totm aug 2023 What funny/interesting thing happened in your life today?

[Kimera Industries]

I tracked Titan orbiting Saturn for a week in my telescope (think of it as baby's first scope.) It was highly dependent on absolutely clear skies and the porch light being off, so I haven't seen it ever since these winter clouds settled in.

My moon counter is now at six: Moon, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan.

Surface feature counter is at 5: Venus phases, Mars ice caps (I think? With a lot of eye squinting one side looked whiter) Jupiter equatorial belt, Saturn's rings, and don't forget the Moon's craters. Not counting its seas because those are technically extremely large, lava-filled craters.

[cubinator]

8 hours ago, Kimera Industries said:

I tracked Titan orbiting Saturn for a week in my telescope (think of it as baby's first scope.) It was highly dependent on absolutely clear skies and the porch light being off, so I haven't seen it ever since these winter clouds settled in.

My moon counter is now at six: Moon, Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan.

Surface feature counter is at 5: Venus phases, Mars ice caps (I think? With a lot of eye squinting one side looked whiter) Jupiter equatorial belt, Saturn's rings, and don't forget the Moon's craters. Not counting its seas because those are technically extremely large, lava-filled craters.

If Titan looks bright, on a clear winter night it's worth going for Rhea, Dione, and Tethys too.

You probably won't be able to make out any detail, but Neptune's not too hard to find right now and is about as bright as Titan, and Uranus is close to the Pleiades.

Also, after the Full moon look for Reinier Gamma, it's a squid-shaped bright spot caused by a magnetic anomaly, not a mountain or crater. It's flat and doesn't cast any shadows. There are also some volcanoes and lava flows that can be seen when the phase is just right...

Edited November 7 by cubinator

[AlamoVampire]

Just visited Voyager 1 in Elite Dangerous. Was fun to see!

04271109112024

[Kimera Industries]

On 11/7/2024 at 6:52 AM, cubinator said:

Also, after the Full moon look for Reinier Gamma, it's a squid-shaped bright spot caused by a magnetic anomaly, not a mountain or crater. It's flat and doesn't cast any shadows.

Tycho Magnetic Anomaly 1?  

I'll try and look for it, but my telescope really isn't that great and the light pollution here is awful. Lot of towns right next to each other in a smoggy valley. I do have plans to drive to a light-free BLM area on the next new moon (TIL: apparently two new moons in one month are called a black moon.) Maybe I can see more than one moon of Saturn.

[cubinator]

41 minutes ago, Kimera Industries said:

Tycho Magnetic Anomaly 1?  

I'll try and look for it, but my telescope really isn't that great and the light pollution here is awful. Lot of towns right next to each other in a smoggy valley. I do have plans to drive to a light-free BLM area on the next new moon (TIL: apparently two new moons in one month are called a black moon.) Maybe I can see more than one moon of Saturn.

Nothing on the Moon is going to be limited by light pollution, at least.

[Kimera Industries]

4 hours ago, cubinator said:

Nothing on the Moon is going to be limited by light pollution, at least.

Good to hear. I'm not very good at this astronomy thing because most of what I know about space is more directly related to space exploration. Seeing things from Earth is not something I know a ton about. You could say I'm an amateur-amateur astronomer.

Recently read up on the Uranus Orbiter and Probe proposal as part of my learning about Voyager 2's flybys of the ice giants. Considering the naming patterns of the first two flagship missions to the outer planets (Galileo and Cassini), I wouldn't be surprised if UOP is named Herschel. 

[Kimera Industries]

You can call me a selenographer because I'm drawing a map of the Moon, by hand. An hour of craning my neck and freezing my hands off got me a rough sketch of the seas. Progress!

[AlamoVampire]

So here i am getting dinner and its at a burger place. Im in the drive thru and i swear i keep smelling latex paint. I cant figure out why or where its from. 
194111152024

[AlamoVampire]

I just visited a little probe humanity shot into space. Goes by the name New Horizons. Ive now visited one of the Voyagers and New Horizons in Elite Dangerous. 021911172024

[Kimera Industries]

I made a pipe cleaner model of New Horizons yesterday. It does indeed look like Bill Cipher.

