I have been meaning to write a new post for a while now. Unfortunately, I have never gotten around to posting until now.

Things have been going well at the new job. I took the Commercial Building Inspector Exam last week. Sometime early next month I should find out if I passed it. The test seemed to go well, and I'm interested in taking some of the other ICC exams in the future.

I'm still getting a feel for the Naperville area. With my brother and friends further north, it's usually me driving up to see them as opposed to them coming down to see me.  I'm trying to change that by starting a HackMaster campaign at my apartment, which has resulted in two visits over the past two months. Hopefully, once I can get the PCs to the Caverns of Quasqueton, the sessions will become more regular.

We've had some bad weather here in the suburbs this past week. Snow non-stop on Tuesday, freezing rain on Thursday and today it's just bitter cold. My thermostat has been set to 70 degrees since October, and it's currently 67 in the apartment due to how cold it is outside. Thankfully, it's bearable and hopefully it shouldn't run my electric bill up too much.

I'll try to get more posts in after the holidays. Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 

Posted by David at 10:08 PM CST

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I took the final step in declaring myself independent this weekend.

I moved into my new apartment.

My mother and stepfather have been great to me the past four years. When I got accepted to MSOE, they allowed me to stay at their home, rent-free, over the breaks. Occasionally I would be called upon to help around the house, and any money I borrowed would be paid back in to form of me buying the groceries. Overall it was a good deal. But the underlying truth of the matter remained. I was in my thirties and living with my parents.

On top of all of that was the fact that I had a new employer. When I worked in Rolling Meadows, it was a thirty minute drive to work that usually saw me getting in five to fifteen minutes early, depending on the traffic. Now I work in Naperville, and my commute changed from half an hour to up to seventy-five minutes if I hit traffic. It also meant that I missed breakfast and was lucky to get to the office at 7:30 (which due to summer hours is technically on time).

So I needed a new place. One where I had everything to myself and a shorter commute. Fortunately, I got both in the form of a one-bedroom apartment overlooking a golf course that's a five minute drive from the office.

My brother and my friends, Gerald and Jon, helped me move on Friday. I took the day off from work (technically a half day off due to summer hours), and managed to get a U-Haul loaded and all my stuff moved in about five hours. It's taken me the past two days to get everything else either unpacked or at least out of the way. I've made at least three trips to the grocery store just to make sure I have everything I need food-wise, and I am still without a dining room table, shelves or a television. But those aren't really priorities right now.

I talked to my parents about my situation. My father never lived on his own until after my parents got divorced, and my mother has never been on her own as she got married to my stepdad shortly after I moved out. My brother has also either lived at home or had roommates. It's a realization that makes this event feel greater than I thought it would.

Of course, now I will have to deal with the growing pains of being on my own. I'm already running around turning off lights and adjusting the thermostat now that I have to pay the electric bill by myself. And sooner or later I will need more furniture. On top of that, student loans kick in at the end of the year, and I have to be ready for that.

I think I'm going to be fine. 

Posted by David at 9:48 PM CDT

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Sorry, I've been rather busy the past six weeks.

For those of you that have been wondering what has been going on since my last post, all has gone well. The four-year experiment called, "Dave Goes Back to College" ended about six weeks ago with a hectic, but productive finals week. I wasn't worried about my exams because after the past four years, I built my GPA up to the point where I could get all Cs in my last quarter and still graduate with honors. Instead, my concerns were centered around the presentation I had to make at the end of my Capstone Project.

From the begining, I worried that I wouldn't get my project done "on time". I had heard stories of grad students that worked on their Master's Capstone and only had to get the write-up and final presentation done in order to get the degree, but ended up getting jobs before graduation that ended up taking up most of their time. I was determined to not be one of those people, even though I had my share of setbacks this year.

Fortunately, I had advisers that were interested in my results and not just looking to see if I met all the criteria. I knew this was definitely the case when five minutes into my presentation, I started to get nervous and  tongue-tied. I stopped, took a deep breath, and say all three of them looking at me with a smile. They knew that I knew what I was doing and wanted me to feel relaxed around them. I ended up giving a successful presentation and finished "on time".

Sort of.

There was still the issue of making sure my report met the standards of the Graduate Style Guide, which is the final step in finishing the project. I turned my report in to the library for review and have spend the last month tweaking the formatting. Tomorrow, I should be done with everything and will get my Masters Degree.

In the meantime, I've been working.

Work has been good so far. My first job since graduation and I am fitting in pretty well. The trek to work is a bit of a pain, so I'm apartment hunting at the moment. I am glad that my office has summer hours, so I'm usually clocked out by noon on Fridays.

