2011 in Review

In January, I published this post on my blag detailing my hopes and goals for the year 2011.  I'm glad to report that I had a much better 2011 than 2010.  Pretty much every goal or hope that I listed in that post manifested itself.  I didn't find an internship despite the supposed prevalence of geotechnical lab work, but I think I'll make it, somehow.  I also only saw 4 football games in person, but again, I think I'll live.  My 2011 included:

• Receiving funding and enrolling in a master of science program at Oregon State.
• Beginning coursework toward that master's degree.
• Moving to Corvallis, Oregon and living 1,300 miles away from my parents. (Honestly, it's kind of tragic even being back for the holiday break.)
• Acquiring a 2011 Mitsubishi Lancer with 000002 miles on it.
• Turning 23.  This has pretty much been my favorite age so far.
• Being the 1% for Halloween.
• Seeing 4 college football games in person.  
• Seeing BYU play and win in Corvallis.
• Getting a new cell phone.  The old one crapped out maybe a month after that post and my parents got me a new one.  A dumbphone, of course.

With a new year comes new hopes and goals.  Unlike last year, I have a good idea of what my future holds.  I'll be continuing coursework and starting research toward my master's degree.  For 2012, I want to make significant strides in my research, not spend more than two weeks at a time in my parents' house, and see more football games.  In addition to the Oregon State games for the coming year, I'm thinking about heading to Provo for the BYU season opener against Wazzu and/or making a road trip to Boise to see the Cougars take on the Broncos on the Smurf Turf.  I'm thinking that the Mayans just ran out of room on their calendar; 2012 is going to be a good year.

Grad School Lessons, Take 1

In addition to teaching me about important technical skills like geotechnical lab work, foundation engineering, and structural seismic design, my first term of grad school has taught me some important life lessons.  Here's a quick summary of each, in no particular order:

• Check out the neighborhood before moving in.  Seriously, if 3/4 of your prospective neighbors speak little or no English, it might be worth it to pay twice as much to live twice as far away from campus.  Here's hoping that my car is still there when I come back from winter break.
• Don't trust other people to do your work.  In two of my classes this term, the homework was assigned as group assignments.  Suffice it to say, I found out why I always did my homework by myself during my undergrad years.  My grades in the two group classes were significantly lower than the one that had individual assignments.  It would have involved a lot more work to do the homework myself, but I think I would have been more satisfied with the results at the end of the term.
• Sometimes you're the dog and sometimes you're the hydrant.  In the seismic design final, I was the hydrant.  Dr. Miller feels that he wants his seismic design classes to learn the codes that govern design of structures.  This would all be well and good if he actually showed his seismic design classes how to use the code.  He told us what was coming, but we were still woefully unprepared because there was little teaching of the code and no assignments based thereon.
• Most people love alcohol more than life itself.  In grad school, most everyone is over 21 and is fully capable of consuming alcohol at any given social event.  Most everyone also exercises this right to the degree that they're pushing the limit of being too impaired to drive, but generally chooses to drive anyway.  I'm seriously thinking about upping the insurance on my car... assuming it's still there at the end of the break.
• People drive like they're impaired even with no help from alcohol.  Everyone in Corvallis drives 20 mph regardless of what the speed limit is.  I don't think the cops even bother setting up speed traps, it's not like they'd be good for anything.  The best one I've seen is a guy who changed his mind as to whether he wanted to turn at a particular intersection about 3 or 4 times and made a swerving half-lane-change for each one right in front of me.  In all fairness, it was right by fraternity row, which leads me to believe he was, indeed, impaired by alcohol.
• It can always get stupider.  I thought BYU CE's undergrad stupid seminar was stupid, then I became acquainted with Oregon State CE's graduate stupid seminar.
• Be grateful for what you have.  BYU's football team had at least a 10-win season every year that I was a student there, and stands a good chance of doing it again this year.  I got used to going to a school with a winning football team and it's kind of tragic that my current school's football team is arguably the worst in its conference. 
• My grades are always lower fall term/semester.  Speaking of football, when several hours of your Saturday are taken up by awesome football action both live and on the TV, it's hard to get any work done.  Winter and spring terms should be easier on my GPA.  Though, next fall I'm going to really need to focus and get it done.

Well, that's pretty much all I've got for now.  I've listed this as 'Take 1' because I assume that I'll have other lessons that I'll learn as grad school progresses. In the mean time, I think this should be sufficient.

