So the funny part about waiting a few days to update your blog is that you start to forget things that you wanted to write about. The really awesome part is that almost none of you are in a position to call me out for forgetting something or flatout making stuff up.
How was my weekend? Oh, the usual.
So I'll start with the pool party/dinner hosted by John Malone, which was a fantastic night out. In case he happens to be reading this, I would like to take the opportunity to thank you again for your hospitality. Among those in attendance were the freshmen; Lauren West and Erin Hub, the sophomores; Zach Gilfus, Wes Yland, Alex Hanford, and Matt Gianforcaro, and the usual crew of Elli, Sam, and myself. I also got a chance to meet Michelle Adam 97', who was, in a word, completely awesome. Contrary to what one would think about a party hosted by engineers for engineers, eye contact was almost made on several occasions and something other than boats was mentioned at least once.
"It's been like a whole paragraph since the last funny picture. I don't know if I'm going to make it."
So, on to the other activities that followed this weekend. The big news, as I may have mentioned earlier, was the inclining experiment for the MLP. This is the event that has made me so averse to certain quadrilaterals that I don't like to refer to them by name any more.
Muuuuuch better.
So for those of you that don't know much about boats, an inclining experiment is basically how the engineers find out whether or not they were right about, y'know, the entire ship's stability. The way this is accomplished is a bunch of weight is moved back and forth around the ship to make it tilt, and from there you can figure out how close the calculated stability made in Imaginary Engineer Land compares to the thousands of tons of steel floating in the harbor.
The trick is to make it tilt slightly.
There are a lot of different ways you can make the ship tilt for the experiment, but it boils down to "let's move some heavy stuff around." For reasonably-sized ships, this is accomplished by moving barrels or even moving giant steel blocks around with a crane. Physics, that fickle mistress, decided that these were way too sane to use on our ship, however. In our case, the only possible way to generate enough weight to tilt the ship was to move ballast around between tanks. In order to measure how much water was being moved, teams of people needed to hang out inside said ballast tanks while hundreds of tons of water is pumped in to measure ts depth.
"But who would be stupid enough to....OH HEY INTERNS! WE FOUND A JOB FOR YOU!"
To recap in English, it became my job to hang out in a giant metal room with no lights while unfathomable amounts of water get pumped in. If this sounds familiar, it's because you've probably watched a few James Bond movies. Contrary to what a reasonable human being would say about this situation, I thought it was the coolest thing ever and I was pretty pumped (get it?) to be doing the job.
Anyway, Saturday was the Big Day, and our shift started at 1800. Elli and I decided that it would be a good idea to use a Car2Go as our method of transportation to and from the shipyard, since it was our best chance of having a ride back after 1:00 AM, when our shift ended.
Plan B was a little less thought-out.
The cool part about Car2Go is that you pick up a car on the street, drive it wherever you want, then just park is somewhere when you're done and it's eventually retrieved. The absolutely awful part is that they use Smart Cars, and they are incapable of propelling me past 50 mph on a highway. I've attached a video of our trip.
We eventually got there alive, with a few minutes to spare before we were considered late for the incline. I find a place to park, and go to end my rental of the car outside the shipyard. It is now that I learn that the car is currently outside of the "home area," where I am allowed to end rentals and leave the car. Instead, my only option is to now park the car, tell it I'll be back later, and continue paying for the service. It is $15 an hour. I make $13. As you can tell, my night was off to a rip-roaring start.
It's the lack of a gas tank that makes this fire impressive.
Boarding was eventually accomplished, albeit a few minutes late. The experiment itself went off relatively flawlessly, and I don't have too many funny stories about the shenanigans that occurred on board. It was ultimately a lot of fun, and made me completely forget about how badly I hated everything associated with Smart Cars for a while.
But it eventually came time to go home, and we tried to use the onboard GPS to get us home. My car, best buddies as we were, decided that it would be a funny joke to have me drive back and forth along I-5 at 2:30 in the morning. Apparently we were going to play a game of NASCAR.
We participated in this race, and lost.
