"Reasoning with a woman is impossible."
"It's like … Well, reasoning with a woman is like sitting down to a friendly game of dice. Only the woman refuses to acknowledge the basic bloody rules of the game. A man, he'll cheat you - but he'll do it honestly. He'll use loaded dice, so that you think you're losing by chance. And if you aren't clever enough to spot what he's doing, then maybe he deserves to take your coin. And that's that.
"A woman, though, she'll sit down to that same game and she'll smoke, and act like she's going to play. Only when it's her turn to throw, she'll toss a pair of her own dice that are blank on all six sides. Not a single pip showing. She'll inspect her trow, then she'll look up at you and say, 'Clearly I just won.'
"Now, you'll scratch your head and look at the dice. Then you'll look up at her, then down at the dice again. 'But there aren't any pops on these dice,' you'll say.
" 'Yes there are,' she'll say. 'And both dice rolled a one.' "
" 'That's exactly the number you need to win,' you'll say.' "
" 'What a coincidence,' she'll reply, then begin to scoop up your coins. And you'll sit there, trying to wrap your head about what just happened. And you'll realize something. A pair of ones isn't the winning throw! Not when ou threw a six on your turn. That means she needed a pair of twos insead! Excitedly, you'll explain what you've discovered. Only then, do you know what she'll do?"
"Then she'll reach over and rub the blank faces of her dice and then with a perfectly straight face she'll say, 'I'm sorry, there was a spot of dirt on the dice, clearly you can see they actually came up as twos!" And she'll believe it, she'll bloody believe it."
"Only that's not the end of it, she scoops up all of your coins and then every other woman in the room will come over and congratulate her on throwing that pair of twos! The more you complain, the more of those bloody women will join the argument, you'll be outnumbered in a moment each of those women will explain to you how those dice clearly read twos, and how you really need to stop behaving like a child. Even the prudish woman who has hated your woman from birth - sice your woman's granny stole the other woman's granny's honeycake recipe when they were both maids - that woman will side against you."
"By the time they are done, you'll be left with no coin, several lists' worth of errands to run and what clothing to wear and a splitting headache. You'll sit there and stare at the table and begin to wonder, just maybe, if those dice didn't era twos after all. If only to preserve what's left of your sanity. That's what it's like to reason with a woman, I tell you."
-Robert Jordan, Wheel of Time: The Gathering Storm
Monday, August 15, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Resurrection
I have been neglecting this vocal outlet for quite some time as I try and adjust to life in the city of brotherly love (not) my new job and being 3k miles away from everything I know and care about. The SC2 blogging will also continue but under a different guise as I try and re-learn this game of starcraft but as a zerg. Coming soon though I have to give a series of post updates about my life for hire and I have a few things to get off my chest including my tretease on women, Palestinian's bitching all the time and US Citizens not understanding wtf is happening, the crazy way we have introductions and their misconceptions, and i'm sure to think of other things by the time I start writing this. SO as of this moment, I consider this blog resurrected!
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Week One Boredom
It occurs to me that while I said I would be updating this every other day or at least twice a week, I haven't actually held true to this and am annoyed with myself because of it. As such, I am finally going to make a daily routine to allow me time to do as I committed myself to. Since I haven't been doing mid-week posts, this will be slightly longer as I give general recap of the first official, full-length work week at Boeing and beyond.
I finally understand why people tend to hate Monday mornings of a workweek. While in school, Mondays were fun, the first day of learning for the week, homework and new projects to look forward to, and people to visit and talk with. Unfortunately at work not of this really happens as there aren't weekend homework assignments or projects to investigate something special, there aren't friends who go out on the weekend and go camping or drive to SF and go to the water, and there really isn't anything fun about Monday morning traffic. SO I'm beginning to believe in TGIF. Of course, this is all compounded by the fact I live behind a train station AND a limberyard that starts work at 3am. So being woken up by horns at 4:30 every day, resulting in 3-4 hours of sleep at best really isn't helpful to mental sanity. Now those who remember me from Davis will say, "yea but you only slept 4 hours there too so you should be used to it right and you went to bed at 4am too." Now yea I did sleep only 4 hours most days in college BUT that's going to class or taking a bus to campus, if you miss that the world really isn't going to care. IF I missed work without calling in, well people would certainly care. Moreover, I am going to bed around 12:30-1am here which would typically result in 5+ hours of sleep or way better in general than college.
Anyway back to the point of this overview. Monday was spent basically taking online tests and being shown around to areas of the building that I haven't been to yet. Now while I enjoy tours of the factory and the different labs that I actually get access to, it's frustraiting not doing any work and just visitng. Unfortunately, Monday through Thursday were days spent entirely doing ABSOLUTELY nothing. Well maybe not nothing, but nothing that relates to the fundamentals of my job. On monday, since I finally had my computer, I spent most of the morning configuring outlook, windows XP, and trying to get some of the necessary software for work ie Matlab and Framemaker. Unfortunately both of these programs were restricted so I had to put in an order request to be able to install them. So between online training, computer configurations, and visits to the lab to see what's up that was just about all that happened Monday.
Tuesday was basically the same thing, more online training and basic paper reading of processes. I am learning about various change request forms, such as the technical paper that descibes what type of changes need to be done and another that actually documents HOW these changes ill be implemented in MATLAB. To this end, I have to say THANK YOU to Prof. Hafez of UC Davis's MAE dept. who drilled matlab into our heads. I got to talk with a guy named Kevin, who is the main algorithm programmer in our group and he basically told me that all the advanced stuff I learned from Hafez is probably never going to be needed because the aerodynamics group takes enough data to have small enough mesh grids and interpolation steps. To this end, he basically told me I am already overqualified for this job and should basically use the next 3-5 years to both train myself for my next job and get a PhD if that is my desire. He basically said that I will get bored doing the same basic thing all the time and that my skills are already beyond what is required of this group, so find the area I really want to work in Control Systems Design and transfer to there ASAP. Some will call him the grouchy old man who is stuck in his ways but is needed because he is always right, but that seems like sound advice to follow. I get the feeling I'll be getting a degree or transfering in due time if I am already that overqualified and maybe to Seattle or Mesa, AZ to work for phantom works.
