You Know You're At An Engineering Conference When...

... you overhear a conversation at the breakfast table next to you, and they're discussing the failure mode of their rental car's CD player (they were from Detroit, the "Motor City" - you gotta cut them a little slack). Apparently they had some trouble with the CD player not ejecting the CD (and maybe not playing it either - I didn't catch it all). The first theory was that it was a bad solder joint, so the failure was related to temperature. Other possible factors put forth were play time elapsed, outside temperature, speed of the car, etc. (I also mentally added faulty wire harness and vibration) They even considered doing a "Design Of Experiment" on the CD player on their way home. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why engineers are so cool and why everyone wants to be one. ;-) Well, at a minimum, they at least want to claim (or is that deny?) they know one or are related to one. :-)

Speaking of wanting to be an engineer, I learned this weekend that if, starting now, no engineers retired, no engineers went into management (currently about 25% do), and American colleges kept graduating engineering students at the current graduation rate (that rate has been decreasing by the way), there would still be an engineer shortage in the future in the U.S.! The unemployment rate for engineers is less than 1.7% (basically 0) in the U.S. Now that's good news for engineers but bad news for business. Also, for the first time ever, in 2007 Japan allowed engineer immigrants into their country to work. The average age of an engineer in the U.S. is mid-to-late 40's. That means there is a huge brain trust that will be retiring soon. These are just some random facts I thought were interesting and that highlight the fact that watching the world's economy in the next few years should be interesting. If you like math and science, consider being an engineer!

Tailor Made

I'm planning to go to China in a couple weeks, and I'll have the opportunity for a tailor/seamstress there to make me some clothes. I've been told it's good to have a picture of what you want or to even take your favorite shirt, skirt, etc. along so that they can copy it in a bunch of different fabrics. Any suggestions? Leave a link in the comments to a picture, e-mail me, or just give me some suggestions if you want. Later gators.

Stale

My blog was getting a bit stale, so I figured I would post stale news to go along with it. Here is the promised summary of my Christmas vacation activities.

You already heard the new glasses part of the story....so we'll skip to when I arrived in Minnesota. We (everybody in my family except Anna) stayed at a hotel in the bustling metropolis of Otter Tail. The hotel has a small water park that we used a little bit. Then I went to Fergus for a few days. I spent one afternoon at the towering Andes (Hills) snowboarding. Then I headed to my parents' house for a few days. I saw a bunch of relatives (I won't name them all because I'll miss some and then be in trouble). Mom and I made lefse one day - like the famous soup, it was Mmmmm Mmmm Good. I went back to Fergus for New Years (thanks for being the host DanDan - way to keep the laces out), and I headed home.

Mostly I just enjoyed seeing friends and family, and I even met a few new people. I ordered some appliances for my aunt. I watched my cousin work on renovating his bathroom. I bugged my sister. Oh yeah, and one afternoon I met Melanaway at the mall, and after that I went car shopping with Mom and Dad. I will do the car update in a different post because I can't give away all my secrets at once. Needless to say, it was terribly exciting. So exciting, in fact, that I barely took any pictures on my trip. Here's a sampling of what I saw:

Two little monkeys on their new bunk bed - next comes jumping, falling off, and breaking their heads? Hopefully not for these cute monkeys. I couldn't believe a 1.5 year old could make it up and down basically without help, but somehow she managed to.








My brother, the horse.















A little cutthroat ping-pong.

This picture just cracks me up. That's all I can say.

Stuff and Things

I'm working on revamping my sidebar, so I'm saving this list for posterity and then removing it from the sidebar. The list is of charities that solicited my money via snail mail during 2007. This does not include telemarketing or e-mail solicitations. The biggest offenders were ones that I have donated to in the past. But, there are a few I've never donated to that are pretty sure if they send me a few more envelopes I'll finally give in. Dream on. Why do they send so much junk in their letters too? They should spend my hard-earned-and-then-donated money on the cause, not sending so much junk mail with little trinkets.

• Admiral Nimitz Foundation (2X)
• AdoptaPlatoon (2X)
• American Breast Cancer Foundation (7X)
• American Cancer Society (2X)
• American Heart Association
• American Institute for Cancer Research (8X)
• Amvets National Service Foundation (6X)
• Coalition to Salute America's Heroes
• Easter Seals (11X)
• Feed The Children
• Food for the Poor, Inc (2X) (They asked for money and my prayers the first time. The second time they asked for money and sent a rosary. Really weird and obnoxious.)
• Fraternal Order of Police
• Gettysburg Foundation
• Korean War Veterans National Museum & Library (2X)
• March of Dimes (7X)
• National Cancer Research Center (2X)
• National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (9X)
• National Republican Congressional Committee
• National Vietnam Veterans Committee (2X)
• Non Commissioned Officers Association/National Defense Foundation
• Paralyzed Veterans of America (11X)
• Saint Matthew's Churches Prayer By Letters (they didn't necessarily want money, but they were still obnoxious)
• Second Harvest Gleaners Food Bank (2X)
• Special Olympics (7X)
• Susan G. Komen for the Cure
• The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (14X)
• The Make-A-Wish Foundation (2X)
• The Salvation Army (2X)
• The Smile Train (3X)
• United States Olympic Committee
• Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (13X)
• Wounded Warriors Project (2X)

And, a comment on the voting for the tracking of my exercise this year. Too bad for half of you, I do plan to track it again this year, but as a concession to you I will put it further down on the sidebar. Those interested can still scroll down to view the progress. I have decided to do the old days of exercise tracking thing again and may add a minutes tracking on top of that. If you've got the data, flaunt it, right? The exact goal is still TBD. For more details, see the exercise accountant update when I finally get it updated.