We eventually got home, thanks in absolutely no part to the car or GPS. That's all for now folks, moar to follow later.
I just need to look at this every so often to feel better.
As fun as it is to elaborately attempt suicide by gas stove every night, sometimes it's nice to go out for a professionally prepared dinner every so often. It also just so happens that I have a loving parent in the area that likes to spoil me with free food. If you're really closely paying attention, you might see where this is going.
In case you missed it, she bought me a lot of nice dinners. It was a tricky question.
To cut a lot of unnecessary exposition out of this post, I'm skipping to the part where my mom and I went to dinner with my cousin AnnaLee, who goes to school out here. It's worth mentioning that while all three of us live in New York, we all ended up across the country at the same time, possibly as a subtle reminder that my family will never let me escape them, kind of like the Mafia.
"I'm prepared to scour the the Earth for that FINE LAD. If Butch
goes to Indochina, I want a GENTLEMAN waiting in a bowl of rice ready to GIVE HIM A HUG."
We went to Phil's BBQ, a place that had ribs that were beyond phenomenal. I can't really compare to anything, because this was my first time trying them. However, reliable sources (my mommy) have reported that this establishment has managed to best even mighty Texas in a taste comparison.
It's okay Texas, you're still famous for open-mindedness.
That being said, AnnaLee was also blown away by the meal, which was more than sufficient proof for me. We were even introduced to her Food Baby, Escobar, whose appearance indicated his approval as well. My mother decided she had a Food Baby as well, but hers has webbed feet and flippers or something. I'm not really sure if this makes him my brother, or if I'm okay with that.
He would later go on to become Danny DeVito.
After dinner was sufficiently destroyed, we got to talking about what exactly made the meat so tender and fantastically tasty. It was then proposed that we could be eating that annoying Gieco pig, and I was more than okay with that.
So, as I mentioned earlier, Sam turned 21 on Thursday. Having been locked away in the Institute since high school ended, we had to look up things that you can do to celebrate this new age. Here's what Google told me:
When you are 21 you are allowed to:
Apply to adopt a child
Hold an airline transport pilot's licence for an aeroplane, helicopter and gyroplane
Apply for a provisional licence to drive a large passenger vehicle or heavy goods vehicle
Supervise a learner driver (providing you have held a full licence for the same type of vehicle for at least three years)
"Happy birthday! We figured you wouldn't like a gyroplane."
Naturally, we had a huge party to get together and supervise learning drivers all weekend. It was pretty wild.
We managed to survive a full weekend of student drivers with Li, Sam's new adopted daughter, riding in the back seat, and stumbled into work intact the following Monday. Work resumed as usual, and Elli and I were revising some AutoCAD drawings. One thing led to another, and suddenly we DROPPED THE BASE....line.
No, Skrillex, you cannot be a naval architect. Go home.
If you don't get that joke, your life is a lot better off. Moving on, I got to break more metal at SDSU today, which is always a great way to spend the day. Classes have started, however, and our structural lab had a class doing some of their own lab stuff in the corner for a while, when it was revealed to me that these people were juniors, like me. Funny story, they were looking at me like I was a grad student, probably because I was hanging out with a bunch of them.
That's right, I'm totally a grad student. Look at my facial hair.
Great news came today when we found out that our efforts for the Trapezoids of Death, the very same that had claimed my sanity the week before, were actually very successful. To give you a sense of how big of a deal this was to us, let me explain: this weekend we will conduct an inclining experiment, a day-long ordeal that keeps a lot of people very busy and well into the night, possibly even the next morning. If for some reason some of our data was inaccurate, the whole thing would need to be repeated and nobody would be able to leave the ship until the mistake is fixed. Our little Excel program is a redundancy measure that will fix that mistake and allow everyone to go home!
In other news, mother dearest is in town for a while! I brought her out to Hodad's as a rite-of-passage thing, and I almost succeeded in my dastardly inheritance plot to kill her by coronary. Speaking of plots to murder my parents via San Diego, remember that sketchy part of town I walked by a few posts back? Guess whose hotel was about 500 feet away from that.
