Surfing!

Those of you who have been reading my blog may - if you've been especially observant - have noticed one entry that is suspiciously missing. Of all the activities to do in southern California, how come I haven't gone surfing yet? Where is my surfing story?!

The truth is sad and bitter medicine. I did indeed try surfing on May 24, 2009. R, the "surfer bum" co-op (I don't think even he would dispute that title), invited me to come along on one of his surfing expeditions. R went surfing every day that he could, and would have done it during his lunch breaks if he had the chance. He wasn't much of a teacher, but he did give me some basic instructions. Unfortunately, I didn't get far enough to use them.

You see in order to ride the waves, you first have to get out away from the shore. Which seems intuitive, until you consider that those same waves which you plan on riding you must somehow get THROUGH in order to get out there. There is a technique to paddling through 5-foot waves so that you stay on your board. However, I didn't figure it out; I was swept off my board and twirled upside down by the footstrap attached to my ankle, while my board smirkingly floated on the surface. I recovered the first time, but the second time I got so much salt water up my nose that I decided to abandon ship and paddle back to shore before the next wave drowned me to death. Waves and I turned out to be an uncomfortable couple. I flirted with the idea of taking lessons, but without a car or a partner to learn with me there was no second date.

But there is more than one kind of surfing, and last Saturday I got the opportunity to redeem myself and become a surfer dude. Sep 12 was the San Diego Windsurfing Association's end-of-season picnic, and someone at ATA invited all the co-ops. This time, we received professional instruction, and well...

Alas, I didn't have enough PAM to slide on land.

So I tried it on water.

This is before I fell in the first time and got the rest of my shirt wet.

I don't think I've had this much fun since my run-in with the dinosaurs at the zoo. The great thing about windsurfing is you don't need waves, so you can do it in land-locked places like Ohio. If there is a windsurfing club in Cincinnati, I think I'll keep it up. (At least until it starts snowing.)

Bus Adventure

Today I wanted to go see the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International's International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition, held at the Transducer Evaluation Center of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center. Or in acronym-speak: AUVSI's AUV Competition at the SPAWAR's TRANSDEC.

I'd talked it up Friday and Saturday, but I couldn't convince any of my fellow apartment mates to go, even though they're engineers too; so I decided to go alone by public transit. I had made one public transit journey before, a put-my-foot-in-the-water experience: I had tried to take a bus to La Jolla for dinner. The bus only took me as far as a shopping center, and rather than change buses I gave up and had dinner in the shopping mall (I was hungry), which had a hockey rink in the middle with little league hockey kids and their dads being loud and boisterous. For this adventure I planned out my route in advance as best I could, to avoid such a disastrous ending as my first bus ride. The plan was to take the 9:30am train from Solana station to Old Town, the 28 bus to Shelter Island, and transfer to the 84 bus, which would take me to TRANSDEC. Google said this would take a little over 2 hours. I figured after I saw enough of the aquatic robots, I'd take a bus to Balboa Park to see the organ concert at 2:00pm, have lunch or dinner (or both), and then head back around 6:00pm.

Here's the route in Google Maps. I'm not sure how well this will preserve, since it's based on the date. (Maybe Google will remember bus schedules forever?)


View Larger Map

Today I'm going to mix up the format a bit and present my day as if I was Twittering. Here goes:

9:00 am: My apartment mate A drops me off at the Solana Beach Amtrak station, as planned.

9:47 am: Waiting at the train station... It's 40 min behind sched. Great start to adventure. (roll eyes)

10:19 am: 1 hr and 20 mins behind schedule now.

10:22 am: Pic

10:45 am: Train finally here.

10:59 am: Cool! The train has an outlet so I'm charging my phone and checking Gmail. (No new messages.)

11:17 am: I'm off the train and onto the bus.

11:40 am: Eating a tuna sandwich from Marvelous Muffins while waiting for the next bus.

11:51 am: A woman came into Marvelous Muffins. "Do you have banana muffins?" "No, sorry."