Wednesday was spent doing mostly the same thing, except I had an introductory performance review with my head boss. She talked about what is expected of the average group member and how they quantify performance as well as the qualitative aspect of the communication ability of each team member and how that relates to a salary adjustment. Unfortunately for me, I started this job about a month too late to have an official end of the year performance review and salary adjustment in March, so I will only be working towards an increase in 2012 unless there is a need for it sooner based on exempliary performance. Alas, but in the end, this was to be expected all things considering. Oh and I was finally able to install matlab today after much addo about nothing. So I was finally able to work out bilinear interpolation and bi-cubic interpolations on paper and translate them to matlab. I showed my algorithm to Kevin and he seemed rather impressed that I wrote it up so well.
Thursday was yet another boring day, but I did have some formal Hazing by my bosses. I had my first official team staff meeting and one of the slides was about a lunchin offered by the head boss and the next was about rookie hazing. Now hearing what they wanted of me: donuts and treats for everyone everyday, coffee on demand, taking minutes, and other things, I pretty much knew it was a hoax. However they asked for my comments, so I got to say well " I suppose you dont really care about how much work I get done because if I am always getting donuts, coffee, lunch, and other foods I really won't ever be doing work. Also, if I am not being reimbursed then I would need a raise to support your demands and moreover if you really want me to take minutes then you cannot complain about me being snarky in response." While that kinda shut them up since I didn't really play along, the last slide was of course "dealing with an overbearing manager who makes up hazing rules in an atempt to scare the new guy." Boy did I see that coming LOL. Although I suppose it would really be no different than now, I just would be getting more food. Today was also a weird day on the people front. I have to say that people in this state are much more reserved and self-centered than in CA. Nobody wants to talk to or help a new person out and there is like this imaginary 3-6 inch bubble of personal space that cannot be crossed without seeming inappropriate. I mean in HS all the girls would hug each other all the time and this was true even in college. In college, if you had a car you would help the stragglers out if it was raining or a long way up the hill. Not on request or reward, but because that was the nice thing to do and that's just what everybody did. People don't think like that here and it's really uncomforable to live in. So I get the feeling that I kinda killed any chance I had on dating this girl I was really into, but I did finally get to talk to another girl I haven't heard from in about a month so that was good. Don't know that it was a fair trade since I can't really be comforted by CA people in person, but I'll take the ones I know and trust over the ones I don't any time.
Last day of the week was Friday, this was by far the most boring of all the days. All of my bosses were gone on vacation or business so I literally staired at my computer for 7 hours doing absolutely nothing. I finally was able to install framemaker today, which I suppose was good, but yea 7.5 hours of uselessness. The last half hour, I finally managed to get most of the software work related to load and run correctly so I was able to start familiarizing myself with it's interface. Now being a computer person, a number person, and a math/engineering nerd, interfaces aren't that hard to figure out, they just take time to see what all the sublevels are. For instance i already remember 3301 1C for fast autostarting of the radar system. These things just take moments or being written down to really be done with it. So I made some process notes, watched a bit, and yet still don't have any idea what I will actually be doing in a work related fashion. On a better note, I was finally able to play some starcraft and actually beat some silver players. I lost to a 2 bronze leagers who had well over 500 games each so I don't feel too bad about this. All in all friday was a boring boring day though. Oh and I found out my couch was coming around 1 on Saturday. Since it is here now I must say it is very firm and quite enjoyable. Unfortunately it makes for some tight corners, but that isn't a big deal.
Well that's about it for me for now, more to come later and more regularly as I now have a very defined schedule that allows for 6 hours of sleep a night if I stick to it. I will also have time to play SC every day, work out (Dain), and lounge... so until next time, enjoy your weekends all!
I finally understand why people tend to hate Monday mornings of a workweek. While in school, Mondays were fun, the first day of learning for the week, homework and new projects to look forward to, and people to visit and talk with. Unfortunately at work not of this really happens as there aren't weekend homework assignments or projects to investigate something special, there aren't friends who go out on the weekend and go camping or drive to SF and go to the water, and there really isn't anything fun about Monday morning traffic. SO I'm beginning to believe in TGIF. Of course, this is all compounded by the fact I live behind a train station AND a limberyard that starts work at 3am. So being woken up by horns at 4:30 every day, resulting in 3-4 hours of sleep at best really isn't helpful to mental sanity. Now those who remember me from Davis will say, "yea but you only slept 4 hours there too so you should be used to it right and you went to bed at 4am too." Now yea I did sleep only 4 hours most days in college BUT that's going to class or taking a bus to campus, if you miss that the world really isn't going to care. IF I missed work without calling in, well people would certainly care. Moreover, I am going to bed around 12:30-1am here which would typically result in 5+ hours of sleep or way better in general than college.
Anyway back to the point of this overview. Monday was spent basically taking online tests and being shown around to areas of the building that I haven't been to yet. Now while I enjoy tours of the factory and the different labs that I actually get access to, it's frustraiting not doing any work and just visitng. Unfortunately, Monday through Thursday were days spent entirely doing ABSOLUTELY nothing. Well maybe not nothing, but nothing that relates to the fundamentals of my job. On monday, since I finally had my computer, I spent most of the morning configuring outlook, windows XP, and trying to get some of the necessary software for work ie Matlab and Framemaker. Unfortunately both of these programs were restricted so I had to put in an order request to be able to install them. So between online training, computer configurations, and visits to the lab to see what's up that was just about all that happened Monday.
Tuesday was basically the same thing, more online training and basic paper reading of processes. I am learning about various change request forms, such as the technical paper that descibes what type of changes need to be done and another that actually documents HOW these changes ill be implemented in MATLAB. To this end, I have to say THANK YOU to Prof. Hafez of UC Davis's MAE dept. who drilled matlab into our heads. I got to talk with a guy named Kevin, who is the main algorithm programmer in our group and he basically told me that all the advanced stuff I learned from Hafez is probably never going to be needed because the aerodynamics group takes enough data to have small enough mesh grids and interpolation steps. To this end, he basically told me I am already overqualified for this job and should basically use the next 3-5 years to both train myself for my next job and get a PhD if that is my desire. He basically said that I will get bored doing the same basic thing all the time and that my skills are already beyond what is required of this group, so find the area I really want to work in Control Systems Design and transfer to there ASAP. Some will call him the grouchy old man who is stuck in his ways but is needed because he is always right, but that seems like sound advice to follow. I get the feeling I'll be getting a degree or transfering in due time if I am already that overqualified and maybe to Seattle or Mesa, AZ to work for phantom works.
