"The internet is a place where absolutely nothing happens. You need to take advantage of that." ~ Strong Bad

It took a ridiculous amount of time, but it looks like I have a job!

I spent about 2-1/2 hours with Electroimpact on Monday, starting with a detailed tour of the facility. The equipment they make is really impressive. It's primarily drilling and fastening equipment that works with extremely high precision over large distances on complex shapes. Some of these are purpose-built machines that would fill a gymnasium. Others are large industrial robots customized with their tool heads and improved controllers.

After the tour, I spent some time with one of their lead engineers reviewing an engineering test I had taken earlier. I think I got three wrong, and they got one wrong. Completing a 25 question test in one hour had me sweating a bit. Although the questions were harder back then, in school we'd usually have three to ten questions in a class period. I then talked to the president and several other engineers. Of the dozen or so people I met, only one didn't laugh at me for wearing a suit. I knew it was a casual workplace, but figured I couldn't go wrong by overdressing. I may have been wrong. Even a visiting group of foreign customers started cracking jokes when they saw me.

They got back to me on Wednesday, and on Friday I accepted their offer. Unless something changes, I start in two weeks.

The timing is fortunate since Kerry is in the middle of moving up to the Seattle area to help her parents get their veterinary clinic off the ground. We had a going away party for her last night and I spent most of today helping her move. I'll be on the other side of Seattle in Mukilteo. Hopefully I can find an apartment in the next two weeks.

Of course, this is going to complicate getting the Formula car running. I'm still figuring out where to keep it and hopefully still work on it.

It sounds like I will be assigned to work on a project for Short Brothers in Ireland. They're involved in the C-Series regional jet Bombardier is in the process of designing. They also have the distinction of having built some of the goofiest looking planes in the world.

I did it. I put off the decision for a while, but in the end I concluded that one of us who built the Formula SAE car had to give it a good home. I wasn't going to leave it to neglect...or worse. The UP shop technician dropped it off this afternoon. I haven't been very productive since.

There's plenty of work to do on it. In our rush to finish it, not all the metal parts got painted, so one of my first tasks will be to clean up the corrosion and paint all those bits. At the same time I need to get an ECU for it, repair a lot of the wiring and control cables, and replace a few other assorted parts. One of my eventual goals is to make new fairings, as the existing bodywork was made for minimal aerodynamic function and not given much attention for appearance. I might also consider restoring the engine to its stock configuration. Some of the modifications required for competition substantially limited horsepower.

Of course, now that I have a project that will beg for copious amounts of my time, I'm sure Murphy's Law will see me with a job again in short order. I guess from that perspective, I can count buying the car as an investment in my job search. In fact, I have an interview this coming Monday in the Everett area for a company that makes tooling for the aerospace industry. The company president woke me up Sunday morning to do a brief phone interview. That part seems a little weird to me, but the work sounds interesting.

Getting the car makes last nights dumb mistake a distant memory. I drove up to Mt. Hood to go night skiing only to remember as I turned into the empty parking lot that they're only open for night skiing Wednesday through Sunday. The worst part is that it wasn't just me. I also subjected two friends to the pointless drive up and back.

I had a couple unrelated financial misadventures this last week. First of all, I had a not-too-uncommon screw-up by the Verified by Visa system while trying to make a purchase online. It almost ended with a hold on my account, but after I cleared that up, it ended with Visa calling to verify my charges. There was a $1 charge I knew nothing about. I know some vendors, for reasons unknown to me, will do this, then refund the charge, but there was no notice this was being done in this case, so I told the computer calling that I hadn't authorized it. I've been told credit brokers penalize their merchants for things like this, so hopefully Skype will take notice (if it was them).

The second was more fun. The unemployment office told me my income for 2009 was enough that I needed to apply for a new claim. They also said since I hadn't properly reported the income, I might also have several months worth of UI benefits I would have to pay back. My response was, "What income?" Apparently at the end of the year, they compared the income I'd declared when applying for benefits to the income declared to the IRS for my social security number and found a substantial mismatch. To make a long story short, I suspect an illegal immigrant in Washington picked a social security number to use at random and ended up with mine. Fortunately, it sounds like this will get properly cleared up on my end.

As has been a little too common lately, I spent part of the weekend helping Kerry's parents with their vet clinic. In theory, I was just along to fix a vacuum system in their mobile clinic. When I got there, though, just about everything else broke, too. I fixed the vacuum, a printer (actually half-fixed two printers), the internet twice, and the laminator. The grand finale, however, waited until I got back home, when the toilet of all things, failed in two unrelated but compounding ways simultaneously. I was not happy.

I should probably get around to writing about the last three weeks, or I guess at least mention a few highlights.

Christmas was great this year. I've tried to impress people with talk about big Christmas get-togethers, but it seems I hang out with too many people who either also have big families, have really crazy families, or in the case of one person I know have both. As a result, I never seem to get much response when I say things like, "There were 38 people at Christmas dinner this year."

