Data-Dump
My time has been greatly curtailed, so excuse the lack of updating. The problem is I just don't have all of the time in the world anymore. I now have all of the time in the world minus 40+ hours each week. This cuts most directly into my fun-time, so I try to cut down on all the frills in life, like TV and internuttery.
My first week of work was great. I like the new job, even with the little painful barbs I can see on the horizon, like being awakened in the middle of the night to handle a cell-phone crisis. At this point it just feels good to be working an a fun environment with nice people and actually working hands-on with something that affects something in the real world. That said, I didn't really affect the real world much at all last week, because I still don't have a laptop or a test-phone so I mostly just sat in my cubicle and studied for my EIT exam. I went on some ride-alongs with the other people in my workgroup, and saw how the job works, but most of my time was spent in the office, agoniizing over fluid-flow through pipes and other things that don't matter to Electrical engineers.
Tezt
The test was on Saturday morning, at 7:30 am, way up past Baltimore. I woke up, drove up to the fair grounds (Video Game action next weekend!) and sat down for my 8 hours of pure testing satisfaction. The first test was actually not so bad. I wasn't sure about a lot of the stuff, but I felt confident that I answered more than 50% of the questions correctly. Then the break came and I went out to the car and ate my lunch. I was the classic under-dog dorky engineer, as all the other people talked to their classmates (Most people were college students who had EIT classes together, or so I gathered from their overheard conversations) and I sat alone in my car studying and opening my dr-pepper only to have it fizz-up and spill all-over the car and myself. THat sentence was arduous, but I trust you came out unscathed. During the break I also noticed a statistic in my study-book that said thatonly 70% of those taking the EIT passed it, and the reality of my situation becamee more apparent. At that point I became worried and not even 45 minutes of frenzied study could prepare me adequately for the next 4 hours of my test. The questions all seemed vaguely similar to what I had studied, and yet somehow foreign and alien to me. For many questions, multiple choice selections A, B, C, and D were identicle except for the placement of the decimal point, which made me a very sad man. During the last hour of the test, having settled on 'answers' for all of the questions, my mind wandered to thoughts of what I could be doing had I not felt some compelling obligation to become an engineer. I could be an actor, a writer, an indian chief, or anything but the guy sitting in the Timonium Fairgrounds field-house failing an engineering test.
WHen time was called and I left the building, I didn't feel good about the test, but I was really glad it was over. I feel happy, I feel good, and test results won't be back until February, so That's the only wayworth feeling at this point.
Dressup
That night I celebrated with a Halloween party at some dude's house where Jen drank herself to destruction. Erica was a pirate (and Designated Driver) and I was Virtual Joel. Some call it lazy and unimaginative, but I figured everyone would recognize an internet sensation like that, and I even made a little remote control to give to people so theyt could make me jumpo and dance and stuff. It was real classy, and I thank Adam for providing the cardboard and construction paper to make a bad costume a good one.
Bi-Review
Yesterday Erica and I slept in without losing any time (thanks to Daylight-savings) and went up to Columbia to get my car and a couple of CDs. I picked up the new Dismemberment Plan and the New Sloan, and both of them have had the same affect on me. THey were both new albums by bands whoe previous albums I had really liked, so maybe I built up my expectations too high, but neither album struck me as amazing. They each had a couple of songs that were poppy and straight-ahead and enjoyable, and the rest were ones that the jury would have to take a recess on. I haven't really heard a song that I really enjoyed thoroughly, from start to finish, but maybe I just need more time. Even bad albums can grow on you. Each album also has an acoustically driven song in which the guitar plays something with an odd time-signature and the vocals seem to meander around that while ending up as just plain "not-so-great". I probably expect too much, or more correctly I expect "more of the same". As Neil Hamburger will tell you, "an Artist needs room to grow", so maybe I should just take a step back and let them do their thing. Maybe I should at least review each album on it's own merits and not let my opinion of one cloud my judgement on the other. Or maybe they should make albums for me and not themselves.
