Well, I am officially finished with my entry level Job Search. Deciding between a couple of offers, I went with the one that was closest to home and allowed me to start almost immediately. The other was in Maryland, and the earliest I could start would be 4 months. The student loan folks just couldn’t wait that long, so May it is. The new company, Clean Earth Technologies, is one that does all kinds of work for the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defence. It looks like (I’m not quite sure yet) I will be working on a robotics project. Sounds like fun.

I returned Monday evening from my short trip to yankeeville for a job interview. My high-school friend Boanna, who is in the Master’s program at John Hopkins, was kind enough to pick me up from the airport and cart me around all afternoon Sunday. We headed down to Washington, D.C. and spent most of the day walking around and seeing the sights. One of the highlights was that we got to see G.W. land at the White House in Marine One, and of course the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. If it weren’t for the 40 mile-per-hour winds and temperatures in the low 40’s, it would have been a perfect trip.

   
   

Monday I spent most of the morning in interviews and waiting for interviews. I liked the atmosphere of the job, and I liked the people there a lot. It looks like a very interesting place to work, and the job they offered me is something that would put to use most of my varied experience, from RF and Hardware through to software development. They made me an offer, but it’s not anything set in stone—it’s just a conditional offer pending other processing that may take up to six months. At that time I’ll know for sure whether or not I actually still have a job waiting. In the meantime, I’m going to keep looking – something better just might come along and not require me to wait 6 months and move 2000 miles, but it would be hard-pressed for another job to compensate as well as this one would, so I’ll just have to wait and see how things go.

Finally I got a job interview. Good thing? Heck yeah it is. Good job? Looks like it very well could be. Relocation? Maryland. Hmmm. Never been to Maryland. But, I’ll get to see how I like it early next month, when I fly up for the interview. Do I want to move? Well, I’m not completely against it. I have good reasons to stay and good reasons to go, but if it came down to it, I would move, given that the job paid for the expense of doing so, and that it was a job that I wouldn’t have a chance of finding down here. This one definitely covers both bases. We’ll see how things go and I’ll try to keep you up to date.

Another finally—finally I got that computer I was struggling with last week finished up. I’m letting it run a bit and burn-in it’s new 160GB hard drive, but it looks as if everything has worked out fine.

Many of the digital shots taken on the recent ski trip to Wolf Creek are now up in the photo gallery for all to enjoy.  There are about 9 pages of them, so I’ll probably divide them into sub-galleries at some point.  I am hoping to get some scanning done very soon so that I can include some of my recent film shots as well, some of which turned out very good. 

On the same note, I have found that despite all of the reviews to the contrary, I like Kodak film better than Fuji.  Granted, in the lab tests Fuji regularly outperforms Kodak, but in my prints, I find that Fuji is fairly prone to overexposure, especially in the case of white or almost-white objects in good light.  This can readily be seen in the Alaska Pictures, all of which were shot on Fuji film (and all of which were somewhat color-corrected when they were scanned).  However, Fuji’s color depth really tends to show in darker shots where, when I took the picture, I thought that the lighting was not so good. 

The Job Search continues.  I have a few leads, most through friends who have been kind enough to get my resume past the normal measures of corporate data collection.  I’ll keep you posted on how things pan out.  Today I hit up the list of the top 500 companies that are hiring for entry level positions this year, as well as posting applications for all of the TLA’s (CIA, FBI, NSA).  Other possibilities are presenting themselves on the left coast.  In the meantime I am doing some more freelance web design work and finishing up some old projects.

In other news, I just bought a new GSM Mobile Telephone, thanks in part to my parents and in part to my wonderful Girlfriend, Katie, who teamed up to to provide the funds for the phone of my choice as a birthday present.  I purchased a new and unlocked Nokia 3620, which my provider Cingular does not sell (and which I got for $270 after shipping, over $100 below retail).  Earlier I had called Cingular to see what it would take to get me on my own plan under GSM while my parents kept their TDMA family-plan.  It looks like this will go over without a hitch, except for the $50 phone bill I will now get to pay. 

Many of the digital shots taken on the recent ski trip to Wolf Creek are now up in the photo gallery for all to enjoy.  There are about 9 pages of them, so I’ll probably divide them into sub-galleries at some point.  I am hoping to get some scanning done very soon so that I can include some of my recent film shots as well, some of which turned out very good. 

On the same note, I have found that despite all of the reviews to the contrary, I like Kodak film better than Fuji.  Granted, in the lab tests Fuji regularly outperforms Kodak, but in my prints, I find that Fuji is fairly prone to overexposure, especially in the case of white or almost-white objects in good light.  This can readily be seen in the Alaska Pictures, all of which were shot on Fuji film (and all of which were somewhat color-corrected when they were scanned).  However, Fuji’s color depth really tends to show in darker shots where, when I took the picture, I thought that the lighting was not so good. 