I was not looking forward to New Years, however. First of all, I decided because of airline prices, the need to stay focused on job searching, visiting people locally, etc. not to go to the MI New Years Retreat in Chicago I've attended for the previous five years. I'd gotten used to it as the way to celebrate the New Year. Secondly, this is scheduled to be the last year the space shuttle flies, not counting a probable slip of one or two missions into next year, and I haven't yet seen a launch in person. Third, the passing of the new year marks a one year anniversary I am not fond of dwelling on, but for which I have had plenty of time to do so.

I made it up to the mountain last week to go skiing for the first time of the season. The weather turned out to be fortunate, as a dry December left the snowpack low and the slopes mostly hardpacked and icy, but a gentle snowfall started as Sarah, Dan, and I left their cabin. The snow was decent when we reached the slopes and continually improved to great by the end of the evening. Now it's raining and the snow's melting again. Hopefully it will be back before too long, as I bought a 5 time night pass I need to use up.

After a little over four years of use (and six years after it went on the market), my original mobile phone had started giving crackling feedback and the battery was dying and no longer available, so I finally gave in and bought a new one. I had planned on buying the most basic $20 model again, but it had almost unusable buttons and was reported to have poor sound, so I shelled out an extra $10 for a Motorola "Renew." They call it Renew because the body and the box it came in were made from recycled materials (the box was still almost impossible to open), and apparently the extra $10 went into the shadow economy of carbon credits. I guess I did my part for the week to fuel a former vice-president's private jet. The phone works more or less like a phone should, so I'm happy with it.

I never heard back from Portland General Electric after the interview, which they told me meant I wasn't chosen for the second round of interviews. I got a call back last week on an application to a staffing agency for a temporary manufacturing engineer. It would have been work related to the test stand designing I did. He called the day after I sent a resume and cover letter and said they might be ready to interview as early as the next day. Unfortunately, that didn't pan out and he let me know this week that they'd filled the position internally. I have to say that he was far better to deal with than the staffing agencies I've dealt with for applications to Intel positions. Of course, all he had to do to achieve that distinction was speak English and remember what company he was hiring for.

Sarah's gingerbread party was on Saturday, which was a blast, as always. Don't forget to vote if you haven't. If we're lucky, Nick will even vote this year so the results can be declared official. He still hasn't voted on last year's houses.

As I was leaving my uncle's driveway after the second of three Thanksgiving dinners I ate this year, a shadow moved into the headlights that I realized was a dark-clad woman jumping in front of my car, her hands extended imploring me to stop. Alarmed, we rolled down the windows to find out what was wrong. She shouted to us, "SLOW DOWN!" as if for the third or fourth time, then waddled back toward the house that shared a driveway with my uncle's and vanished as mysteriously as she had appeared.

Now I will admit, I knew that this was a gravel driveway, "Not a Freeway" as the sign on her fence pointed out, and high speeds damage such surfaces. I had also noticed that although its straightness provided a clear sight-line, my car's width occupied nearly half of it, leaving scant room to dodge a child or pet that might be playing on the gravel at 10 PM on a November night. Knowing this, I can't imagine what could have possessed me to go rocketing down that driveway at a ludicrous 8-½ MPH, but fortunately that woman had been keeping watch by her door, ready to throw herself bodily in front of my car to prevent the inevitable safe passage that was about to occur.

Compared to that near tragedy, everything else seems mundane. Yesterday while I was working on the steamboat, my wrench slipped off as I was torquing a bolt on a heat exchanger. I nearly took out the 87 year old volunteer behind me as I tumbled backwards over a bench, but ended up only spilling his coffee.

On the bike ride home, I noticed some activity around the pump station for the Big Pipe sewer project. Sooner than I expected, they were pulling the mammoth 25 foot diameter tunnel boring machine "Rosie" out of the terminal shaft to barge four miles back to it's starting point near OMSI. From there it has 2 more miles of boring to do in the opposite direction. I couldn't pass up a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a tunnel boring machine up close, so I rode on over and spent a couple hours in the cold watching them maneuver the 530 ton cutter head section onto an equally impressive, self-propelled flatbed with 22 hydraulically-leveled, steerable wheel bogeys (and 88 tires!).

PGE said they'd call me this week if I made it to the second round interviews. Annoyingly, they also said they wouldn't call if I didn't.

I just realized that I hadn't written since before my great aunt's funeral. I had the honor of being a pall-bearer for her, and I managed to sprain my wrist and elbow pretty painfully in the process (I think I was the only one on my side actually lifting). We gave her a good funeral. The weather was stormy, but we still packed the little church where it was held and were rewarded by the sun coming out as we reached the cemetery.

The other big thing to happen lately was an interview with Portland General Electric yesterday for an energy efficiency engineer. It was not my best interview, but I also wasn't expecting to land an interview for the position in the first place, so we'll see if they call me back in for a second round.

