Joshua Tree 2006

Back from JTree in October 2006.

Trip summary from a climbing perspective:

Yosemite:

East Buttress of ElCap with Jim and Link. V and Link swappwed leads, J an K swapped leads. Started at around 9, done by 4pm, waited a bit behind other party. Both V and K had a bit of trouble leading the 1st of the 2 middle 5.9 pitches, but otherwaise stellar route, very fun.

East Side:

Little lakes Valley (Tom's place turnoff) 4 mile approach to Dade lake on one day, then climb bear Creek Spire (NE Arete). Snow on approach during 1 mile of steep talus (ugh). Slept on it, but decided not to go too much further up talus, and turned back with fun trip but no peak.


JTree:

Arrived Thursday

3 climbs at hemingway

Friday

Lost in Lost horse (3-4 climbs)

Saturday

3 climbs at Future Games wall, then escape heat in town

Sunday

6 climbs in Real Hidden Valley

Monday

4 climbs at trashcan rock
4 climbs at hemingway/dairy queen

Tuesday

1 climb in Steve's canyon-mainly rest day/movie

Wednesday

Picked 4 plums

Double Cross 5.7 *** V
Watanobe Wall 10a *** V
Pope's Crack 9 *** K (not her type but excellent lead!)
Illusion Dweller 10b ***** K (few hangs, one fall, but what a climb! sustained!)

Another Chocolate Tasting (#3)

Just returned from Joshua tree (see next post) and tasting chocolate again:


1) L: Lindt Excellence 80%

V: Good snap, very good melting temperature. hint of cherry. very fudgy. Clean aftertaste.

K: Light and crisp. Maraschino flavor. Clean. Good texture.

2) N: NewTree "Forgiveness" 73% with lemon

V: Texture is a bit hard. Lemon is interesting, but quickly turns ashy and bitter. Hint of soap. On the otherhand this is good when eaten quickly as a snack type bar-the lemon is more interesting then.

K: Sweetness and tartness don't mix in this. Dry. Lemon hits you before chocolate. Weird aftertaste. Bitter and acrid aftertaste. Good until compared to higher quality.

3) SB: Scharffen Berger 41% Milk

V: Caramel-cara mia. Doesn't melt quickly. Very tasty.

K: SB milk c. is soo good. Caramelization of the milk! Caramel! Texture very creamy but didn't melt as quickly as I expected. Milky aftertaste very prominent.



V's favorite: Lindt

K's favorite: Difficult between SB and L, very different.





Notes from an earlier unrecorded tasting of SB 68% Kumasi Sambirano:

Very choc. , fudgy sweet and earthy/grassy

Creamy and dark

accessible and fruity with excellent texture.

Chocolate Tasting #2

SB=Scharffen Berger 70% pure "bittersweet"
VS=Villars Swiss 72% pure "dark chocolate"

Choclate Tasting music (A View to A Kill-Duran Duran)

SB:

V-Firm, doesn't melt, strong snap. Orange flavor. Very strong and clean afterwards. I like it, but not my favorite

K-smells like teen spirit (i mean dried leaves) liquor. Doesn't melt. cherries and maple flavor. Mild aftertaste.


VS:

V: Clean snap, melts easier. More bitter. very different flavor. like a grape, with a clean clear first break, follwed by a tart flavor, but a more bitter coffee flavor. Strong aftertaste. You know you've eaten dark chocolate. Smoky long afterwards.

K: Nuttier. chalkier texture. Bitter orange coffee flavor, followed by nuts. 2 very distinct flavors, in stages. Much stronger aftertaste. Epitome of dark choc. feels lonely by itself.


Final:

V: I prefer the VS. It is more classic dark chocolate. Both are interesting, but the VS is probably a more robust. Would like some port...

K: I prefer the SB. Texture is important and the SB has better texture. By istelf the SB has a shorter aftertaste, which is more pleasant without accompaniment (other than Duran Duran...)

Chocolate Tasting #1

1st (recorded) tasting-not blind.

