Hypothetical Questions

I have two questions for you guys. These questions are for a hypothetical person who may or may not be me. :)

Q1: Do you think it is better to say:

a) If I am going to do X, I would like a raise.

or

b) If I am going to do X, I expect a raise.

Q2: If you do ask for a raise, do you come in with a specific amount or leave it open-ended?

PS. One of the reasons I believe that there is still a salary discrepancy between men and women is because women ask for raises way less often, if ever. I read that once, probably in some Maureen Dowd article or something, and from anecdotal evidence (i.e. asking a couple friends) I believe it's true. I personally have never asked for a raise in my life. If you have a sec, post in the comments whether or not you've ever asked for a raise. (and also mention your gender if it's not obvious.)

Inspirational

On page 4 of the latest EE Integrator there is an awesome article about my former lab-mate Sheila. She had an interesting and windy path to ending up with her PhD in electrical engineering, so it's worth a read if you have a few minutes.

BTW I know what you're thinking. That newsletter name is so clever I wish I had come up with it. Integrator... get it? :)

And in other exciting news, either a person or a computer algorithm noticed that Sean & I live together and sent only one hard copy of the Integrator to our condo, addressed to both of us. Good job guys!

Alaska Trip: Day 2

Photo 1: Most expensive gas of the trip. This was a small outpost far away from anything. The going price of gas had been about $1.10 per liter but was more like $1.60 per liter there.











Photo 2: Inside the outpost-store-home was a taxidermied wolf. I petted it.




Photo 3: Look how bravely I approached these nice caribou on the road. I got so close I could practically touch them.






Photo 4: More wildlife - some beautiful rams crossing the road.









Photo 5: Finally we took a break from driving! We stopped at the magnificent Liard River Hot Springs which are way, way up north in BC. It was kind of amazing to me that there were these nice wooden boardwalks and changing rooms and the whole thing was free. The fluctuation in the water temperature was really crazy... sometimes I'd be sitting in a comfy spot and suddenly a hot-current would wash over me. Sean is not into hot water, per se, so he just sat on the edge and chanted his little anti-hot-tub mantra "A pot roast cooks at 140..."

Penny Arcade

So, another one of my claims to fame, in addition to sort-of-knowing Yoram Bauman, is that I work in the same building as Penny Arcade. Spoiler: this post is probably not going to be super interesting to you unless you are a Penny Arcade/PAX fan, but then again it also contains some fun inter-office drama.

Background information: Normally the Penny Arcade guys (and I do mean guys, I have yet to see a girl there) are elusive creatures. Sometimes I will see one in the hallway. I smile at them (at least I think I'm smiling..? Maybe I'm grimacing scarily?) and they scurry on their way. When one of them enters their office door, I will instinctively turn my head as I pass the door, just to follow the trajectory of the moving object I was watching. I never see anyone. It's like they get inside and either vanish into thin air, or duck into the nearest doorway as quickly as possible.

I hear them though. The sounds of ping pong waft through the air day and night. One night I was sitting in the lobby at about 9:30pm, waiting for dear husband to pick me up, and a gaggle of P.A. guys entered, ping pong equipment in hand. I may have mis-interpreted that scene, but what I believe I saw was a group of people returning to work late at night to play ping-pong.

Anyway, as far as I'm concerned the PA guys are good building-mates. They mind their own business and we mind our own business.

But two days ago, something changed. PA had left a bag of trash outside their office door. If they're anything like us, they probably have cleaners coming at least twice a week. But perhaps that trash was grossing them out, or perhaps they were meaning to take it out and then just forgot. I saw it on Monday morning and by Monday afternoon I was wondering if I should say something to them, because it's a little rude to leave trash out in a shared space like that. Here's how my thought process went.

First, I thought about what I know about Penny Arcade, which is essentially nothing, but I had the general sense that they are sort of nerdy-ish-gamer-comic-strip people.

So I thought they might appreciate a funny, passive-agressive-note more than a face-to-face chat.

I started mentally composing a note, trying to come up with a sincere (or as sincere as possible considering I have never been to PAX nor have I read their comic) compliment sandwich.

But then I thought you know, why rock the boat here? I'm sure they will take their trash out tonight.

That could have been the end of that (non)story. But the students started arriving for class and a couple people complained about the smell. So, like the dedicated employee that I am, I tried to deflect the responsibility onto our Chinese instructor. Here's the conversation I had with him.

"Hey I don't want to stereotype or anything, but you play ping-pong, right?"
"Yep."
"Great! How would you feel about challenging the Penny Arcade guys to a game of ping-pong, and then if you win they have to take their trash out?"
"Well, I'm not really that good."
"Oh come on, you're good. Pleeease?"
"Why don't you just go ask them to take their trash out?"

