new job

That's right, I am now employed with a real job. I start next Monday at Applied Signal Technology, and it is way cool. I had an interview with this company just a few weeks ago. It was a really long one, starting at 9:00 and finishing up at 3:00, with a break for lunch. It was definitely good. This place pays well, has good benefits, and does really interesting work. Most of the work I'll be doing is DoD contract work, and I'll be getting clearance to do that work, so most of you can probably expect some phone call in the not too distant future.

I'm really happy about the timing of how everything worked out. I had enough time at my RA job to package everything up nicely so that when I leave, the whole project doesn't get dropped. If anyone is interested, you can check it out here: http://dna.cs.byu.edu/airnet and it seems to have pleased the professors. Now, I'm just goofing off and relaxing for about a week until I start my new job, which, if I haven't mentioned, I'm really excited about.

Oh, one other thing I should be doing is looking around for a place to live. We've decided that commuting for a couple of hours each day won't really be the dream life, so we'll be moving closer to my work. It will probably be between one and two months before we actually move, but we're definitely on our way out of this college town, which is good since neither I nor Guildylocks are in college anymore. I don't know if I mentioned that earlier, but I officially graduated about two weeks ago, too. Anyway, be on the lookout for more information about where we're moving to and maybe a bit more about the job.

$45 steak

So, quite a lot has gone on since I last wrote.  I've had two more awesome trips to Moab, started a "class," went to Vegas, and successfully addicted some friends to a new game.

So, first, the Moab trips.  Trip one was this years Raft for the Cure.  Way better than Race for the Cure.  I don't think I can emphasize enough how much more fun it is to go rafting than to go running.  Especially when you fill the boat you're on with some good friends.  Wudan, Sukie, the boy, of course Guildylocks, and some of her friends from work all came down for this trip.  If I didn't talk about this trip last year, which I probably didn't, I should have.  It's just a lot of fun.  The lunch bbq was definitely great.  Just an all around awesome party.

So great, in fact, that we had to come back the next weekend for Moab! part deux!!  This time around, it was everyone from the first trip, minus the work friends, plus Striker.  Since we were camping, and there was talk of rain coming down in the middle of our 4th of July festivities, we splurged for a cabin, big enough for a couple bunk beds and not much else, but just fine for sleeping in.  If you're wondering what goes on in Moab for the 4th of July, it's not much, at least not from the town itself.  Luckily, we had tons and tons of great food, arches to hike around, fireworks to watch, beans to play (the aforementioned new addiction), and squirrels to sort through the trailmix and take everything but the raisins.  We call him Marty.

Now, this whole "class" thing.  Some of you are probably thinking, didn't you graduate already?  The answer is, technically, no.  Technically.  Due to a lack of employment for the summer, I pushed my graduation back to August, so that I could continue doing my research while looking for some post-college employment.  Unfortunately, they neglected to inform me that I needed to take 3 credits throughout the summer in order to be considered a student by the student employment office.  Luckily, when they terminated me, I had a couple of days to scramble into a class before the add deadline passed, and have since been re-hired.  

My class is actually really fun.  I'm taking a Capstone Project class, so basically, we have a group of 4 of us, and we are using all we've learned in college to do something cool.  That something cool is make a racing game that can be played in 3d (with glasses), and multiplayer for up to 32 players.  So far it's going well.  We just realized we have just a few weeks to get it finished up, but I'm pretty sure we'll get something pretty nice out of it.

My Vegas trip was for another conference.  This one wasn't as interesting to me as the last conference I went to, but I was presenting my research at this one, and not as just a poster this time, but a 20 minute presentation.  It went pretty well, and I even knew the answers to all of the questions people asked at the end.  The funniest things about the trip were what the two professors going with me were focused on.  One of them only really seemed to care about whether the hotel we stayed at had free wireless internet and a decent breakfast.  The other was all about eating at the best buffet.  We stayed at a hotel with a good breakfast, but their internet was down the entire time we were there.  We ate some really good food.  One night, we went to the Bellagio for dinner.  The buffet ran about $29 each, so I'm glad the university paid and not me.  It had really fancy food, from elk roundeye steak, to swordfish and sushi.  Really good.  Oh, and really good carrot cake.  I was expecting we'd find some place significantly cheaper the next night for dinner.  Instead, we went to a steak house in New York New York where they wet age and dry age their steaks for 12 days each.  I think it was called Gallagher's.  Anyway, the restaurant was way fancy, and the steaks we got were $45 each.  And then sides are ordered on top of that cost.  The steaks were also around three inches thick, and I would think were over half a pound each, maybe close to 3/4 lb. or a little bigger.  Anyway, really good food, but definitely expensive.  I just checked the online listing, and they say average price per person is $70-$80, so apparently we were really cheap.