2 chocolates:

SB62Nib) Scharffen Berger Nibby bar 62% Note that this bar has a distinct texture difference, due to its inclusion of cacao nibs. It is still a pure chocolate, since cacao nibs are indeed processed into pure chocolate, but these are coarse ground nibs, so the texture and taste are different.

GSS) Ghirardelli "semi-sweet" bar including milk fat. This bar came to us via a circuitous route, and thus we are unsure of its exact composition.


Tasting accompanied by vanilla silk to cleanse palate. Note that this is our idea, not necc. in agreement with others. Others claim that you should snap (listen for the snap for a good choc.) then smell, then let it melt on tongue for a few sec. then press to roof of mouth, then chew 3-5 times. Spitting is not neccessary here....


GSS-

K- May have been in purse too long. Taska tastes plastic. Smell is nice full cherry flavor. No snap. A bit chalky, pwdered sugar. No bitterness at all, very sweet. Not a dark chocolate. What little bitterness it has is in the finish. Semi sweet

V- Slight Coffee flavor. no Snap. Reminds me of dark choc. chips, or chips in really good ice cream. Very clean, perhaps simple. Not unpleasant at all. Just enough bite at the finish to tell you that it is for real, but not enough to make you think twice. All in all a pleasant choc., but nothing out of the ordinary.

SB62N-

K- Grenadine and bananas-with brazilnuts. Higher melting point, long time before flavor comes through. Scent almost floral- perhaps.. gardenias or honeysuckle A good amount of Cacao nibs. Sweet coffee. Flovar arrived on swallowing, perhaps better for small bites and faster chewing.

V- Texture is of course very intriguing- bananas are very clear. Clean, almost tasteless at the beginning, finishing with a crunch of the nibs and the rich bitter flavors coming through. Strong snap. Very pleasureable and interesting, very low sweetness.


Final comments

K- More dark chocolate- the more I appreciate it. Curious to see what I would choose were I given a choice of a whole bar to eat. Still might prefer milk, but not sure. Cartainly would have until last few weeks. Think I would now have a hard time eating candy bard from the checkout line...


V- For pleasure-the nibby bar, but for cooking, the GSS seems good, and it isn't a bad snack at all. Not really a fair comparison, of course, since I think the GSS was meant for cooking.
I agree with K that dark chocolate is far more complex in flavor (like red wine..) and I would prefer a good dark, pure bar to a milk bar, but there are really good examples of both (again like wine). Comples tastes are almost always preferable, but there are times and places for both.

Chocolate

About 6 months ago Taska decided that she was interested in thinking about Chocolate in the same way that oenophiles think about wine. We've been trying many different chocolates, including some flavored chocolates (a Vosges 41% "Barcelona" bar that includes sea salt was particularly yummy).

We, and my parents, recently took a tour of Scharffen Berger Chocolate factory in Berkeley (highly recommended!) and the tour guides there were quite enthusiastic about our ideas, and mentioned several things about the already extant chocolate tasting/gourmet chocolate community. For one thing, it was claimed that chocolate has more flavor compounds than wine. I'm not sure, but I believe this means that chemically, it has more compounds that tickle our taste buds. Chocolate, or wine, will vary in the proportion of these compounds, giving rise to complex and subtle differences of flavor. Since chocolate has more, the idea is that it is a more fertile ground for taste variation and experimentation. I'm not convinced that this neccessarily follows, but certainly having more things to play with in terms of flavor can't be bad, and chocolate has the addition of texture as well.

Regardless of its comparison to wine, we're pretty psyched about chocolate, since it tastes better than wine, and nothing is particularly impaired after consuming it, except perhaps your waistline. We hope to embark on a tasting journey among the chocolate varieties that currently exist, and perhaps provoke others to join us via tasting parties and other fun forms of chocovangelism. Interested parties might wish to consult with xocoatl.org as a nice resource.