Wednesday was spent doing mostly the same thing, except I had an introductory performance review with my head boss. She talked about what is expected of the average group member and how they quantify performance as well as the qualitative aspect of the communication ability of each team member and how that relates to a salary adjustment. Unfortunately for me, I started this job about a month too late to have an official end of the year performance review and salary adjustment in March, so I will only be working towards an increase in 2012 unless there is a need for it sooner based on exempliary performance. Alas, but in the end, this was to be expected all things considering. Oh and I was finally able to install matlab today after much addo about nothing. So I was finally able to work out bilinear interpolation and bi-cubic interpolations on paper and translate them to matlab. I showed my algorithm to Kevin and he seemed rather impressed that I wrote it up so well.
Thursday was yet another boring day, but I did have some formal Hazing by my bosses. I had my first official team staff meeting and one of the slides was about a lunchin offered by the head boss and the next was about rookie hazing. Now hearing what they wanted of me: donuts and treats for everyone everyday, coffee on demand, taking minutes, and other things, I pretty much knew it was a hoax. However they asked for my comments, so I got to say well " I suppose you dont really care about how much work I get done because if I am always getting donuts, coffee, lunch, and other foods I really won't ever be doing work. Also, if I am not being reimbursed then I would need a raise to support your demands and moreover if you really want me to take minutes then you cannot complain about me being snarky in response." While that kinda shut them up since I didn't really play along, the last slide was of course "dealing with an overbearing manager who makes up hazing rules in an atempt to scare the new guy." Boy did I see that coming LOL. Although I suppose it would really be no different than now, I just would be getting more food. Today was also a weird day on the people front. I have to say that people in this state are much more reserved and self-centered than in CA. Nobody wants to talk to or help a new person out and there is like this imaginary 3-6 inch bubble of personal space that cannot be crossed without seeming inappropriate. I mean in HS all the girls would hug each other all the time and this was true even in college. In college, if you had a car you would help the stragglers out if it was raining or a long way up the hill. Not on request or reward, but because that was the nice thing to do and that's just what everybody did. People don't think like that here and it's really uncomforable to live in. So I get the feeling that I kinda killed any chance I had on dating this girl I was really into, but I did finally get to talk to another girl I haven't heard from in about a month so that was good. Don't know that it was a fair trade since I can't really be comforted by CA people in person, but I'll take the ones I know and trust over the ones I don't any time.
Last day of the week was Friday, this was by far the most boring of all the days. All of my bosses were gone on vacation or business so I literally staired at my computer for 7 hours doing absolutely nothing. I finally was able to install framemaker today, which I suppose was good, but yea 7.5 hours of uselessness. The last half hour, I finally managed to get most of the software work related to load and run correctly so I was able to start familiarizing myself with it's interface. Now being a computer person, a number person, and a math/engineering nerd, interfaces aren't that hard to figure out, they just take time to see what all the sublevels are. For instance i already remember 3301 1C for fast autostarting of the radar system. These things just take moments or being written down to really be done with it. So I made some process notes, watched a bit, and yet still don't have any idea what I will actually be doing in a work related fashion. On a better note, I was finally able to play some starcraft and actually beat some silver players. I lost to a 2 bronze leagers who had well over 500 games each so I don't feel too bad about this. All in all friday was a boring boring day though. Oh and I found out my couch was coming around 1 on Saturday. Since it is here now I must say it is very firm and quite enjoyable. Unfortunately it makes for some tight corners, but that isn't a big deal.
Well that's about it for me for now, more to come later and more regularly as I now have a very defined schedule that allows for 6 hours of sleep a night if I stick to it. I will also have time to play SC every day, work out (Dain), and lounge... so until next time, enjoy your weekends all!
Friday, November 26, 2010
First week and Thanksgiving
Back again,
Well here we are on Black Friday, that soul sucking shopping day from the blackest pits of hell, and I am enjoying the four-day weekend even though it's pretty boring and cold here. So on the day that stores have been open since the wee hours, I will spend some time in my comfortable, yet exceedingly bare abode and give an update on the first week of work and Thanksgiving with the boss. At the end, I have a service announcement for all the Starcraft players out there.
Work on Monday started really slow, they never set up my computer equipment and never got the request even though it was processed on the previous Thursday after I had registered with Boeing. So for most of Monday, I was spending time going over procedures and reading power point presentations about the corporate structure. While there is something more fast paced and maybe exciting about doing research for a professor or private industry, the job security and myriad of career paths afforded by the largest corporation in the country is not only impressive but maybe a smidgen over compensating. The other thing I spent most of Monday doing was meeting the other members of the software requirements team. Well I wouldn't say I met them so much as they met me. By this of course I mean that there are about 20-25 of them and only one of me, and for those who know me you know that I am horrible with remembering names especially when they are clumped together so and the people are busy doing their own work. I did discover that there are many baseball fans in the group so I will have plenty of opportunities to mesh and talk sports. Sadly one of them is a Mets fan and well I feel sorry for him. On the other side, my boss is a such a big fan his goal is to visit every Major and Minor league baseball stadium in the country. He even has a map of this in his basement proving he has gone to about half of them.
Tuesday was spent doing much of the same, going to meetings to see procedures getting set up with the Boeing website, though it's very complicated and most of it was inactive until today for things like direct deposit and health benefits... so I dunno what's gonna happen there. The other thing I spent time doing was visiting the V-22 manufacturing plant and visiting the testing labs. The plant is pretty spiffy, but for those who went through the Aeronautical Engineering school at UC Davis, you will remember the trip you took to the Pratt-Whitney manufacturing plant down by the SF airport. The production lines and general layout of that production plant is almost identical to the V-22 plant. The big difference is that the V-22 airframe and most of the software is loaded here in Pennsylvania and then it is shipped to Amirrilo to add the rotors and nacelles. Unfortunately this means that there are rarely any V-22 sitings here where most of the software is maintained. Kinda sucks since I will probably never get to see the helicopter fully complete but I can with the other planes made here so that's kinda cool. The other thing I learned on Tuesday was that even though I have four degrees, realistically I will never use any of that knowledge except when error/sanity checking the code results I will eventually be writing. This kinda sucks, because I went to school to actually build/design aircraft and instead am writing the software code to support it, however being able to see the internal workings of the aircraft and test it is pretty cool. Since I am allowed to apply for a PhD program in a year, I may get a degree in Aeronautical or Controls or maybe software engineering and eventually teach or move back to the West Coast and be an aircraft designer. The other option of course is to get into Phantom Works and work on special projects. Note for any outside company readers, this isn't divulging anything, as everyone remembers Skunk Works, in fact Kelly Johnson is one of my heroes of aircraft design because the SR-71 is my favorite aircraft of all time. On a wrap up, still no computer or phone nor access to the time keeping system to log my hours and set up the company benefits.
