I hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving. I stayed in Houston (instead of flying home to Pittsburgh) because I am low on money and also because I have so much going on this week that I wanted to try to get some work done on Friday and over the weekend. Everyone I know in Houston went out of town for Thanksgiving, so I actually just spent the holiday in my apartment. Which maybe sounds sad, but really it's not, because, aside from not getting any turkey, lying on a couch and watching football all day is exactly what I want to do on Thanksgiving, and I managed to do that just fine in my apartment. On Friday, I wrote up my colloquium presentation for my interview at the Air Force Academy this Thursday and Friday. And this morning, I arranged to take my skills assessment test for Epic on this Wednesday. I also picked up my new suit this morning. So, it feels like lots of things are happening now. I'm going to keep on practicing my talk for the rest of this week, and try to study a little bit for the skills assessment test, although, aside from the computer programming part, I'm not sure how I would study for it.

Posted at 8:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (748) | TrackBacks (0)

I guess I did well enough in my phone interview with Epic last week to move on to the next step in the interview process. Unfortunately, the next step is me taking a 4-hour skills assessment test. Actually, probably one of the things I've been most successful at in my life is taking tests, so the fact that they are using this to evaluate me, rather than, say, a traditional sitdown interview and my resume and nothing else, gives me a huge advantage. But a 4-hour test... it won't be a picnic. They are sending the test to Rice University Career Services, and I'll schedule a time to take it when it reaches Rice. Probably I'll be taking it early next week. I also have my interview at the Air Force Academy next week, on Thursday and Friday of next week. I have to give a 45-minute presentation on my research during this visit. So even though I am done with school, next week is feeling a lot like finals week for me. In other news, I realized that I would be needing a suit for my interview with the Air Force Academy. The last time I got a suit was 12 years ago, during my junior year in high school. I still have it, and, until recently, it still fit. Unfortunately, I used the pants as part of a costume in one of the theater shows I was in, and they got a hole in the knee, and when I tried on the coat this weekend, it was definitely a little tight. So, it looks like I've finally grown out of my clothes from high school. Anyway, I hate shopping in general and I really really hate shopping for clothes, so I looked around online for what I wanted, and brought the printout to the store to get it. I fell in love with this Donna Karan suit at Men's Wearhouse. I could have got a fine suit for $200-$300 less, and I get a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when I spend money I don't have, but I decided to get it anyway because I'd rather spend the money on a suit I'm in love with than save some money and buy something that's just good enough. So, they're working on doing some minor tailoring of the suit and I'm going to pick it up on Monday. And finally, I mentioned in my last post that my computer was being disagreeable. Well, I think it's fine for now, but the Borland C++ compiler I was using looks like its unsalvageable. Last week, I defragged my memory, and even defragged my virtual memory, which is far from straightforward, but every time I tried to run the compiler, it stalled and gave me a virtual memory error. I even tried to uninstall and reinstall the compiler, using the CD that came with my C++ textbook, and it still didn't work. So, I had to go online and download a free C++ compiler to use with the textbook. It seems to work fine so far, so I'll keep my fingers crossed that it doesn't pick up any bugs.

Posted at 8:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBacks (0)

Things are kinda starting to get going now. I had a phone interview this morning for a job at a medical software company in Madison, Wisconsin. It's hard for me to tell if it went well or not, but I don't think I said or did anything that was too terrible, so there's reason for optimism. I've actually been thinking a lot about moving to the north-central part of the country - Minnesota, Wisconsin or Illinois. The winter weather is a little harsh (I heard that someplace in Minnesota had a -15 degree wind chill this morning) but that whole part of the country seems to be very picturesque, and they have so many lakes up there. I wonder why that is... probably from the receding of the Ice Age glaciers, I guess. I also set a date for my interview for the postdoctaralship at the Air Force Academy. I'll be going up there on Thursday, December 1. I have to give a colloquium, which is a fancy word for an hour-long talk about my research. I'm not looking forward to that. I actually enjoy talking about my research, and even enjoy doing public talks about my research, but you have to do tons of preparation for those kinds of talks, and it is a bit of a nerve-wracking experience even if you do basically enjoy it. So, right now, I have two somewhat promising job prospects at the Air Force Academy and at Epic, the medical software company. I also contacted a third-party job recruiter who was recruiting for the Office of Naval Analysis, and he told me he was going to pass my application on to them, but that was a couple weeks ago and I haven't heard anything since. But the wheels are turning, and I'm feeling like by the time Christmas comes along, I will have at least one job offer... Which is good, because my computer has suddenly started crashing lately, and I'm a little worried that there are only so many more resumes it can print out and so many more internet job-boards it can survey before it finally croaks on me. Actually, ironically, I think the problem might be the C++ compiler that came with one of the C++ textbooks that I bought. Every time I try to run it, I get an error message saying that Windows' virtual memory is low, but when I open the task manager, there seems to be lots of memory available. I've been working for the past two days to try to get my computer and the compiler back into working order. We'll have to see how that goes.

