Les Bonnes Choses

Addendum to today's previous post about the nerd test, which has a question about taking apart VCRs. I would like to explain John's comment, because, as you will see, the nerd test is curiously applicable to my circumstances.

Eons ago (the early-to-mid '90s), before the widespread adoption of the DVD, my family had something called a VCR. It was an older machine with a curious squeak to it. Somehow, it had been discovered that rotating the machine would temporarily stop the high pitched chirping that really took away from the movie watching experience -- unless, of course, one was watching a documentary on crickets, in which case it was like you were actually there! So over the course of a feature length film, the VCR would slowly rotate like some kind of electronic rotisserie.

One evening, John was over and, for reasons which are lost to me now, we decided to try to eliminate this chirping VCR problem we had. So we took out some parts. And then some more parts. Near as we could tell, the VCR had its own little ecosystem, with noise-making parts, and parts that stop those parts from making noise. We reassembled the VCR, sans an identified noisy part, and the presumably-broken part that stops the noisy part from making noise. I think the VCR worked for a time after that. Fortunately, the DVD was adopted in our house before we could find out if one of those vestigial electronic organs were actually responsible for keeping the damn thing from bursting into flames.

Hey, speaking of progress, I received something in the mail today from JPM's postdoctoral alma mater. It wasn't quite a rejection letter, but it wasn't an interview request either. In the letter, they thanked me for applying, but went on to tell me that the search has been postponed due to financial constraints (surprise!). I have been encouraged to reapply next year if the search resumes at that time. I don't know if they would have just flatly rejected me if they thought I was an idiot, so I will just have to call this one "not bad" news.