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| On Thursday I got my offer from JPL. It's pretty good, but I asked for a few days to think about it. So, I've been thinking and I'm going to accept it. It's a technical job where I could learn a lot, I'd be making enough money to live decently and be able to pay off student loans, the benefits are good, and I like the area. I'm going to officially accept tomorrow. I've been looking at housing in the Pasadena area, and it's so expensive compared to what I'm used to! Most one-bedrooms are about $1500/month. Here my roommates and I rent a 2-bedroom that's almost double the square footage for about half the price...
SWE regional conference is this weekend in Pasadena, so I'll be headed back there on Friday. I'm hoping to have a little time to drive around while I'm there, but we'll see. I guess there are 9 of us going so far, the best conference attendance we've ever had. Even better than the year that conference was in Phoenix! It's kind of weird, because the reason most of us go is the career fair. I won't need the career fair, though, because I have a job lined up... There are plenty of workshops that sound interesting that I can go to instead. I was thinking of going to the career fair anyway and getting information on available internships for the underclassmen, but almost our entire section is going. There will be 8 other people getting that info for them, so I might as well just go to the workshops. I guess the Pasadena conference center is right by the outdoor mall I went to while I was there. It's on the same street as the parking garage entrance. It'll be nice to sort of know where I'm going.
Other than that, not much is going on. The first round of homework is due this week, so I've been trying to get all of that together. I have my Materials lab tomorrow, which I'm not particularly fond of. There's an odd number of people in the class and the teacher won't allow groups of three, so I'm the odd one out and have to do the entire lab myself without a partner. It's a pretty stupid way of doing things, we should at least rotate so that I'm not by myself every week, but on the other hand I was the second one finished last week, so I guess it's ok.
We also voted on the project we'll be doing for Detail Design, the second semester of the capstone sequence. We'll be building a satellite on the air bearing and making it move using thrusters. So, it's basically the same project that my class did last year for Experimental Space Systems, except we'll be using less technical equipment and sending commands through a wireless router on the satellite. It's frustrating, because I really don't want to do the same project again. There will probably also be a lot of communications issues within the team. It's hard to work with your fellow classmates because there's no hierarchy. My class is really competitive, so there's this constant jockeying for position that's enough to drive a person crazy. It certainly makes working on projects stressful and altogether not very enjoyable. It's a class that we should be looking forward to, but honestly I'm really not. But, we voted, and I got outvoted so now I have to do this project. So, I'm going to try to grin and bear it, I guess I really have no other option. In a few months I'll be working for a real company making money and working on things I actually care about, so I'm trying to just get through.
I asked to be on the team that facilitates the sending of commands and receiving of data. At least I'd find that somewhat interesting and I might be able to use some of my computer networking experience from my internship. Plus, the people who are more inclined to work on that sort of thing seem easier to get along with than the rest... The teacher picks the groups everybody is on in the end, so hopefully I'll get what I want...
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| Well, I got back from CA yesterday. I had a job interview there with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who design and operate many of NASA's missions.
I left on Thursday, which means I missed the first day of all of my Thursday classes. I drove to Phoenix, then flew to LAX. My flight got in at about 2:30pm, but by the time I got my luggage and rental car I didn't get to the highway until around 3:30. There was some traffic, but not a whole lot. Then I hit the 605 freeway, and it was constant stop-and-go traffic from there to my hotel. JPL is in Pasadena, so the internet said that if there was no traffic I'd be able to get there in about 40 minutes. It ended up taking me close to two hours...
Once I checked into the hotel I went out and found dinner, then drove from the hotel to JPL so that I'd be sure I knew where I was going in the morning. I made it there fine, and it only took about 15 minutes. It took over 30 minutes to get back, though, traffic was pretty bad. I didn't know how traffic would be in the morning, especially if I took a wrong turn somewhere. I left an hour and a half early, stopped and got breakfast at McDonalds and headed over. There wasn't much traffic at all, so I ended up being almost an hour early. There was a park nearby, so I parked there and waited for a while.
Once I got to the visitor's center, there were three other people also waiting for interviews. We talked for a while, they were all getting their Masters degrees in May. Then I met with HR and through the course of the day had 6 interviews. Everything seemed to go really well. I was asked to give a 45-minute presentation entitled "How I Can Contribute to the Success of JPL", so I did that. It's pretty typical for PhD's to give presentations during interviews, so the section that I interviewed with decided everyone should give a presentation.
