There was a little interesting tidbit mentioned in this Freakonomics podcast episode with Michael Lewis regarding statistics in different types of sports: 

It's just so much harder to generate good statistics out of a flow sport like basketball or a really complicated sport like football. Baseball, it's very easy to isolate and assign credit and blame on a field and capture it with a statistic.

I've never heard the idea of grouping different sports into "flow" and "non-flow" categories, but it makes a ton of sense.  Sports like basketball and soccer have all players in continuous motion doing all kinds of things at once, while sports like baseball are centered around discrete events involving only a few players at a time.  Football is more of a mixture of continuous and discrete where there are continuous events (a single play) happening at discrete times (between when the center snaps the ball and when the referee blows the whistle). #sports

I'm not an economist, but I've noticed there's a fundamental difference between markets where you buy a widely available item, like cookies or clothes or a car, versus markets where the supply is irregular, like buying a house or finding a job (maybe not technically a market, but it follows the same trend).  For the former, you can pretty much go to any market at pretty much any time, and you can buy pretty much the same thing.  Sure things change a little over time, but it's a fairly static market in that it doesn't really matter when or where you make the purchase.  For houses and jobs, the market is more dynamic, where the offerings could be completely different from one day to the next.  Plus a buyer can't typically own more than one at a time, so it comes down largely to timing and chance. #money

That "state" in college sports really makes a difference.  Michigan State vs. Ohio is very different from Michigan vs. Ohio State. #sports

At my old job, I wasn't usually the smartest person in the room, but I was often the only person in the room who knew how to do certain things.  This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, because it's good to be competent, and it's also good to be valuable.  But it often felt like if I wasn't there, my tasks wouldn't get done.  It was a single point of failure. 

At my new job, it feels the exact opposite.  Not only am I not the smartest person in the room, but the room is also filled with a lot more competent people, and there's beneficial redundancy.  If one person is incapable or unable to do something, another person can fill in the gap. #business

I worked for the army for a long time.  People know what an army is, and they know what the army is, but it was always difficult to talk to people about what I actually worked on.  "So you blow shit up?"  It's hard to put into words how far off that is from reality, but yeah, sure, I blow shit up. 

My wife worked for a long time for M&M Mars, the candy company.  That was easy to explain.  Even if it was hard to explain what she did specifically, everybody knows what M&M's are.  There are probably only a few people on earth who aren't familiar with at least one Mars product. 

Now that I work for NASA, I feel like I finally have a name brand job.  I do some pretty specific things for some pretty specific projects, but everybody knows what NASA is.  In fact, a lot of people know more about the project I'm working on than me. #business

Probably the most difficult part of accepting my new job was the prospect of leaving home.  I've lived in New Jersey my whole life, and while it may not be the best place on earth, it's home.  The traffic sucks, there are too many people, the people are mean, the weather's terrible, and the property taxes are outrageous, but ... it's home.  It's where my friends live, it's where some of my family live, it's where I work and live and play.  I know where the best pizza place is.  I know the best way to get to work, and the best way to get to the store, any store.  I know where to park near the airport to only get somewhat ripped off.  I know all the best hiking trails and scenic views.  I know the best diner that makes the best/worst stale cup of coffee. 

Despite its many downsides, New Jersey has the indelible quality of being my first and only home up until this point in my life.  Many people leave their home, and many people traverse greater distances and experience larger cultural shocks than I'll experience.  But it's still just difficult to leave home.

One of the more difficult parts of applying for jobs is that you receive no feedback, whether you get rejected or offered a job.  I realize this would place an unnecessary burden on employers, but it would be helpful to know if you rejected me because I'm too old, or too young, or to inexperienced, or you just didn't like my personality.  But at the same time, it would also be nice to know why you accepted me.  Was I your first choice, or your last?  Do you think I'll be a good fit, or are you worried about how weird I am?  People who have applied for and been accepted to various jobs sort of deduce that certain statements on their resume or personal traits played a big role.  But it's really hard to know when you get no feedback. #business

I recently accepted a job offer to work at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL.  This is a bit of a dream come true for me.  I've been working in a similar field for a number of years now, and really the only reason I would leave my job is if I got an offer from NASA.  The offer came, I accepted; I start in a couple weeks. 

The process started a few months ago.  My wife had just gotten a new job and had a fairly good experience navigating the job market.  I decided to put my hat in the ring just to sort of test the waters.  I applied to a few NASA positions, not really expecting to hear back.  Sure enough I got some rejections, and I submitted more applications.  Eventually I got an email offering a virtual interview.  Despite it being in a geographic location that didn't particularly appeal to me (Alabama), I decided to at least go through the interview process to work on the skills that I hadn't really used since I interviewed for my current job nearly 20 years prior. 

Since it had been such a long time since my last interview, I did a bunch of prep work to get ready for some of the tough questions that often come up in interviews, like "Tell us about a time when [some negative thing happened] and how you overcame that" or "How do you deal with interpersonal conflict in a stressful job environment" and things like that.  I actually spent quite a bit of time and energy preparing which, again, I viewed at least as good practice for any other future job interviews that might come along. 

