I've moved!

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Moving

I'm moving. Hopefully you will all follow me on over to my new wordpress site. You can and should subscribe to my new RSS feed.

If Blogger can't run a decent site they don't deserve my blogging and traffic. So please, come on over to the new locale! Hopefully things will run a bit smoother. And I won't have to click "post" and "preview" 10 times in a row to comment on my own blog.

Blogger v. Wordpress

I'm thinking about switching to wordpress. Blogger is really torquing me lately. What say you oh hoardes of readers who follow my blog? Will you still read me on wordpress? Commenting will work better, that I guarantee.

Power of Good Mentorship

I've been re-watching episodes of Star Trek Deep Space Nine lately. In an episode in season 2, Shadowplay, Commander Sisko is talking to his son Jake about future possible plans to join Starfleet. He encourages his son to start training (sort of an internship) under Chief O'Brien.

To me it seems like the kind of opportunity only fostered in a futuristic sci-fi TV show. But in reality, I bet a lot of engineers had similar mentors in their lives. Sysko confesses his son is in the bottom third of mechanical aptitude and O'Brien admits he was as well. That he didn't realize his engineering skills until he was on the front and had to make a critical repair.

In a way it's oddly comforting. I'm not one of those "born an engineer" types though I love it now. I do wonder how many young, aspiring engineers had a Chief O'Brien in their lives. Someone who was an engineer for a living and gave them a pretty good idea of what it was. Or maybe someone who worked in a similar trade. Maybe they taught them a few things and gave them a leg up or a taste of what they might want to do.

Given how many medical dramas there are and how few science or engineering shows, I wonder how many got into the field because of someone they knew growing up or fell into it later and were surprised to learn what it was all about?

Pointless Cat Photo

TechCat is doing much better since we've come back. She's freaking out less that we'll leave again or send her off again. She's been doing what cats do. Napping during the midday, sharing the fan air with us and trying to stay cool in this heat.

Stylish Saturdays #1

Due to my aforementioned vacation some casual clothing beyond sweats and bunny slippers was required.

Cowl neck tank from Old Navy

Boot Cut jeans from Old Navy

Fourmal boots by Madden Girl (via Zappos)

Fancy Free Friday

I've been off the grid this past week. Okay not really, but I have been sort of unplugged and sort of distracted with vacationing. It all started with some insect much smaller than me that's been feasting on my house for who knows how long. Due to financial uncertainties, this was the summer to get stuff done. The last hoorah to buy toys and fix up the place. So I paid a professional to shoot poison through my entire house and skipped off to a locale even warmer than my own to enjoy some time off from MegaCorp. I'm pretty sure I forgot how to be an engineer in the meantime, but oh well I'll worry about that later.

 

TechCat got to spend the week rooming with three dogs and while she got some love and attention she seems to be pretty happy to be home again. Or, I'm guessing that's why she woke us up multiple times during the night to make sure we were still there and she was still there and we weren't going to ship her off to the doghouse again.

 

In honor of my absent design fridays post today, I wrote about Lockheed's HALE-D unmanned airship over at EngineerBlogs. Hope you are all as well rested and even keeled as I feel today (even having to go back to earning my paycheck again). I raise a toast to you and your weekend so we can focus on alcoholic beverages or tasty non-alcoholic beverages and fondly remember days when insects are our worst enemies and having no financial ruin that lay ahead and politicians who we can't tent out of our house. Oh I ruined it already didn't I. Have another drink.