Holdin' On

So this week Wednesday is supposedly Ash Wedensday. I had to be reminded by our trainee. Time is flying once again. One more midterm this Thursday.

I watched "Natural Born Killers" last night. Never really heard anything about it. That was one of the craziest movies I've ever seen. The acid trips, with the messed up plot line, and the gore all combined for a movie I felt should only be watched completely gone. Except then you would probably be caught up in the moment and join in the mahem and kill someone.

I also went running today. I decided to over-achieve/get back into shape ASAP by doing interval training. 8x650m. I also finished with push-ups and situps. The old roommate got me seriously back into the mindset of running when he mentioned a 10K that's at then end of March. I was running in Japan and have been relatively toning some muscles since being back. I'm hoping this translates into the fast track back to shape. Just gotta keep holdin' on (Saliva).

Mt Misen

Mt Misen, originally uploaded by mjbruni.

I finally have the link to the pictures taken on my trip to Hiroshima. Olivia, another trainee from Indonesia (although she's Chinese), was the one who took the picture. After taking two long rope/pulley trolley things up the mountain, we reached a plateau and this was the view. The mountain is on an island just south of Hiroshima. The view was awesome. As Olivia already posted the pictures, here's a link if you want to see more of the trip. It also included going to the Shrine on the Water as well as the A-Bomb Memorial.

This trip started off with a 6-hour midnight bus ride on a friday night, a non-stop tour all day and another 6-hour midnight bus ride back. Helluva Saturday.

Photos have arrived

osaka tower at night
Originally uploaded by mjbruni.

I have downloaded all of the pictures from my phone on to my computer. I was told the red light on top of the tower changes color depending on the weather. Red means cloudy. I went to the top and took a lot of pictures. Osaka was huge. This is the pathway leading up to the tower. There were a lot of homeless people on the way there. I was told later by AIESECers that they never ventured here anymore because of all the homeless people and their not wanting to be harmed. such a shame.

A View from the Good Ol' Days

Office Plaques
Originally uploaded by mjbruni.

I took this picture right before I had to help Karen move everything out of the office. I am posting this picture as a reminder to all that AIESEC-Madison was once DOMINANT. Yes we have come a long ways since I first started in 2003, but we are not to the good days yet. The newest one is dated in 2001. There are NO excuses why we aren't going to get one this year.

PS I miss our old office and the cramped confines that made so many discussions great.

toooooooooo loooooooong

test one is in the bag. hurt like hell getting it there, but it's done!

This morning, I also met with my good contact in ECS to chat. I got the contact in Sub-Zero and got a good lead and contact on another madison company. She also introduced me to the International Engineering Programs director, who also worked in Japan during college... She is the advisor for IESTE, which technically is AIESECs competitor sort of, but she already knew a little about AIESEC and liked it. She even heard about our Salaam program. Crazy.

I will now be skipping the first 30 min of GMM to attend an American Society of Appraisers informational meeting. It seemed up my alley, so I decided it's worth missing the announcements. I'm also skipping the study session for my 340 class which has a test this Friday. All three happen to be at the same exact time. My priorities are very aligned. I better get another contact out of this.

So my day started at 8AM and will not commence until 8PM, at which time I will make the 2 hour trek home to Random Lake. Blizzard, please wait till I've stopped moving.

lalalala

full moon on Feb 13th coming home from the library at midnight. too bad it isn't friday.

do a little dance

my miniSD and USB adaptor arrived today (although mail doesn't come on sundays, so maybe it came yesterday...) and this means I can take the photos off of my camera phone. YES! I did that and it works awesome. Since I bought the 512MB card off ebay, I am now able to transfer music off my comp and onto the card so that I now have my portable mp3 player/camera. If only it could still answer phone calls :-(

I will not be seen by most people this week. I have a test Wed, Thurs and Fri. I also have to go home wed nite to make a doctor's apt thurs morn to then catch a bus back to madison to take my test that night. I also have a Salaam meeting with Claude and Nat'l mixed in that day.