...this looks nothing like the brochure.
Anyway, she's in a better place now. By that, I mean she's in Shelter Island and her hotel is really nice now. That's all for now, and I can't think of a good way to end this post.
Here's some seals. They live in La Jolla sometimes. I've got nothing.
Hello Internet, I figured it's been a few days so I'd check in again. The rest of the weekend panned out just great, with some more fantastic burgers over at Hodads in Ocean Beach. As a person that subsists very heavily on burgers to eat, I cannot describe how fantastic it is to have so many fantastic choices around.
This week, Elli and I were given a project for the upcoming inclining experiment that involves calculating the weight shifted between ballast tanks based on ullage readings. In English, this means that we figured out how much a tank of water weighs by pointing a laser at it.
Elli immediately launched into some hardcore math and started to tackle a long and complicated series of equations that would make our professors proud. I drew some shapes on a piece of paper and hoped for the best. Despite our different methods, the task at hand seemed simple enough and we expected to have a solution fairly quickly.
Famous last words.
Two hours of intense math-ing on some triangles later, I realized that I had derived the equation for a trapezoid, and at that it was wrong anyway. After correcting this, I was then informed that the way I was solving the problem was correct in spirit, but not what we were looking for. It was time to start over.
"Oh, no, that's fine. At least it was a fun learning experience."
Fast forward a few days, and I'm still trying to use shapes to describe what I want but can't quite get it. In the meantime, I've been inventing plenty of new curse words specifically aimed at trapezoids.
You're ugly and nobody likes you, trapezoids.
I definitely feel like some basic geometry, even though it gets a little complicated, shouldn't have me this hung up for a few days in a row. Word on the street is that we're going to have a few days of working on other projects, which should clear our minds for when we come back to it. That, or I take this as a sign that engineering is for much smarter people than myself.
Cooking meth is Plan B.
In other news, it's Sam's 21st birthday today! We celebrated by going to a Mexican restaurant in Old Town with a decent group of people, and then heading over to Baja Betty's in Hillcrest.
A responsible night was had by all.
More interesting things will be happening this weekend, especially because my mom will be coming out to visit tomorrow! If I play my cards right, I can probably score a free meal or two off of her or something.
On a whim I decided to look up some flea markets to visit this weekend, and decided to sabotage Elli's plans for the day by dragging her along. A few awkward public transportation debacles later, we arrived at Kobey's Swap Meet, a place close to Old Town. It was closed, and this was a surprise because I didn't take the 5 seconds to look up their hours before leaving.
So now we were on our own, and Elli wanted to try In-N-Out Burger. After Sam introduced it to me the night before, I was a little more than willing to go.
Their burgers are a little like this, but better.
Then came the walk back, because the buses weren't running in our direction for a while. According to Google, the walk was only 15 minutes. What Google does not tell you is that walk was through Rock Bottom, and it just got dark.
It's always fun figuring out if you prefer to be a sitting duck or live bait.
The walk itself was, thankfully, uneventful, but you know you're in a good part of town when you see a liquor store that advertises its willingness to cash checks on the spot.
We got home shortly thereafter, and saw Pete Stanton '03 and Erin Hub later that night for a Law and Order: SVU marathon. Erin spent the night to avoid taking the trolley on her own, and we decided to go to Kobey's in the morning.
So we went early, and found out that the place was AWESOME. Kobey's is an open-air market that had everything you could think of from army surplus gear to fresh produce, and everyone found a little something they were pretty happy about.
Some Old Town chicanery came after we finished our time at the market, and we played the Tourist Card pretty hard. I found a game shop that plays D&D during the week, so let's see how that goes. We also went to the San Diego Sheriff's Museum and were the definition of stupid tourists.
Her inside voice was still worth three counts of disturbing the peace.
Also, I just need to share this glorious picture taken on the streets of Old Town, because it deserves special mention.
There is nothing in life that can top this moment.
So I don't know about anybody who is reading this, but I never really wanted to work in an office. That being said, it only just occurred to me that this is kind of exactly what engineers do, which in the middle of your junior year is a little like figuring out you hate kids at your son's second birthday party.
