You Don't Plan Sincerity, You Make It Up on the Spot

We, the jury, find the defendant Denny Crane.

Oh, right, sorry. We, the jury, find the defendant Denny Crane not guilty.

I sat down to write a post last night and realized I had nothing to say, so I skipped it. I've still updated more recently than two of the three linked bloggers, so keep your hate mail for another time. Better yet, direct it all at Brent. That's a solution we can all support.

Today, I skipped class and went to the College to Career Career Fair in Nashville. Lee served as driver on this trip, and Amy was the lunch consultant. Of the two jobs, it's hard to say which is more important. Certainly, I don't want to end up in a wreck or lost, but lunch is the most important meal of the day.

I got nominated the boss of the group at one of the early booths at the show. Excellent. Wherever that guy was from is where I want to work. Anybody remember? Anyone? Bueller? It's not important. I'm sure I've got something from the company. It's in the pile in the middle of my bed, with all the other junk and most of the cool shwag (sp?). Of the freebies I was able to snag, my favorites are the Cummins (diesel engine company) water bottle, the Baker-Hughes (petroleum pumping) frisbee and laundry bag (yes, a laundry bag, crazy), the SSR (HVAC work in large buildings) mints, and the Jacobs ESTS (support Marshall Space Flight Center in all activities) sunglasses. I could have gotten more, but it was mostly things I'd either break or break stuff with, so maybe it's for the best.

Careers, right. I talked to several companies (I said 15-20 on the exit survey), gave out maybe 10 resumes, and have brochures from most of them. No one is really there to hire today, but a couple of companies were doing selections for interviews based on resumes received today. Most of the recruiters say to apply online, which I understand to a point. It's paperless and an additional step you'll do if you're truly interested in the company. However, I may be interested, but lazy or lose your card or something. With me, it's probably the first one, but others may have more of a problem with something else. Anyway, I went to the trouble of printing the resumes, the least these companies could do is take one.

Lee, Amy, and I mostly stuck together as we went through the show. It puts the recruiters off a little to talk to three students at once (and gives us control of the information flow), and I know it's easier for me to be in a comfort zone with some backup around. We did split up a little, if there was something that was more math-related, Amy went and talked to them while Lee and I found a more engineering company to talk to. Most places looking for math majors also look for engineers, so that was convenient for travelling in a group. The FBI was there, and practically ignored Lee and me once the recruiter found out that there was a math major nearby. There were a couple that did that in the other direction, too. Missile Defense and related areas are looking to be interesting. The CIA is hiring (I didn't tell you that). Everyone seems to be expanding, so maybe I'll actually get a job this time around. Lee and I talked to several companies in Memphis. Cummins has a branch in Memphis. We tried to talk to FedEx, but it was Kinko's not the real FedEx. There was at least one more, but the name escapes me. Not really what I'm looking for, but I'll talk to anyone who might give me an engineering job. The Cummins recruiters heard "engineering" come out of our mouths and bum-rushed us. The water bottle was worth it, though.

I added some more output graphs to my trajectory code. I am now outputting all three position coordinates vs. time, range vs. time, all three velocity components vs. time, a 3-D plot of position, absolute speed vs. time, and the three direction angles vs. time. It's not really more work to do all that, but it sounds impressive. I have also adjusted some numbers in order to meet the requirements of the Sergeant missile. The Flandro said to see if we could. I just kept adjusting the numbers that I just made up until the mission specifics were about the same as those quoted on what he gave us. It's easy to engineer when you don't have any clue what you're doing.

For the record, I'm staying as far away from the shuttlecock jokes as possible. More tomorrow.