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

I apologize for the record length of time between updates. Wedding planning has kept me pretty busy lately, and even when it hasn't kept me busy, it's kept me thinking there's other activities I should be working on besides fiddling with my site.

One of those activities is a dedicated section for Kerry's and my wedding. Invites are in the mail, but there is additional information here besides time and location. There's biographies of our wedding party, our engagement story, info on travel arrangements, and gift registries. I haven't quite finished yet, so there is a little more travel info to add, plus we want to share some photos, and make a guestbook available to sign. Hopefully you find the wedding site both amusing and useful, although the latter admittedly goes against one of the foundational tenets of my website.

There's been plenty of things going on over the last couple of weeks, so you'll just have to suffer not knowing every detail of my life, as disappointing as I'm sure that must be.

One small exception: I got my first passport last week. Now I can go smuggle factory outlet clothing across the border to trade for Canadian medicines. I took my own photo, being careful to follow all of the requirements the State Department enumerated to the letter: size, framing, cropping, brightness, contrast, color, shadows, resolution, etc. When I got my passport back, I found they'd messed up almost every one of those properties. While my original photo was merely bland (just like they want them), the final product was hideous.

For the curious, the Everett Herald recently did another article on Electroimpact. The CSeries drill and fasten machine is in the second picture.

The other day at work, a conversation near my desk caught my attention. I like to pick up on bits and pieces of what's going on in other people's projects. It starts with mere curiosity, but occasionally I learn useful information about how others have solved problems. In this case, there were five engineers rapidly proposing ideas, weighing factors, and downsorting to an effective balance of affordability, effectiveness, and risk. It was definitely an example of true engineering teamwork rapidly evolving towards a solution for...wait for it...the longest slip-and-slide in Snohomish County.

Last week we had optional first aid and CPR training at work. Getting certified in both has been on my to-do list for a while, but I had never gotten around to it. We need to always have someone certified on site when we're doing our installation in Ireland, plus it will be useful at MI Camp, and I've never liked the idea of being in an emergency and not being able to react effectively.

This past weekend I headed to Lewis County after work. Kerry's 10 year high school reunion was Friday night, and I spent Saturday and Sunday reliving the joys of my teenage years by helping my parents bale hay. I am never driving through Seattle during rush hour(s) again. The drive was 110 miles and should have taken 2 hours. I gave myself three to be safe. After four hours, I had gone 2/3 of the distance. Total trip time was just under five hours. I clocked one 30 minute stretch at 9 mph.

What's more amazing to me than the traffic is the fact that the people around me were almost certainly more aware of what it would be like than I was, but willingly and knowingly placed themselves in that situation.

When I started my job at EI, one of the coolest things I saw was the testing of one of the new automated fiber placement machines. The rapid and precise movement of something as big as this machine was honestly unreal to me at first. Fortunately it's new owner is now showing it off so others can see it, too. Unfortunately, it's not as impressive in video as in person, but it still looks pretty whiz-bang nifty in my opinion.

I've kept very busy since I last wrote. For Independence Day, Kerry and I joined most of my extended family in Chinook the night before. Then we met a group of friends in Seaside for the day, and headed to Portland for the night. Rather than spend our own hard-earned money on fireworks, we let everyone around us do it, and climbed up onto the roof of my sister's house to enjoy a 360° view of the explosions. Then the day after we revisited my old Portland habit of Monday evening happy hour at the Widmer Brother's brewpub.

The weekend before was the wedding of a long-time friend from MI Camp. I had fortuitously run into him at Mass shortly after moving up here without even realizing he lived nearby. That coincidence, however, was outdone when I found myself at the wedding sitting unintentionally right next the coworker who sits next to me at EI.

We rounded out that weekend with a day at the Buckley Log Show, which is in my opinion effectively the height of country entertainment. My favorite events are tree topping and the log rolling, but it's also hard not to enjoy the hot-saw unlimited: where else can you see a V-8 powered chainsaw rip through a two foot diameter tree in just over two seconds?

I spent the evenings after work leading up to that at the Washington MI camp helping out where I could, since for the first time in 12 years I wasn't able to attend a full camp.

In between I got my Washington driver's license - it looks almost like they reused the picture from my Oregon license - am in the process of getting my passport, and am trying to keep all the details of wedding planning organized.

