Shouzer

Yesterday, I went to a meetup for the Detroit International Social club. This meetup was as good as the first one was bad. I was blown away by how enjoyable that experience was.

12 people showed up to this Indian restaurant for dinner. We were there for about 2.5 hours, and the conversation never really lagged for this entire time. The food at this place was really good as well. Most of the people that sat near me had never been to one of these events before, and no one really seemed to know each other. That probably helped in allowing me to join in the conversation because there wasn’t a set, core group of people. And it was so nice to talk about something besides engineering for a night.

I would say the biggest downside to this group is that they only meet every other week. The lack of a core group could get old after a while as well because it sounds like a different set of people show up ever time. Still, I’m really excited that this went so well. I will definitely go back to their next event.

I had my advanced drivers training today that will allow me to drive on the proving grounds roads. It consisted of a lot of evasive driving techniques.

First, they put us in a high speed lane change situation. Basically, we had about 60 ft to change lanes at high speeds without touching the brakes. We’d drive down this little lane of cones with a wall of cones in front. The instructor would yell, “Left!” or “Right” and we would change to an unobstructed lane accordingly. It’s much harder than it sounds. The wall of cones is actually very close, and the car slides a bit when you change lanes. I actually lost control of it completely at 65 mph. It felt like the car was going to flip over.

We did a slalom course along with this test, but it was pretty uneventful.

Next was the low friction surface. They have a skid pad there that they spray with water to simulate ice and snow. We drove onto this skid pad and then immediately started sliding around. This was pretty fun. Basically, they were teaching us to regain control of a car with the back end fishtailing. My driving partner was pretty bad at this, unfortunately. I was in the back seat, and we did numerous donuts on this surface. The crazy part, though, was when the car returned to regular pavement and violently corrected itself. I was flying all over the place back there. Then, we did some ABS brake tests. They had us do 2 wheels on/2wheels off and then slam on the brakes. With no ABS, the car just spun like mad. With it, it was pretty well in a straight line. Lucky for me, my new car doesn’t have ABS, so I could be having some fun this winter.

The last test was stopping and maneuvering under a locked-brake condition. It was pretty bland compared to the other two. Nothing really worth writing about. We finished up by taking the car on and off the pavement at highway speeds to show what this is like in the real world.

Basically though, I had a blast doing this. I wish I could go out and do stuff like that every day.

In other news, I’m going to another meetup tonight. There are 13 people RSVPed to come. Hopefully more than one person will show up this time. I’d hate to be in another blind date type situation over dinner. That would far more awkward than the movie theater. On the other hand, it could result in a very good story.

Al came over to Motown last weekend to visit me. I’d have to say that I had a good time. It was nice having a visitor to hang out with.

On Friday night, we decided to go downtown to check out the awesomeness that is Detroit. I actually hadn’t been there since I was an intern 2 years ago so it was a bit of an experience for me as well. I printed off directions for the drive down there. We were to take I-96 to I-75, then get on I-375 before getting off downtown. We got to the exit for I-75 only to find that it no longer exists. They have completely closed I-96 and I-75 for a mile long stretch near the Canada border.

This would not have been such a big deal if they had bothered to properly guide us with detour signs. We were to take I-75 north, but when we got off the I-96, there were only signs for I-75 south to the left and forward. Al’s new GPS unit instructed us to detour through Canada, which just wasn’t an option as neither of us had our passports. I had to pull a u-turn right in front of the toll booths for the bridge to Canada. People weren’t too happy with me.

There was a guy standing there directing traffic or something. He gave us directions out of there, and Al’s GPS carried us the rest of the way. It was a nice little Friday night adventure.

I got to the office this morning, and the intern in my group told me he got access to the IM program we use at the office. I had been told that I could not get an account. I called the help desk for IT where I was moved around 3 times. I’m still waiting back for an answer.

