here's life

Today I went to one of Wichita's many churches. The worship service was hymns and responsive readings with a quartet lending it's voice in other genres occationally. Which was just a little more liturgical than I expected. The sermon was on Salvation (The appropriate Article of Faith was in the bulletin). She said that some people have sudden conversion experiences while for others it is a more gradual process, happening over many years,and both were valid. I found this a bit more Univeralist than I am comfortable with. For sunday school I went to the Drop-in, sermon discussion/current events group. In the big open room was a table that caught my eye--a display hailing the virtues of open source---with supporting scripture verses! I've sometimes been evangelistic about it (often more than about my faith) but I hadn't seen blatant biblical basis for Linux. What Distro Would Jesus Use? Evidentally, Ubuntu, a Debian variant.
The discussion focused on "why you don't need to know the day you were saved" and "is there a reason we don't have a cross in the front of the church?" It turned out that the salvation-as-a-process was more talking about people who grew up as christians, and can't point to a day that they surrendered to God, and less about "I'd say I'm 63% saved and 38% enlightened, so I have a better probability of going to heaven than nirvana."

The link above takes us to the moon, which was visited by humans for the first time in recorded history 46 years ago. Try zooming in all the way...

In other news, my house now looks even worse than before since I have been drilling and gluing boards all afternoon. But the desk is coming along. (sorry, no camera, no pictures)

I have started to use the Google personalized homepage lately, and it is really helpful to stick stuff on. And not having any experience in otherwise using RSS feeds, I find it helpful to add feeds from blogs that I want to keep an eye on.

The house that my family is building is almost complete. Some carpet on the inside and some concrete and landscaping on the outside, and it will be ready to sell. Anyone need a really cool house on the edge of a meadow in the lovely town of Rolla, Missouri?

a fence streaches across the puddle. On the far side is an empty field, and then a place that teaches flight (Matt from work is taking ground school there--on the company nickel)













on the other side you can see where they have clipped the grass short










a weed that looks like it has little pine cones, but are really just seed pods.















The view from the end of the culvert











and from the middle of road.

Another day at the office, trying to find and decipher drawings. Some of the guys on my team are getting so frustrated in their attempts that they are laughing about the trouble they are having. Tomorrow we'll work at it for a while.


Today when I got home from work with some tools and a nylon sheet that I picked up at the Surplus Store, I had two packages waiting for me--one at the apartment's office and one at the post office--had to hurry to get there before it closed. So now I have a Linksys WRT45G and a music keyboard. The router is pretty quality. Took me a bit to get it configured so that it acted as a gateway, not just a router. Now I really need to get that desk done. But first, to bed.

Sheet of Brass before bending
(edges taped for safety)











After being formed into a water-tight box














With the frame to hold up the rock
















With the rock












The gravel I'll add once I get the pump

...this afternoon was the most pleasant weather I've seen. I came out of work and it was about 80 degrees and the sun was shining. A beautiful afternoon. I guess the rain yesterday left, but the cooler temperatures stayed. I am glad that I didn't work late today.

A little later I was playing volleyball with some of the interns and a Rivet Joint aircraft was taking off and landing from the airstrip across the road. It was interesting to see the plane flying over that I heard about from the L3 trip.

This afternoon I went over to Aaron's apartment and drilled a hole through his wall with my cool new drill and some drillbits I got from the Boeing Surplus Store for $2.50/lb. Then we ran the cable for his internet from the living room to the office and got his computer set up on his new desk. Then I came back and started work on my desk. I got some of the angles and lengths figured and cut. I hope that the neighbors continue to allow me to run a circular saw next to the building.

It was good to spend some time outside working with my hands instead of just my brain. Or what's left of it after two days of trying to understand a complex relational database and it's means and methods. It is interesting that if I mess up the database in certain ways, it can't just be fixed. Just like if you grew up in an abusive situation, I can't just tell you "It's over, you are safe now." Even if you know I am right, it may not repair the emotional damage, or change your irrational emotional responses to today's circumstances. In some cases in the database, I can't fix things because I don't have the power or authorization. In other cases, it is just too inter-related for us to just poke with a stick and make it better.

