Quarter of a semester gone!

Four weeks of work already passed, wow that was quick! I’m settling in to the daily routine as I find things to busy myself with outside of work, extending my network and looking forward to the start of the school year at UCSD for the social life to pick up a bit (the quarter system doesn’t go back to school until September 21^st, how ridiculous is that!?!) This past week I started going on Tuesday and Thursday evening mountain bike rides with a group that I found through the San Diego Mountain Bike Club homepage. These people are pretty serious, have really expensive bikes, and are very nice. One thing I found out on my second ride was that when they suggest you bring a headlight, that means they won’t be coming back until after dark. I never even considered buying a headlight for riding on trails in the dark, but it’s no big deal out here. Looks like I’ll be investing in some equipment for the new bike not too long here. I’ve been taking my backpacking headlight and rigging it into my helmet, but it’s not nearly strong enough to ride at normal speed and still react to the rocks and ruts on the trail. The difference in terrain between the trails in Georgia and the trails in California has taken a bit of getting used to. At home, there are lots of roots and wet spots along the trail; out here, there is no water in the stream beds and all of the hills are dusty, rocky, and loose dirt. When you’re climbing a steep hill on your bike, you can’t stand up to pedal because your back tire will spin and you’ll end up having to walk up. I saw my first snake last week right at dusk – he was in the midst of making his way across the trail so his head and tail were concealed by the bushes at both ends and I was going fast enough that I didn’t have time to stop or swerve out of the way, so I just bunny hopped (jumped my bike) right over him. Looks like I’ll need to be brushing up on my snakebite first aid in the case that something bad happens when I’m out by myself.

Work is going well, it is amazing how convenient it is to live three stop lights away from where you work. Being the engineer that I am, I was interested in finding out exactly how long it takes to go from work to home, so Friday I timed it. From the apartment door to my cubicle, it takes approximately 5 ½ minutes on bike, with the time on the street only being about three of those five minutes because I’ve got to walk down some stairs in the apartment and up some stairs in the office building. As of tomorrow, I will be finished my third project of the semester. The first week of work I spent going through tutorials, learning one of the main programs that our company uses for its analysis, IDEAS. It’s proprietary software that is very deep and has many applications. Following my tutorial training, I was assigned to design and model a test setup for a payload adapter that we’ve contracted to test. The part itself is quite simple, basically just a connection between the electronics and the payload in a rocket. The problem was that I had to have certain clearances and tolerances, and attach a circular piece to a square T-slot table in our lab. I created three different designs and presented to them to my supervisors, who accepted a modified version of my second design. I then realized that I would be needed to create some draft files to be sent to the shop so I could have this design machined and put together, at which point I needed to switch to a different program. I spent quite a while learning this new program while re-modeling parts and transferring them to draft files. I learned a lot about designing with production in mind, basically making it easy on the guys in the shop for the sake of cost. After that, my next project was fairly small – digitizing some data from the Apollo space shuttle that we needed to compare to some of our recent designs. I am now just about finished with my third project, which involved altering the code of a number of .XML files so that the data from our physical stress and strain gauges would be input into tables and formatted correctly.

I’ve been playing soccer regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays with two other guys from the office. We drive about 15 minutes to a park where about 20 businessmen (mostly of foreign origin) meet to have a lunchtime match. Most of these guys are pretty talented, so it is definitely some good competition. I was invited to play on a couple teams in a league starting in the next few weeks by a couple of the best players out there, so I’m hoping to be able to get in on some real weekly soccer games. I have looked into the options to joining a tennis league, but the sign-ups for those leagues were over in August, so I missed out on that.

