Shouzer

Chad Johnson legally changed his name to Chad Javon Ocho Cinco.  I don’t care what anyone says, that’s just awesome.  Still, I hope that he gets back to focusing on the Bengals a bit this year, after some of the stuff that went on this offseason.

I’m having trouble formulating this thought into words and sentences in my head, so the following could be a mess.

What’s so wrong about voting for someone who appears to be smarter than you? Better yet, should that not be our collective mission? When electing someone to public office, especially that of the executive branch, I’m quite certain that it is in my best interest to mark the box next to the name of the person who is least likely to be at the same aptitude level as my friends and neighbors. I want someone who is overly intelligent, whose education far exceeds my own, who, when faced with a decision that affects the lives of millions, would be better equipped than me to lead in the right direction.

Nevertheless, popular opinion seems to reflect that this is not something to be desired in running for office. That “aw shux,” “just one of the guys” act was probably one of the biggest reasons that our current president was elected over either of his opponents. How has that worked out? Again, what is the appeal? When one candidate attacks another for being “elitist,” that should be almost a backhanded compliment. “Thank you very much, yes, I do consider myself to be well-educated, and knowledgeable about many things in which you are not.”

That is my thought for the day. If presidential decisions were easy enough to be made by the guy whose locker was next to mine in high school, then the framers of the constitution probably wouldn’t have been so concerned about it. But things are not that way. One of our candidates has graduated from Columbia and Harvard Law, was the editor of the Harvard Law Review, has over a decade of experience in Chicago politics and the U.S. Senate, and picked a VP mate who has been in the Senate for over 35 years, heading up multiple committees. Those two men are WAY more equipped than me to do almost anything. But that makes them the lesser candidates, according to some… I just don’t get it.

Over the weekend, Obama announced that he had chosen Joe Biden as his running mate. Biden is an experienced, six term senator from Delaware, currently serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. You’d think that’d be a good thing, right?

No, apparently in politics it underscores the fact that Obama isn’t ready to be president.  Why else would he have chosen somebody who had so much more experience than him?  Oh, it also shows that Obama can’t deal with other countries.  That’s why he needed somebody with Biden’s experience in foreign relations.  Mmmhmm.  That’s how it works.

Obama’s selection couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that he believed Biden might be the right person for the job.  No, of course not.  Realistically, he probably could have picked somebody who would deliver more votes (ala Edwards).  Instead, it looks like he focused on choosing somebody that deserved to be vice-president (that should not be taken as a shot against Edwards).

This is why politics is stupid.  Rather than focusing on who Biden is and what he brings to the table, everybody’s analyzing the choice and coming to dumbass conclusions.  What a waste.

I got a sweet bonus last week (I suppose all bonuses likely fall into that category), and like any good American consumer, I decided to spend a portion of it on stuff I don’t really need.  And, like any good American man, I decided to upgrade my home theater system (i.e. TV speakers just don’t cut it).

First on the short list was a decent receiver.  I went with an Onkyo TX-SR606.  It’s nothing super fancy, but it does a few things that were very important for me:

1. It has four HDMI inputs
2. It upconverts all my video and passes it out through one single HDMI to my TV
3. It supports 7.1 sound
4. It decodes Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD

Next up were the speakers.  I got the Definitive ProCinema 800 set, which is (only) a 5.1 set.  Originally I was looking for 7.1, but then I heard these at Magnolia and was thoroughly impressed.  According to CNET, they “redefined [their] expectations of what a small surround speaker system can do.”  I figure I can always buy two more later on, but I’d rather start with quality.

Unfortunately they’re not due here until Friday, but considering I got 0% interest until 2012, I’m willing to live with that.  I don’t seem to buy anything these days unless I get some 0% interest financing.  If they want to give me free money, I’ll take it.  Seriously, how can they afford that?

Oh, and of course I bought my speaker wire from Monoprice.com.  Nobody can beat them.  For real.  Nobody.

Anyway, it’s going to be awesome when I set this shit up and get some gaming in.  Nobody’ll be able to sneak up on me anymore when I’m playing CoD4.  Or, perhaps more importantly, I won’t be able to blame my deaths on that anymore… 

There’s something about the Olympics that I just love.  I don’t know what it is, but I really can’t get enough of the stuff.  Swimming, Volleyball, Track & Field, Basketball, whatever.  I love it all (with the obvious exception of speed walking and ribbon dancing ).