When Wednesday came around, most of the employees either left early or were just on vacation since the next day was Thanksgiving. Basically today was a day spent doing online training of absolutely stupid and ridiculous tests. Since they gave us ethics, protection, and general knowledge talks in orientation AND because 90% of this information is based on common sense, these tests are beyond redundant. Although, I suppose due to the volume of computer losses and private information surrounding such a company, it makes sense to have people reminded of these things. After spending a few hours with these trainings and having lunch with some friends from orientation my day was spent in the lab again just going over basic procedures. I think the idea from my bosses was to spend time just learning HOW they do things before I'm given tasks to do alone. In fact, while in the lab I was told by those people who will probably be in charge of me directly that they took a month or more to finally be able to go to the lab and test things by themselves. It also took many of them an extremely long time to understand remote terminal connections, which I figured out in about 20 seconds (special thanks goes out to Zachary Graham on that one for drilling such things into me!). So I guess I am not a total noob in life. On an ending note, my computer was found across the room due to a maintenance error and was finally installed, though with the wrong software, about 5 minutes before I left for the day.
This brings me to Thanksgiving. On Monday my boss invited me to his house for Thanksgiving after realizing I have lived in this state for about 15 days now and don't know a soul outside of work. So when I woke up early on Thursday and looked outside it was snowing, lightly but it was. I was like: well shit this is gonna be a long day. Fortunately, by the time I left for the 50 minute drive the snow stopped and it was just raining. Rain I can deal with, especially since it wasn't too cold outside. At the house, which is really nice although quite far from work, there were tons of appetizers before dinner. All of the food was quite tasty, though I didn't go crazy with it, because well it's my boss's house with much of his family present. I did learn a lot about what Pennsylvania is like in terms of weather and I got to talk about what CA is like for those who have never been. I can tell that they are infinitely more jealous of me than I am of them in terms of living locations. So after copious amounts of food, I headed for home needed gas along the way. The drive kinda sucked because it was on dark, narrow roads and raining so I was kinda nervous, but survived. I don't know about this state, everything is so dark unlike CA when you have street lights every 200 feet or so by law. Anyway, after that I just came home, went to bed, and am just going to stay in and do housework all weekend. This included of course trying to set up the Boeing stuff that I finally have access to. Otherwise I have nothing else major to report. I will update next week once I get some real work in.
As an announcement for all those Starcraft players, while you could spend your time watching the matched from Dreamhack on Day[9]'s website, I am trying to set up a new version of my Starcraft 1 weekend tournament. For those who don't know, I used to have 6-10 people doing lan matches in a mini tournament that had live casting via an observer in another room. I would like to do that again with Starcraft II with as many people as I can. I already have a bracket system and rules in place, though they are modular, but I would like to actually cast the last best of 3 matchup and post it to youtube as well as the SLAMCLAN site assuming that can be set up.
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT IF INTERESTED SO I CAN START THIS NEXT WEEK!
Well here we are on Black Friday, that soul sucking shopping day from the blackest pits of hell, and I am enjoying the four-day weekend even though it's pretty boring and cold here. So on the day that stores have been open since the wee hours, I will spend some time in my comfortable, yet exceedingly bare abode and give an update on the first week of work and Thanksgiving with the boss. At the end, I have a service announcement for all the Starcraft players out there.
Work on Monday started really slow, they never set up my computer equipment and never got the request even though it was processed on the previous Thursday after I had registered with Boeing. So for most of Monday, I was spending time going over procedures and reading power point presentations about the corporate structure. While there is something more fast paced and maybe exciting about doing research for a professor or private industry, the job security and myriad of career paths afforded by the largest corporation in the country is not only impressive but maybe a smidgen over compensating. The other thing I spent most of Monday doing was meeting the other members of the software requirements team. Well I wouldn't say I met them so much as they met me. By this of course I mean that there are about 20-25 of them and only one of me, and for those who know me you know that I am horrible with remembering names especially when they are clumped together so and the people are busy doing their own work. I did discover that there are many baseball fans in the group so I will have plenty of opportunities to mesh and talk sports. Sadly one of them is a Mets fan and well I feel sorry for him. On the other side, my boss is a such a big fan his goal is to visit every Major and Minor league baseball stadium in the country. He even has a map of this in his basement proving he has gone to about half of them.
Tuesday was spent doing much of the same, going to meetings to see procedures getting set up with the Boeing website, though it's very complicated and most of it was inactive until today for things like direct deposit and health benefits... so I dunno what's gonna happen there. The other thing I spent time doing was visiting the V-22 manufacturing plant and visiting the testing labs. The plant is pretty spiffy, but for those who went through the Aeronautical Engineering school at UC Davis, you will remember the trip you took to the Pratt-Whitney manufacturing plant down by the SF airport. The production lines and general layout of that production plant is almost identical to the V-22 plant. The big difference is that the V-22 airframe and most of the software is loaded here in Pennsylvania and then it is shipped to Amirrilo to add the rotors and nacelles. Unfortunately this means that there are rarely any V-22 sitings here where most of the software is maintained. Kinda sucks since I will probably never get to see the helicopter fully complete but I can with the other planes made here so that's kinda cool. The other thing I learned on Tuesday was that even though I have four degrees, realistically I will never use any of that knowledge except when error/sanity checking the code results I will eventually be writing. This kinda sucks, because I went to school to actually build/design aircraft and instead am writing the software code to support it, however being able to see the internal workings of the aircraft and test it is pretty cool. Since I am allowed to apply for a PhD program in a year, I may get a degree in Aeronautical or Controls or maybe software engineering and eventually teach or move back to the West Coast and be an aircraft designer. The other option of course is to get into Phantom Works and work on special projects. Note for any outside company readers, this isn't divulging anything, as everyone remembers Skunk Works, in fact Kelly Johnson is one of my heroes of aircraft design because the SR-71 is my favorite aircraft of all time. On a wrap up, still no computer or phone nor access to the time keeping system to log my hours and set up the company benefits.
