Lunchtime Blog
Well, here I am at my desk, eating a quick lunch in while we break from our daylong design review. Read some news, checked my baseball team, made the blog/xanga rounds, and I still got a half hour left so why not write a lunchtime blog?
Some news - and this is probably old stuff for many of you readers by now - Jennifer Garner split up with her husband, the guy from Felicity. What's his name again, Mick Foley? haha just kidding, I know his name is Scott Foley.
That makes me mad. Who does Jennifer think she is to give up a guy like Scott? I mean sure, she's the big Alias star now and everything, but up until last year I only knew her as the older girlfriend from Dude Where's My Car. As for Scott, he's so perfect and yummy. She's gonna regret this decision someday.
Ok, just kidding again. I do not think Scott is yummy. I don't even have a clue what he looks like. I have never seen Felicity in my life, and only part of one episode of Alias. I could not care less about this breakup. I have, however, seen Dude Where's My Car and highly recommend it. Jennifer Garner is not bad but, truth be told, I have eyes for only one woman in my life.
So it looks like I'm gonna be working at least a few more weeks of OT. But, this weekend I still plan to start moving my stuff up to Palatine. Too bad I don't have any real furniture yet. Some of you North people may be getting phone calls from your favorite friend soon (me) to help me look at beds, desks, dressers, and maybe curtains too. I think I already decided on which curtains though. There's this satin number with rose designs at Marshall Fields that is calling my name.
Well, I need to use the bathroom. Laters.
Friday, April 04, 2003
Thursday, April 03, 2003
Post-sick Blog
I'm feeling much better today. Thanks to people who wished me well and also to those who wrote blogs that entertained me yesterday.
For those of you who missed it, my IM away message question was to name where the following quote was from: "Sick as a dog... gonna vomit." The answer was Austin Powers 2, said by Dr. Evil after his mechanical chair spun out of control on his moon base. Congratulations to Oiy and Olivia for scoring the correct answer, and also props to all others who participated. It was a tough one, even if you like the Austin Powers series a lot, that wasn't a well known quote.
By the way, if I ever have any future contests of this type, there's a good chance it will be from one of the following movies:
Austin Powers 1, Austin Powers 2, Home Alone, Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Office Space, Happy Gilmore, The Fox And The Hound
Haha maybe not the The Fox And The Hound, most people probably have no clue what that is to begin with. In case anyone is wondering, it's one of those animated videos (not sure if it's Disney or not). I think me and my sister stayed with a family with younger kids for a few days, and we watched that video so many times that we knew all the lines. It's pretty amazing that 10-15 years later, I can still quote some lines from that movie. "I'm Copper, I'm a houuund dog!"
Well, yesterday was a pretty good day, other than the splitting headaches, body soreness, and extreme nausea. I caught up on some sleep missed in the past few months. I played craft with Dennis at like 1 in the afternoon.
I also discovered that there was a He-man movie made, with a younger Courtney Cox, and watched about 10 minutes of it on USA (or was it TNT), before realizing that it was a completely awful movie and changing the channel. That's too bad, cause I used to love He-man. One of my few action figures as a kid was a He-man where you stick those red round caps in the back, and when you twist his waist, he snaps back and delivers a powerful punch, emphasized with a loud popping sound (hence the cap). It was cool, except I wish his waist wasn't always crooked. He looked more like scoliosis man actually.
Oh, one last bit of exciting news - CHRAS has started a new blog. Read it here. I'm so proud of him. Way back when I first started this blog, not a lot of other people were doing it. Since then, so many new bloggers/"xangans" have joined us and it brings a tear to my eye. Nina, you are next.
I'm feeling much better today. Thanks to people who wished me well and also to those who wrote blogs that entertained me yesterday.
For those of you who missed it, my IM away message question was to name where the following quote was from: "Sick as a dog... gonna vomit." The answer was Austin Powers 2, said by Dr. Evil after his mechanical chair spun out of control on his moon base. Congratulations to Oiy and Olivia for scoring the correct answer, and also props to all others who participated. It was a tough one, even if you like the Austin Powers series a lot, that wasn't a well known quote.