I then recalled that the intern I was sitting next to yesterday at a training seminar told me she did her advanced driving class within a week of being hired on. I’m still waiting on that as well. Advanced driver training is required before you can use any vehicle on the grounds. It is usually supposed to be one of the most fun days of work in your life. They take you to a big, open area and teach you how to control a car under critical conditions (like low traction).

The kicker though, was that I calculated today that I actually made more money as an intern. Obviously, my salary was lower then, but they paid for my housing. If you take the money I pay for my housing and then add the taxes I pay on that money and add it to my inflation-adjusted internship salary, it’s actually about $200 than I make now. That’s a bit of a slap to the face to be honest.

To be fair, I live in a much better housing situation than I did then. I was sharing a 2 bedroom apartment with 3 other guys. The apartment I’m in now is a bit smaller, but I like it more. I also have it all to myself so I have loads of space. Actually, I still haven’t figured out to do with the extra space in my bedroom.

I just though you all would be amused by this new realization.

As of Wednesday, I was officially here in Washington working for a year.  In celebration of that (and getting my $600 tax rebate), I decided it was time to finally get some living room furniture.  Futon mattress, you’re just not cutting it anymore.

Megan and I headed down south of here to a place called Mor: Furniture For Less.  Get it?  It’s like you’re getting more furniture for less money.  Where do they come up with this stuff?  That’s what I wanna know.  Anyway, it turns out the place is literally across the street from IKEA, which surprised us a bit.  But, honestly, once we got inside, I realized the two stores target different audiences.

I was almost disappointed that we ended up finding something we liked enough to buy at Mor, because what that really meant is that Megan has never experienced an IKEA.  Even if you never end up buying anything from there, it’s still worth checking out at least once–in sheer size, it puts the average store to shame.

Anyway, we went ahead and bought a set consisting of a sofa, a love seat, a chair, and an ottoman.  Overall, it was a pretty good deal at $1400, especially considering we got no interest financing until 2012.  You can’t beat $35/month payments. 

On Saturday night, I woke up around 3am. There were some people coming back to the apartment complex, presumably from a night out partying. They weren’t really being that loud. It’s possible that I just woke up naturally.

At that same time, I heard some strange noises in my apartment. I have blinds that hang vertically on all of my windows, and all of the windows were open. It sounded like the wind was blowing the blinds downstairs, but there was no wind upstairs. That freaked me out a bit. I went down there, and the blinds were not moving. I couldn’t find what was making the noise. I went back to bed, figuring the noise had some association with the people coming back to the apartment.

This unexplainable noise honestly bothered me a fair bit. Enough so that it disturbed my dreams and sleep for the rest of the night. I wouldn’t say I was scared, but maybe that’s me just trying to sound manly.

The next morning, I woke up, and I moved my sleep train to the couch. I was lying there watching TV and dozing, when I heard the freaky noise again. I looked over, and I saw a squirrel on my porch, clawing at the screen door. He was trying to get into my apartment.

He ran around the porch for a while, generally looking pretty scared and frantic, and then he tried to claw his way in again, both the the glass door and the screen door. I thought he was stuck there. Maybe he had fallen off an overhanging branch, and he couldn’t get back down to the ground. After a few minutes though, he ran down the vertical column, escaping the imprisonment of my balcony. I was relieved because I didn’t want to call animal control over a menacing squirrel that gave me nightmares.

My beautiful, sexy MR2 Spyder is dead. I have had a horrible month with it since I came back from Thailand. It’s like she was mad at me for leaving for a year, or perhaps she felt betrayed because I started working for GM.

First, when I came home, the engine was misfiring. I had to get new spark plugs, a coil was shorted out, and the crankshaft sensor was bad. Then, I started feeling serious cutbacks in the power. It turned out that the inside of the catalytic converter rusted out, and the honeycomb structure fell apart, blocking airflow. I had to get a new catalytic converter, which was luckily under warranty. Finally, as I was driving back to Detroit after my short vacation to Herrin, the engine started knocking. I limped it to the nearest exit, and then towed it to a dealer. They found that I had somehow lost 3.5 qts of oil, out of 4 qts total, and I had a sheared a rod. I needed a new engine. I was not willing to pay for the repairs, so I’ve spent the last week looking for a new car.