11:52 am: "What about banana nut?" "Sorry."

11:54 am: "Banana bread?" No.

11:55 am: "I really like banana. It's my favorite." I point out some actual bananas for sale to the woman. She's not interested in actual bananas. Phooey.

11:57 am: Woman leaves Marvelous Muffins empty handed, sans bananas.

12:10 pm: My new plan is to visit Cabrillo National Monument after TRANSDEC.*

* Cabrillo National Monument is much closer to TRANSDEC than Balboa park, just a bus stop away.

12:17 pm: I've met 4 people from Poland on the bus!

12:26 pm: Oops. I think I missed my stop while distracted by my Polish friends.

12:35 pm: New plan. I'm at Cabrillo Nat Monument with my new Polish friends.

12:52 pm: Done looking around, got my pressed penny; I will look for TRANSDEC on foot.

1:10 pm: Looking for the intersection with Fleming St. Can't be too far.

1:16 pm: Have been walking through a military cemetery. And walking... and walking...

1:23 pm: Please be Fleming, please be Fleming!

1:24 pm: Not Fleming.

1:26 pm: That was a very long cemetery. Of course it is on a peninsula so it had no choice.

1:30 pm: Is that Fleming? OMG IT'S... woodward.

1:34 pm: Is that Fleming?

1:40 pm:

1:45 pm: Uh huh. Parking not quite next to the event, eh?

1:55 pm: SWEET.

2:02 pm: Cornell just got a perfect score - somebody said they're the leaders.

2:04 pm: CoolDad @me: Just watched a video recap of yesterday's competition.

2:33 pm:

2:35 pm: UTD is here! Lol

2:38 pm: CoolDad @me: UTD took second place last year.

2:40 pm: CoolDad @me: Grandma just bought a 32 in digital TV

2:44 pm: Grandma bought a TV? Can I have the old one? :-)

2:47 pm: CoolDad @me: Oops - we gave it to Goodwill!

3:48 pm: Oh well. It probably didn't have a VGA port anyway.

2:51 pm: The coolest sub

2:57 pm: The typical sub

3:17 pm: Cornell's sub

3:24 pm: Cool sub again

3:39 pm: I got a complement from the lady at the concession stand on my T-shirt!*

* I got that at LegoLand, btw.

3:47 pm: I got to drive a real bomb-disarming robot!

3:58 pm: The TV crew got the robots together for an awesome shot.

3:59 pm:

4:12 pm: Heading to the bus stop.

4:45 pm: Waiting for bus number two.

4:51 pm: Bus number two... Away! (With me on it, I mean.)

5:14 pm: At Old Town station.

5:33 pm: Just missed the bus for downtown* - think I'll try to find somewhere to eat here in Old Town.

* Had to go to the bathroom. A man can't pee without missing his bus, is that fair?

5:45 pm: Couldn't find food in this direction. I think Old Town was the other way.

5:48 pm: I caught the bus headed the direction I want... And I can't believe where I may end up eating dinner.

5:54 pm: I let a Mexican who just got kicked out of his Uncle's trailer park borrow my phone to call his cousin and tell her he needs a place to stay. Hope he was honest, and a SWAT team doesn't come chasing after my phone for drug deals or something.

6:45 pm: Ha! I got off one stop before the mall with the hockey rink. I'm at a Jack-in-the-Box in La Jolla.

7:28 pm: I'm back on the bus after a delicious meal.

7:43 pm: Another complement on my shirt! I think it might have been from an intellectually disabled man*... does that still count?

* Googling tells me this is the current PC term... of course if kids start saying, "That's so stoopid, you're disabled!" they'll probably change it again.

7:58 pm: I think I've got to wait 40 mins for this next bus if my schedule is right.

8:51 pm: Off the bus, and on the long walk back home.

9:02 pm: I call A, and he agrees to pick me up at a 7-Eleven so I don't have to walk so far.

9:03 pm: I think I'll buy a candy bar while I'm here.

9:03 pm: Ooh! Ice cream bars!