I apologize for the unexpected downtime. My host's router died, which had some follow on effects that further delayed being available again. I guess it's one of the vicissitudes of free web hosting.

We're starting to cover a few details of wedding planning but haven't set a date yet. There's a lot considerations to weigh, including my company probably sending me to Ireland during some of the potential dates. We have found a priest, although we had to wait for God to make one. A friend I've known since high school was just ordained and had agreed to officiate for us (as long as he actually made it). We attended the ordination last week at St. James Cathedral, which was pretty awesome even despite the 2-1/2 hour length.

At work, CATIA has continued the cycle of lulling me into a false sense of my own competence before making a surprise attack. This time, I saved all my work on Friday, then returned Monday to find the process of loading my files taking hours instead of minutes. Once they finally loaded, this helpful piece of French software gave me a meaningless error.

The attempts at help from various co-workers were to no avail, so I worked at other tasks while waiting for CATIA to grind through my various attempts at troubleshooting.

By Tuesday I had it figured out. I was running CATIA Version 5, Revision 18. We had a batch of other files that were saved in CATIA Version 5, Revision 19. Buried deep within one of my assemblies was one of those parts. Not only did this seemingly minor update prevent forward compatibility, but CATIA choked trying to process it and couldn't even tell me what was wrong.

Keep in mind, I hadn't loaded that part (I thought). This is where the Germans come in. Our product data management software, made in Germany, took care of that for me.

Moral of the story: being caught between the French and the Germans is a dangerous place to be, although this time it was the Irish being involved that ultimately fouled things up.

Aside from a little event with the ring, my week has also included scoring two goals at my soccer game and seeing my first whale. Awesome week!

This past weekend was my first mountain summit attempt for the year, along with Joe and four others. The target was Mt. Baker - 10,778 feet. Before that story, some quick trivia: Mt. Baker was first recorded by Captain Vancouver's 3rd lieutenant, Joseph Baker and is partially known for its visibility from the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It's last eruption was in 1880, and it still has many active fumerols. It holds the world record for most snowfall in a season (95 feet!). It was first summitted on the third attempt in 1868 by Edmund Coleman in a 14 day expedition from Bellingham.

The original plan was to climb from the trailhead early Saturday morning, but I wanted to hike to the base of the glacier the night before for a shorter day than our Mt. Adams climb. A guidebook said this was 2 miles, but the map appears to show 2 miles the way the crow flies (assuming a crow can ascend that steeply). After hauling my camping gear up in the dark I was starting to doubt I'd actually summit. Adjusting to the new job and home has kept me less fit than normal, and my knee was bothering me.

We awoke at 4:30 and were on the trail in an hour. My new crampons worked great on the crusted snow. We roped up to ascend the glaciers shortly after sunrise. By the time we'd reached the steepest part I was nearly exhausted and a dehydration headache was threatening, but the others had slowed down just enough for me to feel I could keep going. We crested the summit at 11:30 after about 5600 feet of climbing (plus ~2000' the night before). It is also my first memory of seeing Canada.



After a cold and windy break at the summit, the descent was pleasant and relatively uneventful. Baraka proved a genius by pulling a bag of stew out of the snow back at camp to cook up. Stew heals in a way the 4 liters of water and probably 2000 calories worth of trail food I'd consumed couldn't.

With that adventure concluded, I'm back to the usual. An indoor soccer season ended today. We finally didn't lose a game. I scored twice, and we tied 7-7 after giving up a goal with 1:20 left.

I'm typing this from a new laptop. I've never felt any strong desire to own a laptop, but after buying the Formula car, I knew I would effectively need one to program the ECU. The hassle of moving also made the convenience more appealing. Since I already have a great desktop, I bought a lightweight, low-power model.

So far, it seems to be more or less as expected. It's about the size of a text book, lasts 5-7 hours on a charge, and came with Windows 7 Premium. On the downside, lights reflect annoyingly off the glossy screen, and Windows 7 is rather demanding on resources, even if it hides that behind flashy transition effects that distract you while you wait.

That's not the only thing I've been wasting my money on. I came across a great deal on a Nikon FM 35mm camera and several lenses. The camera itself is three years older than I am. I've been considering dabbling in film for a while, and several of the lenses will be useful on both the FM and my digital camera. However, I've been busy enough lately that I've only had time to take pictures of it, rather than with it.

