Oh my god I'm a Texan

Yeah. It looks like I am soon to be residing in the great Lone Star state. I will no longer need to remember the Alamo, it will be in my back yard. Bell Helicopter sent me an offer, and I'm going to take it. I guess there are worse things than being a Texan. I could be a Canadian. *shudder*

The good thing about going to Texas is that, especially coming from the point of view of Boston, the cost of living is dirt cheap. I was looking around at apartments online, and they have some apartments that are in these gated communities, have 5-star concierge service, tennis courts, indoor racketball, resort style pools, fitness centers, etc. that are bigger than my sister's apartment in Boston (which lacks these fine amenities) but at about 2/3 the price. And since I'll have a fairly decent salary to live on, I am going to have an absolutely bling-tastic apartment.

Here's to Texas. Home sweet home.

I had forgotten how many old people there are here

I am writing this entree utilizing the free wireless at the St. Augustine, FL Quality Inn. After visiting both grandfathers my family and I are returning home tomorrow. I am happy to report that both seem to be doing a lot better. One was released from the hospital, and the other was allowed a temporary leave so that he could come out for a dinner with my family, his wife (my step-grandmother), and her brother. If you are looking for an amusing story ask me about that dinner. I don't want to just post it here since I'm not sure if there are any channels back to the parties involved from people who may read this =). Who knew, I have a conscious. Trying to stamp that out...

Anyway, on the way down here we got to drive through good old Jacksonville, and we will again tomorrow on the way back up. Someone forgot to inform the city that they aren't allowed to change anything after I left. There are a few changes to the skyline, a new shopping mall, and some other things that are out of place from when I left 4 years ago. Those bastards.

A good thing though is that here in St. Augustine, which is a little less than an hour from Jacksonville, I got to go to one of my favorite restaurants for dinner. It is a seafood place called Barnacle Bills. Despite being a seafood place, I always order the chicken strips (yeah I know, big surprise). The reason I like it so much is not for the chicken strips (though they are tasty) but for the onion rings I order as an appetizer and the hot sauce known as Dat'l-Do-It Sauce, made from the rare and elusive Datil pepper. Best stuff ever. Unlike most crappy hot sauces like tobasco which are normally runny, Dat'l-Do-It has a consistency of ketchup. Along with the hot, there is a bit of honey mixed in with it to take away some of the burn, making so that it is still quite hot but allows you to it eat in large quantities. I once impressed a waitress by using an entire bottle of hot sauce over the course of my onion rings, chicken strips, and fries. They changed their onion rings though. They are not as flaky as they used to be. Those bastards.

Today marks the one-week weekiversy of my interview at Bell, which represents the absolute minimum amount of time that the nice man said it would take for them to get through the bureaucratic red tape if they were going to offer me a job. Lets hope I don't have to wait by the phone too long.

Tough week to be a grandpa

I just left today for a trip to Florida with my family because not one but both of my grandpas are now in the hospital. My dad's father has been having some trouble for the past week or two. We just got a call last night from my aunt saying that it looks like my mom's father had a stroke. It turned out that it was not a stroke, but instead a serious kidney infection that got really bad. He is now in intensive care and it looks like the danger has passed, but they are keeping him in the ICU for the next day or two just to be sure.

This was either good timing or bad timing depending on how you look at it. My family was planning on being on vacation this week, which means we are free to go visit them and my sister has flown down from Boston. It also means though we don't really get to have a vacation. I know what you are thinking..."but Andrew! After having to wake up at noon everyday to play video games you really need the break!" I know, but life is hard sometimes.

It will be a good thing to see both grandfathers. It has been a while. If only the circumstances were a little bit better.

Return of the Jedi (and by Jedi, I mean me)

Well, I am back from Texas. I must say that it wasn't all that bad. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they had grass. I just remember from my only other previous experience in Texas, when we stopped in El Paso on the way to The Price is Right, that there was no grass anywhere. Instead of having lawns, all the houses had decoratively placed rocks. I found it to be morbidly depressing. But not to worry, there is grass in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. Not too many trees though. There were a few scattered every now and then, but nothing approaching any sort of "wooded area." Oh well, you can't win them all.

The area I stayed in was pretty nice though. There were all sorts of good restaurants, movie theaters, mall, etc., so it could be fun to live there. While eating at the TGI Fridays I was pleasantly surpassed to see the Red Sox on television. Then I realized that they were playing the Rangers and it was not the Red Sox people were wanting to see. I was then disappointed, but consuled somewhat by the fact that the Red Sox completed a three game sweep of the Rangers, including beating Kenny Rogers on his first game back from his shortened suspension.