[Batavia]

Did my first piano recital, went well.

[James Kerman]

6 minutes ago, Batavia said:

Did my first piano recital, went well.

What did you play?

[Batavia]

16 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

What did you play?

Played the Toccata by Poulenc!

Here's a link to my favorite recording of it: https://youtu.be/27eyzaU8CoA?feature=shared

[Vanamonde]

12 hours ago, James Kerman said:

What did you play?

The piano. 

12 hours ago, Batavia said:

Played the Toccata by Poulenc!

Here's a link to my favorite recording of it: https://youtu.be/27eyzaU8CoA?feature=shared

That seems like a pretty advanced piece. 

[Ultimate Steve]

Job hunt update!

Back in September I got four interview offers in rapid succession and I slowed down my pace of applications, both to focus on the interviews and also because "There's no way I mess up all four of these right? And there's a fifth one I'm already done with waiting on the answer."

Company 0: Interviewed months ago, they finally got back to me with "no" for a position 2 levels higher than the one I interviewed for.

Company 1: Upon learning more about the job I decided I didn't really want it and decided to push the envelope a little with interview style. Did not go well but now I know.

Company 2: Made it to the second phone interview, not exactly sure what in specific went wrong but it was kind of Meh all around and this is a competitive place to get into so there were doubtless far better suited people.

Company 3: Did 3 rounds of phone+online interviews, they said that I would be better in a hardware focused role on an adjacent team and had me restart the process for that position instead. I made it through 2 rounds and then they rejected me (apparently none of the candidates they interviewed were to their tastes so they opened up applications again).

Company 4: Things went really well. They flew me out for an interview. The in person interview went well and somehow nothing went wrong with the travel. They say I'll know within a week. Recruiter contacts me and says that there's been a delay and that I'll know in another week. Today I finally hear back and - The team thought I did really well, but the position has been cancelled and the needs of the team have been re-evaluated so they will be looking for a level 3 person instead, and also the company is dramatically refocusing hiring on one of their other projects at the expense of everything else.

Six months after graduation, no more active leads, 119 job applications and counting, I'm now competing with the 2025 graduates, here we go again.

I'm starting to doubt my competence at this point. At what point does the employment gap get so large that I'm unemployable? At what point do I give up and just be a bus driver my whole life? Could I handle a part time job and graduate school at the same time, as there's no way I'll be able to pay for it otherwise?

[Kimera Industries]

3 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I'm starting to doubt my competence at this point. At what point does the employment gap get so large that I'm unemployable? At what point do I give up and just be a bus driver my whole life? Could I handle a part time job and graduate school at the same time, as there's no way I'll be able to pay for it otherwise?

Sounds like you did really well in those 5 applications. They key to finding a job is to not give up, because you never know who needs you or when the call will come.

[cubinator]

On 11/21/2024 at 5:03 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

I'm starting to doubt my competence at this point. At what point does the employment gap get so large that I'm unemployable? At what point do I give up and just be a bus driver my whole life? Could I handle a part time job and graduate school at the same time, as there's no way I'll be able to pay for it otherwise?

I wouldn't worry about it. I'm a year deeper in it than you with 5x the applications. I've been interviewed for 16 positions. Your competence is fine, and no one should still be floating around in limbo after 100 apps. 

I've been able to keep my part time job at the planetarium, so even though I only come in once in a while I've still technically been "working" this whole time. If you have anything like that, that's great. If not, if somebody asks about it and they're not willing to understand that you've been trying this whole time, then we're all ****ed. (More seriously, I'm certain that almost all interviewers are aware of this problem, and most are facing similar challenges to ours from the other side. As long as you don't get a particularly evil HR person (the kind who is perpetuating this problem) you'll be fine.) They just like to see that you've been keeping yourself busy with some project or another, "what have you been up to since graduation" is a common question.

