[boycott]

Okay I don't know how many people actually read this blog, but I feel that it is my duty, despite minimal exposure to point out how lousy of a company Time Warner is. Take a look at a result from a test from speedtest.net. We currently pay for a 5Mbps download and somewhere around a 1Mbps uplink. Instead we're sitting at 0.666Mbps download and 0.061Mbps uplink. Not only that, but our ping is sitting at over 1/3 of a second.

Time Warner Cable is a sham and they know it. Unfortunately, they hold a monopoly on Cable/Internet near Culver City, and so they have little-to-no incentive to improve their service. I repeat, Time Warner Cable is a sham. Their service is terrible, you will get a fraction of what you pay for, and they could care less. Try playing video games with friends online when it takes almost 1/2 of a second for Time Warner to get a signal to you. In some games, the difference between winning and losing can be as small as 1/2 of a second.

If you absolutely can, boycott Time Warner Cable. Until they improve their service, offer a refund, or at least give us the service we are paying for, I will not have anything positive to say about them. I repeat: Time Warner Cable is a sham.

[end]

Well folks, I think it's that time. I started this blog some ~4 years ago as a sort of way to track my progress through grad school. I filed my dissertation on Wednesday and gave my final exit talk yesterday which means I'm officially done with graduate school.

So what now?

Well, it's complicated. I still have no publications since my boss doesn't seem interested in publishing them. I gave him the final draft of paper #1 back in May and it is yet to be edited for submission. Papers 2-4 have been in my bosses hands since June/July but still nothing. Paper #5 since November and still nothing. So other than my actual degree, I really have nothing to show for, making myself very unappealing to potential employers. It's actually quite depressing especially considering the number of excuses I keep getting for why my papers just won't go out.

So I'm stuck.

The economy is so bad I can't get a job. I have no papers so I look unproductive. My best option is to stay in this group as a postdoc until my papers go out. But for how long? My boss wants me to develop enough of a reputation in order to work for his PhD advisor as a postdoc, but I'm very skeptical about that. His PhD advisor is 64 years old this year, and it's already too late for me to try to work for him in the fall. That means he'll be nearly 66 by the time I *might* start working for him. That means he needs to maintain his professorship until he's at least 68-69. Likely? I don't even know anymore.

So I'm sticking around to try to impress a professor that might not even have enough time left to take me in his group. That leaves my future very much up in the air at this moment in time. It's frustrating but I have no other options. I'm not even sure I want to stay in NMR. I've lost a lot of love for p-chem over the years. I'm not interested in the direction that this group is starting to go and so I'm wondering what I'm supposed to do with myself. Should I change directions and hope for success? Stay with NMR and hope for success? Or how about abandon p-chem and just get a job with my skills. I guess I have a year or so to think about it.

That's where grad school has left me. If you recall, I was very unsure of myself when I started, and it looks like not even grad school was able to change that about me.

Thanks for watching folks. It's been fun.

[iPhone camera]

[higher-ed]