The interview itself went well. Looking back on it, this was a much more pleasant experience than the JPL interview. At JPL, I was there at 8:00 and didn't leave until 5:30. Every half hour I was escorted to meet with someone else. At Bell I didn't start until 9:00 and was out by 2:30. Much less strenuous day. Also, JPL seemed interested in what knowledge I had collected at MIT and started testing me with technical questions and the like. I was not prepared for this and got caught off guard by it. I reviewed some notes this time before going to Bell, but was pleasantly surprised to find that they never once tried to give me a technical quiz, nor did they ask any sort of questions whatsoever to put me on the spot. To them it seemed that the value of my MIT education was that it showed that I had some basic engineering ability and experience to draw from, but they saw me as a blank slate who could be trained well. They were impressed by my MIT degree, saw it as demonstrating that I am capable and had good potential, but didn't expect me to know everything that I would need to and thus didn't feel the need to test me on it.

I talked to several different groups there, all of which had some very appealing and some unappealing aspects to them. I talked to some guys that deal with stress on the helicopter, some guys that deal with the vibration dynamics both on the rotors and the stationary structures, and guys that deal with propulsion. I am not sure which group I would prefer. I will just have to wait and see who (if anybody) extends me an offer.

One of the group heads I talked too said that if an offer were to be extended I could receive it in a week or two. We will have to wait and see.

Oh yeah...I'm going to mess with it.

Well I am off to Texas, the great lone star state, to interview with Bell Helicopter. We shall see if they want me to go out there permanently. Regardless of that outcome, it was certainly nice of them to fly me out and put me up in a hotel so that I can have dinner tonight with Dave.

Putting together my resume and filling out the application sure is "fun." Its kind of depressing boiling your life down to fit on a single page, especially when you have to bump up the font to make it take up the whole page =).

Well, wish me luck. And if perhaps anyone wants an employee discount on a helicopter I may be able to hook you up soon.

I get all the chicks

Thats right. The chicks dig me. I got these babies to come live in a litte shack in my back yard. Three of them! Not many guys can truly claim to have three chicks at once.

Unfortunately like most chicks these three eventually flew the coop last week leaving me with nothing but crap.

Ah the boys of summer

Baseball is by far the greatest sport. It is sad that now I am away from Boston I will not be able to visit Fenway park. While I am in NC, however, I have the oppurtunity to see two minor league teams, the Single-A Kannapolis Intimidators and the Triple-A Charlotte Knights, both of the White Sox organization. I even had the oppurtunity to see Curt Schilling's first rehab start when the Paw Sox came to town before he returned to Boston to temporarily act as the closer.

Minor league baseball is great, for many reasons. First is that you have your choice of any seat in the house. In Boston you were lucky to grab a pair of tickets way out in the outfield when some crappy team like the Devil Rays came to town, and even those tickets were expensive. Minor league, you can sit first row behind home plate for 8 bucks. Thats where I was sitting when I took the above picture.

The other reason minor league baseball is great is that it certainly helps foster the fantasy that you could play professonal baseball. Whenever you see a batter swing and miss at a ball bounced to the plate, or the third baseman launch a ball into the dugout trying to throw to first base, its easy to think "Hey, I could do that. In the very least I cannot do any worse!"

Of course the Red Sox are currently fostering similar fantasies, as they commited 7 throwing errors in this past series with the Twins. Sigh.

Job Hunting Tips

Here is a public service anouncement for all you potential job hunters out there. Don't bother to do it yourself. After a few weeks of going online, posting resumes, using places like Monstertrac, I had not gotten a single response. Then my good friend David, who recently started working for Bell Helicopter, decided that he didnt know enough people in Texas and thought that I should work there to keep him company. So I forward him my resume to show people, and within 2 or 3 days I get a call saying they wish to fly me out for an interview. I just got off the phone with their HR person. Really amazing.

So don't waste your time with actual job searching. Just find someone you know who is arlready "in" (no, not necessarily a verizon customer. You watch too much television) and let them do it for you. I mean, Bell Helicopter was one of the places in which I went online and submitted a resume and such. Didn't get a response. Same resume. I was just lacking the amazing power of David.

Of course this does not mean I will actually get a job, but to get to have an on-site interview set up is pretty sweet. Yeah free trip to Texas! Man, why couldn't Bell Helicopter be in Puerto Rico?

Home is where your tank is

One of the biggest disappointments about not getting the job at JPL that I wanted is that it meant I wasn't going to get my own appartment yet. I had plans for it. Foremost among them...fishtanks. Lots and lots of fish tanks. Big ones. Like 100+ gallons. I have most of them planned out about what I want in them. But alas, the best layed schemes of mice and men.

