kjodle/the-codex
kjodle/the-codex
1
1
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull Requests Projects Releases 2 Wiki Activity

Updated «Today» section

Browse Source
This commit is contained in:
Kenneth John Odle 2024-06-07 15:09:45 -04:00
parent a76dea4d21
commit 894e8d9858
1 changed files with 20 additions and 0 deletions
Show Stats Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

20
004/codex-004.tex
View File

@ -193,8 +193,28 @@ I could not have been more wrong.
\section{Today}
I am in a very different place now than I ever thought I would be. I'm not on Plan A or Plan B. In fact, I've pretty much run out of alphabet to describe exactly where I am now.
So where am I?
I work as a data reviewer for a contract research organization in the pharmaceutical industry. That means that drug companies send us samples of their products, and we test them for things like assay, impurities, appearance, disintegration, etc. People who majored in chemistry run the tests and I sit there and look at their procedures and results and make sure that everything was performed correctly and that the results are, indeed, valid.
In theory, I'm an analytical chemist. In practice, I'm a nerdy science accountant who spends his day with his nose buried in Excel spreadsheets. A \textit{lot} of Excel spreadsheets.
Except that I also used to design websites, so my spreadsheets are easy on the eyes, color-coded, and logically oriented—that is, they take you through the analytical method in a step-wise, chronological manner. In other words, we look at standard concentrations first, and then our system suitability tests, and then the actual tests. Every cell is also labeled, so it's clear what goes where. My boss admires them and I am justifiably proud of them. After all, these aren't just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill spreadsheets we're talking about here.
My spreadsheets are so beautiful that when my boss got a glimpse of them he immediately placed me in charge of mentoring new data reviewers, mostly so that they could see what my spreadsheets look like. And I get it. I worked really hard to make spreadsheets that are understandable not just to me but everybody because we may have a corrective action come up at some point and we need to be sable to see how we arrived at the results that have. So yep, I strive to make all my spreadsheets consistent and understandable to someone who has no familiarity with them.
\texttt{tl;dr:} I'm \textit{really} good with Microsoft Excel.
But it's not satisfying work.k It pays the bills\footnote{Well, barely, after the recent fit of massive corporate price gouging—I mean, er…inflation.} It's not exactly the hind end of science, but it's close. (I once worked in a lab that did non-clinical testing\footnote{i.e., rats and mice} and believe me, \textit{that} is the hind end of science.\footnote{Science actually has many hind-ends. This is but one of them.}) I'm not really doing science; if anything I'm just a science accountant, making sure the books balance. It's boring—\textit{really }boring—and more than a bit mind-numbing.
Considering that my entire job exists to help keep the drug supply safe (well, the \textit{legal} drug supply) safe that statement may sound frightening or even disturbing. But it's not really. You want this job to be boring. When it's not boring, it's generally because something has gone wrong, and and this is one of those industries (like nuclear energy or airplane manufacturing) where you really don't want things to go wrong.
\chapter{Math in \LaTeX{} with \texttt{align} and \texttt{array}}
\chapter{Searching your Bash History}