Does anyone have any Google+ invites?? jk

I moved

I got an e-mail about Hoseef's post and that reminded me that we have a blog and it would be nice to let people know what's up with me. I just moved to Cary, NC, which is in the "triangle" area by Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. This is where all the crazy college basketball rivalry goes on with Duke, UNC, and North Carolina State (so I'm told-- maybe I'll start following it now). I am a "Sr. Associate Engineer" for Caterpillar. I just finished training in Peoria, IL, and am excited about working for CAT. Once I get a little more established here, I would love to have people come to visit, if there is any interest. The mountains are a few hours to the west, and the ocean is a few hours to the east. Chances are that I will be stationed somewhere in Illinoise for a few months because I'm doing a rotational program designed to help new engineers jump start their careers and network within the company. Now I'm just hoping that it doesn't take long to find a good church and start meeting people in NC (it won't help things if I have to move to IL for a while). It's a little weird not to be in school anymore. I hope everyone else is doing well. Will anyone be at homecoming this year? I'm not planning on going, but if a lot of Foundation alumni go, I would think about it.

Fredrickson

A Day Off

Man a ton has changed since I last posted, quick update, I am now in Jacksonville, Florida, and currently waiting for Fay to get out of the area which she just doesn't seem to want to do, my second tropical storm since being down here, but I did get to stay home today due to the winds up to 60 mph and tons of rain and flooding (Melbourne to the far south of me got 25" of rain!), so far no serious problems for me, and hoping it stays that way.

So, I am now the only salesman for CastCrete for the entire Jacksonville and St. Augustine areas. I got supper lucky, I was only supposed to be promoted to Assistant Branch manager and keep doing the same stuff I was as a Trainee, but I came back from my brother's high school graduation to find out the salesman up here wanted to "chase the south Florida girls" and took a job in West Palm Beach and no one else in the area wanted to move so the job was offered to me. I didn't think I'd have a salesman opportunity for at least 3 years so to get one after only a year was amazing, definitely a huge blessing. I got a pretty nice apartment in Ponte Vedra Beach at an ok rate, just miles from the beach even though I haven't been there yet in the two months I've been here. The job is pretty tough and i have to drive a lot, did 802 miles just last week but its all in my Camry and its very unlikely I'll have to drive a semi again although I still have my license. Not a whole lot of work for me to sell to up here as most of the work is stick frame, and for the first time in my life I get the symbolism of the three little pigs-all these years I thought the wolf was just a wolf. Luckily, my company makes the best product in the state which means i have a lot of loyal customers already and its easy to get people to buy cause they aren't going to buy because of my sales skills but more because of the product I can provide them with.

Found a really different church in Ponte Vedra called Christ the Redeemer, they are a Convergence church which combines sacramental, evangelical, and charismatic influences into their service and is unlike anything I've been to before, which typically I've stayed away from the sacramental type churches, but here I like the blend of everything. They also just started a young adult group that only meets 1-2 times a month which I don't like but it's better then nothing and I've started to meet a lot of the people my age which has been great. Theres also a group from the church called Salt Tribe which has a Wednesday evening church service at the University of North Florida which I am thinking of getting involved with.

Well thats pretty much it, I've been a work-a-holic these last two months and am just now trying to start doing more things with the church and even found some guys to play basketball with on Saturday mornings.

One year down

So my first year of grad school is almost over. It's been pretty good, like Taylor but with fewer people and more math. And by people I mean people that I actually know and interact with, and by math I mean nonsense that no one uses except professors, and them only to pass it on to us. Since my last post I have bought a car, gotten 2 B's, joined an engineering honor society and a cubesat team, watched 4 seasons of The Office, gained 15 pounds worth of oreos and candy corn, gone to 3 job fairs, taught 100 sophomores how to use oscilloscopes, saved the neighbor's russian blue cat from certain death only to let it out of the building to never be seen again, bonded with my roommate, joined a bible study, and road tripped to florida.

Classes this semester have been rough, there is the possibility of having to repeat some of them. I need to do really well on the final in one in particular. If I fail at least it will be easy the second time around. I can slip it into my last semester pretty easily too, so it wouldn't be the end of the world.

TAing has been going a lot better this semester, now that I know the ropes. Actually it's going marginally better and I'm putting a ton less work into it. I'm teaching an introductory electronics lab, so basically I talk for 15-20 minutes in front of 50 or so undergraduates a week and then supervise as they find ways to mess up simple things. It's kind of rewarding to go around with all the answers and handle everybody's questions. The grading takes forever and it's SO BORING. I guess there's the possibility of getting into an easier course where I just have to sit around and answer questions, but I'm already pretty well established in this one. It's a half time TA, but I'm hoping by the last semester that I can get away with putting fewer than 10 hours a week into it. This semester I got a $500 scholarship for being an outstanding TA, but I got the impression it's the kind of thing that every TA that's doing their job eventually gets.

I've been going to Kossuth Street Baptist church since last semester and I joined a bible study there, but it's been a pretty rough semester spiritually, as andrew can attest to. I've really let school dominate a lot of my daily habit stuff I should be doing.

I found an summer internship with a small robotics company in Indy for the summer. I'm over an hour away, so I hooked up with another intern and found an apartment in Indy for the summer. We visited it last weekend to check everything out, and it seems really workable for 3 months. Not particularly in shape or spotless, but big and cheap and we didn't have to sign anything. It's right in the middle of the Broad Ripple area, so there's a lot going on there within walking distance. The guy I'm sharing it with seems pretty easy going, he's a junior in EE here at Purdue.