Other than that stuff, I've been looking for jobs recently, and have a few promising leads, one of which is right around here.  I'll keep everyone posted on how that goes.

that bird just became a man

You how when you're out driving around, there will almost always be some bird that flies right through the middle of the street, really close to your car?  I used to think those birds were just being daredevils, or showing off how well they can navigate through busy traffic, trying to impress all those lady birds.  

Recently, however, I've changed my mind.  I now think that dodging traffic is some kind of bird rite of passage.  On a road trip I took a while ago, one bird failed that rite of passage.

Merry Christmas!!!...?

oh wait, I'm just confused. Must be the weather. plenty of snow. Other people might disagree, but I'd swear there's 6-8 inches of snow. All the trees are bending down because they can't support the weight. There are very few times, well maybe quite a few times, when I don't feel like getting out of bed, and they usually have something to do with cold weather and warm blankets. This was certainly one of those times. If I didn't think I had at least 8 more hours of applying to jobs from the GDC, then maybe I would have stayed in bed.

Which reminds me, I spent 8 hours applying for jobs yesterday. A few weeks ago, Brian went to the GDC (Game Developers Conference). I could have gone, if I had been OK with missing about a week of school, but that just didn't seem like it would have been a particularly good idea. Anyway, he was awesome enough to bring back a bunch of stuff from a lot of companies that are hiring right now, along with some pretty cool other stuff, like t-shirts, toys, random Chinese comic books that he bought because he liked the artwork a lot. Well, I've had this pretty decent size stack of stuff for a little while, and yesterday, I just started going though it all, applying to pretty much everywhere that I at least look mostly qualified for. So, here's hoping someone likes what they see.

Valkyrie

No, not Berserk's wife, the movie.  I saw it last weekend, and I'd say it was pretty good.  It's all about one of the plots the Germans had to assassinate Hitler.  Although most people know the outcome (there was someone next to us who seemed surprised when Hitler didn't end up dead, and a few people had to pay for their "treason"), it's well done enough that I caught myself thinking, "they're actually going to pull it off," only to quickly remember that just isn't how history happened.  Anyway, it is certainly an interesting look at WWII, and does a pretty good job pulling you into the stress and tension of fighting against the Nazis from within their ranks.

to finish school, or not...

Contrary to how I previously thought I felt about continuing school, I now find that I'm thinking it might not be so bad.  I still think I would prefer getting a job and starting some kind of career, but I've started to feel like I'd miss doing research.  

Just to clarify, this is not the kind of research you do for classes, where you have to pick a topic, go to the library, find a bunch of sources about your topic, and write about what two conflicting or complimentary points of view, pointing out strengths and weaknesses for each argument and deciding which you think is correct.  If that's what I had been doing with my professors, I think I would have stopped quite some time ago.  

Anyway, I like the research that I work on with my professors.  I like that I'm actually doing something that someone wants to use (We work with a biologist at another university).  It also turns out, that my boss wants to use my research as part of a grant proposal.  That's pretty cool.  With research like this, I'd definitely have something I could use to get a masters.  I'd even have a good foundation for a thesis, or whatever it is masters students have to write.  

I suppose the problem is, that I keep going back and forth about whether I want to keep taking classes.  Anyway, it's something I've been thinking about, and talking about.  Just another option to consider.

In other news, I'm getting married soon.  We're getting ready to send out all the invitations, so those should be arriving fairly soon.  We think we've gotten most of the addresses we need, so hopefully we'll be sending them all out in the next couple of days.