This weekend, one of the other co-ops, Eric, and I went to Irvine (near Laguna Beach just south of LA) for a free Lexus promotional driving event. We drove up Saturday morning went to see the sights at Laguna Beach, had lunch a little further north on Newport Beach watching some kiteboarders, then helped my friends Leyla and Neena that I met in Madrid move in to their new apartment not too far from the UC Irvine campus. We took a short driving tour of their campus and found that they have the most ridiculous mascot ever, the ANTEATER! Fortunately, they don’t have a football team so they aren’t humiliated too bad, but a drawing of an anteater is on every street sign, and they even have a bronzed statue of one on a street corner. I MUST get shirt that says anteaters on it, that’s just too funny. After laughing about that for a while, Eric and I put together some beds, a couch, and a desk or two for the girls and grabbed dinner at Fashion Island, a big outdoor mall area in Irvine. We were fortunate enough to get to crash on Leyla’s couches for the night, so we could get some good rest before burning some rubber on Sunday. The Lexus event is called Taste of Lexus and was held at an old air field called El Toro. We had a bit of trouble finding the place thanks to four different sets of bad directions. Talk about luxury, Lexus knows how to put on an event. From the point where we signed in, we were lead on a path of food through the tents. The first stop was a room where they had a car on display, with a table full of exotic appetizers for the passers-by. The next room had bowls of pasta with all kinds of toppings, drinks, and a section where you could sign up for a massage or a face lotion therapy session…absolutely ridiculous. This same room had a pseudo-waterfall and a tree in the hybrid section…I’m going to go out on a limb here and just say that I don’t think either of these aspects of the display are going to help me decide to buy a Lexus, but whatever. So after we fill ourselves to the brim with pasta, we go to the next room only to find out that the main dish was there! Four different types of shish-kebabs lure participants to bask in the luxury of a leather seat with a full stomach. The last room was a lounge type area with deserts, an automated grand piano, Xbox 360, etc. So then we exited the tents and began to have some fun with the cars. There were three different tent sections with four cars in each section, so we decided to go to the Luxury section first. These cars were too cushy for me, not enough punch when you push down the pedal. The SC430 was a total disappointment as a convertible two-seater; I hope no one ever refers to this convertible as a ‘sports car.’ One neat thing we saw while standing in line was the demonstration of the automated parallel parking feature on the LX460. Basically you pull up to the car in front of the spot where you want to park, mash the button, and it parks for you (with a bit of brake assist from the driver). Pretty incredible to actually see. The IS 350 was by far the fastest, most practical, coolest, and if I’m not mistaken, the cheapest car there. At $36,000, I was quite impressed by the speed and went back to drive it multiple times. My last lap around the coned course, I got Eric to ride with me and take video. I tried to push the car a little too hard, went into a couple corners a bit too fast, but managed to keep from taking any cones out. On the back straight away, a guy in a van in the infield was speeding next to us honking the horn and yelling at me to keep from flipping the car, but I hadn’t even taken any cones out! They pulled me aside and told me that my driving was irresponsible, but I rebutted by saying “How am I supposed to know if I want to autocross in this car if I don’t know what it can do?” Fortunately, they didn’t cause too much of a scene and I didn’t hurt anything, so no loss on my part! Check out the video here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3468570433118311458 (make sure to read the description on the side) Another exciting caveat about the event, I met a cute girl who, turns out, goes to school about 20 miles from where I live in Del Mar. I saw her and her mom glancing our way throughout the day and decided to say something to her next time she walked by. She’s a cute brunette who reminds me of a girl I used to play soccer with on the Patriots, Anne Pollard. She’s studying criminology at Cal State – San Marcos and was quite the driver. I got her phone number and am looking forward to following up with her. Needless to say, it was a blast and I am really looking forward to doing the Mazda version of this event in October at the California Motor Speedway in LA.

This past week I received confirmation that I will have 5 friends from Georgia Tech coming out to visit for their fall break in mid October. I’m looking forward to showing them around and getting to spend some time with friends from back home. It’s so nice to have friends who follow up on their word and actually come visit when they say that they’re going to! Laura Faires and April McNeely from back home are going to make a trip out the first weekend of November, I’m looking forward to that as well.

I’ve realized two somewhat humorous things over the past couple of weeks that I’d like to share. I work in an environment where it is ok to wear jeans and tennis shoes to work, yet we still have “casual day” on Friday, whodathunkit? All it really means is that you’re cleared to wear a t-shirt to work, in case you didn’t feel comfortable doing that the rest of the week. The other thing is my views on leftovers. I’m starting to like cooking, trying to get creative and faster with my cooking abilities. The catch is, under my parents' wings, I would denounce and almost declare a distaste for leftovers. Yet as my perspective begins to transform from customer to chef, I realize that leftovers save a lot of time and require very little effort with a substantially smaller loss in taste versus time saved. So be it mom and dad…sorry for the pain all of these years :) I never saw your side of the fence because all I knew at the time was that I was home from soccer practice and I was hungry.

