Meat & Three

Yesterday was the Career Fair up in Nashville, and it was quite the learning experience. The companies I talked to, + sign indicates cool schwag:

FFA (Federal Aviation Administration): The job would involve designing control towers and whatnot, lots of travel over the region (from the Mississippi to the East Coast, from Kentucky to the Carribbean). Cool job, not so big on the travel.

National Instruments: The mostly make widgets in the techincal field, for various private and governmental organiztion (cool, I guess). They're mostly looking for people to join their Engineering Leadership Program (they mentioned phone sales and my eyes glazed over).

SSR (Smith, Seckman, and Reid Inc.): Engineering consulting firm based in Nashville, with locations in Memphis, Hernando, Knoxville, and other mostly southern cities. Sounds like an ok place with pretty good benefits (good). It's mostly HVAC (not bad, not at all). Very nice recruiters. +

TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority): Official Motto: Dam It! (I kid. But it should be). They have all sorts of power plant, HVAC, and design jobs that open on a rolling basis (good). Not much bad, just general job availaibility is unpredictable. +

FedEx Kinko's: Just Kinko's. Jerks.

Y-12 National Security Complex: Located in Oak Ridge, TN, they moniter weapons or something (good). Kinda shady. Not many job opportunities for mechanical engineers (bad).

Cummins, Inc.: They make and recondition diesel engines (good). Headquartered in Columbus, Indiana with a location in Memphis. When the recruiters heard Jeff and I say "engineer," they were on us like white on rice (very good). +

FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation): Weren't interested in engineers, but they were interested in math majors. Go figure.

M2E Consulting Engineers: Engineering consultants, mostly construction work with some forensic engineering (very good). Based in Miami and soon to be in Las Vegas (not so good). Seemed pretty laid back.

Jacobs ESTS: They do a large part of the contracting for NASA in Hunstville (good). As I understand it, they're doing a lot of work on the Ares project (really good) and are expanding in the next couple of years (really really good). +

CIA (Central Intelligence Agency): +

PEO (Program Executive Office Missiles & Space): If it involves a rocket engine in Hunstville, they know about it. And probably helped design it (good). Also hiring a lot of people in the near future. Apparently, there are still Apollo engineers still kicking. +

Nuclear Fuel Services: Honestly, I don't remember much other than their location in Oak Ridge. And probably some nuclear-related work. +

Baker Hughes: Oil drilling support company, from drilling to searching to refining. Based in Texas (suprise). Very nice recruiters, perceptive enough to realize I won't read anything they give me. The German engineering manager guy was a little too eager, though. He really put it out there. The whole experience gave me a "don't drink the kool-aid" vibe. ++

Jeff and I looked for Parker-Hannifin, but they were no-shows. They have an office in Memphis, and make automotive couplings. Garrett worked for them for a while during college.

After the fair, we went to lunch at the White Trash Cafe. The food was excellent, and cheap. I had the meat loaf, mashed 'taters, and fried apples - cornbread on the side. We're told that they have murder mystery theater nights on Fridays. Neat.

Today Jeff and I went up to school to meet with Amy and Scruffy to work on our programs for Missiles. We figured out how to get our programs to stop when we want, by using the bisection method. All it took was a minor felony on my part (I self-checked some books from the library). It's a victim-less crime. Anyway, the bisection method works for now, but may not be sufficient as we add more and more realism to our programs. We'll see.

I'm really beginning to loathe carbon fiber characterization. It took 3 hours to run 12 samples. It should have taken 1 hour, tops. Long story, and I won't go into it now.

Happy Valentine's day to everyone in a relationship. Happy Singles-Awareness Day to the rest of you.