Chocolate of course must be divided into categories, the most obvious being milk vs. dark, which is probably roughly equivalent to white vs red, if one is interested in furthering the wine analogy. However, before that division, one must also make the distinction of pure vs adulterated. Chocolate + sea salt is amazing and interesting, however, it is not pure. To be pure, by our current off the cuff definition, we must have nothing, save cacao, cocoa butter, vanilla, lecithin, sugar in some proportion. The existence of any other ingredient should be considered as an adulteration. Note that milk chocolate would be one common form of adulteration, but not, by any means the only one. Milk chocolate is common enough to warrant its own category, but there must indeed be a third category for other forms of additions to pure chocolate. We will continue to keep records of our tasting here as they occur.

June Climbing

To continue my halfhearted climbing documentation:

Back in May we get to Yose only once (weather not as good as usual, and we were a bit sick occasionally) and we did:

* The first 3 pitches of a wet Goodrich Pinnacle route (looked like it might be a little bit wet on the runout face parts so we called it after 3 pitches. Taska P1 (5.6) Travis P2(5.7) Jim P3(5.8/9)
* Harry Daley route 5.8 (such a fun little climb over there on GP apron!) Jim P1 Travis P2
* Bishop's Terrace 5.8 Travis P1 Jim P2 (1 pitch to the top, 2nd pitch traverses over to the terrace


Finally got back to Yose on June 4-5 for a 2day trip.

Day1:
*Higher Cathedral Spire-regular route. what a route. 5 pitches, the last 4 are 5.9. Great summit (rarity in Yose!) We did the std route as shown in stopo, the thin hands variation to the right on P2 looked more like 10b (saw another party struggle on it...). THe 3rd pitch was pretty stunning, and the 5th pitch we did a sttep hands variation on the right that was short but fun.
** Travis P1 (5.5) P5 (5.9)
** Taska P3 (5.9)
** Jim P2,4 (5.9)
* Commitment- We got down from the 1500' vertical of the hike to and from Higher spire at about 330 or so, and decided that after a snack we needed to do something more to earn our dinner. So we ran up Commitment in pretty quick time (less than 2hrs-quick for us anyway). V-P1(5.8) K-P2(5.7) J-P3(5.9)

Day2:
A bit sore we decided we needed something to stretch the muscles and be a bit more relaxing, so we did Royal Arches. We ended up finding a couple of new things to do: a 5.7 hand crack just to the right on the big ledge system before the "3rd" pitch. A good alternative to 3rd class scrabming in the gully on the left, fun for 20-30 feet. Also the 5.9?? variation on the 5.7 pitch after the traverse. When the tree at the top of that pitch finally goes (rotten, but gives great holds!) you can move left about 15-20 feet below the tree and do a little crack that has one fisty move-but a #3 camalot should protect it very well, no problem and a good alternative to bringing the treee down. Total time <4.5 hours, not too bad, we weren't really hurying, and we had 3 people, though Jim was self-belaying.

Podcast Test

So I am now getting interested in podcasting, and I tried this podcast from home with just the random flotsam and jetsam I had laying about in my itunes and iphoto stuff (most of my real photos and music are in Taska's account, so didn't use them).

This took about 30 mins from opening garageband to posting it to my blog...

My first podcast


Just click on the link and if you have iTunes you should hear it immediately. Keep an eye on the lower left corner to see images. You may have to open the iTunes artwork pane (in lower left corner, there is a button to do that)-you also have to keep the podcast selected for the pix to show. You can make them bigger by expanding that window...

REM

REM personal top 25 lists are appearing. So here is a joint effort of me and Taska to make this list. It took a lot of vodka, many trips to the iPod, and some serious soul searching to hash this out. Ranking is way out of the question, but we managed to break it into 3 groups.


All REM is Great (Except Monster-which is only good) but these are not in the top 2 tiers (21-25)

Cuyahoga-Lived in Cleveland-Cuyahoga county Ohio long after this album came out-irrelevant, but significant at the time.

Radio Free Europe-Classic-can’t leave it out.

Electrolite-New Adventures is on Compton Ave in Cleveland, Sr year of College. Monster was a bit disappointing (for eveyone) and then this-hours of play- on the big white dusty college couch.

Around the Sun-bought this album in Joshua Tree. How many REM songs are connected to climbing for us! Yet we've loved them for far longer than we've climbed.