While it’s all pretty impressive to watch, I think the single most impressive event for me is the still rings in men’s gymnastics.  The sheer amount of strength that takes is absolutely amazing.  I mean, I can do it, but I’m just surprised there’s so many other people who can, too.

Seriously, though, how weird would it be to win a gold medal, confirming that you’re the best in the world at what you do…only to have to return to work the next week?  I’ve read that a fair number of olympians suffer from depression after returning home, and I can definitely believe it.  One week you’re on top of the world, and the next you’re back at Home Depot.

I had some company up in Michigan last week. My sister was visiting during her vacation between finishing school and starting work. It was certainly nice to have someone to hang out with every night after work. I could probably get used to that.

We didn’t do too much exciting stuff except for eat out a lot. The highlight of that was probably The Melting Pot, which is a fondue restaurant. I had been wanting to go, and it’s not exactly the type of place you can go with the guys from work. We ended up going the night she got her test results as a celebration dinner. The cheese and the chocolate course were fairly new to me, but the main course seemed like a combination of a Korean BBQ and a hot pot. All of the food was delicious though.

On Saturday, we hit up the Woodward Dream Cruise, which is kind of a big classic car show. People cruise down this main road in Detroit, and there are little fairs all along the way. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of classic cars there. It was very cool.

We also went over to Canada for a bit because it’s always nice to visit other countries. Windsor, the city just on the other side of the border, is a pretty boring place, unfortunately. They have a nice park down by the river though, and we just hung out there for a while.

The customs guard on the way back was the rudest I have ever encountered in my life, which I feel is saying a lot. This man was incensed by the very thought that we would want to visit Canada for the afternoon just to see it. He just couldn’t understand why we would want to go there just to hang out. Maybe he was trying to scare us into admitting we had crossed the border to pick up a stash of illegal prescription drugs. Maybe his wife decided she didn’t want to take his crap any more, and she left him that morning. Maybe he had to pee, and his break wasn’t for another hour. Maybe he was just a monster douche bag. All I know is, I never want to go across that border again.

I check up on Shouzer several times a day, and there has been no activity for almost 2 weeks. That makes me bored, and I suspect that the same holds true for whatever readers we do have. For me personally, I’ve been trying to come up with stories to write about, but I’m drawing a blank. Not much has happened over the last 2 weeks either. Life is settling into a groove, which is nice, but it is not conducive to story-telling.

There are some news articles that have come out recently that I feel are worth mentioning. The first is GM’s quarterly earning release, which is important to me. They lost $15.5 billion last quarter. Ouch. From what I’ve heard, my department won’t be going through any forced layoffs, despite a 20% company-wide reduction in salaried “expenses”. There will be a few people leaving my area through early retirement. I could go for some of that. I’d probably take it if I got the offer.

In much, much better news, the death toll in Iraq in July was at its lowest since 2003. It’s nice to hear some good news coming from that region after years of bad news. Honestly, I have become a bit numb to it. I am at the point where the news of a suicide bombing in Baghdad does little to pull my heartstrings. That is honestly a sad reflection on both me and the situation as a whole, I think.

The other big question I hear a lot is, What exactly do you do at GM? (I think it’s mostly my parents that ask me this.) Well, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure yet, but I am starting to get a grasp of it. I am a controls integration engineer on the 6 speed transmission platform. My group manages the releases of software for these transmissions, and troubleshoots any problems that come up. We are the go-between for the core software people, those who write the code, and the calibrators, those who test and tweak the code in the vehicles. I am mostly on the troubleshooting end of that spectrum.

For example, I am at a plant right now helping with a problem with the transmission output speed. We are getting some noise on the signal related to the sensor that is used to measure said speed. Lots of people from many different groups are involved in the troubleshooting process, but my group is spearheading the effort. It’s what we do. I have a few other responsibilities, including tracking CPU utilization on all of the software releases and handling serial data communication mismatches. Often, a test car will be put together with a hodgepodge of components. Sometimes, the controllers for these components are using different versions of the serial data protocol, and I have to sort that out. I haven’t done too much of this yet as I am not fully trained in this area, but it will become a big part of my job.

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.