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.