This weekend Kerry and I took a trip down to Portland. Aside from some brief visits with a few friends, I had time to work on the sternwheeler and join my old soccer team for a game. Unfortunately, the other team forfeited, so we only scrimmaged. I ended up with a near fatal rug burn on my left knee from the astroturf. It matches a similar one on my right knee from an indoor game that had almost finished healing.

A couple days before that I had an irritating encounter with Snohomish County's finest. Although I'd normally be happy to answer any reasonable question for an officer, we got off to a shaky started when he began with an unfounded accusation of "screaming and shouting." Implying that I was hiding from a warrant when I declined to show him an ID should have led me to shut the door in his face, but I mistakenly thought showing him my driver's license might be taken as a courtesy instead of him reading it off to the dispatcher. We could have had a simple conversation about whatever noise was reported, but he decided to be a bully and I let him get away with it.

One of our Toyota forklifts had a hydraulic control lever fail this week. That's hardly remarkable, but it interested me because of my long history with hydraulic control levers. To make a story that's probably only interesting to me short, I can say with say with literally the utmost authority that this failure would not have happened on a Hyster.

Working at a place where actions like throwing the transmission repeatedly into reverse at high speed, dropping two tons of lumber from above, and running cooling tests so hard the forklift actually drifts through the corners are daily tasks, it's easy to develop a sinking sense that the product you make is hopelessly failure-prone. It's vindicating to see the competition's product fail from far less abuse than I'm used to dealing out.

Speaking of Hyster, I noticed recently they're hiring again, after a long period of attrition and market recovery.

Meanwhile, the local PUD is having serious trouble understanding the difference between not receiving payment and depositing the payment but not updating their records for two weeks. I don't have a lot of faith after two calls that didn't resolve the issue that they'll remember promising not to shut off my power on Monday like they originally threatened.

There was a Christmas tree in the dumpster outside my apartment this morning. It looks like one of my neighbors must work for Boeing's HR department. I got two more late rejection notices from them this week.

Sunday I joined part of the family visiting my grandmother for her birthday, and afterwards Kerry and I explored Point Defiance Park. Monday I went to work like normal, went through the day like normal, ran errands like normal, and ate dinner like normal. Then I came down with norovirus.

I went from feeling perfectly normal to praying on my knees before a porcelain altar in less than four hours. As I understand it, everyone else I was with Sunday did, too. It sounds like I actually got off easy.

Since this protein-encapsulated scrap of worthless RNA was clearly ridiculously contagious, I reluctantly took Tuesday off work. That's the first time I can remember ever taking an unscheduled day off work. I can no longer claim to have something in common with iron man Cal Ripken Jr. Actually, I did cheat by going in for a couple hours after almost everyone had left for the evening, but I wasn't in the starting lineup. We have a fairly big review coming up this week, and I had a lot to get done, which is also why today was a long day...A very long day, actually, but I got everything done.

Aside from mailing in my census form, the main excitement his week has been scoring a three pound bag of robin eggs and some jelly beans on sale the day after Easter.

I also received some of my first machined parts in from the shop this week at work. Having in hand something you designed is a feeling that a CAD model on the screen can't really match.

Plus I scored a 3-D mouse from the IT department last week to help with my CAD work somewhat. It takes some getting used to, but I'm starting to find myself instinctively using it for some work, so hopefully it save enough time to justify the $90 cost. Logitech definitely showed they know how to impress an engineer with it. It's built on top of a solid, machined and polished billet of stainless steel.

Speaking of expensive computer gear, I recently took a look at the specs on my work computer. The thing is big: almost the size of a 2-drawer filing cabinet. I have a similarly impressive 24" widescreen monitor to go with it. Inside, in addition to a video card nearly the length of the case, I found a 950 Watt power supply, 8 GB of RAM, and two 64 bit Intel Xeon quad core processors. Just in case it wasn't clear: that's eight processing cores! Unfortunately, CATIA doesn't make very good use of the parallel processing ability. It often maxes out one or two cores, but leaves the rest at idle. Supposedly ANSYS does much better at using all the power available, but I haven't tried it yet. Also, despite the horsepower, I frequently run out of RAM because our models are so large, and the video card bogs down trying to draw all the details on screen.