Job Searching

Still trying to finish my Ph.D., still spinning my wheels on an experiment which may or may not work. Therefore, I'm not getting enough time to write my thesis, or to search for a job for after I graduate.

Speaking of which, I've gone from looking for a dream job to looking for a job with a few basic criteria:

• Does not involve writing code as the primary function. I don't want to program computers (and I'm not good at it anyway), or to write applets, or for that matter to just use MATLAB/etc to analyze data and write simulations. I'm an experimentalist, not a theoretician or computationalist.
• Job is located outside of the axis of misery. Another way of saying this is that the job is not in California, New York, Massachusetts, or Illinois. Barring that, it's at least outside fo the major metro areas of those God-forsaking states.
• Job will pay enough that I can support my family. If I have to move, we will be living off of my salary alone. I'd like to be able to pay down our student loans, and maybe someday own a house. I'd like to be able to retire and live off of my savings when I am elderly and infirm. Perhaps y, say, age 70 or so?
• I'd prefer something which does involve optics, since that's very broadly the field that I'm in.

You wouldn't think this was a tall order to fulfill. But for some reason every experimental optics program is in LA (specifically, in and around El Segundo) or the San Fransisco and San Jose Metro areas. Lose Alamos and Lawrence Livermore (California, but not in the metro areas) are in a hiring freeze. And most other optics jobs are either computation-heavy or located elsewhere in the axis of misery.

Sigh. It looks increasingly like I may have to move to LA, assuming that I can secure something there.