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Things Start Rolling at Boeing

I can already tell that things are going to be different then they were last year. Not in a bad way, not a in good way; just different.

For example, last year I had one project that I focused on pretty much the entire time. Because I only had a single project, I really only had a single point of contact for day-to-day activities and then my boss.

This year is different. I have the same boss as last year, which is blessing because he’s great. He’ll handle high-level items. Then I have a manager who will cover middle-level activities. Finally, I have a slew of people I work with everyday. Co-workers in fact, although they’re more then that because they’ve been there longer and know what they’re doing.

I also have about three projects I’m working on. Less deep and more wide when compared to last year.

Which brings me to what I’m working on: I’m in the hardware group and I’m working on drawings and hardware selection.

Could I be anymore vague? Probably.

Life as an intern is good.

[tags] boeing, intern, internship[/tags]

When We Last Left Our Hero

  1. I was in Colorado
  2. Didn’t have a job
  3. Hadn’t started work
  4. Had only been to one wedding this summer

One week later:

  1. Back in Seattle
  2. Have a job
  3. Started work
  4. Have been to two weddings, sorta

So how does this all work out? Well, getting on a 8:30 am flight to Seattle last Sunday morning was the easy part. Then the real fun began. I really don’t care to get into the details because A) they don’t matter to people who aren’t involved; and, B) it would probably be appropriate to keep them under wraps (at least until sufficient time has passed that people no longer care about/read this site).

What I can/will say is that I’m back at Boeing and started on Friday. I spent most of the day reading hard copies of material related to my project because my computer access hadn’t been restored yet.

I was supposed to go to Brent’s wedding today and I did, just at the wrong time. So pretty much completely botched that one. I did catch him before they left for the reception.

Delay

Now that school is actually done, I can focus all my attention on the summer.

Unfortunately, the summer may be off to a bad start. My boss at Boeing called me today and there might be some delay in me starting. Boeing hasn’t been awarded the contract yet, despite the fact that it was supposed to be in place by now. So I’m in a holding pattern (ha, great pun) until they get that signed.

Until then, I’ll probably be opening up shop again, doing random computer-ish stuff in the meantime. Drop me a line if you’re in need of a tech. My rates are reasonable and I make house-calls.

The Taxman Cometh

This was the first year I’ve needed to pay taxes. I feel, slightly…republican…or something like that. It’s not that I don’t mind paying taxes, I just made a paltry amount last summer and ended up paying two Benjamin’s. That’s on top of the over $600 that was taken straight out of my paycheck for Social Security and MediCare.

I think what aggravates me the most is that I’m paying for school more or less out of my own pocket (via loans for the time being) and amount to over three times what I make per a year. Shouldn’t I be getting money from the Government, not giving money to them?

This whole education and tax thing is ass-backwards if you ask me.

Until the next April 15th, enjoy this money-related Family Guy clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT7gh-8feZg

Update: Renamed the post

[tags]family guy, stewie, brian, irs, money[/tags]

Who Would You Hire First?

My Circuits teacher, Mark Lusk, made this point the other day:

Lazy Industrious
Idiot
Genius

Given the above table, what order would you hire the listed people (Lazy Idiot, Lazy Genius, Industrious Idiot, Industrious Genius)?

One might think this would be the solution:

Lazy Industrious
Idiot 4 3
Genius 2 1

…potentially switching 2 and 3 around. But this would be incorrect! The actual order is:

Lazy Industrious
Idiot 3 4
Genius 1 2

Now you may be thinking, What?! Why would I want to hire the industrial idiot last? Better yet, why would I want to hire the lazy genius first?

Think of it this way. The industrial idiot is going to work hard (he’s industrious, remember?). But he’s going to work hard at the wrong thing…or he’s going to do it wrong (he’s an idiot). Working hard toward something that isn’t a company goal is bad. Even worse then doing the wrong thing half-assed.

Now, for the lazy genius. Why wouldn’t you want a smart person working hard? Because there’s always better way to do it. And that’s what the lazy genius will find: the lazier (and presumably easier) way to accomplish the task. Less time means more money saved.

Simple really.