By the way, if I ever have any future contests of this type, there's a good chance it will be from one of the following movies:
Austin Powers 1, Austin Powers 2, Home Alone, Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Office Space, Happy Gilmore, The Fox And The Hound
Haha maybe not the The Fox And The Hound, most people probably have no clue what that is to begin with. In case anyone is wondering, it's one of those animated videos (not sure if it's Disney or not). I think me and my sister stayed with a family with younger kids for a few days, and we watched that video so many times that we knew all the lines. It's pretty amazing that 10-15 years later, I can still quote some lines from that movie. "I'm Copper, I'm a houuund dog!"
Well, yesterday was a pretty good day, other than the splitting headaches, body soreness, and extreme nausea. I caught up on some sleep missed in the past few months. I played craft with Dennis at like 1 in the afternoon.
I also discovered that there was a He-man movie made, with a younger Courtney Cox, and watched about 10 minutes of it on USA (or was it TNT), before realizing that it was a completely awful movie and changing the channel. That's too bad, cause I used to love He-man. One of my few action figures as a kid was a He-man where you stick those red round caps in the back, and when you twist his waist, he snaps back and delivers a powerful punch, emphasized with a loud popping sound (hence the cap). It was cool, except I wish his waist wasn't always crooked. He looked more like scoliosis man actually.
Oh, one last bit of exciting news - CHRAS has started a new blog. Read it here. I'm so proud of him. Way back when I first started this blog, not a lot of other people were doing it. Since then, so many new bloggers/"xangans" have joined us and it brings a tear to my eye. Nina, you are next.
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Sick Blog
A recap of the past 36 hours:
Monday Night - Driving home from work, I was literally a block away from my house when a commercial came on the radio for $1 Filet'O'Fish at McDonalds. Since I have had a lifelong love affair with Fricky D's Fishes, I couldn't resist and went to go buy some. Boy, was that a mistake. As soon as I ate those two sandwiches and the "McValue Fries" (I felt like a homo ordering McValue Fries in the DriveThru), something didn't feel right.
Nevertheless, I played a couple games of Starcraft before watching Punk'D. Jessica Alba is really good looking but she also seems like a major biatch too. "Niiooo! I don't give a f_ck!" I have to give her negative points for that. Then I went to sleep.
Tuesday - Woke up feeling like crap. Head hurt like hell, mouth dry, muscles sore. Went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, but ended up hurling last night's dinner. I'm not eating any more Filet'O'Fishes for at least a week.
The funny thing about throwing up is that it is one of the worst physical feelings when it's happening. But in the minutes afterward, you feel good. A strange "Vomiter's High", if you will. And since I had a big Design Review meeting to attend, I decided to be a trooper and go to work.
By the time I get there, the Vomiter's High has all but faded. First thing I do once I get to my desk is check my email. I have one message telling me that the Design Review is rescheduled for later this week. About 2 hours later, I just can't last any longer and I take the rest of the day off.
Get home and pass out in my bed. My mom and dad return from their Italy trip to find me in bed with a big pot next to my head, which I had prepared in case of more hurlage. Spent the rest of the afternoon and night tossing and turning in bed. Maybe it's true that boys are babies when they're sick, but that just means we need girls that much more to take care of us.
Wednesday - Woke up feeling like crap, again. Head hurts, but this time I think it's soreness from being in bed all day, not from the sickness. Called in sick to work. Decided to write a blog.
***
I don't know about everyone else, but when I'm sick, my brain runs at like a million thoughts per second (or something like that). I swear, minutes seemed like hours yesterday when I was in bed. And unfortunately, my mind was filled with almost all negative thoughts. I had the angriest Linkin Park song stuck in my head, and couldn't stop thinking of images from the bathroom scene in Dreamcatchers. Fat guy's bloody ass, over and over! Sweet... Maybe in the future I will have to be more careful with what I put into my brain. I'm gonna listen to Chopin all day or watch Aladdin and Crossroads. Starting now.
Something that bothers me about being sick is, you don't get to see your attacker. I mean, it's one thing if you get mauled by a bear or something, cause then you know why your body is all jacked up. But no, you're being brought to your knees by a microscopic single-celled organism that barely counts as a living thing. They don't even have DNA, they have RNA. What the hell is that?! Makes me so mad.
I hate how every muscle in your body gets sore too. It's especially bad for me because I'm so muscular. Damn, why do I have to be so frickin huge? But I think I lost like 10 pounds in the past 2 days. And probably most of the strength I gained from the last month of lifting. >:-O
Shoot, I missed April Fools too. Not that I ever really did any real pranks for that, but still. I think me and Piya have the most immature humor on April Fools that isn't funny to anybody else. So I'll spare the rest of the readers from our jokes.