9:03 pm: OOH! TWIX ICE CREAM BARS!

9:04 pm: Chatting with the guy at the cash register.

9:04 and two seconds later pm:

me: "Uh... A... can I eat this in your car?"

A: <dumbfounded> "Have you SEEN how I treat my car?"

me: "OK, thanks!"

9:19 pm: I'm back! What a day.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

Last Friday I took off work to go to the San Diego Wild Animal Park with my Aunt C. who is in town. She was visiting with a friend, who has a 6-year-old daughter named M. I got to camp with them overnight at the Wild Animal Park through the Roar and Snore® program.

C and I arrived in time to see the lorikeets and a few other exhibits before meeting up at the Roar and Snore tents to unpack and get dinner.

On the bus for the Journey to Africa.

In the tent next door to us was a man probably in his late 20's and his son V, who was M's age. M and V instantly bonded and became best friends for the weekend - it's amazing how kids can do that! V's dad was pretty interesting too; he's a mechanical engineer turned marketing consultant from Germany who is working for a biotech start-up in San Diego. As a budding mechanical engineer myself, we had a lot to talk about.

Me and my new friends.

As part of the program, we got 2 guided tours and 3 presentations where care-takers brought out some of the animals not on exhibit, so it was definitely a more educational experience than your average zoo visit. (Plus, the tour guides were cute, and I got to chat with some of them for a while.)

I liked the Wild Animal Park better than the San Diego Zoo, because the enclosures were so vast, and the backdrop is pure California mountains. It felt more natural than any zoo I've ever been in, and was even drop dead gorgeous on occasion.

On Saturday, V was worn out and he and his dad left, so M grabbed my hand and gave me a whirlwind tour of the park, which she had seen with her mom yesterday. (They had arrived early on Friday.) "Quick!" she said, tugging me towards the next exhibit. "And don't step on any cracks, they're electric!" After "electrifying" myself a few times, she changed the rules so stepping on sidewalk cracks would "release monsters" - presumably a much greater deterrent. (And here I thought stepping on a crack just broke your mother's back!)

One of the coolest exhibits was Dino Mountain, a trail lined with animatronic dinosaurs! M eagerly showed me each one. "Here, this one spits water!" she warned me as we approached a dilophosaurus. Not wanting to get wet, I stood off to the side. The dinosaur turned it's head and sprayed me with water anyway. "You are right, M, it does!" I said cheerily as I tried to clean my glasses.


M really made an ordinary zoo trip vastly more entertaining. Kids say the funniest things! The most potent were two question asked right after the other:

"Will, do you have any kids?"
"Why, no M! I'm too young for that."
"Do you have a life?"

The bluntness of the question startled me for a second.

"Why, yes. Yes, M. I do. I go to college. And I have a job."

I thought deeply about those two questions, and the subtle implication of their quick succession. I hear the phrase "Get a life!" thrown around a lot at college, usually as a cheap insult, sometimes as self-deprecating humor. I think M is right though - if you don't have kids you should make your life extraordinary. My Aunt C. never married, but she has traveled all over the world (including Antarctica) and runs marathons; she plans to run a marathon in every continent before she dies. Once you have a kid, your life becomes centered around your child; you don't have as much time for a life of your own. It is almost as if you must choose between "having a life" and having kids. Frankly though, I'd choose kids any day if they a're as funny and sweet as M.

Trip to LA Part III: Griffith Observatory

Part 3 of 3: Griffith Observatory

A model of the telescope in one of the displays at the Griffith Observatory.

I don't know why, but aerospace engineers seem to have a fascination for space. (Space week on the science channel was like couch-glue for these guys.) So our final destination of the day was the Griffith Observatory. (For those who might not know, observatories are buildings that house giant telescopes.) Because of its remarkably calm skies, there is less atmospheric distortion on the west coast than probably most of the country, making California a haven for astronomers in the 19th century. Consequentally, California has lots of important observatories, including Palomar, Mount Wilson, and Lick.