So, off I went. A guy who I have never seen before answered the door. I was thinking about the compliment sandwich but as soon as I saw this guy I decided it would be silly and threw that idea out the window. This is roughly how the conversation went.

"Hi... soo... is that your trash over there?"
Uncomfortable pause.
"Yep."
Uncomfortable pause.
"Ok. Could you guys maybe... take it out?"
Uncomfortable pause.
"Yep."
"Thanks." As he was shutting the door I said "I love PAX it's really cool".

So there you have it... a smoothly-executed open-faced compliment sandwich. I assume it worked since the trash was gone this morning.

Nostalgia!

Last night I had a dream that I was at a house party back in Tucson, with the old crew. I'll call them the IRC crew (Internet Relay Chat, woot!) since that's how most/all of them knew each other. In the dream I was so happy, it really made me miss everyone back there. (Ok many of them aren't even there anymore but hey you can still miss things that no longer exist.)

In other nostalgic news, I just tried to use ctrl-y to paste. Oh Emacs, you have influenced my life so much!! Actually, I was using E-views which is similar in name to Emacs so I can see how my brain got confused. Good times! :)

Alaska Trip: Day 1

Our friend has posted pictures of our trip, so I will post my favorites here to tell the story of our 3-day drive (plus 1 day in Anchorage) with some exciting visual aids.



Photo 1: The closest I got to doing exercise during the drive. I lifted the ole husband off the ground for about 1 millisecond, while we were stopped for construction.



Photo 2: Our first animal sighting was a black bear. Too bad he ran off before I could snap a photo. He was there a second ago, I swear!




Photo 3: After 17 hours in the car I needed to stretch!

And what did 17 hours get us? We started at Hope, British Columbia, and ended up at Fort Nelson, B.C. (We drove from Seattle to Hope on Thursday night so technically Frida was day 2.)


View Larger Map

Language Trivia

Right now I'm at work and I am supposed to be working on the newsletter. The hardest part is finding something interesting for the trivia section. So far I haven't been able to top my awesome trivia from the March newsletter. If you're bored you can see it here, but I'll just paste the text here for your reading pleasure:

A recent study showed how language can affect the way people think about space, which in turn can affect how they think about time. Participants were given a set of cards that showed a temporal progression such as a man aging. English speakers tended to arrange the cards from left to right, while Hebrew speakers placed them from right to left.

Kuuk Thaayorre, an Australian aboriginal language, does not have words for 'right' and 'left'. All spatial relationships are described using cardinal directions, e.g north, south, east and west. These speakers arranged the cards differently depending on how they were sitting, so that the cards always went from east to west. If the person was facing north they would place the cards from right to left, and if they were facing west the cards would start close to their body and move away.

BTW I got that trivia idea from an Economist article that I had read. Ever since reading that article my dear husband loves to talk about my "north" arm, or "southwest" leg. Just to remind me that there is a whole civilization out there with whom I would not be able to speak because I am so bad at directions.

BTW this is still only the second-coolest language trivia I have found in my life, the first being the McGurk effect which I blogged about back in the day here.

Name Changing

I never had a super strong opinion one way or the other on whether I would change my name when I got married. I ended up deciding to do it, mostly I guess because I thought it was a romantic, yet relatively simple, thing to do.

Now I see that I was right on the romantic part, but not so much on the simple part. The reason it's so romantic is because it's a huge pain in the butt. I wouldn't exactly compare it to Orpheus traveling to the underworld to retrieve Eurydice... because that journey actually had a purpose. (Oh, snap!)

I'm kidding, it's not really that bad. But there are so many places that have your name that you just kind of take for granted. The things I have changed so far are:

1. Social security card (trip to the SS. office)
2. Driver's licence (trip to the DMV)
3. Credit card
4. My name at the dentist's office (not sure how important this was, but done for consistency)
5. Resume - which, BTW is now confusing because my publications still have my old name on them (if anyone has tips on how to format this, other than "don't change your name", let me know)

Things I haven't changed yet (over 3 months after the wedding):

1. passport (ack! It's going to involve MAILING stuff, eww.)
2. Bank Account (I'm paralyzed with indecision here cause I'm sick of B of A but I think changing my name might still be easier than canceling all 3 of my accounts with them)
3. My UW account( and Husky card, etc.) This is bad b/c I signed up for my class after being married, but I knew that I was still in the UW system with my maiden name so I thought it would just be easier.
4. My email address - honestly I don't know if I will ever change this.
5. ?? Who knows... Amazon account, that type of thing, I'm sure I'm forgetting other things.

PS. All of you successfully-married-and-new-last-named ladies out there are free to call me a giant whiner. You are clearly way more organized and on top of your sh** than I am, good job! :) Men, you are not allowed to call me a whiner.