Well, I should probably go eat breakfast. My stomach is feeling funny and my brain is fried. Come to think of it, it probably wasn't a good idea to write this blog. It might be one of my most confusing and incoherent entries ever. Oh well.
Oh, here's a link to a story that might entertain you, in case you were disappointed by the content of this blog: National guardman changed his name to a toy
"And when it's on, we transform like Optimus Prime" - DMX, Get At Me Dog
A recap of the past 36 hours:
Monday Night - Driving home from work, I was literally a block away from my house when a commercial came on the radio for $1 Filet'O'Fish at McDonalds. Since I have had a lifelong love affair with Fricky D's Fishes, I couldn't resist and went to go buy some. Boy, was that a mistake. As soon as I ate those two sandwiches and the "McValue Fries" (I felt like a homo ordering McValue Fries in the DriveThru), something didn't feel right.
Nevertheless, I played a couple games of Starcraft before watching Punk'D. Jessica Alba is really good looking but she also seems like a major biatch too. "Niiooo! I don't give a f_ck!" I have to give her negative points for that. Then I went to sleep.
Tuesday - Woke up feeling like crap. Head hurt like hell, mouth dry, muscles sore. Went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, but ended up hurling last night's dinner. I'm not eating any more Filet'O'Fishes for at least a week.
The funny thing about throwing up is that it is one of the worst physical feelings when it's happening. But in the minutes afterward, you feel good. A strange "Vomiter's High", if you will. And since I had a big Design Review meeting to attend, I decided to be a trooper and go to work.
By the time I get there, the Vomiter's High has all but faded. First thing I do once I get to my desk is check my email. I have one message telling me that the Design Review is rescheduled for later this week. About 2 hours later, I just can't last any longer and I take the rest of the day off.
Get home and pass out in my bed. My mom and dad return from their Italy trip to find me in bed with a big pot next to my head, which I had prepared in case of more hurlage. Spent the rest of the afternoon and night tossing and turning in bed. Maybe it's true that boys are babies when they're sick, but that just means we need girls that much more to take care of us.
Wednesday - Woke up feeling like crap, again. Head hurts, but this time I think it's soreness from being in bed all day, not from the sickness. Called in sick to work. Decided to write a blog.
***
I don't know about everyone else, but when I'm sick, my brain runs at like a million thoughts per second (or something like that). I swear, minutes seemed like hours yesterday when I was in bed. And unfortunately, my mind was filled with almost all negative thoughts. I had the angriest Linkin Park song stuck in my head, and couldn't stop thinking of images from the bathroom scene in Dreamcatchers. Fat guy's bloody ass, over and over! Sweet... Maybe in the future I will have to be more careful with what I put into my brain. I'm gonna listen to Chopin all day or watch Aladdin and Crossroads. Starting now.
Something that bothers me about being sick is, you don't get to see your attacker. I mean, it's one thing if you get mauled by a bear or something, cause then you know why your body is all jacked up. But no, you're being brought to your knees by a microscopic single-celled organism that barely counts as a living thing. They don't even have DNA, they have RNA. What the hell is that?! Makes me so mad.
I hate how every muscle in your body gets sore too. It's especially bad for me because I'm so muscular. Damn, why do I have to be so frickin huge? But I think I lost like 10 pounds in the past 2 days. And probably most of the strength I gained from the last month of lifting. >:-O
Shoot, I missed April Fools too. Not that I ever really did any real pranks for that, but still. I think me and Piya have the most immature humor on April Fools that isn't funny to anybody else. So I'll spare the rest of the readers from our jokes.
Well, I should probably go eat breakfast. My stomach is feeling funny and my brain is fried. Come to think of it, it probably wasn't a good idea to write this blog. It might be one of my most confusing and incoherent entries ever. Oh well.
Oh, here's a link to a story that might entertain you, in case you were disappointed by the content of this blog: National guardman changed his name to a toy
"And when it's on, we transform like Optimus Prime" - DMX, Get At Me Dog
Monday, March 31, 2003
Work Stuff
My week of training is over, and unfortunately I got a lot to do this week so it's back to overtime schedule. No more getting home at 4 and playing Starcraft for hours.
Tomorrow is a big "design review" for the project I'm working on. I remember when we had a design review for ECE Senior Design, where we had to meet with the head professor and our TA for like 15 minutes to explain what we were doing. It was kind of a big thing at the time, but wasn't that bad, especially cause our TA was somewhat of a putz and didn't really seem to care if we were making progress and stuff.