The Job Search continues.  I have a few leads, most through friends who have been kind enough to get my resume past the normal measures of corporate data collection.  I’ll keep you posted on how things pan out.  Today I hit up the list of the top 500 companies that are hiring for entry level positions this year, as well as posting applications for all of the TLA’s (CIA, FBI, NSA).  Other possibilities are presenting themselves on the left coast.  In the meantime I am doing some more freelance web design work and finishing up some old projects.

In other news, I just bought a new GSM Mobile Telephone, thanks in part to my parents and in part to my wonderful Girlfriend, Katie, who teamed up to to provide the funds for the phone of my choice as a birthday present.  I purchased a new and unlocked Nokia 3620, which my provider Cingular does not sell (and which I got for $270 after shipping, over $100 below retail).  Earlier I had called Cingular to see what it would take to get me on my own plan under GSM while my parents kept their TDMA family-plan.  It looks like this will go over without a hitch, except for the $50 phone bill I will now get to pay. 

Heading two timezones west and then staying up until 3 or 4am in that timezone does a work on one’s sleeping habits.  I laid down at midnight – about an hour late with respect to my pre-L.A. sleep schedule – and woke up at 1am ready to go at it.  I know I’ll hate myself in the morning, but since I don’t head into work tomorrow until about 10am, it’s not too big a deal, so here I am. 

In other news, we’re gearing up for the President’s day (or if you’re a girl, the Valentines Day) ski trip that is right at a week away.  We’ll be heading out in Deran’s Bronco at about 6:00PM next Thursday, and, barring any weather-related driving issues, should arrive at Wolf Creek with enough time for a good nap before hitting the slopes Friday.  In preparation, and just because I needed one, I bought a new jacket tonight.  The one I got last year is just too big, and Beau is going to take it off my hands for about half of what I paid for it.  I should be getting the new one sometime Monday.  I had it shipped to work second-day air to avoid any delivery isues, so depending on how fast SierraTradingPost ships things, I’ll have it either Friday or Monday, but more than likely the latter.

Still looking for a job.  Have a few promising leads but nothing concrete yet.  I would love more than anything to get a good interview.  Unfortunately, many of the companies out there care more about the gpa than about how good of an engineer someone is.  Companies should start caring more about what a potential employee really can do for them, and not just mask off tiers of people just because one number.  I’ve known too many smart people with good GPA’s that didn’t know how to solder or know the difference between FR4 and Polyamide, let alone how to design, capture, and layout a circuit and pcb.  I’m a damn good electrical engineer (and humble too), and a 3.21 cum isn’t bad in itself, especially for someone that worked his way through most of college. 

The bottom line: If you’re a recruiter and you happen to be reading this, take a chance and give me a call; I won’t let you or your company down.

Landed at DFW last night around midnight and finally made it to bed around 2:30am.  For those of you who didn’t get the memo, I have been out west in Los Angeles visiting with friends since Thursday.  Now back to the grindstone.  Although I haven’t had many up or down comments on the site changes, I think I’ll leave it this way for at least a little while. 

Other than that, I am still looking for an enginnering job and gearing up to apply for graduate school in the fall, in the case that the job search falls through.  I’ll re-post my resume online in the next few days.

For the 2 of you out there wondering why I haven’t posted in almost a month, I’m right there with you.  I’m not too busy, I’ve had a good amount of time laying around between work and well, work, but I just haven’t had much to say.  I’ve been doing a bit of playing around with a new design for the site, which has been in its current state for almost a year now.  The new site can be previewed here, please let me know if you like it or hate it.  It’s a bit of a rip-off from bluerobot, but while heavily modifying their source (which is offered for the taking), I learned alot about HTML standards and CSS.  The new site is fully validated to the W3C standards, which is a nice touch.  Obviously, there’s a lot of work still to go, but that is the direction I think we’re heading.

I’m also looking for a new job.  I got a raise from my current employer that will hold me over for a bit, but I’d like to find something where I can learn more about engineering.  My interest in our type of projects is quickly waning as well (or was it ever really there?).  The highlight of my day today was getting a microcontroller board to turn on an LED, which has been eluding us for a few days now because of some pretty poor documentation.  Sounds exciting, huh?  So for anyone out there that knows someone looking for an entry-level engineer with a ton of experience, please let me know via the contact link on the bottom right part of the page.

That’s it for now.  Happy New Year and all that, of course.