I ate lunch in the cafeteria with my sponsoring supervisor. The cafeteria was really nice and the food was great. Afterward we had a little time so she took me to the Von Karman Museum. There were models of all the spacecraft JPL had been a part of, including a full-scale model of one of the MERs (like Spirit and Opportunity). There was also a full-scale model of the Galileo satellite, which took up most of one room. After lunch I had more interviews.
When I met with the HR lady again at the end of the day she said she already had a message from one of the ladies I interviewed with who wants to give me an offer. That lady works on ground systems for satellites. I've been told at school that since it's typically electrical engineers that work on communications systems, and that since I'm an aerospace engineer, I may not have the knowledge that companies are looking for yet. I mentioned that to the interviewer, and she said she's looking to add more diversity to the people in her group, so she's actually looking for someone with an aerospace background rather than strictly an electrical background. She mentioned that she wants to have one of the two new-hires she's planning to hire work quarter-time on the Dawn mission that just launched in September. Dawn is going to the two largest bodies in the asteroid belt, a very small planet and an asteroid. It would be really cool to get to work on that mission...
The HR lady also told me that I should go to old town Pasadena that night and look around on Colorado Blvd. I'm not sure I was in the area she told me to go to, but it was still really neat. There was this huge outdoor mall built on top of an enormous parking garage. When I parked, I was sure I would never again be able to find that car again. There were about 6 different entrances to the garage on two different streets and inside there were elevators everywhere. There are even two sets of terrace apartments that overlook the mall. It'd be pretty nice to live there, the mall is right there, Target is within walking distance, there's even a movie theater that you wouldn't have to drive to...
I flew back to Phoenix yesterday. If I had realized that the airport really is that close to the ocean, I probably would have gotten up and hour earlier and walked on the beach for a while before heading to the airport. My plane flew out over the ocean as we were leaving LAX. It was Saturday, so there really wasn't any smog and we had clear view of the area. The mountains are right there, the ocean is right there... It's definitely somewhere I could see myself living.
Now that I'm home I have to get back into classes and homework and all that...
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| Conference last weekend was fun. The career fair was huge, as expected. They said it's the largest engineering career fair in the country every year. Plus, most places actually have engineers at their booths instead of just HR people. It's nice to be able to ask the engineers about the work environment and that sort of thing. We didn't end up placing in Team Tech this year, but we had a good time anyway.
On Saturday night we walked around downtown Nashville. Everywhere had live music, so that was fun. We found a club that we could all get into and stayed there for a little while, but because it was an 18+ club and it was ladies night, it attracted quite a few men in their 40s-50s. The older men just lined the walls of the place and watched. It was creepy. One of them tapped Ashley on the shoulder and gave her a thumbs-up and we were out of there. Ashley and I walked down Broadway and went into about 4 different bars. The first place we went into was themed like a trailer park. There was a sort of patio room with cheap plastic furniture, then as you went back the rest of the place was decorated like you were in a trailer. It was strange but still kind of neat. The band there was really good. They were a cover band and played mostly country music. That was our favorite, and we stayed there for quite a while.
Once we got back to school, things were a little crazy since we'd missed three days of school. I hadn't missed anything important, but I also hadn't done any homework for 5 days and we were exhausted from staying up late and getting up early...
We've been working on Prelim stuff a lot still. We've been working on a computer model of the spacecraft lately. We've got our System Design Review on Wednesday, which is a two-hour presentation. It's supposed to have a lot of pictures in it, so we're working on generating lots of pictures. Yesterday Kyle and I figured out how to make movies out of our STK simulations, so those are pretty cool. I think everything is coming together pretty well.
We've got an idea for our Detail design project next semester, but we're not sure if it's going to happen or not. The teacher who is in charge of Detail is also my Attitude teacher, and he proposed in class last week that we try our hands at the latest X-Prize competition. You have to build a full-scale model spacecraft that lifts 50 meters off the ground, hovers there for 90 seconds, then moves horizontally about 100 meters to a target on the ground and lands. You then refuel the spacecraft and it has to go back to where it started. It's a really ambitious project, and nobody has been able to do it yet. It would be fun, though...
I'm still working on the job hunt. I got my extension from Lockheed, but I really want to be involved with spacecraft from the beginning of my career, I don't want to do a job outside my field for a few years with the hope of eventually maybe being able to transfer back into my field. At conference I talked to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which sounds appealing. I talked to them last year too. They're hiring patent examiners. Basically, anytime somebody applies for a patent, someone has to consider what they're trying to patent, research and see if something similar is already on file, and take care of the paperwork. You get to deal with the very latest technical developments in your field, and you job is to understand how things work. There's also technical reading and writing involved and a lot of details to consider. I think it's something I'd enjoy. I applied, so hopefully I'll hear back from that.