Well, this time the design review is 6 hours long and there will probably be at least 20 people participating or so. Including the big cheeses, the 3-star "Top Secret" guys who call the shots. And I think the program director will care if we are making progress or not.
When people ask me where I work and what I do, I'm not sure what to say. Most people haven't heard of Northrop Grumman unless they are interested in military technology or they watch CNBC a lot. And the title "Systems Engineer" is kind of vague too.
Well, in case anyone who reads my blog is interested, I will shed a little light on my company and what I do. If you aren't interested, skip this entry.
First of all, the government does not design and build a lot of its own defense equipment. When you watch the news, almost all of the major integrated weapons systems and technology are actually built by the private sector.
This is where defense contractors come into play. Say the government wants a new fleet of short range fighter jets to stock its aircraft carriers. They announce a request for these jets, listing the specifications that the finished product must meet - things like top speed, fuel capacity, or minimum landing/takeoff distance.
Given these requirements, the defense contractors research the project and come up with competing proposals, detailing things like the costs and time needed to complete. The government looks at proposals from the various contractors, and awards the contract to the one with the best proposal.
The major companies we're talking about here, other than NG, are players like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, or General Dynamics. To give you an example of how the industry works, Raytheon owns the contract for the Patriot Missile System (I think Lockheed is a subcontractor that makes the actual missile), which a lot of people who remember the first Gulf War know about. Every time the government needs more Patriot Missile Systems, it goes to Raytheon and asks them to build more at a set price. In some cases, the military will take over a contract, in which case it takes all the design material and program information so it can manage and manufacture the product itself.
Northrop Grumman is composed of several individual sectors, such as Integrated Systems (builds fighter planes, bombers, etc), Information Technology (handles websites, network infrastructure for the White House and other gov't organizations), and the sector I work for, Electronic Systems.
So, at Rolling Meadows and our headquarters in Baltimore, we don't actually build the B-2 Bomber or aircraft carriers that Northrop is known for. But, we do work on some of the most critical systems that the military needs in the modern age.
For example, a big thing right now is Infra-red Countermeasures (IRCM). You may have heard in the news about the growing threat of heat-seeking Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs) being used by terrorists and enemies to shoot down our aircraft, aimed at military jets and now at commercial airliners as well. Traditionally, the method of defeating these missiles is to physically launch decoy flares from your plane, hoping that the heat from those flares will attract the missile away from yourself. Unfortunately, the newer generation of heat-seeking SAMs are smart enough to ignore the flares and hit the target anyways. The idea of IRCM is to use IR technology to generate a heat image projected away from the jet, which works better to confuse and defeat the so-called "smart missiles". Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems is currently the only provider of an effective and working design of IRCM, which has been used in recent military campaigns and is being used on aircraft in Iraq right now.
As for me, I'm just a peon among over 100,000 employees spread across the country. Officially, I'm an entry-level engineer that works mostly in EE applications. I have 2-star (Secret) clearance but currently I'm not doing any classified work.
Typical day? There isn't a good answer I can give to that question. Basically, I work on projects with other engineers. The fundamental definition of an engineer is someone who is given a set of requirements and "engineers" solutions to meet them. Throughout the course of the large-scale projects we work on at this company, there are literally hundreds or thousands of requirements to meet. This translate to a pretty wide range of jobs and things that need to be done.
Most of the time, I'm at my desk working on my computer. I use the common programs like Microsoft Excel and Word a lot, but also drawing programs like Visio, a requirements managment tool called SLATE, and my training last week was for LabWindows, which uses a lot of C language programming.
I've spent some time in the lab too, which was actually pretty similar to lab in college. Running tests, taking measurements, plotting stuff on oscilloscopes, talking about sports, and then doing writeups afterwards. Typically, I like being in lab more than being at my desk because I get to work with some pretty cool and advanced stuff.
When I'm not at my desk or in lab, it usually means I'm at a meeting. I have come to hate meetings, but a lot of times they are necessary in order to get things accomplished. The thing that sucks is that I usually don't really have to be present, cause they don't need any real input from me, but I still gotta be there in person. Then they always seem to drag on for way longer than planned. Plan on burning at least 2 hours per meeting is what I've learned.