To help alleviate my dilema, I set up the 29 gallon tank I had at home. At least its bigger than the 10 gallon one which I had in Boston, by roughly 2.9 times. You can see it above. The fish are mostly all hiding in it, so here they are up close and personal (see, I have friends here. And they can breath underwater. None of my Boston friends could...)

This is my Convict. She is the only remaining survivor of the original tank. My mother took care of her while I was in Boston. Kind of a funny storry...while I was home for last Thanksgiving I had turned the filter off because it was making a lot of noise. I forgot to turn it back on again before I left. My mother was never good at finding fish, so she didn't see her in the tank, and since I had turned off the filter she assumed that the fish had died and stopped taking care of her. So when I returned this summer I found the tank with only about 25% of the water left in it (rest evaporated) and it in a quite nasty state. Mom says the fish died. So I go to start cleaning it up, and low and behold I see her within about 10 seconds. She must have been living off the plants for food and depending on them to filter the water for her. I dont see how people can claim its hard to keep fish...if this little one can survive with absolute complete neglect for months, I think its pretty hard to kill off fish. Most peoples problem is that they put in way too much food which just rots and poisons the water. Adding live plants also clearly helps.

This is my parrot fish, one of the new arrivals after I cleaned up the tank. Like the convict, it is a cichlid. Cichlids are a family of fish that are found in Africa and in South America. They are usually pretty aggressive, so are not considered a "novice" fish because they will often fight. That means you need to be careful what fish you put in the tank because they will just kill all of the pansy non-aggressive fish. The parrot fish is a bit unique because it is actually a hybrid fish. I dont remember what it is a mix of though. They are kind of like mules, where they are bred from two different species and cannot produce fertile young themselves. He's darn cute though.

This is my firemouth, another kind of cichlid. He's got that really cool flame colored spot on his throat, hence the name. This is actually my second firemouth since setting up the tank. The first one died when he got himself stuck in a weird crevasse in the piece of driftwood I keep as decoration. He got himself wedged in there really good and I guess he couldnt get himself back out again. It took me like 10 minutes with a pair of tweezers to pull his carcass out by the tail. No one ever claimed that fish were smart.

This is my plecostomus. He spends most of his day hiding (and is very good at it). He is not only beautiful, but is very important because he keeps my tank sparkling clean by eating all the algae that tries to grow in there. Now I know what you are thinking, "Hey, but dont those things get huge?!?! It wont like it in a 29 gallon tank." Well when did you become the fish expert? Huh? If you most know, I have taken that into account. He will be most happy in the bigger aquarium that I will have in my own apartment by the time he gets that big. Right now he has plenty of room. I got one that was just big enough that the other fish wouldn't pick on it. They grow pretty slowly, so I have plenty of time.


I know by this point you are at the edge of your seat thinking "Wow, your new tank is great, but what about the 10 gallon one we all know and love from Boston?" Well not to worry. I gave the fish I had in there to my sister's boyfriend to take care of. Its a great system because he knows how to take care of fish, and he has extra incentive to make sure it lives a long and fulfilling life because I'm sure he wants to avoid any vindictive disapproval from his girlfriend's family :-). Anyway, I coundn't waste a perfectly good tank so I set that one up too and put it on my desk. I got a pair of baby clown loaches in there, one of which can be seen here. Clown loaches are great. My favorite freshwater fish. I know, I know. You are thinking "But wait! those will get way to big for a 10 gallon tank. Geez. Everybody's a fish expert. Yes they will, but I will move them before that happens. They are too small to survive with those brutes picking on them in the 29 gallon tank right now, and if you recall I plan to have multiple larger tanks in the not so distant future. I assure you they will have good lives with plenty of room to swim. For right now I also got a couple of tiger barbs in there to keep them company, but no one really cares too much about them. Look 'em up online if you want to see what one looks like. You really need to learn to do things on your own anyway.

Well, there you have it. They are my little friends. Now I must go feed them.

Uh..is this thing on? Anybody? Bueller?

Unlike most young graduates who are eager to face the world, I have as yet not secured my toehole as a productive member of society (read: dont have a job). So after graduating from MIT in the spring, I moved home from Boston for the summer. "Home" is not defined where I spent the first 18 years of my life before I left for college, but as Concord, NC where my parents moved my freshman year. I know that since I don't know anyone in Concord, coupled with the fact that Concord is one hell of an excruciatingly boring place, many people are worried that I will not enjoy my time here. Hopefully these postings will help those people sleep at night. Of course that can be accomplished by either showing that their fears are baseless and they need not worry, or more simply just by just boring them. Either way I shall accomplish my goal.