So, I got a router on ebay. I only paid about 33 bucks for it counting shipping, so either all the people who were willing to pay $45 + S&H got all the routers they needed or they went to bed. Or maybe there is something wrong with it.
On the other hand, I had a long day at work today, but I actually got something done. I found a couple dozen values for thicknesses and sizes by poring over diagrams and drawings. Then as I was finishing up, I found I had made an error and don't know how it happened. So, I wonder how accurate the data I found is? Well, tomorrow I have class, so maybe in the evening I will check my numbers. The other guys I am working with had varying levels of success on similar quests. We are all slowly learning the data storage systems, and how best to get the information we need.

Here I sit, eating hamburger stew. The cool thing about this stew is that I started it cooking, put in all the veggies and adjusted it down to just about the right level, and headed off to church. Two hours later, I found that the electric skillet had not burned it. And it wasn't raw either, I could cut the veggies with a spoon.(though we know that the spoons are the sharpest) All it needed was some seasoning. What I really need is a crockpot, so it is not so hit-or-miss. I also need some people to come over so I have a reason to clean this place up.

Where do I find suction cups? I need like a dozen 1" diameter suction cups. I looked at Dollar General. I canvased the entire housewarez section of WalMart, I did a cursory search at Lowes. But all I found were there big ones that have a lever that pulls it tigh. I just want a little piece of rubber, maybe with a hook I can remove.

I now have a saw and a drill and other tools in my closet, and some lumber in what would be my dining room. I gathered the necessary items to make a desk. It cost me about the same amount as if I bought a similar one from OfficeMax. But most of that was in tools that will be useful in the future.
I also am hoping that some people bid on some ebay items" in the next few days, or I will be getting a great deal on more routers than I need. My life is like a bag of tangerines hanging by a string over a pack of rabid dogs---constantly being thrown from one extreme to another.

I put in some overtime today. Now that we are actually doing something that needs to get done, they are ok with us working some extra time on it. I'm not sure that I want to go down that road...at least not so much that I get burned out and hate my job as my boss warned could happen with taking too much overtime.

It looks like the weeks of not really doing much at work are coming to an end. Tomorrow morning we are briefed on what us four new hires are going to be doing for the next several weeks---gathering data on all the rivets at the seams running the length of the plane. They say we will know a whole lot about the plane by the time we are done, so it sounds like a good opportunity.

I got my faster computer up and running again. I got a new power supply that seem to work better. But the $25 dollars I spent on it nearly doubles my to-date computer expenditures. I found a place in town that sells computer parts for pretty cheap, especially the old stuff. It is like the I.T. dumpster, but I pay them a little. Good old I.T; thinking about their "bargain bin" makes me happy...

Here in Wichita, there is a 4 engine plane that is doing touch-and-go's most days and some nights. I am not sure what Cessna is trying to find out, but it seems to be taking them a while.

Today at work was the big unveiling of the new name of the company: Spirit Aerosystems. You could feel that most people felt a bit let down when it wasn't something AWESOME. But what really would have been awesome? Nobody knows. And in time, people will begin to latch onto it and claim it as their own.
So, now, I don't work for Boeing, I don't work for Midwest, I work for Spirit.

But what ever the name is, they pay me and so I went and got some groceries this evening. Contrary to the common proverb, I was shopping while hungry. I don't think I bought to much though...

I need to find things to keep myself busy. I found myself reading comics most of the evening, and there are so many other, more useful things to do. I did talk to a friend (on Impersonal Messaging) that I had a grudge against, and I understand his side of the story slightly better.

