In Space, No One Can Hear You Bitch
Aug. 28th, 2014 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoyMy buddy, the one who got me to apply for the job at the Space Place, has a Moon Baby now! And he's a bit dazed.
ME: How's baby stuff?
HIM: Constant. Did you know babies are boring? And gross?
ME: Well, you've still got a bit of time to mess with her newborn reflexes! That's good for a little entertainment, right?
HIM: That's true. And I think she's starting to actually maybe focus her eyes a little bit on me, which is cool!
ME: That's always nice. Let me know if you ever need me to just come over and hold the baby so you guys can get some sleep, though.
I also offered to do a dome shift on Saturday so he wouldn't have to come in. He agreed, which means I'm shadowing one of his underlings, with the heavily implied caveat that I need to stop by his desk afterward tomorrow so that he can tell me all the things she got wrong about how to do the job.* I think I'm gonna like doing dome shows.
Also, a coworker I got into one of those weird arguments today where the other person feels the need to Well Actually you and then proceeds to tell you exactly what you just said. I was talking with a different coworker about reworking the best way to present a half hour lesson about all the technnology in the solar system and mentioned how we ought to add that it wasn't just the telescope, but also the invention of new and exciting kinds of math, that helped us accurately describe the solar system heliocentrically and move away from Aristotle and Ptolemy's incorrect geocentric stuff with the epicycles and so forth, and the guy in the next cubicle overheard.
GUY: Well, actually, in defense of Ptolemy, his epicycles were a fairly good model, and he was a mathematical genius.
ME: Yeah, I mean, he was working with what he knew, and it was a good model, but it was also wrong. I'm talking about how we advanced our knowledge ...
GUY: You realize that it wasn't just the telescope, though? It was Newton's calculus that helped define planetary motions.
ME: Yeah, that's what I was going to mention as the "new kinds of math." But like I said, I have half an hour to get kids from what we can see with just our eyes to Mars rovers and comet landers giving us more accurate pictures ...
GUY: You can't go pooh-poohing Ptolemy for not having the technology we have now to observe things!
ME: EVERY SINGLE THING YOU'RE TELLING ME IS SOMETHING I JUST SAID.
I may have been a little on edge because I was having a bit of a difficult time keeping the other coworker, the one who I was originally talking to about the lesson plan, from opening six new tabs every time he got to another of my bullet points in order to explain to me other things I had just said. I apologized for snapping, but sometimes it's the only way to get people to hear me.
So, yeah. The Space Place job is still a job, with all its frustrations and annoyances. But by god I get to tell kids awesome things about space, and I can spend time between dome shows secretly pretending I'm hanging out on Ganymede or hanging out in lunar orbit during lunar eclipses, so I would say this job is still pretty damn fantastic anyway.
*This particular dome tech has been working there for over a decade and clearly no longer cares. I think she is actually asleep when she does her night sky presentations. Which is actually pretty inspiring, because I am eager to say "Dude, just ... let ME do this" and take over.
ME: How's baby stuff?
HIM: Constant. Did you know babies are boring? And gross?
ME: Well, you've still got a bit of time to mess with her newborn reflexes! That's good for a little entertainment, right?
HIM: That's true. And I think she's starting to actually maybe focus her eyes a little bit on me, which is cool!
ME: That's always nice. Let me know if you ever need me to just come over and hold the baby so you guys can get some sleep, though.
I also offered to do a dome shift on Saturday so he wouldn't have to come in. He agreed, which means I'm shadowing one of his underlings, with the heavily implied caveat that I need to stop by his desk afterward tomorrow so that he can tell me all the things she got wrong about how to do the job.* I think I'm gonna like doing dome shows.
Also, a coworker I got into one of those weird arguments today where the other person feels the need to Well Actually you and then proceeds to tell you exactly what you just said. I was talking with a different coworker about reworking the best way to present a half hour lesson about all the technnology in the solar system and mentioned how we ought to add that it wasn't just the telescope, but also the invention of new and exciting kinds of math, that helped us accurately describe the solar system heliocentrically and move away from Aristotle and Ptolemy's incorrect geocentric stuff with the epicycles and so forth, and the guy in the next cubicle overheard.
GUY: Well, actually, in defense of Ptolemy, his epicycles were a fairly good model, and he was a mathematical genius.
ME: Yeah, I mean, he was working with what he knew, and it was a good model, but it was also wrong. I'm talking about how we advanced our knowledge ...
GUY: You realize that it wasn't just the telescope, though? It was Newton's calculus that helped define planetary motions.
ME: Yeah, that's what I was going to mention as the "new kinds of math." But like I said, I have half an hour to get kids from what we can see with just our eyes to Mars rovers and comet landers giving us more accurate pictures ...
GUY: You can't go pooh-poohing Ptolemy for not having the technology we have now to observe things!
ME: EVERY SINGLE THING YOU'RE TELLING ME IS SOMETHING I JUST SAID.
I may have been a little on edge because I was having a bit of a difficult time keeping the other coworker, the one who I was originally talking to about the lesson plan, from opening six new tabs every time he got to another of my bullet points in order to explain to me other things I had just said. I apologized for snapping, but sometimes it's the only way to get people to hear me.
So, yeah. The Space Place job is still a job, with all its frustrations and annoyances. But by god I get to tell kids awesome things about space, and I can spend time between dome shows secretly pretending I'm hanging out on Ganymede or hanging out in lunar orbit during lunar eclipses, so I would say this job is still pretty damn fantastic anyway.
*This particular dome tech has been working there for over a decade and clearly no longer cares. I think she is actually asleep when she does her night sky presentations. Which is actually pretty inspiring, because I am eager to say "Dude, just ... let ME do this" and take over.