When Wednesday came around, most of the employees either left early or were just on vacation since the next day was Thanksgiving. Basically today was a day spent doing online training of absolutely stupid and ridiculous tests. Since they gave us ethics, protection, and general knowledge talks in orientation AND because 90% of this information is based on common sense, these tests are beyond redundant. Although, I suppose due to the volume of computer losses and private information surrounding such a company, it makes sense to have people reminded of these things. After spending a few hours with these trainings and having lunch with some friends from orientation my day was spent in the lab again just going over basic procedures. I think the idea from my bosses was to spend time just learning HOW they do things before I'm given tasks to do alone. In fact, while in the lab I was told by those people who will probably be in charge of me directly that they took a month or more to finally be able to go to the lab and test things by themselves. It also took many of them an extremely long time to understand remote terminal connections, which I figured out in about 20 seconds (special thanks goes out to Zachary Graham on that one for drilling such things into me!). So I guess I am not a total noob in life. On an ending note, my computer was found across the room due to a maintenance error and was finally installed, though with the wrong software, about 5 minutes before I left for the day.
This brings me to Thanksgiving. On Monday my boss invited me to his house for Thanksgiving after realizing I have lived in this state for about 15 days now and don't know a soul outside of work. So when I woke up early on Thursday and looked outside it was snowing, lightly but it was. I was like: well shit this is gonna be a long day. Fortunately, by the time I left for the 50 minute drive the snow stopped and it was just raining. Rain I can deal with, especially since it wasn't too cold outside. At the house, which is really nice although quite far from work, there were tons of appetizers before dinner. All of the food was quite tasty, though I didn't go crazy with it, because well it's my boss's house with much of his family present. I did learn a lot about what Pennsylvania is like in terms of weather and I got to talk about what CA is like for those who have never been. I can tell that they are infinitely more jealous of me than I am of them in terms of living locations. So after copious amounts of food, I headed for home needed gas along the way. The drive kinda sucked because it was on dark, narrow roads and raining so I was kinda nervous, but survived. I don't know about this state, everything is so dark unlike CA when you have street lights every 200 feet or so by law. Anyway, after that I just came home, went to bed, and am just going to stay in and do housework all weekend. This included of course trying to set up the Boeing stuff that I finally have access to. Otherwise I have nothing else major to report. I will update next week once I get some real work in.
As an announcement for all those Starcraft players, while you could spend your time watching the matched from Dreamhack on Day[9]'s website, I am trying to set up a new version of my Starcraft 1 weekend tournament. For those who don't know, I used to have 6-10 people doing lan matches in a mini tournament that had live casting via an observer in another room. I would like to do that again with Starcraft II with as many people as I can. I already have a bracket system and rules in place, though they are modular, but I would like to actually cast the last best of 3 matchup and post it to youtube as well as the SLAMCLAN site assuming that can be set up.
PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT IF INTERESTED SO I CAN START THIS NEXT WEEK!
Saturday, November 20, 2010
The Saturday After
Hello again,
So Friday the 19th was the day I had a full fledged orientation at Boeing. When I say full fledged I mean from 7:30am-5:15pm or for those who are not mathematically adept, that's 8 hours and 45 minutes of orientation. Day started off rather quickly, for I had one of those nights of over excitement leading to the inability to sleep but without the feeling of being tired. There are only two other times in my life I have had this same feeling, the first was the night before I went to Alaska for the first time and our shuttle was coming at 4am for a 7am flight and the other was the day I bought my Nintendo 64 and DK64 with the expansion pack with my own money. While the former is a rather obvious moment, the later happened to be the first >50$ expenditure of my life and at 14 I likened it to the greatest thing ever. So having one of those nights meant I went to bed at like 1am and woke up at 5:30 with the inability to fall back to sleep, therefore by a strange turn of events, I was there an hour early.
Orientation at a major company is well exactly how you would expect, long and tedious. They go through welcoming and a general outline of the company with some history for those genuinely unfamiliar with Boeing, which is basically all the hot finance girls. Then new speakers come in and give talks about the web access systems, which I liken to a glorified sisweb meets online banking structure, and all of this is followed by talks on ethics, and safety before lunch. Now I should mention here, that there was this one annoying kid who kept asking the most infuriating things or coming up with statements that just make you want to shake your head and pull Captain Picard (see below).
Lunch was probably the best part for me as they invite your department managers to come have lunch with you and give you tours. Now I had already meet my department heads last Friday, so my section head, the one in charge of the entire division came down to meet me. That in itself was pretty awesome, but after showing me the cafeterias - yes there are two - she took me around the facilities where I will be working. This included poking my head in the V-22 manufacturing plant and showing me my desk and labs. Unfortunately I don't have security clearance so I can't actually get IN to the labs, but maybe some day I will. So that was a good lunch and hopefully I didn't say anything stupid and instead ingratiated myself to the head boss. Especially since I have a 30-day assessment with her and I don't want to go into it being screwed. Now on top of this, they may be having me skip some of the more basic training and just do the most important stuff while I don't have a computer so I can start being productive earlier, which is both awesome because I'm sick of being useless and scary because I don't want to be in charge of my own project already.
Back in the conference room, I had the chance to talk to the two cute finance girls next to me who I met at the last meeting on Wednesday. Both are pretty nice, but neither are working anywhere near me, so internal Boeing facebook stalking lol. Not really for anybody important reading this, it's just a saying call off the attack dogs. After lunch is when the more active presenters came and basically talked to us about how much we are needed especially with the increase in production and design coming in the future. The last presenter was in HR who basically pointed out that the Nov. 19th orientation class it's itself a new team of workers, and we really all have the same concerns and excitements about our new job so we are not alone. On the other hand, it is strange to hear someone who has been with the company for 26 years call themselves new compared to those who have been in the same desk since the Vietnam war or over 50 years! The one downside of this is that stupid kid kept opening his mouth and being a dick. Now I know that when I am in an English class with morons or a Chem class and I ask weird questions or berate people, people look at me and say "man I wish he would shut the hell up" but at least my stories were somewhat subject related and I had a purpose. This fuzz-bag, well even the former F-15 fighter pilot was shaking his head and pulling one of these:
The last thing of the day was a mini tour of the campus and we got to go to the 3D simulation lab. Now this place is totally awesome with fully 3D computer systems, motion tracking, and back-lit monitors that let you walk right up to them. Fortunately none of that is proprietary as I have seen it before, especially in movie theaters and commercial applications so I'm not divulging company secrets at all. I do wish they could load in Ender's Game into that thing though as a full 3D terrain, battle and squadron environment would be totally awesome. Unfortunately, solid works can't pipe that much information at one time, and when I asked why sized clusters they were using they looked at me and went wtf is a cluster we just use Linux in general.... I'm guessing there was a lost in translation, but then again, I could be trying to debase the onlookers, or they were actually using windows and I was mistaken, alas we shall never know.