That’s all I’ve got for now, y’all have a good week!

Getting Home, Cross Country Trip, and Settling in to SD

Again, I apologize for the delayed posting, the speed of life just runs away with the time! Below you will find the accounts of my cross country trip with my dad, as well as my first few weeks in San Diego.

When I got to Atlanta from Madrid, I made for the bike shop to pick up a new bike to ride at home with Pete and on my cross country trip. I ended up getting a Gary Fisher Hoo Koo E Koo and had one day to ride with Pete at home. After 15 minutes during my first ride on the bike, I found myself with two flat tires…what luck! Fortunately, the following days’ experiences would make up for that disappointment.

We left Monday night around 12:15 am on our way to Houston because we had plans to meet up with my dad’s college roommate Jim Redmond and his family for dinner. We managed the straight drive with no problems, walked around downtown Houston for an hour, then met Jim at his sizable home across from Tracy McGrady’s (currently a famous NBA player)…needless to say it was quite the pad. I had met Jim and his wife Meg once before about 12 years ago, who were high school sweethearts along with my parents back in Michigan. We chatted the evening away, had some amazing prime rib, and I watched Shawshank Redemption in their theater. The most exciting part about their house aside from the sheer size was the machinery in the garage. In the three car garage sat a Ford GT, Mercedes CLS55 AMG, and a Porsche 911 Turbo (one of my dream cars). It was interesting that Jim had the same color scheme in the GT as my friend Tom from Georgia Tech, in which they only have produced 12 cars, and I’ve sat in two of them! Just a brief history on the Ford GT: it was originally created in the late 60s as a Ferrari killer in the world renowned Le Mans race. It destroyed the competition with its 40 inch low roof. They put it back into production as Ford’s most revered performance vehicle ($150,000), and Jim said that it would put my dream car Turbo to shame on the track – looks like I may have to start looking for a new dream car. Ok, so after we got some sleep, I was anxious to get up because we were scheduled to go to the track around 10. I still wasn’t quite sure at this point what that would include, but I was up for anything involving the word ‘track.’ So we get there and find out that the track has been sponsored by Mercedes, so the driving school cars were C 230s for the students and C 330s for the instructors. For the first hour, we did a mix of things including riding with instructors as they showed us the lines and techniques for this track, lead and follow, and then another short ride with the instructor for further pointers. I came out of the bathroom after a short break to find my instructor waving me on from about 100 yards away telling me to go have fun…uh can you say Kid in a Candy Store? Dad and I proceeded to do laps for another hour-hour and half, getting faster and more comfortable with each lap. There’s nothing like driving on the edge with somebody else’s car on somebody else’s rubber, it just doesn’t get better than that! During our driving, I waited for dad to come around the track so we could have a little fun together, obviously without getting too close. So after the first big turn, I saw him right in my rear view mirror and I knew that I messed up the turn, but not that bad. A little confused, I continued to lap barely inching away from him but nothing substantial. As our time came to a close, I met dad in the pits and switched cars because, as it turned out, he grabbed an instructor car that had 4 more cylinders than mine did, no wonder he was in my rear view mirror! He was very happy that I couldn’t leave him, even though he did have a completely different car, an automatic with another half of an engine, but it was all in good fun and thoroughly enjoyable for all. My dad was so full of adrenaline when we left that he couldn’t even take a picture of me by the front sign because his hands were still shaking. I can’t thank Jim enough for the experience of a lifetime. A note about his son: He’s on the Junior Amateur Golf Tour and is an amazing player, I’m probably going to get in touch with the Georgia Tech golf coach to make sure he checks this kid out.