Chorus and the ring- Reveal-We lived in the East bay when we got this album and I never really connected with it, however this song is great. There are some other good ones on that album, but Up, Around the Sun and the Great Beyond, all dwarf this album a bit.


Really good songs-but one tier down (11-20-no order):

Nightswimming- A photo of us-dancing at Central taken by Brad?-on the dashboard of the Honda, every streetlight reflected...

Drive- Motivation. A great opening to an album.

Talk About the Passion-muhmuh-The Prelude, in front of 431 Stonewall.

Gardening at Night-I’ve done this...

Perfect Circle-Driving down Forrest St., turning on to Stonewall, again Taska introduces me to this song. Taska: Jamison’s house, music cave, father’s record player, $250 needle-sounds good even without that.

End of the World-Classic-Slamdancing at Shad’s new years party-every year

bittersweet me- Taska:long story-Group sex-AIDS test-poster on the wall-illustrator “M.M.” -bomb strapped to leg- “I’d rather chew my leg off...”-told you it was a long story.

Time after Time-The slow pause is “one of the best moments in music ever: according to Taska. Travis likes So. Central rain here instead....

The One I Love-Classic, though very overplayed, and “oft misunderstood”

Why Not Smile (Taska)/Walk Unafraid (Travis) Up is always in Boulder Canyon.

Obvious Inclusions- top 10 in no particlular order:

Driver 8-It just screams REM. Tri-tone. Taska:First REM song she learned to play on the Guitar

Losing my religion-I bought out of time in a record store in Athens, while there for a bike race with my Dad. I knew and liked REM, but I didn't realize they were from Athens till I got home!

Belong-Resonates. Driving my Honda Prelude to Central High School-the parking lot of Subway on Union Ave, with Taska.

Maps and Legends- Driving through Coventry in Cleveland hgts. listening to a live version of this, long after it came out.

Hope-Taska and I rented a car with a CD player in Boulder, CO and I had UP and we played this song over and over while driving/climbing in Boulder Canyon

Half a world away- Taska:painting in Byron’s room, writing letters to Adam, in college, half a wor.....

King of Birds-Newton. Taska:Anything is cool if it starts with a Sitar

You are the Everything-What can I say? Steamy windows. Romance. Mandolins. Taska: First time I saw them in concert-Green tour Mid South Coliseum with indigo girls.

World Leader Pretend-When I quit my PhD program at Stanford I climbed a route in Yosemite, sat on a ledge above the valley, painted arrows on myself and sang this song.

Swan Swan H--Taska’s first favorite REM song.

Climbing Trip 2

Pinnacles again 2/20

Taska and I, East Side

Nipple Jam 5.8? (V)

Thrill Hammer 5.8+ (VK)

??? 5.7 (V)

North end of East Face Discovery wall...

Insubstantial Man 10a (K)

Not its real name, some other word instead of insubstantial...Good lead-one hard mantle move by a bolt, then thin 5.9ish for 3 more bolts

Wet Kiss 5.9 (V)

always fun!

The Big Pucker 10d (TR)

good climb - hard mantle for short folks crux is after the ledge, well protected

Swallow Crack 5.6 (K)

fun way to end the day-easy but fun. Saw some guys at the base of this with what looked like an El Cap rack. Never did see if they did this or something else, but it looked weird...

Brokeback Murrow

Brokeback Mountain

Great movie. Politically, of course, I have to be behind it, but it is
way beyond that. Ang Lee is just plain good at his job, and does a great
job with a really good story from Proulx and McMurtry, and a great
performance by Heath Ledger. Top it off with Wyoming, and a great little
soundtrack (small, almost precious, pieces of guitar music, just enough to
be interesting, but not enough to be distracting)

The oscars for me boil down to this and Good Night and Good Luck. Both
movies I care about politically, as well as appreciating their craft. The
"free speech vs. patriot act/McCarthyism/bigoted idiots" and "gay rights
vs. hate crimes/Pat Robertson/bigoted idiots" aspect
of these movies resonates deeply with me, of course, and it is hard for me
to evaluate them on a purely cinematic basis. I want them both to be
acclaimed, so that more of the country hears these important messages.

