Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Starting a career... while finishing master's

So.. I found a job at Link Testing Laboratories in Detroit, as a software engineer. I'm making custom vba applications for reporting, data aquisition, etc. The staff there is really great, which helps!

Thankfully, it only takes me about 20 mins (10 mins border time) to get to work everyday (about the distance to Tecumseh from the West End, just you're going a lot faster.)

Things are going good on the job front, but, big surprise, I'm having further problems with my thesis supervisor. I told him 3 months ago I was looking for a job, and he was cool with it. Now he's pissed, apparently; perhaps he didn't expect me to find something so soon.

In retrospect, I would have did a master's under the supervision of someone who wasn't a complete asshole, but alas, that's life.

I've almost completed a now 18 page journal paper (which will basically be most of my content of my thesis, just expanded a bit and add appendices/etc). However, the visiting student in the lab found a defficiency with my hardware setup, and just HAD to report it to Dr Chen... it had a problem I couldn't find the solution to, so instead of completely solving it, I setup the simulation such that the condition never occurred.

This student unintentionally created a lot of headache for me; at least he apologized after Chen talked down to us both for like an hour.

Why I didn't tell X Chen about it? Well, he's an asshole about everything, that's why. He threatened to call my current boss and get me fired (yep... he did). I gave him the evilest look when he said that: getting my master's is important to me, but this guy takes the cake, and I'm no longer afraid to stand up to him (he doesn't like this.)

Infact , after discussing with other students, the only type to get along with him are complete pushovers, or perhaps people more culturally inclined to his assholicness; it's no surprise the lab now has mostly students with a similar nationality to him.

I've put a lot of work into this master's work - I'd like to finish it, but it seems a bit out of my control. I discussed with Chen a new circuit configuration that I found recently that should remedy the limitation, and implemented it last night (still got to work out some kinks, doesn't work yet.) I can't let Chen get me down (he's EXTREMELY good at this) -- which is what he's trying to do, have me give up so he no longer has to deal with me. He ain't getting off that easy.

You know, there's only a few people I've ever met or dealt with that I can say I hate. I can say that for Dr. Chen - he drove me almost to the depths of madness when I took to heart most things he said. He put me down, time and time again ,and again, and again ( a note to Chen: telling people they suck is not a good motivator.) For better or for worse, I probably won't have to see him after January: Thank God.