Hobocan (t-rent's start-up) looks like it will be getting off the ground very shortly. I still have to finish creating the parts/getting quotes for the bizillion different ways we can make them. This was a little harder than I originally thought. I think Mechanical curriculum should focus a lot more on manufacturing and materials than we do. Most of the problems so far are dealing with tolerancing, material selection, and creation procedures. I've had 2 out of 15 classes deal with this, and they were intros. I guess I'm not finished and more of my final classes will deal with this, but I almost feel like I should've learned it the opposite way. AKA learn how everything is made and what goes with what, and then learn about how to improve the existing structures for better performance. It feels like the opposite right now.

Final note: our house is clean and it only took us 4 weeks to get it that way

FUCK

morning's after do suck. I'm already 30min late and I still don't remember anything after beer pong. My head is killing! I guess that means last night was good...
(I will probably see pictures later describing the chaos from the night before)

I did manage to network once again while at the bar, so we'll see if this trend continues. It's a good spot for meeting people.

head=explosion t-minus 10 seconds, but the counter keeps resetting at 1
now THAT'S getting blue-balled

also noted: everyone on facebook linked to my classes that is female is "in a relationship"; what the hell is that

the times we had...

it's official: my winter coat is gone.

I dropped it in the hallway of Grainger at 11PM last week Wednesday while carrying a package down for Ali. Instead of going and picking it up right away, I decided to stay in the room where I dropped it off and add my two cents on the interviews I did the previous days and help decide which members should be in our LC.

Also lost: Grace's gloves that were in my inside pocket.

There will be services for said items this Wednesday after our AIESEC meeting at Brat's while celebrating my 21st plus one Birthday. I never got a 21st due to sickness, so this year is all out.

for personal reference

Poem

I like reading nomad poems. I wonder if JD is going to post another anytime soon?

Jobs

Our Engineering Career Fair was last week and I gave out my application to a good amount of companies. No interviews yet, but most places said they didn't start the intern interviewing process until at least the middle of February. I'm not worrying too much right now about finding a job for the summer.

I'm more worried about what the hell I'm doing after college. Yes, I still have over a year left, but most engineers plan WAY further ahead than that (even if they don't admit it). If you asked most engineering grads how long they wanted to be an engineer, I'd say over 80% would say since their soph year in HS. That's a long time without changing your mind. For me, since 6th grade. I didn't even know what engineering was in 6th grade, but I did know I wanted to be one. That has been my goal ever since, but now I'm wondering if it's one I should even try for.

All of this was brought on by my interview with a Madison area company last spring. I stumbled upon my review and was a little surprised by the comments. I interviewed with the VP HR and her only complaint was that she thought I need to find my area of focus and that I'd be great at doing it, but that this focus probably isn't engineering. She thought I would be really good at doing her job.

As I've also realized since coming to Madison is that engineers of the past are not engineers of today or the future. What I will be expected to do is completely different than what my parents' generation of engineers has done. The field has changed a lot. I grew up knowing a lot of engineers and wanting to do the things they were doing. Now most engineers sit at a desk staring at a computer screen all day and see if they can somehow make a little dot jump up and down (or something like that). I love computers and working on them, but I still need the field work. I CAN do this today, but I would have to settle for a small company in a small city in the middle of nowhere. That I can't do.

Most fellow AIESECers dream of changing the world by taking non-profit positions and helping out the poor. I don't think this way. I will change the world by being the big guy and changing it from the top. Engineers can change societies. I want to be that engineer and I feel the only way I can be that engineer is if I'm working for a company that has a large say of what products are made, how they're made, and who's making them. This means big company, big city, big goals. THIS is why I have always wanted to be an engineer. I guess the steps to get there are seeming a lot harder than I thought, especially the ones through school. I thought those would be the easiest, but they are turning out to be the hardest.

I only feel good when I'm doing other things, like running, lifting, playing guitar, databasing, SHOK, AIESEC, everything, but my core classes. To get the job I want after college, I will take my current path, but the classes don't seem to have any relevance to that job. I swear engineering is math and intuition, that's it. These classes are teaching me crap I will probably never use again and they aren't helping my math or intuition. Both have suffered since coming to college. My mind is not as sharp as it used to be in math. I struggle with even simple logic problems now.

I envy those who enjoy their classes. I don't think I will ever feel like that. But, I know what I want after this is done, so I am going to keep going through the motions. I will reach the big one. (I guess this means I'm going to be an engineer afterall.)