Anyway, at the end of the day there was a raffle, unfortunately no such luck for me, then I had fun in rush hour traffic before coming home and sleeping. I think more food shopping tomorrow to bring the total money spent to just over 5k for this whole trip, yea a lot I know but I guess it's necessary all things considering. Anyway, as of Monday morning, I will finally be an adult in the workplace "living the dream" unfortunately in California that dream is to be in Hawaii wearing shirts, surfing, girls in bikini's, and generally awesome weather not the freaking code, ice wind's of the north east. Curse you north Atlantic winds curse you!
Well that's all for now, maybe I'll try some starcraft again soon and be of use to the clan.
So Friday the 19th was the day I had a full fledged orientation at Boeing. When I say full fledged I mean from 7:30am-5:15pm or for those who are not mathematically adept, that's 8 hours and 45 minutes of orientation. Day started off rather quickly, for I had one of those nights of over excitement leading to the inability to sleep but without the feeling of being tired. There are only two other times in my life I have had this same feeling, the first was the night before I went to Alaska for the first time and our shuttle was coming at 4am for a 7am flight and the other was the day I bought my Nintendo 64 and DK64 with the expansion pack with my own money. While the former is a rather obvious moment, the later happened to be the first >50$ expenditure of my life and at 14 I likened it to the greatest thing ever. So having one of those nights meant I went to bed at like 1am and woke up at 5:30 with the inability to fall back to sleep, therefore by a strange turn of events, I was there an hour early.
Orientation at a major company is well exactly how you would expect, long and tedious. They go through welcoming and a general outline of the company with some history for those genuinely unfamiliar with Boeing, which is basically all the hot finance girls. Then new speakers come in and give talks about the web access systems, which I liken to a glorified sisweb meets online banking structure, and all of this is followed by talks on ethics, and safety before lunch. Now I should mention here, that there was this one annoying kid who kept asking the most infuriating things or coming up with statements that just make you want to shake your head and pull Captain Picard (see below).
Lunch was probably the best part for me as they invite your department managers to come have lunch with you and give you tours. Now I had already meet my department heads last Friday, so my section head, the one in charge of the entire division came down to meet me. That in itself was pretty awesome, but after showing me the cafeterias - yes there are two - she took me around the facilities where I will be working. This included poking my head in the V-22 manufacturing plant and showing me my desk and labs. Unfortunately I don't have security clearance so I can't actually get IN to the labs, but maybe some day I will. So that was a good lunch and hopefully I didn't say anything stupid and instead ingratiated myself to the head boss. Especially since I have a 30-day assessment with her and I don't want to go into it being screwed. Now on top of this, they may be having me skip some of the more basic training and just do the most important stuff while I don't have a computer so I can start being productive earlier, which is both awesome because I'm sick of being useless and scary because I don't want to be in charge of my own project already.
Back in the conference room, I had the chance to talk to the two cute finance girls next to me who I met at the last meeting on Wednesday. Both are pretty nice, but neither are working anywhere near me, so internal Boeing facebook stalking lol. Not really for anybody important reading this, it's just a saying call off the attack dogs. After lunch is when the more active presenters came and basically talked to us about how much we are needed especially with the increase in production and design coming in the future. The last presenter was in HR who basically pointed out that the Nov. 19th orientation class it's itself a new team of workers, and we really all have the same concerns and excitements about our new job so we are not alone. On the other hand, it is strange to hear someone who has been with the company for 26 years call themselves new compared to those who have been in the same desk since the Vietnam war or over 50 years! The one downside of this is that stupid kid kept opening his mouth and being a dick. Now I know that when I am in an English class with morons or a Chem class and I ask weird questions or berate people, people look at me and say "man I wish he would shut the hell up" but at least my stories were somewhat subject related and I had a purpose. This fuzz-bag, well even the former F-15 fighter pilot was shaking his head and pulling one of these:
 |
| Well maybe this, and if it were me I would arm the Y,L,G, and A Lasers and hell man the damn Photo torpedoes too. |
 |
| More accurate is this.... yea this. |
The last thing of the day was a mini tour of the campus and we got to go to the 3D simulation lab. Now this place is totally awesome with fully 3D computer systems, motion tracking, and back-lit monitors that let you walk right up to them. Fortunately none of that is proprietary as I have seen it before, especially in movie theaters and commercial applications so I'm not divulging company secrets at all. I do wish they could load in Ender's Game into that thing though as a full 3D terrain, battle and squadron environment would be totally awesome. Unfortunately, solid works can't pipe that much information at one time, and when I asked why sized clusters they were using they looked at me and went wtf is a cluster we just use Linux in general.... I'm guessing there was a lost in translation, but then again, I could be trying to debase the onlookers, or they were actually using windows and I was mistaken, alas we shall never know.
Anyway, at the end of the day there was a raffle, unfortunately no such luck for me, then I had fun in rush hour traffic before coming home and sleeping. I think more food shopping tomorrow to bring the total money spent to just over 5k for this whole trip, yea a lot I know but I guess it's necessary all things considering. Anyway, as of Monday morning, I will finally be an adult in the workplace "living the dream" unfortunately in California that dream is to be in Hawaii wearing shirts, surfing, girls in bikini's, and generally awesome weather not the freaking code, ice wind's of the north east. Curse you north Atlantic winds curse you!
Well that's all for now, maybe I'll try some starcraft again soon and be of use to the clan.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Finding and Furnishing
Hello again,
So after a week or so of crying and searching for a place to live, I was able to get an apartment at the Media Station Apartment complex in Media PA. The apartment is on the bottom of 4 floors and is fairly spacious in size (note pics below). I was told I was pretty lucky to get in as the person applying for the same apartment before had their application fall through due to credit, so lucky me. Once having a place to live, I unloaded my car but didn't move in officially for a couple more days, instead staying at a hotel in Delaware for a couple more nights as I started furniture shopping and basically getting my barrings.
The first purchase was a queen bed, which I am starting to really enjoy having a larger bed, that was my first time buying a bed and owning one larger than a twin. After having a bed, I was starting to feel a bit easier about living here as at least I had a bed to sleep on and someplace warm to live. After that, I took a trip down to Costco in Delaware where I got a 42" TV, a desk chair, microwave, and eventually a very nice glass topped 3-section desk. So all in all, life was starting to get better as I knew the area pretty well and was starting to have a furnished house. After the Costco stop, it was time to go to Target for things like lighting, bedding, ironing boards, and other necessary items. Strangely enough, all the Targets in PA are super-targets so they all have dry and freezer foods at comparable prices to a "Safeway" called Genardi's out here. It's weird to say "I need a frozen pizza, I think I'll go to Target?!" Last stop of furniture was everybody's favorite place IKEA where I got tables, bookcases, dressers, and all other furniture items to basically finish the furnishing of my place. Last step was to take everything home, pull it out of my car, which I am starting to appreciate having a SUV even if they are harder for me to drive, and get to building. Once everything was finally built, I was felling like I was "sitting pretty" with a furnished house, internet, and everything unpacked and put away. Unfortunately my couch will take a couple more weeks to get here, so that's not in the photos, and I am missing about 3 boxes of books and stuff from home, but everything I NEED is here.
