Career Jackpot

I am so fortunate to be here. Here at Lonza, in Bend, in Tumalo, in the land of the last Blockbuster, and on the Twin Bridges scenic bike route. I cannot wait for the family to join me. They are going to find even more ways to love this.

Sunrise from my balcony

Sunrise from my balcony, with a view of the pond

Sunset from my balcony

Professionally, my first week was excellent in all the ways that I had hoped, and not so great in the very predictable ways (namely, setting my computer up to meet my needs and figuring out how to navigate all the different bits and pieces of administration. I still need to figure out how to get this awesome 401K set up, but it seems to require that I override some information from my last job in ADP...I cannot seem to make ADP forget APx. I think I need to submit an HR ticket.)

A bag filled with swag

Here is a list of the excellent:

1. It is apparent that I have full autonomy over my work, access to the department's business direction, and clearly achievable goals. There will be no micromanagement here.

2. The pace is much slower than what I am used to. Doing things well, slowly, and correctly is the order of the day. 

3. I will own the NMR and its capabilities. The scientist who performed this function is leaving to go be a consultant in the coming weeks, so I jumped in and remembered how to use it. In November, the old Varian console will be upgraded to a state-of-the-art Bruker Neo, so I will be heavily involved in the installation, training, and relationship-building with the vendor's application scientists.

4. My first deliverable is a document summarizing the PAT opportunities within Bend R&D. I started musing right away and my manager quickly said, "No hurry! You don't have to finish today or even next week." I am going to start by meeting with my new solid form colleague this week to understand their current vibrational spectroscopic equipment.

5. The perks. Oh my goodness, the perks! Where to begin? 

Someone has really been empowered to implement real employee retention policies here. First, there are the on-site fitness classes, trails, teams, showers, towel service, and a fitness app, where you can earn points when you work out or check in at your gym, where you get gym rebates through the app. You then redeem the points for prizes like gift cards and vouchers, such as Amazon, Southwest Airlines, Target, various spas, Best Buy, Nike, Athleta, Macy's, etc. That's all pretty fun, but you can also save up lots of points for gear like Garmin, Fitbit, and Apple watches. I think I will try to save points for one of those. 

There are yoga classes twice a week and fitness classes twice a week at lunch time, in addition to things that I probably cannot participate in due to aches and pains and lack of any kind of athletic ability: lunchtime running club, soccer club, and and ultimate frisbee.

Every single desk has two monitors and a compatible dock for a company laptop, and all the desks can be raised to standing height, just in case you are tired of sitting on your butt.

I will split my time between North Central Bend ("Bend Research Inc. Central" or BRIC) and Tumalo (BRIT), but my office will be at BRIT. The person in charge of the seating arrangement confirmed this with me on Friday afternoon. This starts to narrow down the area where we might want to look for houses next spring. I want to be bikeable to both locations and probably in the Mountain View High School zone.

The break room at BRIT looks like this.

This stuff is all free...as much Bubly as you can drink (I will stop buying it now), bread and bagels, a cupboard full of soup, peanut butter and jelly, honey, teas, coffee, etc. There are two fridges. One for your private lunch bag and another for communal foods like every single flavor of cream cheese ever invented.

Someone here is caring for this squash, tomato, and herb garden, and the veggies are piled up on a platter for people to take.

Here is my fantastic new NMR. I don't want to look suspicious by taking a bunch of photos of the labs, but this is a domain over which I have been assigned leadership, so pictures feel fine.

A magnet for me to love, with other people assigned to its care and feeding. (The worst burn I have ever had was not when I grabbed onto a panhandle after finishing steaks in the oven. It was when I branded my arm with a transfer tube as it emerged from a dewar of liquid helium. I didn't even feel it at first, it was so cold. Then my skin throbbed, blistered, and wept for several days.)

Old computer that isn't connected to a cloud? No problem. Here's your own personal 8-GB secure thumb drive issued by the front desk. Do what you need to do to get the job done!

A 12-sample autosampler, ensuring that no one has to wait around to run their samples.

This is starting to get pretty long. I have some bike ride videos to share, but I'm going to stop for now and just share some pictures from this week. More to come!

My odometer rolled over this week!

Morning views on the bike ride to BRIT

I stumbled on the last Blockbuster! My GenX brain was so tickled that I had to go in!

My favorite trumpet player, hamming with his friends

Glass art on the path to Braveheart's horse barn

Saturday's workout

Some pictures from Texas:

Finally, this silliness.