So, I went to MO this weekend, leaving after work on Friday and reaching my destination at 10:30. Which was the house my family is building. We spent the night at the house for the first time. In the morning we worked on finish wiring. My little brothers had been working on outlets and ceiling fans. Three-way switches are confusing.
In the evening I cleaned some tempered glass to take back to KS. Eight pieces, 20.5" by 21" from which to make a desk.
I also talked on the phone to my two sisters and brother-in-law until both ears were sore.
Sunday I skipped out of church early to catch a ride back to our new house. There I waited until my ride to KS arrived. We loaded up my stuff and took off, looking forward to getting home just after dinner. And then the car started to die at stop signs. It would start back up fine...sputter and die. Our suspected culprit was watery gasoline he had filled up with earlier. But that was a week and a few tanks ago. So, we got some Heet and dumped it in, filled up with gas, dumped in more Heet and it seemed to be doing ok, so we got on the interstate and didn't have any trouble for 40 miles. His dad lived a couple hours away, so while we waited, we took off the fuel filter, shook out black powder with the gas and replaced it. We drove another ten miles, but when we stopped, it started acting up again. When his dad replaces the filter and it still didn't work, we parked it at a repair place and rode to his house, where we ate and then left about 6: headed for KS with five hours ahead of us, in his mom's pickup. The rest of the trip was uneventful, though we looked forward to getting up early in the morning for a long, tired day at work. But we made it and the car needs flushing out, but should be fine. I am glad I got to go.

Today at work we actually worked on a project--got people to look stuff up, went around finding stuff out, looking at little pieces of metal. Finally got a solution that shouldn't involve engineering anything--use a different nut that is already ok'ed.
Then I played volleyball with interns from mine and other companies. They seemed like a quality bunch, and we had a lot of fun. I need to go to bed, to get up, drive to work with Aaron, so I can ride straight to MO afterwards.
oE

This evening I got internet at my apartment. So I plugged my computer into the cable modem, and pushed the button....nothing. It worked last night... I checked the cables. So, I got my spare computer (ToBe) and it worked fine. A bit slower, but ok. I took the other apart (a 1.2gHz that my brother-in-law found in the dumpster, didn't work at home, so I brought it out here and it worked,,,for a while) The fuse in the power supply is burned out, so I'll have to find another. But that could be a symptom.

Last night me and Aaron (guy from work who lives in my apartment complex) went and played softball with some interns from various nearby companies. I did poorly, as usual, and our team lost drastically. (we almost got a run)
On our way back, we joined some neighbors playing volleyball. They were sober, but horificly foul-mouthed. I wonder what it is like out there when I see them playing drunk all weekend!

I still haven't really started working at the office yet. Always seems there is something we are waiting for. Lately I have been going through some incomplete tutorials on the CAD program they use. Maybe once I get good it would work better than something like SolidWorks, but it seems to be pretty similar to programs freely availible I have on my Linux box. I try to show positivity about the totally anti-intuitional, brain-rending user interface by saying I obviously do not understand it well enough. And it doesn't seem that much of a coding leap to make it usable--just make dimensions define objects, instead of the other way around!
So, Coda, can you write me a Java CAD program that actually works?

Back at home I sit in my empty house and try to figure out how to fill it. I have some good ideas for making some furnature, but I need some stuff from MO. And one of the new hires here is going to Rolla for the weekend (of boozing on the rivers). So maybe I'll go with him, or have my family send with him some pieces of tempered glass from behind the shed.

oE Abu

I have been in Wichita for a little over two weeks now. I have been going to work, and I actually have an apartment now. I don't have much of a life, but things may pick up.

Tuesday I went to a softball game where I heard that a bunch of Boeing interns played. They didn't really need any more people that time, but next week they may. One of the teams seemed pretty relaxed--just happy to get around the bases without spilling much of their drink. Definately closer to my skill level than some of the other teams.

My empty apartment doesn't offer many comforts, but that will change. I need to find some furniture. And a desk so that next week when I get an internet connection and my computer becomes useful, I have a better place to put it.

So, the question is, do I spring for tables and chairs that cost hundreds of dollars, or get used stuff that costs dozens of dollars, or build my own?