The beautiful city of Hollywood stretched out beneath Griffith Observatory, giving off light pollution that I'm sure the astronomers curse.

Supposedly, Griffith Observatory was only 40 minutes or so from Hollywood, so we stayed in Hollywood for dinner and enjoyed delicious, satisfying meals at Johnny Rockets. (I caught myself singing along with the oldies eminating from the cieling a couple of times.) We headed out expecting to arrive at the observatory with plenty of time. Little did we know our GPS had other plans for us that night!

First, it tried to take us up a road through a park that was closed off with a gate. After failing to find a way around it, we stopped to ask directions from an elderly Japanese man returning to his car from a picnic. "Yes... yes! I know how to get to the observatory. It's been many years though.... If you exit the park, you'll be on Los Feliz Blvd. Then, ah... you turn on Vermont Ave. Very simple, yes?" We thanked him and headed out on Los Feliz. To our excitement, the GPS was now plotting a new course to the observatory that didn't involve crashing through locked park gates!

A few minutes later, we passed Vermont Ave. Oops! But our GPS had us turn at the very next road, so they probably meeted up somewhere, right? An extra block wouldn't hurt us. As we drove, the road became steeper and narrower. Imagine one of those windy roads they film car commercials on, except with one-lane. And cars parked on each side. This road goes on and on, and as we're getting closer to where the GPS shows our turn is, a park ranger car with lights flashing comes from around a corner and barely misses us! When we look back at our GPS, we've passed our turn. The road's too narrow for us to turn around so we keep following the road, which turns out to be a loop, and descend back down the mountain. Thinking we might have just missed the turn due to the distraction of the near-accident, we head back up. When we get to the spot though, there is no road to turn on. There's a house sitting where our road should be. Our GPS has misled us again! Giving up, we head back down and trace our steps to find Vermont, like the wise old man had suggested.

We find Vermont, and it does take us to the observatory. However, the observatory is packed and the parking had overflowed back down the road for a quarter mile. So we park, and start hiking up the road in the dark, without flashlights. We suspected the people were there for fireworks, since it was July 3, but we were never sure. The observatory was packed too, so maybe it's just really popular. It was like a small science museum, with exhibits on how telescopes work, the history of astronomy, and general space topics like the solar system. It would be perfect for an elementary school field trip. Plus, it's free! The planetarium costs extra, but we didn't do that.

Don't look now, but there is a gas giant above your head!

Me with my buddy Einstein, a humble guy who tries to deflect attention.

The observatory closed at 10 o'clock, and we drove back to San Diego. We were fairly worn out, so we spent the rest of the weekend recovering by sleeping in and watching the Science channel.

Trip to LA Part II: Hollywood!

Part 2 of 3: Hollywood

Then it was on to Hollywood! I was rather disappointed in Hollywood Boulevard - it is actually pretty run down and shady. Some of the historic theaters could definitely use restoration, and the proliferation of "adult" stores and panhandlers detracted from the experience. Nonetheless, we walked the Walk of Fame and took pictures of the stars. Each had a different style: I only took pictures of a few stars that really stood out to me (such as the band Queen) and only with with me in the picture with the star.

Buddy your a boy, make a big noise playing in the street! (Technically sidewalk.)

N took lots of star pictures - focusing on names such as Ray Bradbury, Jim Henson, and Gene Roddenberry.

(If you look closely, you'll see my shoe!)

M, playing the role of "least geeky" in our trio, took pictures of the stars for Harrison Ford, Samuel Jackson, Sylvester Stallone and the like.


At the end of our walk we reached the Chinese theater and the famous foot and hand prints! N and M only took a few pics, but I went hogwild, enthralled with comparing my foot-size to all the actors. Frankly, the foot/handprints seem much more human and intersting than the engraved stars. A lot of actors wrote little catchphrases in their concrete, such as "Carpe diem!" from Dead Poet Society and "I'll be back" from the Terminator series.


Fact: my feet are the same size as Robin Williams' and bigger than Bruce Willis'. (At least based on the shoes he wore that day.)