The worst meetings are the "first thing in the morning" conference calls with the east coast, cause those foos are an hour ahead and that means I gotta wake up and come in an hour early. Of course, half the time I get there on time, and the meeting doesn't start until like 40 minutes later when everyone else arrives. The thing to remember is, there's a difference between "7 o'clock" and "7 o'clock sharp".
So, do I like my job? I don't know how to answer that one either. I guess I could say that it's pretty close to what I expected, which is good. I don't jump out of bed every morning and race to work out of sheer excitement, but I don't ever dread going to the job either.
There are a lot of positive things I could say about this job. Of course the salary and benefits are nice, for someone coming straight out of school. At least it's pretty standard for engineering positions.
Another big thing is that most of the people I work with are pretty nice. Engineers tend to be pretty down to earth, and while they all like to complain about being underappreciated, I think deep down they are happy with what they're doing. Compared to the business world, say a consulting or sales position, this environment is much less cutthroat in a corporate sense.
In a way, it's good to be challenged by stress and people around you, and I think I will eventually want to experience work in a business-type field. But in the long term, it probably takes its toll on you as a person. I don't want to end up being a heartless CEO who has billions of dollars and grand achievements, but is a failure as a family man and lacks moral standards.
The actual work is a positive as well. You find probably more cutting-edge technology in the defense industry than in commercial industries. And I like the fact that I'm not entirely focused on hardware or software, signal processing or power engineering, but I get a taste of a wide range of topics across the broad scope of electrical engineering.
There's a few negatives I could think of. I said earlier that the people were nice, which is true, but at times it would be nice if there were more younger people, and if there were more non-engineers around. I don't care that there's no hot girls here, cause it seems kind of lame to be meeting chicks at your job, and I got a woman already anyways. But if I had a choice, I probably wouldn't ever hang out with any of the people I work with. Not that I'm Mr. Cool or whatever, but most of these engineers are even nerdier than me. Hard to believe, but I'm serious.
It's ok though, cause I don't really need to socialize with the people I work with. I like hanging with my old circle of friends plenty enough.
The other drawback to being an engineer is the limited opportunities. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think there's much in the way of career advancement for most engineers. You get raises and promotions, but in the end, you're always working for the higher-ups. That's fine for a lot of people, I guess, but I do expect out of myself in life that by the time I retire, I will have reached the level of the "higher-ups" I'm talking about.
With an ordinary bachelor's degree at this giant corporation, that's pretty unlikely to happen spontaneously. So I don't think I can be too content and comfortable too stay where I am. At least in a few years, I'll most likely pursue an MBA or Masters in Engineering. And at some point, I will have to take the initiative to move on and shoot for higher goals. But that's in the future.
Overall, I would say that I'm happy with where I am right now. I do feel lucky to have this job especially in light of the poor economic conditions. When people ask me how the job is, I usually say "it's ok" or talk about how busy I am, but when I think about it, I really do like it.
For more information, go to northropgrumman.com and read the FAQ.
My week of training is over, and unfortunately I got a lot to do this week so it's back to overtime schedule. No more getting home at 4 and playing Starcraft for hours.
Tomorrow is a big "design review" for the project I'm working on. I remember when we had a design review for ECE Senior Design, where we had to meet with the head professor and our TA for like 15 minutes to explain what we were doing. It was kind of a big thing at the time, but wasn't that bad, especially cause our TA was somewhat of a putz and didn't really seem to care if we were making progress and stuff.
Well, this time the design review is 6 hours long and there will probably be at least 20 people participating or so. Including the big cheeses, the 3-star "Top Secret" guys who call the shots. And I think the program director will care if we are making progress or not.
When people ask me where I work and what I do, I'm not sure what to say. Most people haven't heard of Northrop Grumman unless they are interested in military technology or they watch CNBC a lot. And the title "Systems Engineer" is kind of vague too.
Well, in case anyone who reads my blog is interested, I will shed a little light on my company and what I do. If you aren't interested, skip this entry.
First of all, the government does not design and build a lot of its own defense equipment. When you watch the news, almost all of the major integrated weapons systems and technology are actually built by the private sector.
This is where defense contractors come into play. Say the government wants a new fleet of short range fighter jets to stock its aircraft carriers. They announce a request for these jets, listing the specifications that the finished product must meet - things like top speed, fuel capacity, or minimum landing/takeoff distance.