On Friday night Megan and I went out to dinner, then we went to this place downtown called The Raven. Dalia's boyfriend and his brother were going to be playing music there, so we decided to go listen. I'd heard them play before, and they're pretty good. It turned out to be a lot of fun. There were about 20 people there from school, plus people from the other local colleges. It was fun to sit and talk with a different group of people for a change.
Saturday was the first weather balloon launch of the semester. Kyle and John were the ones who got most everything set up, but I watched really closely and I think that I can do it now too. The one thing that didn't work out is that we weren't able to get data from the balloon payloads through the radio. It was weird, because we could hear the data but for whatever reason the computer couldn't record it. We were able to get the data through the internet from other stations, though, so it wasn't a big deal. We think there's a setting there we were missing.
Yesterday was also $1 movie day at the theater. Megan, Ashley, Ashley's boyfriend, a couple other guys, and I all went to see "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford". It was a pretty good movie, though a little long. Afterward we all went to Red Robin for supper. Then Megan, Ashley, and I went back and saw "Bee Movie". It was ok. There really aren't many good movies out right now. They're all bloody or political. Or both.
Today I worked on our SNI project in the machine shop. My group doesn't communicate very well, which makes us pretty inefficient. So far someone has ordered the wrong size I-beam and nobody knows what size of shaft we ordered for the motor. Everybody likes to feel important or something, so no information gets shared. It's pretty frustrating. I was given the task today of drilling holes in a bracket to mount on a base. I asked how big the holes should be and they said they'd let me pick. I asked where the bracket should be mounted and again they told me it was up to me. We have a computer model of what the final assembly should look like. That model has dimensions on it. I have no idea why we're randomly choosing bolt sizes and hole placements when all that is laid out in the model, but it explains why we've ordered the wrong sizes of two parts so far. I thought the point of making a computer model was to make sure everything fit before you started cutting anything. It's really annoying.
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| Conference last weekend was fun. The career fair was huge, as expected. They said it's the largest engineering career fair in the country every year. Plus, most places actually have engineers at their booths instead of just HR people. It's nice to be able to ask the engineers about the work environment and that sort of thing. We didn't end up placing in Team Tech this year, but we had a good time anyway.
On Saturday night we walked around downtown Nashville. Everywhere had live music, so that was fun. We found a club that we could all get into and stayed there for a little while, but because it was an 18+ club and it was ladies night, it attracted quite a few men in their 40s-50s. The older men just lined the walls of the place and watched. It was creepy. One of them tapped Ashley on the shoulder and gave her a thumbs-up and we were out of there. Ashley and I walked down Broadway and went into about 4 different bars. The first place we went into was themed like a trailer park. There was a sort of patio room with cheap plastic furniture, then as you went back the rest of the place was decorated like you were in a trailer. It was strange but still kind of neat. The band there was really good. They were a cover band and played mostly country music. That was our favorite, and we stayed there for quite a while.
Once we got back to school, things were a little crazy since we'd missed three days of school. I hadn't missed anything important, but I also hadn't done any homework for 5 days and we were exhausted from staying up late and getting up early...
We've been working on Prelim stuff a lot still. We've been working on a computer model of the spacecraft lately. We've got our System Design Review on Wednesday, which is a two-hour presentation. It's supposed to have a lot of pictures in it, so we're working on generating lots of pictures. Yesterday Kyle and I figured out how to make movies out of our STK simulations, so those are pretty cool. I think everything is coming together pretty well.
We've got an idea for our Detail design project next semester, but we're not sure if it's going to happen or not. The teacher who is in charge of Detail is also my Attitude teacher, and he proposed in class last week that we try our hands at the latest X-Prize competition. You have to build a full-scale model spacecraft that lifts 50 meters off the ground, hovers there for 90 seconds, then moves horizontally about 100 meters to a target on the ground and lands. You then refuel the spacecraft and it has to go back to where it started. It's a really ambitious project, and nobody has been able to do it yet. It would be fun, though...
I'm still working on the job hunt. I got my extension from Lockheed, but I really want to be involved with spacecraft from the beginning of my career, I don't want to do a job outside my field for a few years with the hope of eventually maybe being able to transfer back into my field. At conference I talked to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which sounds appealing. I talked to them last year too. They're hiring patent examiners. Basically, anytime somebody applies for a patent, someone has to consider what they're trying to patent, research and see if something similar is already on file, and take care of the paperwork. You get to deal with the very latest technical developments in your field, and you job is to understand how things work. There's also technical reading and writing involved and a lot of details to consider. I think it's something I'd enjoy. I applied, so hopefully I'll hear back from that.
