Next chapter of "As the Bunsen Burns"TillyGalore wrote:ArkieDukie, it's time for an update. We really need to come up with a title for this Soap Opera.
Things have been a bit nerve-wracking for me. The Boss and the business folks are working on the budget for the coming fiscal year (current fiscal year ends on Aug. 31, I believe). My office is next door to the departmental business administrator's office, and I've heard a couple of conversations that lead me to believe that the bean-counters are trying to make The Boss cut positions within the department. It sounds as though one of these positions is mine. The Boss is fighting this. Haven't heard any more lately, but
. As an added bonus, I have to start keeping a work diary in order to track how many hours I spend on specific projects. If The Boss feels I'm spending too much time on a particular project, he can redirect my efforts. I fear what this could mean, especially given the fact that WEC complains loudly and often that he doesn't have enough help. He's especially short-handed now, since his postdoc literally walked out one day and didn't come back. The situation is even worse for MacGyver. I think I mentioned before that The Boss has pulled a bait-and-switch and is basically forcing him in to working on projects with a couple of the village idiots (one of them being Wile E. Coyote). It also sounds as though The Boss is working on getting MacGyver switched to our department, which could be good or bad. I think The Boss has ulterior motives involving getting his hands on MacGyver's instrumentation if/when he doesn't get tenure. It turns out that he also had an ulterior motive in choosing the technician he has decided to hire for MacGyver (see following paragraph). MacGyver is miserable, and I cannot blame him.
The Boss has his group meetings in a common area just outside my office. Last week I heard one of his grad students talking about her project. It happens to be related to one of my areas of interest; it's something I worked on in the past. I mentioned this to the grad student; she was somewhat excited. I then offered my expertise to The Boss. His response? He's hiring someone who has done similar work before using methodology that was state-of-the-art about 20 years ago and doesn't give an answer that's as exact as what I offered to do. Basically, imagine that you have a container full of necklaces, all of which are made of the same type of beads in varying compositions. The Boss is interested in one particular type of bead. The other guy's method takes all the necklaces in the container and breaks them into the individual beads. He then counts how many of that bead are in the entire bin. Mine would break the necklaces into chunks that are measured. In this manner, I could tell which necklaces contain the bead of interest and the exact ordering of the bead of interest in each necklace. There are implications for the presence of the bead in the necklace - and exactly where the bead is in the necklace. The Boss isn't even interested in determining this information - only the total number of his bead of interest in the entire container.
(necklaces = proteins, amino acids = beads) This conversation made me realize that, scientifically, I am fighting a losing battle with The Boss. Just like his pal Wile E. Coyote and the other investigator that MacGyver is being forced to work for, The Boss is at least 20 years behind the times in terms of methodology. It's your basic exercise in futility.