Yippee ki yay!!! I am so badass; my feet are bigger than Bruce Willis'!!!

Trip to LA Part I: Caltech

Earlier this month, N and M began making plans for how to spend the 4th of July three-day weekend. A and R (who are over 21) were going to Las Vegas, so N and M figured they'd have their own under-21 road trip to San Francisco. They invited me to join them, which was both polite and more importantly would reduce their share of gas and hotel fees. I said, "Sure, if you end up going I'm down for that" and left them to their meticulous plan-making - researching hotel prices, parking prices, how loooooong it would take to get there, etc. N and M have done relatively little in the way of sight-seeing this quarter, so I was surprised, but highly skeptical that they would carry the idea through. I was right: the San Francisco trip was too expensive and too short for the amount of driving required, so it was replaced with a 3-day stay in Los Angeles, which has the advantage of being closer, and significantly cheaper since we can stay at the LA co-op apartment. Apparently that was still too much for my friends to handle though, so they reduced it to a day trip to LA. But that was still more than I had expected, given their typical weekend habits. Finally, after a long hiatus, some go-getting! Some adventure! So much in fact, that I doubt it will fit into one post, so I may split it into parts.

Now, I've learned that different co-op sections of have different personalities. When the previous group went to LA, we headed straight to the beach and played volleyball, later going out for good food. This section of co-ops is a little geekier. Our must-see destinations for LA: Caltech, Hollywood, and the Griffith Observatory! I know what you're thinking - Hollywood is not geeky right? Perhaps, unless (like N and myself) your sole goal to see the triple footprints of R2-D2, C-3PO and Darth Vader in front of the Chinese Theater.

Part 1: Caltech

Caltech was pretty awesome. Of course, it was closed because of the holiday, so we couldn't actually go inside any of the buildings, but the outside looks nice. We wandered all over campus trying to find a campus map, finally finding one after we had seen 90% of the campus.

N and M puzzle over the all important question - where ARE we?

We also found a giant cannon - the famous Flemming cannon that some MIT students stole as a prank a few years back - and got our pictures with it. All three of us are thinking about Caltech for grad school now.

Writer's block

Sorry I haven't written anything in nearly a month. I've got a bad case of writer's block.

Birch Aquarium

My previous story was all words with no pictures. This story is the opposite, to keep the universe from shearing apart.

Email subscriptions

You can now subscribe to my blog via email provided by Feedburner, whatever that is. (Like Blogger, it's owned by Google, so it must be cool, right?)

Edit: I got an email, so it works. There's a few hours delay, but that shouldn't matter.

The day I wore a tie

As far as corporate cultures go, ATA is pretty laid back. Full time employees can come in and leave whenever they like. There are groups who regularly leave to play Ultimate Frisbee or soccer in the middle of the day. And nobody wears a tie.

It was the day of the so-called co-op exit presentations. Every session, each co-op has to give a presentation to the rest of the employees about what he or she did this session. We were told to dress nicely - hence the shopping trip in LA to find dress pants for N. Since I wasn't leaving this session, I was the only co-op not giving a presentation, but I thought I'd dress up to support the other co-ops. So that morning I put on a nice shirt, dress pants, and... a tie.

When S and I walked over to the other apartment to see if they were ready to get leave, N and C looked at me and said, "Holy cow! Why are you wearing a tie man?! You're not giving a presentation." I told him I just dressed up to support him and all the other co-ops are giving presentations. N looked at me sternly. "Do you see me or C wearing a tie? You're going to make us look bad, dressing all fancy like that!" At that point, B walked in, also wearing a tie. N and C turn on him. "What the heck, B?! That's not cool. Don't wear a tie man!" N and C give me and B dirty looks as the seriousness of our predicament sinks in. But B and I stubbornly stuck it out and decided to wear our ties anyway - if it made us look better than the other co-ops, that is their problem right?