Yesterday, I purchased a 2006 Saturn Ion. It’s only got 22k miles on it so it’s still under warranty for almost a year. Plus, the dealer does a lifetime powertrain warranty. This alleviates my worries about my engine melting down again. It’s also got a manual transmission, which I pretty much require in a car now. Here’s a pic:

The lesson I learned from that MR2 is that having a beautiful car really isn’t all its cracked up to be. I sort of forgot about how much I loved it until something really bad happened. It’s not like I got massive enjoyment out of my daily commute, and I rarely took it out on country roads for pleasure cruises. A week or two ago, a terrible human being of a woman in an Excursion backed into me in a Walmart parking lot. She later told her insurance that we backed into each other. That meant I was going to have to pay for the repairs. It was a minor scratch, but it was a big problem because much of the intrinsic value of my car was its looks. Yet, as I said, until that happened, I rarely derived any pleasure from the way it looked. Basically, I got no added benefit from it, but the bad stuff was magnified.

So I went the opposite direction with this car. It’s a stripped down, economy car. It’s about the most practical thing I could buy, which is about the polar opposite of my last car. We’ll see how it goes.

Kyle, this problem in my life plus the current lack of material has kept me from writing any Tales of Awkwardness this week. Now that I’ve gotten it sorted out, I’ll try to come up with something.

I went with my family to a Cardinals game tonight up in St. Louis. I’d say overall, it was a pretty good time even though the Mets won 11-1.

The game was rain delayed, so we stopped for dinner on the way, and showed up in the 2nd inning. When we got there, there was a lady in one of our seats. No big deal because she helped us clean the water off, and the seats on the other side were empty. She was down there to talk to her friends in the row behind. This became a problem for me.

She spent the next 5 inning turned around talking directly into my ear, and she was loud, very loud. I mean, she was almost shouting. I debated with myself on how to handle this situation. She was in one of our seats so it was within my rights to tell her to get out, but I’m non-confrontational. I’m scared to get into a fight with someone I don’t know.

As my previous stories here have demonstrated, I maintain a level of cool and social savvy in every imaginable situation. Never do I let things become awkward or uncomfortable. I am proud to say that I handled this with the same such grace and dignity. I turned to my sister and told her a story.

I went to a movie with mom and dad up in Detroit a few weeks ago. There was this couple sitting next to us that would not shut up through the entire movie. They were talking in their normal voices the whole time. Now, they weren’t doing anything as annoying as talking to their friends in the row behind us, but still, I had to tell them to shut up.

This didn’t really take care of things, so I pushed it a step further. I complained quite loudly that I was getting a headache from the ringing in my ears. That took care of it. The people behind us gathered that I was fed-up and suggested they switch seats with the other group in their party. I guess they had two sets of seats. It was a great day for the cause of passive aggressive, indirect confrontation. I’d like to say I’m proud of my accomplishment, but I’m actually a little ashamed of it. Mostly, because I still have no idea how I should have handled that situation.

I went over to Chicago earlier this week to visit Al and Nick, and I had a really good time. I showed up on Monday night, and had some Harold’s Chicken. That’s good stuff if you get the chance to try it. On Tuesday, I went to Gino’s and the Taste Festival with Al. We also saw Get Smart, which is really good movie by the way. Then, we met up with Nick to go to comedy show and dinner. The comedy show wasn’t too impressive, but the dinner was amazing. I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to meet Nick’s boyfriend, Scott, but he was busy. That’s how it goes sometimes I guess.

I’m visiting my parents and my sister now. They’re hosting a big party tomorrow for the 4th. That should be exciting.