The title says it all. Almost immediately after I completed my first major project at Barco, I got shifted to another project and it has been draining both my time and energy ever since–perhaps my health as well as I’m currently ill. A significant portion of our engineering resources have been allocated to meet some tight deadlines issued from our customer. My seemingly endless task has been to test our system designs against a specification and pursue any and all issues that we can identify. I can only say that it has been an increasingly frustrating experience and I can only hope that it ends on a positive note.
I have largely left my website in neglect. I have not touched the code in weeks and anyone can see that content updates are increasingly infrequent. I can only apologize and restate that I do make it my goal to increase the quality and frequency of content I place on this website.
Birthdays are different for me now than they used to be. I didn’t receive a big stack of presents, nor did I expect to receive many, if any. The meaning of the moment has shifted over the years.
This year, my Dad gave me a better present in the form of a surprise family reunion (of sorts). It’s all too rare a thing for any significant subset of our family to be able to get together in one place at one time. I’ve grown to greatly appreciate those few moments when we can all gather for one occasion.
The 2005 Elementary Science Olympiad was held for elemntary school students in the Auburn/Opelika area. The event is hosted at Auburn University by the College of Sciences and Mathematics. My uncle has organized the Hot Air Balloons event for the past several years and I was in town for the weekend so I got an opportunity to help out with the event.
The premise is simple enough. Teams of up to three kids from each school construct a paper hot air balloon that they bring with them to the event. Each team is given a time window in which to fill the balloon and make any spot repairs or changes they need before they release the balloon. At the end of 15 minutes, the balloons must be released. The balloons are judged on aesthetics, flight time, and maximum altitude achieved.
My job was to time the flight time and filling time, as well as to operate the heat guns providing the buoyancy for the balloons. It turned out to be a more fun than I expected.
Some of the teams did quite well, sending the balloon all the way to the roof and achieving hang times extending for the better part of a minute. On the other hand, there were some teams that didn’t get their balloons off the ground. Fairly large balloons with a traditional shape tended to do the best. Most of the teams waited the full 15 minutes to release their balloons, but a few of the higher ranking teams released early with good success.
All in all, it was a nice break from the norm to complement a nice weekend out of town. I wish all the kids best of luck next year!
This past week has been quite eventful. I got the call Monday morning from Patrice over at Barco offering me a full-time job as a software/hardware systems integration engineer. I was quite excited about the offer, but I asked for a week’s time to think it over. I scheduled a meeting on Tuesday with Lara Hanley over at the Georgia Tech Alumni Association to discuss my options.
I drove down to Dothan Wednesday to discuss my offer and spend a nice evening with my parents and grandparents on Mom’s birthday. The kitchen has been completely stripped of wallpaper and a few other things in preparation for a thorough remodeling. It seems like I come home to a new house each time I visit now. I completed my 2004 tax returns Thursday morning with the help of TurboTax Deluxe 2004 and made my yearly IRA contribution. Even with all the hand-holding TurboTax does, I still feel daunted by the tax code. After a nice lunch at Pizza Hut, I bade farewell to Mom and drove up to Auburn for the remainder of the day. There I was able to partake of ping pong, PC troubleshooting, and a nice home-cooked meal.
I returned to Atlanta on Friday to formally accept the job offer from Barco. I tracked down the offer package at our leasing office, filled out some paperwork, and sent some e-mails to get everything squared away. Some of the details will have to wait until Monday to be finalized, and I don’t yet know when I can start working. Titus and I hit ProMove on Saturday before heading up to the Norcross and Duluth areas to look for a new apartment. My Aunt Kathy and Uncle Tinker were in town to see the Fry’s and they graciously treated us to a nice dinner at Applebee’s. Whew, what a week!
I showed up bright and early at 8:30 AM yesterday for a round of interviews at BarcoView, the Duluth branch of international display and visualization expert Barco. The tour started the HR representative, who asked me a brief set of questions and then filled me in on the company’s history and benefits package. Next, I met my potential boss and he asked me a few more questions and then filled me in on what his group does, which is primarily to do build-to-order work for speciality markets like military, avionics, and medical devices. After that, I met with a couple more Barco employees who were also Georgia Tech alumni and we discussed the kind of work they did and various trends in technology. Quite honestly, it felt more like a tour than an interview. Finally, I really did get a tour of the facilities with my would-be supervisor where I got to see some neat stuff like the assembly floor, the QA department, and a high-resolution display prototype (one of only two in the world). I felt like the visit went quite well and everyone I met was nice and personable.