Consequently, the more I start to feel better here, the more depressed I started to feel knowing that my dad leaves tomorrow and I really will be on my own. On Friday however, I had lunch with my two immediate bosses and they seem like really nice guys who think I will be a good fit for their group. While talking with them, I learned that Boeing tries to make 2 V-22's and Chinook Helicopters from their plant every year, they really don't have a dress code, and really don't care when I work so long as I work for 8 hours a day, within reason. Since my dad was with me, he did a lot of talking since he has a lot of aircraft knowledge and history with his previous work. It turns out that Boeing occasionally goes down to Miramar in San Diego, and since I am from that area, next time flight testing is done there I will be tops on the list to go watch... kinda awesome as miramar air show was one of the reasons I became an Aero-engineer in the first place.
Now I would take a minute here and actually tell you, FINALLY, what I will actually be doing, but my department is literally a group of engineering mercenaries. When we have actual mission control issues to work on, we are our own team, but when the avionics or mission control items are not critical, services are loaned to the controls, flight, mission planning, design, or basically any group that needs Matlab/programming help. SO all I can tell you at this point is that I am an engineer whose primary tool is Matlab coding. Guess all that time with Hafez and coding in ENG180, EAE126, and well every other class that had programming was worth it for this job.
The other thing I suppose that's nice of living where I am is that I am close to the main activities of this area. On Saturday, my dad stopped one of the police officers driving around the complex, which I will not go in to as the police and more accurately the concept of "towns, counties, and cities" around here is totally weird, and asked about this complex and general area. According to the officer, my particular complex is perhaps the best in the entire area and has almost no crime, which is why they hit it so hard, to ensure the peace. Also the complex seems to come alive in the summer with people all over the pool area and kids my age having the occasional party and such. What this means is that I will HOPEFULLY be able to meet people my own age and not be totally depressed all the time. It also means that this was a pretty good place to get lucky with.
Now how does that relate to activities? Well I live about a quarter mile from the bar scene in downtown Media. I went to a really nice restaurant on Sunday that is also a brewery. They had a special on Sunday that was a 14oz. Rib Eye, baked potato, soup/salad, and a pint of house beer for 19.99$! It was the best meal here apart from the standard olive gardens and fast foods of CA. The food here is perhaps the thing that will keep me from going crazy as they give good sized portions for pretty reasonable prices.
Unfortunately especially for Zach and others who like beer, Pennsylvania has laws that prohibit the sale of alcohol except at designated stores or restaurants. This means they are obviously a bit more expensive, but there are quite a few brewery-restaurants around so I guess it evens out. I dunno too much about prices, but 18$ for 64 oz seems kinda high even for house brews.
Well after dinner Sunday, I basically went shopping one last time at target for other little things and once to "Safeway" or their other food store here called ACME and that's pretty much it. So tomorrow at 7am my dad leaves for CA which means I have to drive home from the airport. It's about 8 miles total, but the roads are really small to me, and I just haven't driven on the freeway much to be comfortable with it. 1500 miles of freeway on I-80 when NOBODY is around and 10 miles in congested city are totally different. After that, 1pm I have papers to sign at work, Friday is my orientation day starting at 7:45AM, and next week is my first 3 days of work before Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, I think I'm gonna be home and alone for this year, which is also a first, but I don't want to drive for 3 hours in holiday traffic to go to Virginia for dinner and Harry Potter 7.1 at a friend's house.
MY HOUSE PHOTOS - minus the couch
So that's pretty much it for now, just getting my house together, my car registered/inspected and ready, and trying to not get too depressed over being all alone out here and having winter coming just around the bend. I'll be updating soon and hopefully some of my whit will be back and the read will be a bit better, but until then you know the drill.
P.S. For those waiting for more Starcraft, I will hopefully start playing that game again soon and writing more casts with some video casts, but I just don't know when I'll get back to that, be patient life is hectic here as you know.
So after a week or so of crying and searching for a place to live, I was able to get an apartment at the Media Station Apartment complex in Media PA. The apartment is on the bottom of 4 floors and is fairly spacious in size (note pics below). I was told I was pretty lucky to get in as the person applying for the same apartment before had their application fall through due to credit, so lucky me. Once having a place to live, I unloaded my car but didn't move in officially for a couple more days, instead staying at a hotel in Delaware for a couple more nights as I started furniture shopping and basically getting my barrings.
The first purchase was a queen bed, which I am starting to really enjoy having a larger bed, that was my first time buying a bed and owning one larger than a twin. After having a bed, I was starting to feel a bit easier about living here as at least I had a bed to sleep on and someplace warm to live. After that, I took a trip down to Costco in Delaware where I got a 42" TV, a desk chair, microwave, and eventually a very nice glass topped 3-section desk. So all in all, life was starting to get better as I knew the area pretty well and was starting to have a furnished house. After the Costco stop, it was time to go to Target for things like lighting, bedding, ironing boards, and other necessary items. Strangely enough, all the Targets in PA are super-targets so they all have dry and freezer foods at comparable prices to a "Safeway" called Genardi's out here. It's weird to say "I need a frozen pizza, I think I'll go to Target?!" Last stop of furniture was everybody's favorite place IKEA where I got tables, bookcases, dressers, and all other furniture items to basically finish the furnishing of my place. Last step was to take everything home, pull it out of my car, which I am starting to appreciate having a SUV even if they are harder for me to drive, and get to building. Once everything was finally built, I was felling like I was "sitting pretty" with a furnished house, internet, and everything unpacked and put away. Unfortunately my couch will take a couple more weeks to get here, so that's not in the photos, and I am missing about 3 boxes of books and stuff from home, but everything I NEED is here.