"Dude, one of the employees is going to call you out, I just know it," said C. "I tried wearing a tie once, and I got called out on it. And if someone doesn't, I'll point it out every time I run into you today." Ben decided to take off the tie and wear it just for the presentation. I thought N and C were crazy, and decided to wear mine all day. Little did I know.

That morning, my boss came over to discuss the project I'd been working on. His face became a look of consternation. "What's the occasion for wearing a tie?" he asked quizzically.

"Oh, the co-ops are giving their end-of-session presentations today," I told him.

"Oh are they? I don't usually go to those so I'd forgotten. So you had to wear a tie, because you're giving a presentation." My boss relaxed, the puzzled look beginning to dissipate.

"Actually, since I just got here, I'm not giving a presentation."

The puzzled look returned to his face. "Oh, but you had to wear a tie anyway?"

My boss's logic baffling me, I carefully replied, "No... it wasn't required. I just wore a tie."

My boss looked at me for a moment, trying to work out in his head why I was wearing a tie. "Uh huh," he said, finally giving up and changing the topic of our conversation.

Later that day in the carpool on the way home, C asked me if I got called out for wearing a tie. "Yeah," I admitted, "I think when my boss saw it he was worried he'd forgotten an important meeting or something. He was pretty confused."

C smiled triumphantly. "I told you!" he said. "I told you not to wear a tie."

Cooking

So I've been doing some cooking now that I'm on my own with no Center Court to go to. I started simple - Mac 'N' Cheese with hot dogs - then worked my way up through Red Baron pizzas, spaghetti, and am currently at brownies. (You actually have to mix eggs and milk for those! Intense, huh?)

Of course, I had to know when my spaghetti was done:

Freaking awesome, really. Has the military considered making gecko robots that climb walls using spaghetti? What makes spaghetti stick? I seriously think this should be studied. I just spent 10 minutes on google, and found nothing! Although I did find a really cool study about why spaghetti doesn't break in half when you hold the ends and bend it. I want to know if it's van der Waals forces, or bubbles, or what. I'm betting the surface structure of spaghetti would be a lot easier to mimic than that of gecko feet, and if the clinging ability is scalable, it might be a significantly cheaper gecko-tape strategy.

Next on the menu is taco casserole! My mom mailed me a box with the recipe, as well as some ingredients and other goodies. Isn't she great?

Los Angeles & Shopping

It has been WAY too long without an update, and I apologize. That happens sometimes I guess.

The weekend of the 17-18th S drove me and all the San Diego co-ops to LA to visit ATA's two co-ops in the LA branch. They're both girls. (Woohoo!) And they both already have boyfriends. (Aww!) But I had a great time hanging out with them. We spent a gazillion hours at the beach Saturday, and everybody but me and S got burned to a crisp. S is naturally dark and used sunscreen; I used sunscreen and adopted a fun technique for hiding from the sun:

That worked great until some drunk girl who was playing volleyball with us decided it would be fun to step on my stomach, but misjudged and hit a little lower instead. There is nothing like being woken from a warm nap at the beach by someone stepping on your balls! It would have been funny if I hadn't been so furious.

Afterwards, we hung out at the pool in front of the LA apartment, and in the evening went shopping to get N a pair of dress pants for a presentation he was giving Tuesday. The only outcome of that was I got Cinnabon (woo!) and finally found some glasses cleaner! Both the stores within walking distance of my apartment, Ralph's and Von's, sell about two dozen contacts cleaning products, but no products for glasses. Are glasses that out of vogue?

The following weekend, the LA coops came to San Diego and spent the weekend with us, where they went shopping (they are girls after all) in the Pacific Beach area. The gals went to Pink Zone and who knows elsewhere, and the guys and I just walked through all the thrift stores looking for T-shirts. I need some white T-shirts for wearing on Ulimate Frisbee days (white shirts versus colored shirts), but didn't find any I liked. I did find this though:

Now I just need to find a pair of pants AWESOME enough to wear with that.

