Name changes should be easy

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I renewed my ACS membership today, and, as I have done every year for several years in a row, I tried to update my title through the ACS Membership My Account page. No luck. Only a link to contact customer service.

In previous years I have decided that emailing customer service is too much hassle, and so, year after year, my membership card, mailings, and email newsletters are addressed to Mrs. Haas, rather than Dr. Haas. I have been Dr. Haas for 5 years. It is past time to get this stuff right. It is also way past time for the ACS to get with the 21st century and realize that names change. It's ridiculous to build a system that assumes otherwise.

As I said on Twitter: It's a good bet that any system that makes name changes difficult was designed or chosen by people who have never changed their names. It reflects a lack of diversity among decision-makers.

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Conferencing with an infant

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I went to the ACS Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting (MARM) at the beginning of June, and, since she’s still nursing and refuses to take a bottle, Sweet Pea came along. My husband did not. The conference was Sunday to Tuesday, and he wasn’t able to take Monday and Tuesday off. Sweet Pea has a wonderful daycare, but we still don’t have a babysitter, and arranging family to babysit was a challenge because of distance and scheduling. So I just took her along and spent three days solo parenting.

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Where does it end?

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I listened to some of the inaugural episode of "Late Night with Chemjobber" last night. As a whole, I think it was a decent start. There were some technical issues (the audio cut out several times), some glitches (at one point Chemjobber accidentally hung up on the callers), and I get the feeling that nobody involved was practiced at radio or podcasting. All of that was understandable. For the most part, the topics were interesting or amusing, and (after a little dancing about deciding who should respond first) generated good discussions. I have one bone to pick with the show, though, and it's a big one: significant air time was given to a troll. 

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