However, cinematically, I think Brokeback is the narrow winner. I think.
It's real close. I guess I could sit around and watch them both over and
over just to decide. Wouldn't be bad, that.

2 cool things

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

I'm most of the way through it and really like it. Mostly
autobiographical, somewhat maudlin and very introspective. Always witty,
and often inspiring.

Eggers currently is editor of McSweeney's
which is a nifty site/magazine.

From there I ran into freedarko which is an
interesting and intelligent basketball commentary.

Good sportswriting for those of us who appreciate good writing, but also
follow sports, is sometimes hard to find. Bill Simmons at espn.com was as
good as it got for me until I found freedarko, which is better after a few
glances, to my mind. Gregg Easterbrook used to be pretty interesting,
except that he compared Disney to hitler and lost his spot on espn...

Treos

So I got a treo about 2 weeks ago, and as a consequece haven't been
posting here. Basically this is because I am playing with the Treo on the
train, instead of thinking of interesting blog postings.

Anyway, I haven't forgotten this, and of course, I can post from the treo
too, but I haven't done that yet.

The Treo (650) is pretty darn cool, for those of you considering a
"device".

cyberpunk feminists

An interisting paper on cyberpunk women

From: River Runs Through It-Norman MacLean

     "... but you can love completely without complete understanding."

     Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was
young are dead, but I still reach out to them.

     Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of
course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends
think I shouldn't. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where
the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start
fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light
of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and
memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count
rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

     Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through
it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks
from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless
raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are
theirs.

     I am haunted by waters.

I believe that this is the quote from the book. I believe that in the
movie he adds "even jessie" before "but I still reach out to them".
He leaves out (?) the 2nd sentence of the 1st paragraph, and then
leaves out the word "arctic" in the next sentence too. Otherwise it
is unchanged when Redford reads it at the end.

Just Beautiful.

TV

On my way to the train I was talking with a co-worker about my
relationship with TV. It is well established that most TV is not good
brain food (even most of PBS and discovery channel is like faux health
food: you're still better off reading a book or having a discussion.)
If you are only trying to lead an intellectually stimulating life, I
can think of no need to have a TV, and it might only be used for art
films or other such, if it did come in the house.

However, most of us, even me, aren't solely interested in intellectual
stimulation. Sometimes we feel a need to turn off our overly active
brains, sometimes we want to relax, utterly and completely, without
anything mentally taxing. TV provides a way to do this. I've got two
problems.

First, I'm not convinced this is necessary at all, maybe reading,
relaxing in a sauna, whatever, is better for us than TV. Maybe TV is a
crutch that doesn't really help us do what we want it to: help us
relax. Maybe it eats up more time than it gives back. I feel like the
idea would be no TV. Go out work, play, whatever. Then come home and
relax by sitting in a chair by a fire and reading, or napping, or
taking a bath. One might be better off if that were one's life. But
I'll conceded this point and let TV in my door. Let's say that I
recognize that TV has some value as a relaxation aid. How to manage
it? This leads to...

Problem 2: Once you let TV in, it starts taking over. It's
addictive. One way it does this is by scheduling your life for you.
You find things you want to watch and now you're tied to its schedule,
rather than your own. This problem has been eliminated recently (for
me and many others) by TiVo. You own your time again, and the TV
doesn't control your schedule. It is _great_ for this. And has
improved my life a lot, since I no longer worry about scheduling my TV
times to watch what I want.

However, scheduling is just one way that TV inculcates itself into your
life. Once you get in the habit of watching, it's hard to stop. You
get addicted. TiVo doesn't stop that, it feeds it. TV is addictive
because even though the product is pretty junky, the fix is so cheap
that you can't help but do it. TiVo makes the fix even cheaper. I.e.
no annoying ads, you watch whatever you want starting when you want to
start it, and you can fit it around your life. Sounds good, and it
is, but it means you don't have to think, just plop your growing ass in
front of the TiVo and you get mildly entertaining drivel, and the
drivel starts and stops when you want it to. It's still drivel
though. Drivel may be helpful in small doses as a soporific, or
something similar, but what if all you ever do is come home and turn on
the drivel box? Addiction.