The only other things going on is that my laptop got wiped clean by MSOE during finals week as part of the deal that lets me keep it. As a result I lost a lot of my friends e-mail addresses that I forgot to back up. The screen is also a bit buggy as it will spontaneously dim on me will no way to fix it outside of going into standby mode, or shutting it off, and restarting it. Looks like I will have to get it fixed as soon as possible. Hopefully as soon as I get the tech issues dealt with and settled into my new post-college life, I'll be in touch more often.

Posted by David at 10:39 PM CDT

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Four years ago, I had a decision to make.

I had a job, and it wasn't a bad job, but it also wasn't something I was happy with either. I was a draftsman at an architectural firm, or more accurately, I was the draftsman at an architectural firm. I had flunked out of the University of Illinois twice, and had managed to scrape up enough classes at the College of Lake County to get myself an Associates Degree in CAD Drafting Technology. I was treated alright at the firm, and had developed friendships with my co-workers that go on to this day. But as with all things in life, things changed. Friends had left to go to other companies, new people were brought in, new projects, new offices. But one thing remained constant; I was the man in the corner that drafted, and that was it.

And after a while, I got sick of it.

I had no upward mobility, no matter what changes happened. The first, and only time I was given my own project to be responsible for, I was pulled in so many directions by everyone else in the company that I ended up working 17-hour days to get it done on time. But those delays meant that I would never be trusted with managing a project again. Then I decided to take the initiative and develop a plan to help standardize how the company put a set of construction drawings together. My bosses praised me for my effort. My friends cheered me, believing that this was going to get me to the next level, and then a bunch of middle managers chastised me for overstepping my boundaries in the company.

I was burned out, and needed to change something. I realized that I had one of three choices to make.

So four years ago, I filled out an application and got accepted to the Milwaukee School of Engineering. I uprooted my entire life to go from a three-bedroom apartment in the Chicago suburbs to a dorm room in Milwaukee. I had more or less cut off my old life and bet my entire future that the three years I would spend in the land of beer and cheese would lead to something better.

Along the way, I made new friends, both in and out of school. I did well in my classes, and became a tutor to help others. With my stepfather's help, I managed to organize a tour of the roof of Miller Park. I joined ASCE and went to Purdue with their Steel Bridge Team. And along the way, another opportunity opened up. I got the chance to go for my Masters as well as my Bachelors with only one year added to my time in school.

I said, what the hell.

Then I was told I had two choices, do a short research paper and take a lot of graduate level classes, or find something to research and do a long capstone project.

After a summer of debate, I went with the big project.

Now classes are done. Finals are next week. And I have a seventy-seven page paper that, should all go well, will end up in MSOE's library for future generations to learn from. Eight days from now, I will graduate, bringing the last four years of stress, classes, projects, presentations and yes, drinking to an end.

And on the day after Memorial Day, my new job begins as an Engineer-In-Training (EIT). My next goals will be to get my SE and PE licenses. And I've left the door open to go after a PhD when the time comes.

But for now, all that remains are a few exams, a presentation, a hard drive full of research, and a concrete beam sitting in the Construction Lab.

Here's to the future. 

Posted by David at 10:10 PM CDT

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My grandmother felt it. My father didn't. But the United States Geological Survey confirmed that a Level 5.2 Earthquake hit the Midwest early this morning.

Thank goodness I passed Structural Dynamics this fall. It's starting to look more and more that structural engineers will have to do seismic design even if they don't live out of the Left Coast. We've been told for decades that the New Madrid Fault could give us some problems. It appears that they are coming sooner than later.

The L.A. Times has downplayed the event compared to their usual earthquake activity out west stating:

The shaking may not have been strong enough to quicken the pulse of quake-blasé Californians, many of whom won't head for the safety of a door frame unless the Richter scale inches closer to a 6.0.

But what Californians don't realize is that an earthquake out here in "flyover country" can be more dangerous than out west. The ground around the San Andreas Fault is pretty broken up. The gaps and cracks in the earth allow the shockwave of an earthquake to dissipate, reducing the range of the event.

But in the Midwest, the ground is mostly solid. So a quake that hits here can travel a lot farther than it would in California. This means that more places, and people, can be affected by an earthquake out here.

9/11 already increased the need for structural engineers to deal with loads from shockwaves due to explosions. Now with the threat of an earthquake in the heartland, it will need to be made an even higher priority. Seismic design in no longer California's problem anymore.

Posted by David at 3:30 PM CDT

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