The situation is worsening. The problem has expanded beyond ordinary people looking for first-time jobs, to include 4.0 GPA college graduates AND experienced workers too. This means we're approaching that 'singularity' where literally no one is able to get a job fairly quickly. If it keeps up, we should be looking directly at a huge implosion soon. The good news is people are starting to talk about it. Always remember that this worsening is of the environment you occupy, not of yourself.

If you are worried about your skills stagnating, do some affordable projects making use of them. Design and build a small robot, or write a fluid or orbit simulation, or print an interesting mechanical device. These are the kinds of things that have kept the weight off my mind, as well. (That was the primary mission objective of the ENTIRE submarine I designed while waiting to hear back from one interview).

As for graduate school, ask your school about it. From what I understand, students generally pay for it by doing research or TA work, and financing is not an issue. Maybe I should start asking around about it!

=======================================

Out of curiosity, what are your no-response rate and rejection rate? Mine are both around 50% of applications.

[Ultimate Steve]

20 minutes ago, cubinator said:

Out of curiosity, what are your no-response rate and rejection rate? Mine are both around 50% of applications.

Oddly enough it came out to 50/50 exactly the last time I ran the numbers, but I had done a large burst of applications in the preceding few days so turning back the clock a little to allow for response time, it is more like 55-60% rejection and 40-45% no-response. If I separate out the interview -> rejections from the rest of the rejections it is still pretty close to 50/50.

Thank you for the reassurance, it really helps a lot. I've been working on a simple multiplayer N-body space combat game recently, not pretty at all, mostly a tech demo for internet communication, I think I can make space for it on my resume.

I have also scheduled a meeting with my university's career advisors.

[cubinator]

3 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Oddly enough it came out to 50/50 exactly the last time I ran the numbers, but I had done a large burst of applications in the preceding few days so turning back the clock a little to allow for response time, it is more like 55-60% rejection and 40-45% no-response. If I separate out the interview -> rejections from the rest of the rejections it is still pretty close to 50/50.

Interesting, yeah that's pretty similar to my numbers with slightly over 50% rejecting. One interesting number I pulled recently is the rejection rate for jobs that are specifically "entry level" or "level 1" or such in the title is 62%, much higher than the rest. But I also have a high interview rate from these jobs. I think entry level jobs may be looked at more thoroughly than other applications.

3 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Thank you for the reassurance, it really helps a lot. I've been working on a simple multiplayer N-body space combat game recently, not pretty at all, mostly a tech demo for internet communication, I think I can make space for it on my resume.

That sounds great! As long as you have an answer for "what have you done since graduating" I think you'll be fine. Posting that stuff on Linkedin can be good too. I hate playing the algorithm game, but if I have some cool pictures I may as well show them off.

[Zozaf Kerman]

On 11/21/2024 at 3:03 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

At what point does the employment gap get so large that I'm unemployable? At what point do I give up and just be a bus driver my whole life? Could I handle a part time job and graduate school at the same time, as there's no way I'll be able to pay for it otherwise?

If there’s no jobs available, make some. Start a few side projects in your free time that may pan out to be greater things. You never know when your small hobby ends up as the next big trend.

[cubinator]

@Ultimate Steve anyway, this is my general reaction to life right now:

[cubinator]

Last night I saw Uranus without any visual aid. The dimmest stars I know I saw were in the low 6.x range.

[GuessingEveryDay]

6 hours ago, cubinator said:

Last night I saw Uranus without any visual aid.

Dang it, I thought the blackout blinds would work...

 

My family drove down from Alabama and we got to spend the day in our hometown and had a great time meeting with old neighbors!

[Kimera Industries]

A couple of nights ago I dreamt I was aboard the space station Mir. We had just arrived on the shuttle. The Russian crew was very welcoming and friendly and they loved sharing their space with us. The Earth was really beautiful and blue.

[Eclipse 32]

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