tropical storm your face

So in case any of you have not heard a tropical storm is approaching us very soon, in fact technically I think we are in it now. I am kind of excited about it and scared. I am not too worried pretty much because no one around here is, but then again this is the south and people are a little slower here if you get my gist. I think all we are expecting is heavy winds around 40 mph at the max and flash flooding but we are in west Raleigh and I believe it is higher ground. Apart from the storm I will be doing homework this weekend and looking for furniture. We are hitting the furniture stores this weekend for the memorial day weekend sales.

So far we have planned a few things for the future. We need to buy furniture such as a couch, kitchen table, washer and dryer, a desk, and besides furniture we may end up getting another kitty. This time I get to pick him/her which will be an it out. I think we will stick with the Harry Potter names, but as to which name we are not sure until we see it. I am kind of keen on Neville, for Neville Longbottom.

Let me think what else is new, hmmm, well school is ok. I am not sure if I wrote about this or not last time, but instead of being a TA I was bumped up to an RA. For those of you who do not know a TA is a teaching assistant mainly you are the profs slave and grade grade grade, and if the prof is lazy enough you teach the class. Instead I am an RA, research assistant. Now I am working for a prof on a project. The project I have is the PULSAR reactor here on campus is a 1 MW reactor. They want to see if it is plausible to upgrade to a 4 MW reactor. I will be doing the in depth analysis of this possibility and provide a roadmap to the upgrade.

The project actually really interest me a lot and I am looking forward to diving into it. However, this is not final but I think I will just do my masters here. The east coast right now just is not me. It is pretty here but I need seasons, and less bugs. So I have been thinking about what I can do, and I have been thinking about finishing my masters here then trying to get hired on at INL and getting my PhD at ISU. That is what my mentor did and now he is making the big bucks after only 3 or 4 years working at INL. Plus after last summer I realized I actually really enjoy it in Idaho.

Other news, my friend John and Harmony arrived last weekend with their new baby Skyler whom we met tonight. He is a really cute baby, I am still scared to hold babies so Kailey held him. I probably will eventually hold him, so far I have not held a baby in my life so that is why I am a little apprehensive. Anyways that's all for tonight.

Love and kisses,
Rick

To leave you with a quote:
"Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, and why we died. All that matters is that today, two stood against many. Valor pleases you, so grant me this one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, the HELL with you!"
~Conan the Barbarian

hot hot hot

We made it. We are here in North Carolina now. It took 4 days to get here but we made it in one piece. Do not let the north part fool you because we are in the south. Our apartment is great air conditioning is splendid, I think I would die without it. However, the bugs are not so good. There are bugs everywhere. Especially wood cockroaches, which I have been told are not that bad, but they are still COCKROACHES!! They do not have those where I come from and we have them in our apartment. So today's plan of action is filling in all the holes in my apartment around the pipes and what not.

Yesturday was my first encounter with one, I won the morning battle but they were too quick for me in the evening. I have been debating to get some spiders and just throw them in the house, big ones so they will eat the cockroaches. I have been told the reason the wood cockroaches are in such great numbers is because of the heavily wood surroundings, I say, "I could use a oak kitchen table cut them down". But I think there is such things as southern hippies so they do not.

So as far as my cross country journey is concerned not much happened. Kailey and I left Sunday night. Spent the night in The Dalles with my parents. Then we drove to Salt Lake City on Monday and stayed with my aunt. Tuesday we drove halfway through Nebraska, saw a lot of corn, saw some more corn the next day. Saw fewer corn the next and eventually went through St. Louis which was white knuckled, as well as Louisville. Then magically we are not in Raliegh. It was very humid the day we got here and the day we unloaded, which incase you do not know humidity is a new concept to Kailey and I, and we do not like it one bit. But it dried up a little and wasn't too bad the past few days then today it kicked in again.

Unloading sucked, Kailey and I unloaded everything except our dressers the first day we were here. We are now unpacked, however the office is a mess with stuff laying everywhere, but that is my doing. We have had to buy a lot of furniture since we could not fit it all in the truck, incase you did not know we split the cost of the truck with a friend of mine. So far I have got a book shelf (need another) another shelf organizer thingy, cd rack. I still need another shelf, couch, desk for kailey. We left a lot behind, and it kind of sucks but we will get through it, so far I have not touched the loan I took out and I think it is time too.

Lately I have been debating the couch option. We talked about getting a futon for now, but last night I kind of decided we should just get a couch. They have pretty good sales going on right now and most furniture places deliver, so that would cut the cost of us having to rent a U-haul just to get it to our apartment. Plus I really do not like futons much at all. If I am going to fork over $100 on it a I might as well spend another couple hundred and get a nice couch. So I think Wednesday we are going furniture shopping.

Anywho that is all I will write for now sorry for lack of pictures those will be here shortly.

Love and kisses,
Rick

To leave you with a quote:
"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."
~Einstein

damned if you do damned if you don't

Goodbye Idaho!!! I am just about done here, in fact the end may be sooner than thought but I had better not get my hopes up. So the experiment I was supposed to run Wednesday-Friday is going to probably be postponed due to the moron effect. This other group was running experiments and has been taking up part of the loop we need. They were supposed to be done about 3 weeks ago and that has caused much delay. Well last Friday they told us they were done, it turns out they are not and will be running tomorrow. So tomorrow I am going to find out from my mentor if I will be able to even do anything by Friday. If not, I am out of here. I can't stand to sit in my office and do nothing, I am sick of that. I just want to go home now.