Given these requirements, the defense contractors research the project and come up with competing proposals, detailing things like the costs and time needed to complete. The government looks at proposals from the various contractors, and awards the contract to the one with the best proposal.
The major companies we're talking about here, other than NG, are players like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, or General Dynamics. To give you an example of how the industry works, Raytheon owns the contract for the Patriot Missile System (I think Lockheed is a subcontractor that makes the actual missile), which a lot of people who remember the first Gulf War know about. Every time the government needs more Patriot Missile Systems, it goes to Raytheon and asks them to build more at a set price. In some cases, the military will take over a contract, in which case it takes all the design material and program information so it can manage and manufacture the product itself.
Northrop Grumman is composed of several individual sectors, such as Integrated Systems (builds fighter planes, bombers, etc), Information Technology (handles websites, network infrastructure for the White House and other gov't organizations), and the sector I work for, Electronic Systems.
So, at Rolling Meadows and our headquarters in Baltimore, we don't actually build the B-2 Bomber or aircraft carriers that Northrop is known for. But, we do work on some of the most critical systems that the military needs in the modern age.
For example, a big thing right now is Infra-red Countermeasures (IRCM). You may have heard in the news about the growing threat of heat-seeking Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAMs) being used by terrorists and enemies to shoot down our aircraft, aimed at military jets and now at commercial airliners as well. Traditionally, the method of defeating these missiles is to physically launch decoy flares from your plane, hoping that the heat from those flares will attract the missile away from yourself. Unfortunately, the newer generation of heat-seeking SAMs are smart enough to ignore the flares and hit the target anyways. The idea of IRCM is to use IR technology to generate a heat image projected away from the jet, which works better to confuse and defeat the so-called "smart missiles". Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems is currently the only provider of an effective and working design of IRCM, which has been used in recent military campaigns and is being used on aircraft in Iraq right now.
As for me, I'm just a peon among over 100,000 employees spread across the country. Officially, I'm an entry-level engineer that works mostly in EE applications. I have 2-star (Secret) clearance but currently I'm not doing any classified work.
Typical day? There isn't a good answer I can give to that question. Basically, I work on projects with other engineers. The fundamental definition of an engineer is someone who is given a set of requirements and "engineers" solutions to meet them. Throughout the course of the large-scale projects we work on at this company, there are literally hundreds or thousands of requirements to meet. This translate to a pretty wide range of jobs and things that need to be done.
Most of the time, I'm at my desk working on my computer. I use the common programs like Microsoft Excel and Word a lot, but also drawing programs like Visio, a requirements managment tool called SLATE, and my training last week was for LabWindows, which uses a lot of C language programming.
I've spent some time in the lab too, which was actually pretty similar to lab in college. Running tests, taking measurements, plotting stuff on oscilloscopes, talking about sports, and then doing writeups afterwards. Typically, I like being in lab more than being at my desk because I get to work with some pretty cool and advanced stuff.
When I'm not at my desk or in lab, it usually means I'm at a meeting. I have come to hate meetings, but a lot of times they are necessary in order to get things accomplished. The thing that sucks is that I usually don't really have to be present, cause they don't need any real input from me, but I still gotta be there in person. Then they always seem to drag on for way longer than planned. Plan on burning at least 2 hours per meeting is what I've learned.
The worst meetings are the "first thing in the morning" conference calls with the east coast, cause those foos are an hour ahead and that means I gotta wake up and come in an hour early. Of course, half the time I get there on time, and the meeting doesn't start until like 40 minutes later when everyone else arrives. The thing to remember is, there's a difference between "7 o'clock" and "7 o'clock sharp".
So, do I like my job? I don't know how to answer that one either. I guess I could say that it's pretty close to what I expected, which is good. I don't jump out of bed every morning and race to work out of sheer excitement, but I don't ever dread going to the job either.
There are a lot of positive things I could say about this job. Of course the salary and benefits are nice, for someone coming straight out of school. At least it's pretty standard for engineering positions.
Another big thing is that most of the people I work with are pretty nice. Engineers tend to be pretty down to earth, and while they all like to complain about being underappreciated, I think deep down they are happy with what they're doing. Compared to the business world, say a consulting or sales position, this environment is much less cutthroat in a corporate sense.
In a way, it's good to be challenged by stress and people around you, and I think I will eventually want to experience work in a business-type field. But in the long term, it probably takes its toll on you as a person. I don't want to end up being a heartless CEO who has billions of dollars and grand achievements, but is a failure as a family man and lacks moral standards.
