Planet Olin

I'm at work (I'm one of like three people here) and I'm pissed off at a board that won't do what I'm telling it to do, so I'm taking a break to blog instead.

A few rants.

(1) Two people from my (very small) high school have gotten engaged within the last week. One was a classmate, and the other was one of my small circle of friends. How did I find out they got engaged? Facebook relationship status changes. Sad, isn't it? Oh, and speaking of people getting engaged, if you got a ring for Christmas, and you're wearing it on your ring finger, but you're telling me it's not an engagement ring, I do not believe you. You know who you are. :P

(2) Also on Facebook, I belong to a group called Gay Marriage Killed the Dinosaurs. The "information" post is the oft-forwarded list of reasons gay marriage is bad, including lines like "Children must have both a mother and a father, which is why we do not allow single people to have children in America". I chuckled when I joined it and ignored it for a while. I happened to look at the discussion lately after I noticed this title in the group list of an individual I know to be fundie Christian. Turns out there are a large number of people joining this group honestly believing that gay marriage did, in fact, kill the dinosaurs. Now stay with me here a second. Apparently, you see, dinosaurs occasionally engaged in homosexual behavior (and, presumably, watched a lot of "What Not to Wear") and the more they did it, the more they enjoyed it. They enjoyed it so much, in fact, that they stopped breeding heterosexually all together, and poof! No more dinosaurs. And this is an argument, clearly, for why we should not allow gay marriage between people now. Sadly, I shit you not. The group is overrun by these people now. My only consolation is that most of them are not yet old enough to vote.

(3) I love all my friends very much, and I realize we are a product of a generation of kids with over-scheduled lives who have been in ballet, soccer, and opera singing lessons since conception. But I now have an 8-5 job and occasional commitments to a community service program I feel very strongly about. What do I do the rest of the time? Sit my hard-working ass on the couch and read. Sometimes I cook very involved foodstuffs for my enjoyment and others'. Sometimes I go out with friends from school and/or work. I do not do yoga, assist with political campaigns, find a second job, or run marathons. So when you ask me what I do in my spare time, and I say, "read, cook, hang out with people," and you insist that no really, I have to have a "hobby", I am secretly rolling my eyes at you. I'm very happy doing what I do right now. If I get bored, I will change that. But for the multiple of you that have suggested that I am somehow lacking in excitement in my life because I'm enjoying having relatively nothing to do for the first time since starting kindergarten, don't worry about me. I'm fine. :)

And reading's a hobby, dammit, especially when you go through books as fast as I do.

That is all.

Now this board is going to be my bitch.

When machines do the reporting, I get a real kick out of the automated image match-ups.

Over Thanksgiving, I inherited a little something from my grandparents. This baby was made in 1962, purchased by my great-grandmother, passed on to my grandparents, and now it is all mine.

Look on my aluminum Christmas tree, ye mighty, and despair.

Felicitee Kertis has accused me of being lax in updating my blog. I almost protested till I checked the last date of post. It is true.

My six-month mark at work passed on 1 December, without much fanfare other than the fact that I still have a job and my boss and various supervisors seem pleased with the things I do. Despite not being at the end of an academic semester, I'm feeling "the crunch." I have a ton of circuit boards to program/test/fix/throw into trash cans in frustration for various projects that are in manufacturing. The big project I'm on has its PDR (preliminary design review) this Wednesday and Thursday for the Navy, and I in my masochism volunteered to be Powerpoint Nazi and do the "oh-no-this-text-box-is-one-pixel-bigger-than-this-other-one" kind of cleanup and merging for the more than 300 slides we're preparing to present. (At least my PM appreciates such work -- it is refreshing) It ate my soul last week, and I had to bring my laptop home to work on it at night, but I am most pleased with it and the preliminary feedback we got from the Navy was that it was looking good. Yay!

That said, there has been plenty of time for relaxing -- I've been reading a lot, cooking and baking a lot, writing Christmas cards, doing Christmas shopping (99% online - yeah lazy!), and doing what I shouldn't do and watching TV a lot. On the other hand, FIRST is gearing up, so I'm coordinating the Ambassadors for the Boston Regional, drawing on my relatively pitiful professional network to line up VIP guests for the event, and it sounds like there's a good chance I'll have a new team to work with in the spring. I think the lazy time I've been having since graduation may be coming to an end. It's been fun, but now I have good ways to be useful after I leave work.

In other news, I actually kind of enjoy staying late at work and working very intently on things for long periods of time. This may pass. But for now, it is good.

Also: on such nights when I *have* to stay late to get things done before deadlines, what will happen if I have scheduled time with a FIRST team that overlaps? I suppose I do what I'm paid to do, but I had not considered this issue. Hmmmm.

And finally, though I'm sure a majority of the people who read this are Oliners anyway, for those who are not and who had not heard, Olin is officially a real school. We received our accreditation from NEASC last week (at a breakfast for "newly accredited schools," which Jon rightfully points out was probably a pretty lonely breakfast for President Miller) making us a real school who can issue student visas, accept scholarships, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Also, after printing out the certificate forwarded to us and hanging it on the outside of my cubicle with the date highlighted, I discovered that most people I work with had no idea they had hired someone from an unaccredited school. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, I suppose!

That's about it. If anything exciting happens, you shall be the first to know.

oh oh oh, i can't believe i left this out about the lab job
when i told my dad, i decided to play a trick on him. now, keep in mind that i've been out of high school for 5 1/2 years and i dont have any degrees -- this is majorly on my parent's mind, much more so than on, say, mine. as it stands, i plan to graduate in may, which hinged on me being able to get a lab job so i could get research credit. but i called dad and told him 'hey dad, i have some news.......i've decided that after this semester, instead of finishing up school i'm gonna go do peace corps for 2 years. i really think i can make a difference!'       
there was nothing but silence on the other end for what could easily have become minutes, a silence from my father that is rare indeed. fearing him dead i let him in on the joke, which he found fit to then use on my mom. each of my brothers also HOWLED at the thought of it. oh, parents...

One final and one internship application left to go. Then home to Chicago on Saturday and to Boston on Sunday. I can't wait.

Tee hee.