I put on a suit and tie and seriously considered not wearing pants because (a) the video only captured me from above the waist, and (b) it was a hot summer day in my house and I was sweating more than usual due to the stress of the interview.  The interview itself consisted of a panel of people asking me fairly simple questions about my work experience and things like that.  One of the questions was, "Why do you want to work for NASA?"  My answer was prepared and heartfelt:  If I could do the same type of work I'm currently doing (flight dynamics modeling and trajectory simulations) but for a different overall mission (scientific discovery and space exploration vs. military and defense), that would be extremely attractive to me. 

For a few weeks after the interview, I sort of agonized a bit.  I tried not to get too ahead of myself, but I wanted to be prepared for whatever answer came:  (a) rejection, (b) an ok offer that might be reasonable to decline, or (c) a great offer that would be foolish to reject. 

Then came the initial offer via email.  It was a pretty good offer.  Once they did some employment verification and whatnot, that offer became a very good offer.  They even invited me to counteroffer to account for things like moving expenses and whatnot.  I submitted a counteroffer, not expecting much from a government organization, and they came back with an even better offer. 

I had about a month to make a decision, and I agonized quite a bit more.  The idea of moving out of New Jersey was the biggest downside, not because New Jersey is particularly great, but because it's home.  We own a house here, we have friends and family here, we know where the best pizza places are.  And Alabama isn't exactly the most attractive place to live.  The prospect of selling our house, moving away from our home, and buying a house in a faraway southern state was a bit of a roadblock. 

I did some research.  I got some advice from friends.  I traveled down to Huntsville to check things out firsthand.  I did a lot of thinking.  I came back home thinking I would probably decline the job offer because it just wasn't the right time.  My wife was working on some things in her new job and she wasn't ready to leave.  My thought was that I'd decline this offer, then maybe try again in a year or two when we were more ready for such a big change. 

My wife, bless her heart, pointed out that my job offer was currently on the table, while her career goals were more long-term.  It would be foolish to reject the "current actual" vs. hoping for the "future potential."  Plus there'd be no guarantee that this offer would come around again in the future.  We were eating lunch at a local restaurant, and our conversation started with "I think I'll decline the offer" and ended with "I think I'll accept the offer." 

I was looking back at some really old emails, and I happened to find some previous times I had to applied to NASA:  once in 2007, once in 2008, and once in 2013.  What I hadn't realized at the time is that the positions I applied for were all essentially the same position, in the same group, at the same NASA location.  In 2022, I got that job, in that group, at that NASA location.

I mostly try not to kill bugs.  When there's a bug in my house, I try to capture it and put it outside.  It ain't much, but it's honest work.  It's not that I'm a genuinely good or kind person, I just try not to kill things if I can avoid it.  I rescued an earwig the other day.  A giant yellowjacket the day before that.  If I find a spider, depending on its size and creepiness, I'll just leave it there. 

But if I find a mosquito in my house, I will fucking murder that thing in a heartbeat and then spit on its stupid corpse.  Mosquitos are vile, worthless beings whose sole addition to the universe is spreading disease.  Fuck them.  I'd kill a million mosquitoes if I had the chance.  A billion. 

I saw a guy a while back with a t-shirt that said, "Say perhaps to drugs."  It was at a concert where drugs are commonly found, so it wasn't that out of place.  I saw it and laughed, then went about my day.  But the idea stuck in my brain like a virus. 

I was a child in the 80s and 90s during the "Say no to drugs" campaigns of the war on drugs.  So the phrase "Say no to drugs" is permanently etched into my subconscious whenever the topic comes up.  In some ways I think that's a good thing, because kids have a hard time with nuance.  It's simpler to teach kids to avoid all drugs at all times, instead of teaching them about pharmacology and dose-response curves. 

But as I got older, I noticed that people use all kinds of drugs all the time.  We consume caffeine for energy.  We smoke nicotine for stress.  We drink alcohol for fun.  We take acetaminophen and ibuprofen for pain relief.  We take allergy pills and stomach pills and sleeping pills.  We take antibiotics and antivirals and anticoagulants and anticonvulsants.  A drug is defined as "a chemical substance, typically of known structure, which, when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect," which really begs the question:  What isn't a drug?  Sugar surely counts.  Doesn't pretty much all food count?  Music, nature, and sex, while not chemical substances, surely produce a biological effect, no? 

No one actually follows the advice of "Say no to drugs."  Or more accurately, we only follow it in regards to certain drugs, which some government agency decided to classify as illegal for unknown or perhaps questionable reasons.  Certain drugs are illegal because they're addictive and harmful, like heroin and methamphetamine.  But surely not all illegal drugs are in the same boat, like psilocybin and mescaline, which can be enjoyed safely and recreationally. 

So anyway, I think "Say perhaps to drugs" is a great statement from a philosophical standpoint.  It's clearly in opposition to the "Say no to drugs" idea of "all people should say no to all drugs."  But it's also not saying "Say yes to drugs" in the sense that "all people should say yes to all drugs."  It's taking a passive stance somewhere in the middle by saying, "Maybe some people should perhaps say yes to some drugs sometimes."