Boeing

All done at Boeing…for now. Yay! It was an incredible two months. I learned so much, not just Java, but development, business, communication, design. Pretty much everything. And…

…I’ll be doing it again next year! I took an educational leave of absence and I’ll be return next summer as an intern in the hardware group, which is more electrical engineering-based (and that’s my degree). If I like it enough, and if Boeing likes me enough, they might even make me an offer at the end of next year (or the year after, depends on where I stand graduation wise).

The Last Few

The last few days and weeks have pretty much flown by. I’m not quite sure what stories I’ll remember to tell, but I know there are some good ones.

Boeing has been a blur, I can’t believe that I only have 8 days left there. So far, I’ve been on two tours. One to the 737 plant in Renton, the other to the Composites Manufacturing Facility in Fredrickson (a little south east of Tacoma).

It’s amazing how they built airplanes. We were able to see them lift the left-side horizontal stabilizer into place on one of the aircraft at the beginning of the tour and then see them test the inflatable slide (when the door opens in an emergency) on another aircraft. So amazing. We also saw the new blended wing 737 Boeing is making. That’s a weird looking plane.

At Fredrickson, they showed us how they build the composite structures for the 777 horizontal and vertical stabilizers. That’s also an amazing process. The line is U-shaped and almost all the pieces move in one direction. There are autonomous robot vehicles that roam around the floor, moving the large pieces around. Apparently, they also have the largest double-sided autoclaves for curing the composite material. Very cool.

My programming project, is coming along nicely. All of the core programming is done as of Friday. Trying to schedule a review for Monday or Tuesday, then some final testing and tweaking.

We went to Hansville a few weeks back and hung out there for a day.

No trips to Canada thus far and it looks like I won’t get to Canada before I take of for Europe (more on that later).

I had a funny moment the other week. I was talking to Peter about jobs and how funny it would be if, after doing all this technical related work (at Fergcorp, Nordstrom, Boeing, etc), my resume had “UPS Driver” or “Hotel Connoisseur”.

Hotel Connoisseur? It took Peter a few minutes to figure out that I meant concierge, not connoisseur. An excellent Ferg moment.

Early Marriage?

I like Mondays because I get to go to this Boeing Intern events at Boeing Field and then mosey in on to work around 12, work for a few hours and then come home. We were scheduled to hear someone from Connexion by Boeing talk, but instead we had some people from Product Development. If you’ve been following the news lately, you no doubt notice that it has been rumored that Boeing was going to kill off Connexion. It now appears that Boeing is in fact shutting down Connexion. I digress.

I ended up talking to another intern today who I’d never met before (there are quite a few hundred of us, so that happens a lot). There’s a typical initial volley of information to determine who you are, where you’re from, what school you go to, what your major is, and where you’re working and what you’re doing. At the time, the class was doing an intern networking event. The goal was to sit with similar majors (which I completely failed at, sitting with a group of mechanical engineers) and discuss various things (You know you work at Boeing when…“you try to LEAN out your own life”). This intern, who I’ll call John, goes to BYU and is a Mech E. Halfway through our conversation, a female intern, who I’ll call Jane, walks over behind him and gives him a kiss. I assume they’re dating and was surprised about how quickly the two interns got together (my rational being that most interns are from out of state and that it was highly unlikely that a college couple would intern at the same company away from home).

Then John introduces Jane as his wife, and the BYU thing clicks, and it all makes sense now. I didn’t ask, but I doubt that John or Jane are over 22 years old, which is not entirely surprising as I heard about two people at Mines (yes, Colorado School of Mines) who were married last year. If I recall correctly, the guy had just come back from his mission trip and was 23 or so. He ended up marrying a freshman.

Now the question, why do I hear about so many Mormons getting married so young? I assume that it’s traditional, but I don’t know for sure. However, I’m more curious about about the effect of being married so young. It seems atypical for people with a higher social-economic status to marry at such a young age and I wonder how their marriages compare to those of people who get married later in life. Are the divorce rates any different? What about change in social-economic status, does it go up or down? What else deviates substantially from the norm?

[tags]boeing internship, boeing intern, boeing, intern, internship, connexion by boeing, byu, marriage, mormon[/tags]