Our next stop was Austin to see Heather Johns, a girl a met at a bike shop this past February. She was just getting moved into her new house and in the middle of the transition, so we got a hotel for our night there. We went to an authentically Austin restaurant for dinner with some Johnny Cash and Elvis covers. We checked out her new house afterwards with a few minutes of salsa and shag dancing on the open floor, the proceeded to what my dad refers to as the “most bizarre bar” he has ever been to. I’ll give it to him that there were some interestingly humorous people there, notably the only couple I’ve ever seen that actually represents true “funk.” Early the next morning, Heather and I put my new bike to test with a morning ride on some of her home trails. A very enjoyable ride with a dip in the river afterwards, followed by a Spanish breakfast. Heather is the most easy and enjoyable person to talk to I have ever met, she’s awesome! I wish her the best in her budding real estate career as well as breaking in the new house. We took a quick driving tour of UT Austin after leaving the hotel, the headed toward El Paso. I laughed when we entered Texas and saw the sign for El Paso that said “El Paso 858 miles,” but they weren’t kidding. The funny thing is that I don’t recall being bored at all by this drive; I’m not sure whether it was the scenery or the companionship, but I would do it again! I didn’t realize that Juarez is the Tijuana of Texas, and that the Rio Grande is the only thing that makes El Paso and Juarez different cities. The states of New Mexico and Arizona went fairly quickly as well, with a short stop at the University of Arizona to see an old friend Jake Lacey. Jake is doing well, training with the Navy ROTC getting ready for action, as well as honing his impressive photography skills. It’s been probably 8 years since I saw Jake, but he still seems the same as I remember him. We continued the drive until just after the California border, where we saw some amazing sand dunes. You know, when I think of desert, I think of cacti, but this was a different kind of desert. The funny thing was that it was only like 5 minutes of Arabian camel style sand, then it disappeared.

Not long after we passed the dunes, I found out from my future boss via phone that my apartment wasn’t going to be ready until at least Saturday morning (and it was Thursday afternoon). So my dad and I decided to get a hotel at the split off of a highway that would take us to a lake in the mountains called Big Bear Lake. Little did we know that Big Bear was at an elevation of around 6500 ft., making the low there about 46 degrees…slightly cooler than you would expect a southern California locale to be. Fortunately, we were able to utilize my backpacking gear in a luckily-found campsite at the base of a ski resort just outside of town. My new Gary Fisher mountain bike was calling “Riccola” at the sight of the 20 downhill trails as well as the chance to ride the lift up and test the hydraulic disc brakes on the way down. As coincidence would have it, I rode up the lift with an architect from San Diego who was up for the weekend, and not only showed me around the trails on the mountain, but offered his card for future rides in SD. Bears made their presence known in our campground later that night, not messing with anything of ours but waking up some of the neighbors, that’s what I’m talking about! When I heard a lady asking whether bears were the ones that you should run from or lay down and play dead, I thought she had been doing too much reading on the internet. The guy who ran the campground said this bear couple had been to the campground every night that week and were taking care of the leftovers that people had been foolish enough to leave out. Either way, this camping experience was a pleasant surprise to get some wilderness time with the Pa, something I hadn’t done alone since a fishing tournament when I was like 5.

Our next stop was a friend of my dad’s from his neighborhood in Farmington, Michigan during middle and high school. He had been out of touch with Adam Rollins for about 20 years, but Holly googled his name and came up with some encouraging results (fortunately he is a lawyer, so it made things a bit easier). Needless to say, old friendships rekindle brightly with lots of storytelling and revelry. It was fun to get to hear both sides of a few stories that I never had two perspectives of. Adam showed us around his side of Monrovia, just outside Pasadena, Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, Venice Beach, Santa Monica Pier, and a bit of Malibu. We had dinner at Neptune’s Net, a restaurant they ate at in “Too Fast, Too Furious.” After breakfast the following morning, dad and I made the journey to our final destination, Del Mar Ridge apartments about 20 miles north of the heart of downtown San Diego.

With some help from the roommates, we had my stuff up in no time. My dad was such a help during the first week there; taking care of groceries, chores, wash, things that needed to be fixed. You name it, he did it. As he was home during my time at work, I walked to work for this week, which only takes about 15 minutes – what a pleasure! I now ride my bike, but what more could you ask for. I don’t need more than a tank of gas every couple weeks because the only place I drive to is the beach (5 minutes away) and the grocery store. The rest of my dad’s stay consisted of some exploring around the area, a dinner in Old Town, a dinner in The Gaslamp Quarter (really expensive), and some beach time. He didn’t get to see any of the blonde California girls he has heard about, but I’ve done that for him since his departure. As his trip concluded on Thursday night, I could tell he was ready to get home and sleep in his own bed. We sure did have a good trip though, with no real disputes and a lot of fun experiences. Thanks for coming Dad! The generational differences were evident when he got out of the car, though, as I rolled down the windows and turned the music up. Time for a couple months of life on my own…off to a wonderful start thanks to dad.