The Allergy Shot

Some of my better friends know that I have allergies, and get allergy shots regularly every two weeks. I figured it prudent to continue the shots here in CA, just in case. (Secretly, I was hoping my allergy symptoms would disappear in California, but that hasn't happened.) Luckily, there is a medical clinic just a five minute walk from ATA, so I scheduled an appointment during my lunch hour. That way I wouldn't have to do make up time, I figured. Besides, how long could an allergy shot take?

Quite a while, as it turned out! I'd forgotten to consider the tremendous paperwork required the first time you go to a new doctor. I filled out form after form, signing this and that, and spent quite a while chatting with the lady behind the front desk while I was at it.

"Responsible Person... is that me or my dad?"
"Either one really, it doesn't matter there."
"Patient Address. Um... I forget the apartment's address exactly."
"Oh put Ohio for that one, honey! It's used for billing."
"Responsible Person [different form]. Doesn't matter again I guess?"
"No, it matters this time. Better put your dad there."

At that point I was called in to the allergist, and told I could finish the paperwork before I left. The allergist was a really nice guy, and when I told him I was working at ATA, he smiled. "Good! So you do you know George?" he asked.
Thrown off-guard, I replied, "Um, not yet, I guess."
"Ah, well George works there I think. He's a good friend of mine. Here, I'll write his name down so you don't forget. Tell him I said to take good care of ya!"
Hmm, that'll be an interesting conversation starter, I thought. "Hey! You and I have the same allergist, you know that?" It'll be hard to pull that one off without seeming creepy.

Back in the waiting room, I struggled to finish the paperwork for the lady behind the desk:

"Employer Address. Dang, I don't have that one either on me. Can I call them really quick?"
"Oh just skip that, it doesn't matter."
"Wait, so which ones of these matter?"
"Just the first two."
"So how much of this do I really have to fill out?"
"Oh, I think it's good now, you can just hand it to me."

I'm not sure whether she was serious of just wanted me gone, but I didn't mind because the appointment had already taken over an hour. The lady behind the front desk was from Cincinnati, by the way. Lived there for 20 years before moving back to San Diego where she was born.

Mission: Acquire Postcards

Part 1: The Burrito

So Thursday, I was walking on my way to buy lunch, because I was tired of PB&J and wanted to get a burrito from this place N took me my first week. Only I didn't remember where it was. Normally I'd eat with the other coops, but S and C were gone on a test, and B had taken the day off to be with his parents, so the only coops were N and me, and N decided to go to the gym during his lunch break. So I'm stuck having lunch on my own, with only N's vague directions "somewhere across the street right?" to help me find the burrito place. So I took off using muscle memory, and ended up at a mall where I'd had lunch the first week. Having failed to find my delicious burrito, I settled for Subway instead.

Part 2: Hallmark

But fortune favored my misled wandering! For as I started back I passed a Hallmark store: At last! I thought. Maybe THEY have postcards (unlike the grocery store)? I walked in, and immediately saw some beautiful cards with pictures of California - $5 a piece. My heart began to sink. But as I turned around, directly opposite were postcards, with a sign "35 cents each, 3 for $1". As my friends in Cinci say, "JACKP(H)OT!!"

I grabbed nine of them to get a multiple of 3 and went to the checkout counter. With few customers in the store, the manager was happy to see me. She started by asking if I was visiting, at which I explained my coop and how I was from Cincinnati working on my ME, and she got excited and declared her husband was an electrical engineer. The other lady who was working the cash register interrupted to say she'd forgotten about the 3 for $1 discount and started re-entering the purchase, at which point the manager said, "Oh give him all of them for one dollar!" I laughed and thanked her, and wondered at my good fortune. Before I left the manager told me to drop by if I ever need something to do or someone to talk to! Suffice it to say, I will drop by and say hi whenever I go past the Hallmark from now on.

Happy birthday ATA!

Today at work we celebrated ATA's 9th anniversary. I celebrated the chance to eat cake and ice cream! ;-)

That is what ATA looks like from the parking lot. We share part of the building with Siemens, which is slightly ironic because they are the company that now owns what is left of SDRC.