Consequently, the more I start to feel better here, the more depressed I started to feel knowing that my dad leaves tomorrow and I really will be on my own. On Friday however, I had lunch with my two immediate bosses and they seem like really nice guys who think I will be a good fit for their group. While talking with them, I learned that Boeing tries to make 2 V-22's and Chinook Helicopters from their plant every year, they really don't have a dress code, and really don't care when I work so long as I work for 8 hours a day, within reason. Since my dad was with me, he did a lot of talking since he has a lot of aircraft knowledge and history with his previous work. It turns out that Boeing occasionally goes down to Miramar in San Diego, and since I am from that area, next time flight testing is done there I will be tops on the list to go watch... kinda awesome as miramar air show was one of the reasons I became an Aero-engineer in the first place.
Now I would take a minute here and actually tell you, FINALLY, what I will actually be doing, but my department is literally a group of engineering mercenaries. When we have actual mission control issues to work on, we are our own team, but when the avionics or mission control items are not critical, services are loaned to the controls, flight, mission planning, design, or basically any group that needs Matlab/programming help. SO all I can tell you at this point is that I am an engineer whose primary tool is Matlab coding. Guess all that time with Hafez and coding in ENG180, EAE126, and well every other class that had programming was worth it for this job.
The other thing I suppose that's nice of living where I am is that I am close to the main activities of this area. On Saturday, my dad stopped one of the police officers driving around the complex, which I will not go in to as the police and more accurately the concept of "towns, counties, and cities" around here is totally weird, and asked about this complex and general area. According to the officer, my particular complex is perhaps the best in the entire area and has almost no crime, which is why they hit it so hard, to ensure the peace. Also the complex seems to come alive in the summer with people all over the pool area and kids my age having the occasional party and such. What this means is that I will HOPEFULLY be able to meet people my own age and not be totally depressed all the time. It also means that this was a pretty good place to get lucky with.
Now how does that relate to activities? Well I live about a quarter mile from the bar scene in downtown Media. I went to a really nice restaurant on Sunday that is also a brewery. They had a special on Sunday that was a 14oz. Rib Eye, baked potato, soup/salad, and a pint of house beer for 19.99$! It was the best meal here apart from the standard olive gardens and fast foods of CA. The food here is perhaps the thing that will keep me from going crazy as they give good sized portions for pretty reasonable prices.
Unfortunately especially for Zach and others who like beer, Pennsylvania has laws that prohibit the sale of alcohol except at designated stores or restaurants. This means they are obviously a bit more expensive, but there are quite a few brewery-restaurants around so I guess it evens out. I dunno too much about prices, but 18$ for 64 oz seems kinda high even for house brews.
Well after dinner Sunday, I basically went shopping one last time at target for other little things and once to "Safeway" or their other food store here called ACME and that's pretty much it. So tomorrow at 7am my dad leaves for CA which means I have to drive home from the airport. It's about 8 miles total, but the roads are really small to me, and I just haven't driven on the freeway much to be comfortable with it. 1500 miles of freeway on I-80 when NOBODY is around and 10 miles in congested city are totally different. After that, 1pm I have papers to sign at work, Friday is my orientation day starting at 7:45AM, and next week is my first 3 days of work before Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, I think I'm gonna be home and alone for this year, which is also a first, but I don't want to drive for 3 hours in holiday traffic to go to Virginia for dinner and Harry Potter 7.1 at a friend's house.
MY HOUSE PHOTOS - minus the couch
 |
| bathroom right side - notice built in washer/dryer |
 |
| bathroom left side - towel rack is in a stupid spot |
 |
| Dad slept on the floor, kinda lame also those cables were organized since then |
 |
| Yup those are diplomas on the wall |
 |
| Small ass kitchen 8'x5' but big enough since I don't really make lasagna often |
 |
| Dad enjoying the desk on a conference call |
 |
| This is my very deep walk in closet, it goes about 15' back there |
 |
| Amanda might recognize this, was the place mate at the restaurant-brewery Iron Hill we went to on Sunday. I tried to get a picture of the menu and the beers, but I couldn't get it to turn out. They had 5 main ones in growlers to go: Iron Hill Light Lager, Raspberry Wheat (I had this), Ironbound Ale, Vienna Red Lager, Pig Iron Porter, and seasonal Belgian ale. |
So that's pretty much it for now, just getting my house together, my car registered/inspected and ready, and trying to not get too depressed over being all alone out here and having winter coming just around the bend. I'll be updating soon and hopefully some of my whit will be back and the read will be a bit better, but until then you know the drill.
P.S. For those waiting for more Starcraft, I will hopefully start playing that game again soon and writing more casts with some video casts, but I just don't know when I'll get back to that, be patient life is hectic here as you know.
The Road to Pennsylvania
DAY 5
Well I have been really busy and haven't really checked back here in almost a week, so it didn't occur to me that I didn't do the DAY 5 post of the last day of driving. I will do that now and then do a new post on the week of living here and getting settled and then I will do another post this weekend after Orientation tomorrow and Friday.
The last day of driving was altogether pretty boring, mostly I saw lots of trees and some small farms. Driving through I-76 you have to get on two toll roads, one to get through Illinois and the last to get through the first part of Pennsylvania. The last leg of the drive is the road from the home of the Steelers to that of the Eagles, but you have to pass right by Penn State. I don't know if anybody knows about Penn State, but it is basically a giant football stadium and absolutely nothing else. People come from 3 hours away to watch football games there. At the end of the drive, we arrived in Chester PA at a holiday in that was, by far, the worst hotel I have even been in, in the scariest of parts of town. I suppose this was to be expected since it's right next to an industrial zone and a junior college, but being there was just bad.
There isn't really much else to say about the last leg of driving except after just over 3000 miles of driving of which I did about half, it was finally over.
Well I have been really busy and haven't really checked back here in almost a week, so it didn't occur to me that I didn't do the DAY 5 post of the last day of driving. I will do that now and then do a new post on the week of living here and getting settled and then I will do another post this weekend after Orientation tomorrow and Friday.
The last day of driving was altogether pretty boring, mostly I saw lots of trees and some small farms. Driving through I-76 you have to get on two toll roads, one to get through Illinois and the last to get through the first part of Pennsylvania. The last leg of the drive is the road from the home of the Steelers to that of the Eagles, but you have to pass right by Penn State. I don't know if anybody knows about Penn State, but it is basically a giant football stadium and absolutely nothing else. People come from 3 hours away to watch football games there. At the end of the drive, we arrived in Chester PA at a holiday in that was, by far, the worst hotel I have even been in, in the scariest of parts of town. I suppose this was to be expected since it's right next to an industrial zone and a junior college, but being there was just bad.
There isn't really much else to say about the last leg of driving except after just over 3000 miles of driving of which I did about half, it was finally over.
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