The first week at work was interesting, with my days full of tutorials on the modeling and analysis program that our company uses as one of its moneymakers. I am experienced in 3-D modeling, but getting used to a different interface and much deeper program took quite a while. The coolest and most different thing about our office is that it is very laid back. I wore khaki dress pants, dress shoes, and a polo shirt the first day, and I was by far the most dressed up person there. Everyone wears jeans and whatever is comfortable; no t-shirts or flip flops but pretty close. The daily schedule is flexible with people able to start and finish when they choose, within reason. This means the guys from the office play ultimate Frisbee during lunch on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, while another couple play soccer on Wednesdays and Fridays. One of my roommates, Andrew, and I decided to play ultimate the first Tuesday, which turned out to be much more serious than the slow game with engineers that I expected. I can honestly say I was one of the worst players out there, and I felt out of place! Haha, funny to say that, but I have since taken up the soccer instead and it is much more enjoyable. The soccer game is a bit further away but takes place with around 20 other businessmen, mostly foreign of some sort, who come together for an hour and a half to play some pretty dang competitive soccer. The catch is, though, that they play with very little contact, no slide tackling, and a sense of politeness that my style had to get used to. Anyways, it’s nice to take a break in the middle of the day to get some exercise, I certainly like that mentality. I don’t think the businessmen in Atlanta would ever consider doing something like that in the middle of the work day, but maybe they should! One of the kids that works a couple cubicles down from me has gone surfing in the morning before work, and brings his board in with him. Some of the other guys go during lunch hour, I think I like this place J I got my first project this past week, and I am in charge of the design of the structure for our test, as well as getting it quoted and started for production, kinda cool to get to just get cut loose on a project right away.

All of the other co-ops are getting along pretty well, we all went to a fundraiser party for a local girls’ ultimate team raising money to go to the national championship as well as the world championship in Australia. We had an enjoyable time, with the chance to meet some of Eric’s ultimate friends. Matt and I are the only ones from Georgia Tech, while both my roommates Andrew and Jeff, as well as the other two from the other apartment Eric and Rick, are all Oilermakers from Purdue. I think I will get along with Eric the best, as I think we are two of the more social of the group, but still a good group nonetheless.

This Labor Day Weekend consisted of some fun in the apartments, a couple trips to the packed Pacific Beach, a quick trip to Tijuana on Saturday night, some surfing, and some good food. Pacific Beach, on Saturday, was my first taste of the Southern California that I expected to find when we arrived. This beach is covered with thousands of college age kids standing around drinking, playing horseshoes, bocce ball, Frisbee, smash ball, and people watching - tons of blondes and well crafted bodies running around. The funny part is that all of these people are on the beach, but only a fraction of that are in the water because it is around 66 degrees. Saturday, I went to a party with the guy, Adam, who goes to UCSD, and then to Tijuana later in the night. It was certainly an experience, as I expected it to be, but not anything like what I had seen the first time through Tijuana when I went whale watching in 8^th grade. Then, I only saw the hills around the border covered with cardboard boxes and people waiting to get across. It was a late night, I didn’t get back to my apartment until around 7 am, so needless to say I didn’t get up until early in the afternoon. Jeff and I went surfing after I grabbed lunch, and then Andrew and I watched the very interesting Discovery Channel special titled “Inside the Twin Towers.” This special was great because it gave first hand accounts from the survivors of the horrific event, making me think about things that I never considered before. Monday, with the rest of an entire day behind me, started at 7:15 and an omelet, an early morning mountain bike ride, then an afternoon on the beach. Capped by some grilled hamburgers, it was a wonderful holiday weekend.

I’ve got some friends already planning to visit, which I’m pretty excited about. I also have recently made plans to attend Mazda (ZoomZoomLive) and Lexus (Taste of Lexus) promotional events, in September, October, and November, which are going to be free and very fun. I’m having to make a conscious effort to go out of the daily routine of work to meet people my age, as our section of Del Mar doesn’t house too many people who are regularly out and about. I think I’m going to try to get involved with some kind of activity on the UCSD campus, as it is only one exit away on the highway and has a lot of potential for contacts. Whatever the next couple months have in store, I really want to make a few contacts that enable me to say that I know people in San Diego, because two of the three co-ops working with me now have 0 friends here from last session. I’m also making a conscious effort to learn a bit about cooking rather than having microwave meals and the easy stuff every night.