Posted at 8:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

I originally envisioned this "Diary" area as being a place where everyone who was interested could keep up on what was sure to be the frenetic pace of my job search. Presumably, I would be flying from interview to interview, fielding one job request after another, and it would be excessive to send a mass email out to everyone for each new development. But, as the sparse postings in this diary suggest, there really hasn't been much in the way of news to give you. But, finally, I do have an interview lined up. The U.S. Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, has a postdoctoral position open, and they have called me in for an interview. I still have to make the travel arrangements through their physics department, but my best guess is that the interview will be just after Thanksgiving, two weeks from now, give or take. The position involves something that is a very popular subject in Atomic/Molecular/Optical Physics - the trapping and guiding of atoms with lasers. In this case, it is rubidium atoms that are guided through a hollow optical fiber by a laser beam. As I said, trapping and guiding atoms with lasers is a popular subject, and I have many friends at Rice who did work along those lines, so it's something I'm pretty familiar with, but I've never done it myself, and I think it'd be a cool thing to do. So, I'm crossing my fingers hoping that the interview goes well, and, if it does, I might be spending the next couple winters in Colorado.

Posted at 8:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm finding out that a lot of the jobs that I'm interested in require applicants to have computer programming skill. Unfortunately, computer programming is one of the few things I did not do during my graduate student career. So, while I'm sitting and waiting to receive a job offer from someone, I'm going through a textbook that teaches you C++ in twenty-four 1-hr sessions. I did 5 hours yesterday; I'll probably only get one hour in today, but I'm hoping I'll be pretty much finished by the end of the week. I've already updated my resume and CV to reflect my newfound C++ knowledge. I took a class in Java programming a few years ago, and C++ is not much different as far as I can tell, so I'm picking it up pretty easily. I guess that leads to the question of why I don't list Java programming as one of my skills on my resume/CV. Well, the Java class had tons of homework, and by the end of the semester I just couldn't keep up with the homework and my regular graduate teaching and research work, so I ended up not turning in a lot of homework. Since homework made up about 65% of the class grade, not turning in my homework really hurt my grade. I did well enough on the tests that I didn't completely fail, but I ended up with a D in the class. So, I don't feel right putting Java programming as one of my skills since I got a D in my Java class. But I do basically understand how to do Java, so that's helping me a lot with C++.

Posted at 8:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

During the course of this week, I have transitioned from being mildly depressed to cautiously optimistic about my prospects of finding a job. I came into this process very green, which is entirely my fault since Rice University has a very good Career Services department that I did not utilize at all. Because of that, I came into this process naïvely assuming that because I had a Ph.D. in the very difficult subject area of physics from a prestigious university that just about any open position in a science/engineering/technical field that I fancied was as good as mine. Well, it turns out that being a smart guy with a big-time degree is not enough nowadays. You also need to be an expert in Java/C++/Unix or your need 4 years experience in the aerospace industry or you need to have extensive experience in modeling fluid dynamics. That is, you need to be a really smart guy who can do the job from day 1, which makes sense because nowadays most white-collar workers only stay at their jobs for about 5 year stretches, so there's no reason for employers to invest the time in training. Anyway, it seemed like I wasn't qualified for anything. I did apply for a few jobs on the hope that even though I was obviously unqualified that they might at least schedule an interview for me just for the heck of it. But I didn't hear anything back from anybody, and it was depressing. This week, though, I started feeling a little better. I found some jobs that I was qualified for, and also some jobs that basically said in the listing "Hey, really smart people, we're looking for you!" For example, there's one job in Los Angeles for a movie studio consulting place in which, given certain parameters, you predict the possible success of a movie. That would be something different. I haven't heard back from them yet, but I at least feel good in that I feel like it wouldn't be a longshot for them to call me in for an interview. And there were a couple other positions like that which I applied to this week. So, all in all, things are looking OK right now.

Posted at 8:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)