Still standing

Between a colossal case of Writer's Block, the new job and the time-compressed summer class schedule it's hard out here to write a post once in a while. The high points of the summer:

New job

I am know a shop tech/ CAD draftsman at LA Research and Engineering. That's LA as in Lower Alabama, not the massive smog/smug maelstrom on the west coast.

This is a small firm which generally picks up small one-off projects. The pay blows but it abounds with wonderful opportunities and learning experiences. A fair number of engineering students pick up summer co-ops with large companies and better pay, to end up as go-fers or copy bitches. All in all I'm happy to wrap my mind around projects ranging from re-configuring the x-rays at my school's new Health Sciences building to developing machinery for pet supply manufacturers. All sorts of weird shit comes down the pike but at the end of the day I get to cut my CAD teeth, and then go back to the machine shop and build the job from scratch. In the process I've become a decent welder and a semi-competent machinist; life is good.

New Classes

Taking two classes over the summer is a PITA; I'm glad the GI Bill considers 7 semester hours over the summer to be a full-time schedule. I've made up for the spring CAL II debacle, and wrapped up my last gen-ed requirement with a microeconomics class. This week will bring about finals and a much-needed respite from the morning and night classes that bracket my workday.

New Place

In the middle of all this, I somehow found a way to move all my shit into an apartment five minutes' walk from three decent bars and a corner grocery, to say nothing of a ten minute walk from campus. If I didn't have the 45-minute commute to work each day I wouldn't need to drive at all.

That's about it so far. I've relented on kicking around the Obamatard now that the kool-aid has worn off and more people have finally seen that ass-clown for what he is, as his idiotic economic measures fail and his polls plummet.

More to follow.