I am very disappointed with this summer. I have talked to many people that had internships at other labs. When they got there the lab had their housing check ready for them as well as travel reimbursement. The other labs also have your computer ready to go with all the security clearances you need. This summer I get here, I do not have an office to begin with. I mainly took over someone else’s office. The housing and travel reimbursement I did not get until about my 5th week here. My project has been up in the air all summer. I have had to do mini projects to keep busy, and to help on other peoples projects. It has been frustrating to get anything done.

Most interns do not come to national labs for the money; they come for the practical experience. So far I have had none. Last summer I designed some stuff on the computer, and was promised this summer when I came back we would run the experiment the first two weeks I was here, and for the rest of the summer I was supposed to write a CFD code to match our experiment. Well so far I have done neither and it is frustrating and very disappointing. This lab is trying to become a world class lab, and if it keeps screwing around its interns like it has this summer then people will spread the word and no one will want to work here. Especially at the site, because riding a bus for 3 hours a day is not worth it. If you work at the site for 30 years you will spend 2 full years on a bus, that means 24 hours a day 365 days a year on a bus. That my friends is sad, you figure if the lab wants someone to go through that then they should at least treat their people the way a world class lab would.

If you want an idea of what it’s like here read "Catch 22" that is what the politicians are like here. They want you to do something but at the same time the thing you do is against their policy. It is just a cluster jam.

The good news it that I only have less than a week. I will be coming home soon and far far away from here. I will be glad to get home it has been a hard summer. Particularly being away from Kailey. I miss her a lot and I go a little bit stir crazy without her. The first week here I didn't really eat dinners because I am used to eating with her (ie she cooks most of the time I admit it). Anyways I miss Kailey a lot.

Love and kisses,
Rick

To leave you with a quote:
"Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach. "Is Orr crazy?" "He sure is," Doc Daneeka said. "Can you ground him?" "I sure can but first he has to ask me to. That's part of the rule." "Then why doesn't he ask you to?" "Because he's crazy," Doc Daneeka said. "He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had. Sure I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to." "That's all he has to do to be grounded?" "That's all. Let him ask me." "And then you can ground him?" Yossarian asked. "No, then I can't ground him." "You mean there's a catch?" "Sure there is a catch," Doc Daneeka replied. "Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy."
~Catch 22

if life gives you lemons take a shot of tequilla

Life is kind of funny sometimes. The past two days have been the worse days in a long time. Yesterday was particularly bad. However, Kailey and I worked everything out. I changed my email stuff and everything is hopefully going to be smooth for awhile.

Then today when I got to work I had an email from Sallie Mae (my loan people) and it said my faxed had been received. Just for fun I wanted to check and see if on the web it said my application was incomplete. Instead of the predicted message it said in a big giant font, “Congratulations your loan has been approved dispersal date is for...". I was so excited I called Kailey and told her.

The only bad thing is the dispersal date is for the 9th. I needed it now. I am going to go to the bank tomorrow and see if I can't get a credit card or something for a just in case thing. I would probably pay for a lot of the gas with the card that way I'd have money in the bank and when I get my loan I can pay the card off and cut it up.

In less than two weeks I will be in Raleigh starting a new chapter with Kailey. I am very excited. I am so happy she is coming with me. The more and more I think about it, I can't imagine life without her. The first few weeks there are going to be rough really rough but we will manage. But we will have each other and that is all I need, well that and a place to rest my head.

My parents are going to help Kailey pack up the rest of our stuff either Saturday or Sunday. I would like it very much if Kailey went to her parents house the rest of the week. To be honest it is one thing I wish I could do as well. So I would like her to but I don't know what she has planned. I just know she will get home sick and her mom and dad will get daughter sick, it would be good for them to spend that week together, plus it may help Kailey keep her sanity for that week (wink wink at you Kailey).

As for me my mentor is busy Monday and Tuesday so I have to go set up the instruments by myself those days. It will not be so bad. Better than today, I am not really even sure why I came in to work today to be honest. I have nothing to do at the site. It is my last day here, so I guess I could take my stuff home.

Love and kisses,
Rick

To leave you with a quote:
"You're gonna eat lightnin' and you're gonna crap thunder!"
~from Rocky I

the horror the horror

Man the past two days have been really horrible. It is like a living nightmare.



It started yesterday when I called my loan people. My application did not get processed again because the drivers license photo I sent was unclear. I blew the thing up to the size of half a page and faxed it to myself to double check see if it was clear, it was. Also this was the second time I had sent it. So panicked ensued and I rushed to EROB to photo copy and fax it again this time each side was an 8.5" x 11" so it had better work now. That was very stressful because they said it will take another 5 days to process my application and then another 2 weeks after that to get any money. So I am not very happy about that at all.

Work was very slow all day, thus the reason I had so much time to deal with the loan people. However, the next horrible thing that happened is when I got home my computer had the blue screen of death. I had started to run my anti-virus program before I left for work. Apparently that was not a good plan. I had to reinstall everything, and I lost everything that was on it.

So that was yesterday. To make things worse this morning I got a text message from Kailey that was not good. So I called to see what was going on, and she informed me that she received emails and stuff from me that was bad news. So I went and checked everything and it turns out someone figured out my password and broke into my myspace account and my email account. The myspace they didn't change the password, but they changed my main email account password which really stinks. I finally figured it out and made a new password after forever and a day. But that doesn't change the fact that this person whoever it was has screwed my personal life up big time. I am not happy about this at all. Why can't people just be nice and not screw with me.