Well that's it, hopefully someone else posts here before 4 months from now.

$76.50

Yeah, so that is how much my ticket is going to cost, for having my license plate lights burn out on my Explorer without my knowledge. Here's the best part, the cop who pulled me over on the side of the road because of this told me if I got it fixed and showed it to a police officer it would be reduced to $7.50. Turns out first of all she wrote down the incorrect statute number which is not a reducible one and even if it were it would be reduced to only $54. So, guess how much the light bulbs cost to replace: $3.50. WTF! If I would have known they needed to be replaced I would have done so, it took me a whole 10 minutes to do it. Its nice to know in a town that is filled with theft (I don't know if I told you guys, my office was broken into in the first month of working there), drugs, murders, and prostitutes (a couple have tried to get me to pick them up, I didn't if you're wondering, and I've seen one be picked up by someone else) they have time to hassle an honest tax payer who has never gotten a ticket before because his frickin license plate lights burnt out unknown to him. I'm a frickin great driver and safe too, it even says that on my license which is a CDL Class A. I drive for a living almost, this is ridiculous. Here's the best part: I got the ticket last Tuesday and on Friday after three weeks of waiting I finally got my Camry. Its really nice, but could have come 3 days earlier it appears. I left a message for the officer who pulled me over, but she doesn't get back to work until Friday, and even when she does, I don't know if there is anything she can do about it, I at least want to inform her of her own penal code and what it means to have something be reducible because she obviously doesn't know.
In other news, some of you might have noticed that I now have a girlfriend listed under my status on facebook. This is indeed the case, although it happened fricking fast. I had only known her a week when we became "official" but we've been hanging out almost every night. She likes the Office too so we've been watching that together. I'm already having doubts about the whole thing, which I don't think is a good sign. I like her, but I get the feeling she likes me a Lot more and that kind of bothers me. I'm already over analyzing things, like her height--she's 5'4" which why that bothers me, I don't know--and silly little things like that. So, basically I have no clue what I'm doing and she has had multiple boyfriends and--gulp--even been engaged once and has been hurt because of some of those relationships. She's 23 and currently a kindergarten teacher in Ormond Beach. I just don't know what is normal...I mean I've never dated anyone before and I was at Taylor for the last 4 years where the girls didn't want to date you unless you were a stud or future president of a fortune 500 company (ok, slight hyperbole but you get my point). Obviously, its too soon to tell about anything, but I definitely think I need to be doing a lot of praying and talking with her and others. I think things should slow down a bit, but I guess for her this is slow, so I got to figure that out too. I'll probably get in trouble just for posting this, but I trust all of you guys and really value you're opinions on everything.
I wish I could have made it back for Silent Night, I hear it'll be like Homecoming x2. Anyway, I hope that those of you who still have finals and paper coming up get everything done and I'm looking forward to catching up with you guys during Christmas break, even if its only on the phone. ~Hoseef

Hoseef is now fully a trucker, and has the gut to prove it.

So, I passed my CDL Class A drivers test on Saturday. That was pretty cool. There were 3 parts: a pretrip, vehicle control, and then on the road. I got a 40 out of 47 on my pretrip (which I only needed a 35), hit only one cone for a 2 point deduction on my backing part (I was allowed to miss 12 points and I just barely hit the last cone, didn't even knock it over), and aced the on road portion. The on road portion was the one I wasn't the most sure about, but I think the tester must have been with new driver students all day, so I probably seemed great at shifting and turning and everything else comparatively speaking. He actually said if things don't work at Cast-Crete I could try becoming a driving instructor. I don't think I am going to take him up on that though. So, I'm thinking great I passed in one try, we submitted the paperwork for my company car a week ahead of the test, I'll probably be getting my car sometime this week, I mean it was probably the largest reason I took the job in the first place, even more so than the salary which I could have gotten at a couple of places. BUT, it turns out that the regional manager (the guy who is my boss's boss's boss and reports directly to the owner of the company) had his lease just expire on his 700 series BMW, so until he gets another one, he'll be driving MY car (which I just found out is a silver metallic car :). NICE! Really though its not that big a deal, I shouldn't have to wait more than 2-3 weeks before I'll be able to get it and I've already waited 5 1/2 months so a couple more days isn't that big of a deal. I have been getting more and more paranoid lately though, because things have slowed down so drastically, even since when I started I am wondering how much longer the company is going to want to keep me on the payroll when I'm just learning things and not making them all that much money. Then again there has got to be a dumber trainee than myself out there, well I hope at least.
Anywho, now I'm focusing more on the delivery part of the job which means I still have to drive my semi and this time with a load on and take it to job sites. At least I don't have to work weekends more than once a month now. The day of my test was my 13th straight day of work and a 10 hour day at that. Good to hear you were all doing well and homecoming was an absolute blast. Same thing next year? And as always if the 40 degree weather up there isn't treating you well, you should know its 80 down here, if you ever wanted to visit and go to the beach that is, granted it has been getting down to about 45 late at night so bring at least 1 long sleeve shirt. :)

Still no car, but i had to share this

http://www.wesh.com/news/14589276/detail.html

I definitely do not live in Iowa any more. And is it horrible of me to think this is funny? Maybe there is such a thing as cosmic justice, though its a little harsh.