I'm in the midst of thinking about upgrading my cable service, so that
I can obtain a higher-quality of drivel. Specifically this revolves
around getting soccer drivel that I might watch instead of basketball
drivel and football drivel. Sports drivel seems to be a speciality of
mine, and like 24 and other addictions, it seems to work by "if you
don't watch the first one, the second one is less fun to watch." I
have to keep up with the regular season so that I know what is going on
in the playoffs, etc. I don't really even have any teams I get behind,
I just watch sports. Often it's a way to relax on a weekend, but
it's more than that too, and why can't I relax by reading a good book?

Do we (Americans) watch TV because there is nothing better in our
culture, or do we have nothing better in our culture, because we watch
TV. Does that apply to me? Will the increase in choices coming due to
TiVos, iTunes video, and the obvious extensions, mean that we watch
less? Or more?

Excellent mantra

From the mod_perl book:

Which is more important: saving enough memory to allow the machine to
serve a few extra concurrent clients, or using off-the-shelf modules that
are proven and well understood? Debugging a reinvention of the wheel can
cost a lot of development time, especially if each member of your team
reinvents in a different way. In general, it is a lot cheaper to buy more
memory or a bigger machine than it is to hire an extra programmer. So
while it may be wise to avoid using a bloated module if you need only a
few functions that you could easily code yourself, the place to look for
real efficiency savings is in how you write your code.

New Climbing Year

Jan 9th- First climbing trip of 2006. Pinnacles. I was sick up until
a day before so we weren't sure if we were going, and our first day
back in the gym last week revealed us to be weak and out of shape from
the holidays. Upshot was that we weren't sure we were going until the
day before. Then tghe day before we went out an ran 6 miles too fast
(not very fast, but for us, fast). Tired legs.

Jim always tries to keep pitch counts-i.e. how many pitches have we
done in a year, and he tries to get us up around 100. Last year I
think we broke that easily, as we got twentysomething on half dome (
Taska and I got 30-40 on our vacation in October but Jim doesn't get to
count those...) Anyway, I'm not sure that counting pitches is too
sensible, but I can at least do that:

Pinnacles 1/9 Elephant Rock 5.6 (J) and 10a (TR)
Smiling Simian 5.8 (VKJ) (Short but fun)
Even Coyotes Like it Doggie Style 10a (KJ)
(Good route, 5 bolts)
Dos Equus 5.8 (VKJ)
Twinkle Toes Traverse 5.7 (J)

6 pitches (I guess we count TRs) nice and easy intro to the year

Last Day at Work

One of my good friends at work left today for another job, and another
is leaving next week. Said goodbye today, though I imagine I'll see
her "around." Both of these people came to our group at around the
same time I did, and they are both a little over 30, like me, so it
makes me think about a couple of things:

1) NPR recently ran a story on morning edition about
generational differences in the workplace. To paraphrase that, and add
some comments on my own-remember of course, these are generalities and
sterotypes:

Number one difference between the baby boomers (who tend to be our
bosses), and the gen xers (i.e. me and my departing friends) is the
time staying at one employer. We xers tend to stick around for 3-5
years. That's enough time to learn useful skills, contribute to the
workplace, and then begin to desire to learn new skills, which are
generally not available in the same workplace. These days, the skills
one needs on the job are always changing. Jobs change. Technologies
change. Missions change. xers thrive on this change, and we adapt
well, mainly because we are always trying to keep ahead of or at least
in step with changing trends. Moving to new positions, especially in
new employers, helps us stay abreast of new changes, and keeps us
employable. We generally see our most important asset as something
like "adaptability" or "learns quickly, " rather than thinking of some
particular area of expertise or skill. Good people, we think, are
good people, regardless of years of fortran programming experience.
That's why x-ers dominated the dot coms. There was no expertise, new
businesses were/are being invented.

