on customer service

To those whom I adore,

Ok so I have not finished writing my super update yet. But I am writing it. For those of you who did not know because I am pretty sure I dreamt of writing this but did not actually do so, I was planning on writing a super update. After reading some of my last few entrees since being here I came to the realization that they suck and are not informative on what is going on in my life. So if you are now expecting a super update do not worry it will come soon. Unfortunately this blog will not be one; instead it will be more of my increasingly southern rambling.

I have come to the conclusion the south is contagious. I use the word contagious instead of a phrase "grows on you" because the south is something I do not want. If you read between the lines in the bible you will see that in when the end of days comes it will start in the south. Yes the south is not enjoyable for me; however I am slowly starting to speak redneck slang not by choice either. This form of dialect is just not civilized. Kailey has caught be a few times. My subconscious is cheating me out of sounding educated. I am starting to not talk as much in public for fear of picking up more southern dialect. Constantly I am surrounded by words and strange accents like being in a leprosy colony. I do not want to touch anything for fear of picking up this disease that makes even the smartest of people appear stupid.

Aside from the how stupid people sound I have been exploring this concept of southern hospitality and yet to find it. People are far ruder here than anywhere I have been, well maybe not as rude as the gentlemen of London. I was expecting there to be a lot of old people sitting on their porches drinking sweet tea and playing banjos. Instead there are people driving 100 mph and deciding they do not need break lights or blinkers. It is amazing that people are allowed to drive in this state.

Now I would like to take you on an adventure of trying to buy something in the south. Before I start I just wanted to say the stories my parents told me about the south are all true. So to begin if you are trying to order food or get any types of customer service do not expect it to be on your time. No, no, no, people here may be getting paid by the hour, but what they do in an hour’s time here would be ten minutes of work back west.

So take for example Kailey and I go to McDonalds and want to get lunch. We are waiting, no not in drive through, no wrong again not in line, we are waiting at the counter. About ten feet away from us is four employees having a conversation. They keep talking and laughing all while our stomachs moan for that sweet greasy food. One of them looks at us up and down smirking, judging, and mocking with their beady little eyes.

Finally, one of them, a manager no less sees us and our hungry faces and orders one of his minions to take our order, it was the beady eyed one. So slowly like a kid dragging their feet in protest “mozies” on over to us. Slams both her hands on the counter hangs her head down slumping almost as if she was about to pass out from exhaustion. I think she is reading something when all of the sudden I hear something, it was a whisper or so I thought. I tell her “I am sorry but I didn’t hear you” she replies, “Watchawansi”. I did not know this word and after a second of replaying what she said in my mind I realized that in some way she was communicating to us that she wanted us to order. We proceed to order with her interrupting every now and then to ask us to repeat that, “A number 2 with a coke”, “A what?”, “A, number, 2, with, a, coke” I repeat. The entire ordeal took about 10 minutes from the time we got to the counter until we finished ordering.

We have run into more and more situations such as the one I just described. This weekend we will see other parts of NC, we are heading to the coast tomorrow for the day. I am not sure where we are going yet maybe to where the Wright Brother’s first flew, or maybe Wilmington. I am not sure; I may go check out Cape Fear as well. I am looking forward to seeing the ocean again and I know Kailey has been looking forward to getting out. It will be fun I hope.

Sorry I did not post any pictures but this site can be wierd sometimes and likes to not upload the pictures onto the blog in a timely manner. I had a sweet picture of a redneck limo that I have seen around here lately. It is a pickup truck with a super extended cab, it is absolutely ridiculous.

Love,
Rick

To leave you with a quote:
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
~Socrates

It may say North Carolina but make no mistake it's the south!

To everyone I adore, sorry it has been so long since I wrote last. I have not been terribly busy; I just have not been around the internet. I still have not got the net at my apartment so everything has to be done at school and well I do not like to be at school any longer than I have to be. School is ok, I ended up dropping one class because I spent about 30 hours on the first homework set and only got 1 of 5 questions done and it was incorrect. It made my brain pop so I just dropped the class and called it quits on that class and took up research credits instead. So far the research has been reading a paper that was a senior design project of last year’s seniors. I finished a long time ago and I have been waiting since to do something worth while.

Kailey and I are doing good. She got a job at Kroger's, they own Fred Meyer's on the west coast, but here they are just a grocery store. Her job really sucked so she kept applying to other places, which is a good thing because I didn't think that job was going to be good for her. Pretty much there she had to stand in one place all day long and not move. So the only people she had conversations with were customers, some of them angry. Anyways she got a job at a baby/little kid store called Gymboree (not sure of spelling) she likes it there and she gets to interact with her co-workers and friendlier customers for the most part. She then got another job at a place called Limited Too which is about a minute walk from Gymboree. That is good because she can work both jobs and get a full 40-50 hours a week. I am very grateful now she can quit Kroger's. So as of right now she technically has 3 jobs, soon to be 2 though. I am really proud of her.

Let's see what else is going on, hmmm my Dad just finished our deck. For those of you who know about the french doors going to nowhere, well now they have a home.

As you can see it looks awesome. I am very proud to say that I had nothing to do with this project what-so-ever! It is good being away sometimes but I do miss home a lot. Now I guess my parents can spend that extra cash on themselves that they had previously been forking over for the ehancement of my brain. They are currently in Mexico on a marlin fishing trip with my aunt and uncle. Below you can see the first "marlin" my dad has caught.

No need to worry, there were professonals around to help him reel that big guy in. Oh I make myself giggle. I just thought that was a funny picture so I put it up here. I think that their actual trip will be awesome. I would love to go marlin fishing. I am no fan of fish but I love fishing. Could you imagine reeling in a 150-300 lb fish. Wow, I know I can't

As far as any vacation plans go for me, I want to go to the beach the next day that Kailey and I have off together. I hear it is really beautiful here, but so far I have not seen it. I miss home a lot. I miss mountains. I miss Oregonians. I miss people who know how to drive. I miss customer service. Things really are different here, and sometimes it has been a hard adjustment. Anyways, if you are reading this then I probably miss you, since only family and friends have this blog address. Anyways everyone should keep in touch. I have to head off to seminar now, and then catch a bus home.

Hugs and kisses,
Rick

To leave you with a quote:
"My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it."
~Abraham Lincoln

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