On another note, the primary voting here is eminent, and I sure am getting tons of phone calls from all the political people urging me to vote, especially for certain candidates. I heard an interesting theory today on voting in the primaries. If you're fairly confident the candidate you like in your party will win, then go and vote for the candidate in the other party that you want him/her to run against (preferrably the "weaker" one). :-)

They Arrived

On Friday, they arrived! Who/what are they? "They" are my new glasses. It's highly irregular for me to get two new pairs in two years, but that's what you can do when you're independently wealthy (or your insurance pays for part of them). So anyway, these glasses have a bit of a story attached.

Before I hit the road on my Christmas vacation journey, I had good intentions to get the eye exam that my insurance covers most of, but as usual I procrastinated and didn't get it done. So, I set out on my journey and happened to stay at my cousin's house in Wisconsin. The story is a bit longer if I tell the whole thing, but I'll cut to the chase and say that I got a VIP eye exam at 10:00 PM that night at the Verona Vision Center with the qualified Tami Hunt, O.D. examining. I picked out my new glasses after my eyes were dilated and things were a bit blurry, but I was told they make me look more sophisticated than my old ones (by the doctor selling me the glasses). Judge for yourself.

New Glasses (Yes, I'm very excited about them.)


New Glasses with the clip-on sunglasses (and me putting on my gangsta face)


Old Glasses (for your reference in determining level of improvement)

Note: Although this is A red sweater, it is not THE red sweater.

You're it

Well, Ms. Jen tagged me the other day to do a book thing/meme.

The rules: List five books that you have read in 2007 that you love. These do not have to be books that came out in 2007, but books that you (re)discovered/(re)read in 2007 that have become or are important to you. Link back to the person who tagged you. Tag five others.

First, I struggled with even thinking of five books I read in 2007. Then I realized it was a piece of cake:

1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
   
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
6. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
   

There! That was easy! I read the whole 7-book series in the space of a couple months this fall - I hadn't read any of them previously. Plus I could list two "bonus" books. :-)

Okay, okay, I know that was a total cop-out. Fine....I'll do this for real.... Here are 5 (plus a few more) I could think of. I'm not sure they all became important to me, but I did read them.

1. The whole 7-book Harry Potter series - I found these books very fascinating. The imagination it took to put that all together must be incredible. I also found it interesting how love was the common thread throughout the whole series even though the book was about witches.
2. Hollywood Tough - A Shane Scully novel by Stephen J. Cannell. Not his best Shane Scully novel, but it was still an enjoyable read.
3. The Devil's Workshop and King Con - both also by Stephen J. Cannell, but with different main characters. I learned some interesting stuff about being a hobo and riding trains and about being a con artist.
4. Plum Island and Spencerville - both by Nelson Demille. I'm not positive, but I think I read both of these in 2007. I don't really keep a list of all the books I've read. The years start to run together after awhile. I usually enjoy Nelson Demille's books. Plum Island was excellent I thought. Spencerville not as much. It was fascinating in a morbid kind of way.
5. The Holy Bible - I must admit I stole this idea from Jen, but I can honestly say that I re-read parts of it this year, enjoyed it, and it is important to me.
6. The First Horseman - by John Case, it's a fictional book about using cholera as a biological weapon. He also wrote The Genesis Code, which I found interesting too (but I didn't read it this year).
   

Yeah....I am definitely not much of a non-fiction person. I don't feel like tagging 5 others, but if you're a blogger and want to do this, go ahead and run with it.

This is totally off the topic, but this global warming stuff is fun. It's the middle of winter and we had 60 degrees (F) outside this afternoon with thunderstorms and a few potential tornadoes tonight. Is it too far east for a chinook to have made it here?

Coming in future posts: a summary of my Xmas/New Years vacation, an update on the car search, a new glasses picture, and maybe some boring stuff about my life. You wouldn't want to miss that, would you?

Summary and Resolutions

It's hard to believe 2007 has come and gone. For posterity, here's the exercise summary for the year:

.............................................
Goal: Exercise 3/5 of the days in the year (219 of 365). To count as a day of exercise, I must exercise at least 30 minutes that day at medium-to-strenuous levels.
.............................................
Days of exercise in 2007: 197 of 365
...........................................
January: 11 of 31
............................................
February: 12 of 28
............................................
March: 18 of 31
.............................................
April: 16 of 30
.............................................
May: 20 of 31
.............................................
June: 18 of 30
............................................
July: 19 of 31
............................................
August: 14 of 31
............................................
September: 17 of 30
.............................................
October: 20 of 31
............................................
November: 18 of 30
...........................................
December: 14 of 31
...........................................

For us visual learners (and nerds who can't resist plotting a good set of data):



For my insurance today, I took the annual health summary and found that my healthiness number had improved from 73 to 83, and I think part of that was due to my increased exercise level. Having a healthier number doesn't get me anything except personal satisfaction and maybe a longer life.

I was slightly disappointed that I didn't meet my goal for 2007. Though it wasn't the primary goal, I also thought that with this increased exercise level I might possibly lose a couple pounds, but it turns out I weighed exactly the same in January 2007 and January 2008 (+/- 1 pound). And, I pretty much stayed that same weight all of 2007.

Now comes the hard part. How should I track my exercise this year? By minutes per day, per week, per month? Counting minutes is fraught with peril because how do you determine whether you count stretching and cool-down time? Should I not track my exercise at all? Should I up the ante and set a loftier goal even though I didn't meet my 2007 goal? Cast your vote on the right sidebar please. And leave a comment corresponding to your vote on this post if you wish! :-)