Boomers tend to want to stay in the same position much longer, and
often see it as a failure (of employee or employer or both) if someone
leaves after a "short" time. Employers are tied more closely to one's
identity, and perhaps skills, business sectors, etc. didn't change as
rapidly in the past. An employer didn't have to work as hard to retain
a boomer, because they naturally wanted to stay. x-ers tend to
naturally want to move on after a while, and thus and employer must
work to retain them by offering development paths.

It begs the question, should employers even try to retain employees?
The traditional wisdom is that an employer should attempt to retain
employees. They should try to do the career development thing,
training, paths, etc. But why? Is it possible that new blood _is_
actually needed every once in a while, and maybe more often than it
used to be? Maybe we should strive for a workplace where everyone
shifts around every 5 years or so. Cross pollination, etc. It keeps
people out of the infamous comfort zone as well. Academia has done
this for years. grad students, post-docs, they all do great work
partially because they have short tenures then move on. The
institution attracts good grad students and post docs based not on
their pay but on the placement of the leaving postdocs and grad
students. Anyone who knows me knows I was not a big fan of the
academic life, but maybe in the big picture that's a sound model.
Rather than thinking of career development paths as trying to "retain"
good employees, think of them as "attracting" the next good employee.
Maybe that's a better model. Clearly there is personal and
situational variation, so the grad school model of pretty rigorous
timelines might not be appropriate, but employers should/are thinking
more about this model, rather than "stay with us forever." Presumably
many are, I wonder how far people are going with it.

Another interesting difference mentioned in the NPR piece was work-life
balance. Apparently xers want more outside life than boomers did. My
opinion is that so many xers saw their hard-working boomer parents'
relationships collapse and end in divorce and/or absentee parenting
that they want to avoid that. There is probably also something to be
said for women in the workplace who feel they have a right to be there,
rather than feeling they have to fight to prove that women can work.
This new generation of women workers probably is more vocal about
wanting time off for families. Hopefully modern fathers are becoming
more vocal as well, saying if the mother gets to take some time off,
the father should too. And hopefully (near to my heart) childless
folks are saying the same thing, "I don't have kids, but I should be
able to take time off just like s/he does. After all maybe I chose not
to have kids at this point because I wanted to do X, where X is not
work"

2) (I'll bet you don't remember what the numbers refer to:the 2 things
that my friends' departure made me think about-the NPR story and...)
What about me-should I leave soon too, since my peers are leaving, is
my alarm clock ticking? (Of course I recognize that my (potential)
employers might read this too, but I believe, perhaps idealistically,
in keeping a consistent, defensible set of beliefs and actions. If I
write something here that my employer has a problem with, they should
speak up, and if can't explain it honestly to their satisfaction, then
we do have a problem, but one that goes deeper than a few words on a
blog...)

As it turns out, while I've certainly thought about it more due to my
friends' departure, I don't really feel my alarm clock ticking. While
a lot of xers fall into the above feelings, I may be different. First
my job involves a lot of problem solving on a daily basis, which keeps
me fresh, I am still learning new things in my job. Secondly, I lived
in academia, with constant transitions, for a while, and I left, partly
to gain some stability. This bodes well for my current situation, and
badly for my alarm clock, since it seems to mean I value stability more
than the typical xer. Keeping abreast of change, and developing new
skills to cope with change certainly resonates with me strongly, but
perhaps I find ways of fitting that in, or maybe I am lucky, or maybe
my alarm will go off a little later.

Regardless, I think the xer/boomer patterns are interesting in general,
and probably both sets have something to gain from understanding the
others' patterns. It isn't a question of "old fogeys" and "young
upstarts" since I think the relevant comparisons are looking at
different generations when they were at the same place in their
careers/lives. It also isn't right and wrong, just different, boomers
need to recognize that the workplace will be increasingly dominated by
people with a different way of thinking, and xers need to realize that
others in the workplace may have a different natural expectation than
they do, and it isn't necessarily wrong.

Blackberrying

Has anyone looked up the Sylvia Plath poem in relation to the handheld
device... I had better do that.

Anyway, I think I need to have one (a device not a poem..)