I kind of always dreaded living the Office Space lifestyle, trapped in some existential hell punctuated with pointless meetings and busy work.
"I'm going to need you to come in on a Saturday. All of them."
Instead, this week I found myself breaking stuff for science and climbing around the world's most expensive jungle gym, the USNS Montford Point.
I work on a hovercraft mothership.
It was an incredible change of scenery from the Mission Valley office, and it's absolutely thrilling to work in a design office and then see the general arrangements you've been working on in AutoCAD in real life. I honestly never expected to enjoy working in the office (at least for NASSCO) as much as I do, and it's so great to find out its nothing like what I was taught to expect from Office Space.
Okay, so I know I promised to update more often shortly before going missing for over a week. BUT WHAT A WEEK IT HAS BEEN! Locals keep apologizing for and/or complaining about the weather recently, which is quite frankly absurd to somebody who left this not two weeks ago:
An Unbiased Account of New York Winters
...to move into this:
The Wasteland
That being said, it's been an adventure every day in some way or another. Working for NASSCO is fantastic, particularly because I have yet to realize that printing out Excel charts is not actually exciting.
The past two days have been a break from the norm, shifting from office work to "LET'S GO PULL SOME METAL IN HALF!" Elli and I paid a visit to San Diego State University's structural lab to test weld strength, and saw what it was like to be on a normal school's campus
Pictured Above: Just Another Day at the Office
Other interesting news includes the expansion of my cooking repertoire, formerly Exploding Eggs and Burnt English Muffin, with the new additions of Burnt Cheeseburger, Burnt Chicken, vodka a la penne, and tacos with tortillas fit for the gods themselves.
Last night was the Southwest SNAME meeting, which might as well have been called the "NASSCO Engineer's Dinner" with the exception of about four attendees. The following day, which is coincidentally tonight, was the Webb Alumni dinner and yet again another mass gathering of people who have at one point worked at or with NASSCO. It was fantastic to see Webbies from every generation show up in one place and collectively prove that we can, somehow, survive in the real world after escaping The Institute.
At some point during dinner, it dawned on me that I was rubbing elbows with not only half a century's worth of alumni, but administrative figures that are only mythological creatures at other schools. While it's impressive enough that I personally know every one of my professors, it's another thing entirely to eat dinner with your college's Dean, President, and President-elect as if it were an everyday occurrence.
Living in paradise, in beautiful and free housing, at an interesting and stimulating workplace as a paid intern while participating in a tight-knit family of renowned professionals...I could live with this.
Well, this is my first post so I'll try to sum up the past few days. Turns out the apartment is so new, the taxi GPS couldn't find our address. Yay!
Settled in to the apartment shortly thereafter, and it's alright. And by alright, I mean I literally spent half an hour walking laps around the house saying "oh my god oh my god oh my god" to nobody in particular. As if a full kitchen, two giant flat-screens, and more channels than there are people at Webb, the apartment came with a couple days' worth of food to help a freshly moved college kid not starve to death until he can find the supermarket.
First dinner in San Diego resulted in a trip to Denny's, and I was promptly reminded why I haven't eaten there as long as I can remember. Among the lessons learned from that night was that apparently jaywalking on the West Coast gives Elli anxiety. I, meanwhile, had trouble understanding the concept of *not* running across the street the second you got an opening.
Almost kicked off the next morning with a bang when I left the gas stove on for a while while trying to scramble some eggs. Apparently it's good form to start the fire BEFORE the room is filled with flammable material.
Went for an adventure with Sam and her friend Andrew from CMA, and saw Ocean Beach. Encountered some interesting wildlife on my trip, but I was encouraged to not feed it.
First day of work started with a glorious mile-long walk from a trolley station to the shipyard, and I swear we could see Tijuana from where we stood. From what I've heard, it's a quiet and sleepy town perfect for casual solo visitors with lots of money.
Cooking adventures aside, that's the news from this end so far. Now that I'm set up, I promise posts will be a little more interesting and maybe with pretty pictures.