The actual work is a positive as well. You find probably more cutting-edge technology in the defense industry than in commercial industries. And I like the fact that I'm not entirely focused on hardware or software, signal processing or power engineering, but I get a taste of a wide range of topics across the broad scope of electrical engineering.
There's a few negatives I could think of. I said earlier that the people were nice, which is true, but at times it would be nice if there were more younger people, and if there were more non-engineers around. I don't care that there's no hot girls here, cause it seems kind of lame to be meeting chicks at your job, and I got a woman already anyways. But if I had a choice, I probably wouldn't ever hang out with any of the people I work with. Not that I'm Mr. Cool or whatever, but most of these engineers are even nerdier than me. Hard to believe, but I'm serious.
It's ok though, cause I don't really need to socialize with the people I work with. I like hanging with my old circle of friends plenty enough.
The other drawback to being an engineer is the limited opportunities. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I don't think there's much in the way of career advancement for most engineers. You get raises and promotions, but in the end, you're always working for the higher-ups. That's fine for a lot of people, I guess, but I do expect out of myself in life that by the time I retire, I will have reached the level of the "higher-ups" I'm talking about.
With an ordinary bachelor's degree at this giant corporation, that's pretty unlikely to happen spontaneously. So I don't think I can be too content and comfortable too stay where I am. At least in a few years, I'll most likely pursue an MBA or Masters in Engineering. And at some point, I will have to take the initiative to move on and shoot for higher goals. But that's in the future.
Overall, I would say that I'm happy with where I am right now. I do feel lucky to have this job especially in light of the poor economic conditions. When people ask me how the job is, I usually say "it's ok" or talk about how busy I am, but when I think about it, I really do like it.
For more information, go to northropgrumman.com and read the FAQ.
BASEBALL
Last night was a greatly anticipated event for me. Even though I had been talking about it for weeks, it didn't really hit me that baseball season was starting until the first pitch of the game.
During the national anthem, they had 3 Navy fighter jets fly over the field, which was cool. I couldn't see what kind they were, but they looked like Boeing F/A-18 Hornets. Too bad they couldn't score any Northrop B-2 Stealth Bombers or Grumman F-14's, those are way cooler.
Anyways, before the first half-inning was over, my boys were a combined negative 2, thanks to Troy Glaus' fielding error and A-Rod's GIDP. Not a great start to the Dudlings' year, but it's a long season.
So a couple innings later, A-rod comes up to bat again and this time, launched a monster shot deep into the left field seats. That got the juices flowing in me real quick. The only bad thing was how he did a little happy trot and winked at the dugout on the way around the bases. That's the first time I've seen him be cocky in a game. Not that he hasn't earned the right to be cocky, but hopefully he doesn't turn into an punk and start playing like crap this year. Then again, I like Bonds even with how he's an ass and watches his homers and stuff.
Tonight, more fun on the diamond: two of the best active pitchers alive, Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux get the call for my team. Too bad they are like a combined 800 years old. But it don't matter, they're oldies but goodies. As long as their arms don't fall off I'll be happy.
Last night was a greatly anticipated event for me. Even though I had been talking about it for weeks, it didn't really hit me that baseball season was starting until the first pitch of the game.
During the national anthem, they had 3 Navy fighter jets fly over the field, which was cool. I couldn't see what kind they were, but they looked like Boeing F/A-18 Hornets. Too bad they couldn't score any Northrop B-2 Stealth Bombers or Grumman F-14's, those are way cooler.
Anyways, before the first half-inning was over, my boys were a combined negative 2, thanks to Troy Glaus' fielding error and A-Rod's GIDP. Not a great start to the Dudlings' year, but it's a long season.
So a couple innings later, A-rod comes up to bat again and this time, launched a monster shot deep into the left field seats. That got the juices flowing in me real quick. The only bad thing was how he did a little happy trot and winked at the dugout on the way around the bases. That's the first time I've seen him be cocky in a game. Not that he hasn't earned the right to be cocky, but hopefully he doesn't turn into an punk and start playing like crap this year. Then again, I like Bonds even with how he's an ass and watches his homers and stuff.
Tonight, more fun on the diamond: two of the best active pitchers alive, Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux get the call for my team. Too bad they are like a combined 800 years old. But it don't matter, they're oldies but goodies. As long as their arms don't fall off I'll be happy.
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