Work at ATA

Boy have I been busy! The nice new camera I ordered from eBay shows "Lens Error" when I turn it on, so y'all be stuck with camera-phone pics for a while. (I'm going to try to fix it rather than return it, because - well - I'm a mechanical engineer.)

I've forgotten to take any photos since the ones I took of my room. I've been so busy just trying to buy enough groceries to have lunch the next day and not run out of toilet paper. But fear not! here's a photo I forgot to post last time:

That's the view outside my window. How sweet is that? I have a swimming pool outside my apartment! It's still a tad too cool for that yet, but I've got six months.

At ATA I've been doing tutorials learning to use I-DEAS, which for my UC friends is kind of like CAD programs like SolidEdge, but once you build a model, you generate a finite element model from it and can do simulations like in ANSYS. Actually, it probably is a lot like ANSYS, but I haven't done anything in ANSYS, so I don't know. Interestingly, I-DEAS is at the end of its life, so everybody is kind of working their way towards migrating to NX. Some of the founders of ATA may have helped write the original I-DEAS though, which is pretty awesome. Brief company history: ATA was the Advanced Testing and Analysis branch of SDRC (Structural Dynamics Research Corporation) which had close ties with the University of Cincinnati. When SDRC was being bought by another company, the testing and analysis group at San Diego was told they'd be shut down, so rather than leave they broke off from SDRC to become their own entity. So believe it or not, many of my co-workers are UC grads or from the UC area! Which, obviously, I think is awesome.

Another awesome thing about ATA is there's a dozen or so employees that take off an hour at noon on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays to play ultimate frisbee. I missed it on Tuesday, but joined in on the fun today! I like it, because I need the exercise - Stadium View had gotten me out of shape for sure. We had even teams, and I was supposed to cover one of the guys, but despite his gry hair he was pretty good, and I could barely keep up with him. I did make a few good catches though.

This weekend, I NEED to find a place that sells postcards; I hear it was raining in Cincinnati today. :-P

Hello from California!!!

My airplane flight went incredibly smooth - check in was fast, got through security without questions, flight wasn't delayed... and aside from the fact I have now seen Twilight without hearing any of the dialog, I arrived unharmed. The first thing I must say about San Diego is there are lots of trees! It's unbelievable. There are palm trees everywhere! It's almost like a game, where whoever fits the most plants in their community wins, and everyone is playing. It completely contrasts the "concrete jungle" city stereotype which Cincinnati fits so well. From reading in my San Diego travel guidebook, I know why: In the late 1800's, a college-educated woman named Kate Sessions made a deal with the city of San Diego, where she got 36 acres of City Park (now Balboa Park) to herself to mess with gardening, in exchange for planting 400 trees a year, 100 in the park and 300 elsewhere in the city. She is credited with pioneering and popularizing many of the tree species popular in the area and turning Balboa Park into a "horticultural paradise". Anyway, basically San Diego has lots of trees, and they're different from Ohio trees. I'll try and get some good pictures.

I've met all my fellow co-ops, and they all seem cool. Three guys live in an apartment a few doors down, and one girl lives in the same apartment as me. (Lol, I know what you're thinking guys... but it's a big apartment and she's on the way opposite end, and she has her own bathroom and shower and everything, so it's not close quarters. The only thing we're sharing at the moment is a refrigerator.) As soon as I dropped my stuff off in my room, Sally (the person from ATA that met me at the airport) took me and the other co-ops to Brew and Board, where I consumed a giant, double-decker sandwich... the first thing I'd eaten in 8 hours. After lunch, the guys and I drove down to Balboa Park and played frisbee for a while, after which we got snackers from KFC, and then we played tennis in the evening. As you can imagine, I was pretty worn out by then, but it's great to be finally getting some exercise again after spending last quarter completely sedentary.

And now, some pictures of my room, because pictures are better than long paragraphs anyway.

I've got a palm tree right outside my window!

I've got a bigger desk than I had at college!