Right after I got home from that, I got an email from Shock System telling me I hadn't been chosen for their open position, although they are considering creating one more opening. Then the email after that was a rejection notice from a company in Hillsboro that makes fuel cells. I guess as a younger company they haven't learned yet not to extend applicants the very basic courtesy actually responding to an application. Large organizations like Boeing or the Army Corps of Engineers know better than to respond in the first three months, if ever. Better to let them think their resume was thrown in the trash without even a glance, so as to discourage them from applying to future openings.

My outdoor soccer season came to a quiet close when our final opponent showed up short-handed, allowing us an easy 5-0 win. That left us in 4th place out of eight teams in our division. I also played an indoor game last night for my former housemate's office team. Unfortunately, I forgot my socks, which complicated things.

Over the last week I've found myself facing a serious and growing temptation that I could use some talking out of. Actually, perhaps I need some talking into. I'm not sure which.

UP has decided it no longer has a use for the Formula SAE race car several classmates and I built for our senior design project, so it is for sale. Although the car is a lot of fun and keeping it in team hands has strong sentimental appeal, I figured the price would be well out of my range. However, I wanted to get one last look at it and perhaps see if there was anything I could do to fix it up so our work would be well represented to whoever buys it.

When I dropped by, I learned two things. First of all, the school was asking barely a pittance for it. Secondly, a team of last year's seniors had ransacked it for parts for their High Mileage Vehicle project (in a classic case of asking forgiveness rather than permission), including most of our expensive fuel injection system.

The result is that it's not running. From the inventory I took, I'm guessing fixing it there will cost another $2000 or more in addition to a lot of elbow grease (not only did they swipe a lot of expensive parts, they weren't gentle in removing them). The flip side is that after it's running and spiffed up, I think its potential resale value to the right buyer will be comparable to the total cost. In theory I could fix it up, enjoy it for a couple summers, then sell it for minimal net cost.

The biggest remaining question would be how best to enjoy it so that it becomes something more than a money pit. I know it's eligible for some of the race events at PIR. I think there's a nearby karting track large enough for it, and there's currently a lot of vacant warehouses in the Portland area. Or I could just hang it over the fireplace as a trophy.

All I need now is for someone to talk me into it. Or out of it. I don't know.

My great aunt Mary passed away this Friday. I would appreciate you all keeping her in your prayers.

I spent Thursday and Friday this week at home tending the house and watching over my siblings while my parents take a vacation, something I don't recall them ever having done before. I think I did an ok job keeping things in order, as when I handed off responsibility to my sister for the weekend, the house was still standing and the number of siblings present was within two of the number when I started.

We averted a minor incident on the sternwheeler last week. A five gallon can of diesel had rusted through, fortunately while we were around to spot it. The puddle was working its way towards the water when it was found. About halfway through cleaning it up, I realized that based on the location, we could have saved ourselves the effort by simply not telling the smokers on board about it. One of them was bound to take cigarette break eventually. I've also apparently become the go-to volunteer for VCR repairs, but that's another story.

Soccer has seen a lot of high-scoring games lately. The three University of Portland games I've been to were collectively won 17-2. My team followed up on our 5-1 win with a 4-0 win last weekend. Today's game was a painful 0-7 loss. For unknown reasons, only nine players showed up as we faced the top team in our division. We fought hard, however, holding them to a single point in the first half, scored before our keeper showed up. We tried to keep up the intensity and even out the score in the second half, but with a two player deficit, no chance to rest, and then one more player leaving the field with knee pain, eventually we reached our breaking point in a big way.

We're currently 5-3 and listed in third place out of ten teams. I expect this loss will drop us to fourth place with two games left in the season.

Yesterday morning a courteous but short-spoken PGE contractor knocked on the door to let me know he was going to be installing a new wireless electrical meter, as our last bill had told us to expect. I asked him to give me a minute to turn off my computer and went about my business. He finished the job in 5 minutes and was gone. The power wasn't even out long enough for all the clocks to lose their time.

However, when I went to restart my computer, it froze up in the middle of booting. A sense of foreboding turned serious as I realized that something had occurred during his work that "let some of the magic smoke" out of my computer. It didn't appear totaled, but the hard drives no longer seemed to exist, so not only was my computer dead, but I had no idea of the state of 3 years worth of data, including about 6 months that I had no backup for such as job hunting materials and photos.

Fortunately, my years fixing the sorts of havoc that only naive college students can wreak upon a computer left me with a few tricks up my sleeves, and my previously unjustified reluctance to throw out the partially scavenged shell of my old computer payed off. With some transplanting, re-wiring, and a clean OS install on an obsolete drive I had it booting again. Thanks to my external hard drive enclosure, I found out my hard drives were still good. Apparently the transient had somehow made it past the surge protector, through the power supply, and only taken out the SATA controller on the far corner of the motherboard. It looks like I need a new motherboard, but as far as electrical damage to a computer goes, this turned out to be mild.

Last weekend's soccer game was more or less a blowout. We finished 5-1 after they snuck in a funny arcing shot right at the end that caught the keeper off balance. He'd made up for it earlier though by blocking a penalty kick for a foul I'd been called for in the box. For the record, I most definitely did not commit a foul.