On Friday night Megan and I went out to dinner, then we went to this place downtown called The Raven. Dalia's boyfriend and his brother were going to be playing music there, so we decided to go listen. I'd heard them play before, and they're pretty good. It turned out to be a lot of fun. There were about 20 people there from school, plus people from the other local colleges. It was fun to sit and talk with a different group of people for a change.
Saturday was the first weather balloon launch of the semester. Kyle and John were the ones who got most everything set up, but I watched really closely and I think that I can do it now too. The one thing that didn't work out is that we weren't able to get data from the balloon payloads through the radio. It was weird, because we could hear the data but for whatever reason the computer couldn't record it. We were able to get the data through the internet from other stations, though, so it wasn't a big deal. We think there's a setting there we were missing.
Yesterday was also $1 movie day at the theater. Megan, Ashley, Ashley's boyfriend, a couple other guys, and I all went to see "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford". It was a pretty good movie, though a little long. Afterward we all went to Red Robin for supper. Then Megan, Ashley, and I went back and saw "Bee Movie". It was ok. There really aren't many good movies out right now. They're all bloody or political. Or both.
Today I worked on our SNI project in the machine shop. My group doesn't communicate very well, which makes us pretty inefficient. So far someone has ordered the wrong size I-beam and nobody knows what size of shaft we ordered for the motor. Everybody likes to feel important or something, so no information gets shared. It's pretty frustrating. I was given the task today of drilling holes in a bracket to mount on a base. I asked how big the holes should be and they said they'd let me pick. I asked where the bracket should be mounted and again they told me it was up to me. We have a computer model of what the final assembly should look like. That model has dimensions on it. I have no idea why we're randomly choosing bolt sizes and hole placements when all that is laid out in the model, but it explains why we've ordered the wrong sizes of two parts so far. I thought the point of making a computer model was to make sure everything fit before you started cutting anything. It's really annoying.
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| First things first, I got my job offer letter from Lockheed today. It's to go back to New Jersey like I did last summer and continue evaluating more commercial off-the-shelf products they could use in their computer systems on naval ships. It's a really good offer, and it's pretty tempting. It is still early, though, and I'm really hoping to get a space-related job, so I asked for an extension. From what I hear it's pretty normal to ask for more time to decide. If I didn't get another offer, this one would be a good starting point for me. I've got a lot of advice coming at me from a lot of different people, but I think for now I'm just going to wait.
It's weird deciding if I want to go back to New Jersey or not. Sometimes I find myself wondering what my old co-workers or the other interns are doing right now. It's weird to live in a place for a few months, get used to the area and people, then leave and not know if you're ever going back there...
The SWE National Conference is in Nashville this weekend. We leave tomorrow afternoon and get into Nashville around 11:00pm. The Team Tech competition practice is first thing Thursday morning, so we'll be up bright and early to cheer Jordan on with her presentation. The career fair there is going to be huge, so I'm excited for that. There are over 250 companies that are attending, and I've got a list of about 10 that I'm really interested in talking to. Sometimes they even do on-the-spot interviews, so it's pretty exciting. We have Saturday night free, so we'll be exploring downtown Nashville. That should be pretty fun. Teresa even found some kind of club that we can all get into (Ashley and I are the only ones who are 21).
I've mostly been doing homework lately. I was in the design lab from 8:30am - 4:00pm on Saturday. That was pretty depressing. It was the preview day for all the high school students who wanted to come visit, so we could see them through the tiny design lab windows. We wanted to go warn them but chose not to. Ashley is a Campus Academic Mentor, so she had a three hour meeting with various students. One of them asked her if it's hard. Um, of course it's hard. It's rocket science. It's college. If the only question you can come up with when you're visiting your possible school is "is it hard?", you're never going to make it.
Prelim is coming along pretty well. I made an amazing simulation in STK (Satellite Tool Kit). Whenever our satellite is in view of the Earth, it draws a nice green line between the spacecraft and the station on Earth. It's kind of mesmerizing, because you can watch a video of it in 3-D. I was showing it off, when Yu said I should make it a cone instead of a line so the connection between our satellite and the Earth is 3-D when you watch the 3-D view. I told him I didn't know how, so he showed me. I almost think that I learn more useful information from my peers sitting in the design lab than in class sometimes. Anyway, now my sim is basically amazing. It also requires a special program to run, but I'll try to post pictures here sometime (I'm too lazy to find somewhere to upload them right now...)
Other than that, I haven't been doing much...
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