Ten Virtuous Ladies

In Sunday School this last weekend, the instructor focused mostly on the first thirteen verses of Matthew 25, more commonly known as the parable of the ten virgins.  If you're not familiar with the story, it goes a little something like this.  There were ten women betrothed to marry a man, and it was their wedding day.  As a side note, polygamy was socially accepted at Jesus' time, but few men could afford it.  I guess women have always been expensive... but I digress.  Five of these women brought their little clay lamps and brought extra fuel oil with them.  The other five didn't bring extra oil and had to go out and buy more. By the time these five got back, the wedding had already started and they had been locked out.

 

This parable is analogous to how well prepared the righteous are to receive Christ at his coming.  All of the women were suitable in the eyes of the man.  Would you really marry someone who you didn't like, even if could have more than one spouse?  So, all of these women were a part of God's kingdom on Earth.  Some just slacked off and weren't prepared when the time came.

Now, this parable is pretty cool, in and of itself, but I wouldn't post this if I didn't think I had something good to add to it.  As a geotechnical engineer, I'm more expert than your average person in just about all things dirt related.  Inasmuch as the lamps that these ladies had were made out of clay, I feel like I can offer some insights.

Individual particles of clay are long and thin and don't necessarily fit together into a uniform structure all that well.  When clay particles are deposited, they don't all lay flat.  Some of them end up standing up on end to a certain degree and creating relatively large voids in the soil structure.  This is called flocculation.  Because of the electrical nature of clays, the presence of salt ions increases the effect, making the soil more flocculated. In addition, clay particles often like to stick together in clumps called "packets" which, again, aren't necessarily uniform and create somewhat larger pores in the clay structure.

A uniform clay structure at the top with a flocculated clay structure in the middle. The bottom picture is a more macroscopic view of clay structure, giving more insight into its porous nature.

In somewhat recent geological history, the holy land and much of the middle east was covered by an ocean.  This is where the limestone that was used to construct the Pyramids of Giza came from.  Thus, many of the clay deposits in the holy land were deposited by oceans.  This gives these clay deposits high salt ion content and a relatively high degree of flocculation.

What it all comes down to is that the clay in Israel is highly porous.  The highly flocculated structure makes pores in the clay through which a fluid like water or oil can flow.  Even though the clay was kind of fired, it still retains these properties, for the most part.

Getting back to the parable of the ten virgins, the five women who didn't bring oil thought that they could make it through the time they had to wait with just the oil they had.  The Bible doesn't mention it specifically, but I think it's quite possible that they thought they could just put out their lamps and wait until they needed them again.  Because of the porous nature of clay in general, and especially the clay in Israel, the oil in their lamps leaked out and they did not have enough when they needed it.  In short, that's not how it works; these ladies still had to pay the piper for their lack of preparedness.

The moral of the story for our lives is that we need to carry extra oil with us, because we could run out unexpectedly.  If we are to be prepared for the Savior when He comes, we must keep more testimony of the gospel with us than we think we need. If you don't have enough with you, you may run out unexpectedly and not have enough time to go find some.  No one knows when He'll come specifically, so really, it's best to have plenty on you at all times.

The Obligatory Google Search Results Post

What brings people who don't know me to this blag?  Well, Google has given me some insights via my Blogger Stats page.  Here are all the search terms that people have typed into Google to end up at this page, whether they meant to, or not.  The search terms will be in all lower case, since that's how Google does things.  Enjoy.

• kathy buck.  Undoubtedly from this post where I thought I had a snowball's chance in heck of getting a job with Bechtel.
• tangled black short hair movie disney.  It took me a while to find a picture of Rapunzel from the movie Tangled after Rider had cut off her hair, so I'm glad some other people could find it here.
• a series of unfortunate dudefests.  Yes!  Someone's looking specifically for my blag.  :)
• "appropriate touching" lds. Not exactly sure which post that would have led to; probably one of the ones on Gary Chapman's love languages and physical touch.
• andra pathakis staley. Someone scouring the internet for Andra.  May have even been Andra herself.  Ring check!
• byu football pictures dennis pita.  And yes, they did actually misspell it "pita."  Dennis PITTA.
• cu boulder 4.0 grading scale.  I'm sad to say that all my posts on grad school probably didn't help anyone who typed this into Google.
• fall walls of jericho.  I'd like to think that this post is making its way around the internet.
• foghorn leghorn "flying".  Undoubtedly from my comparison of Foghorn Leghorn to Swoop in this post.
• lds young women.
• most interesting man in the world cunnilingus.  The query for the most interesting man in the world came from this post... but I'm pretty sure I haven't mentioned cunnilingus in this blag... until now.
• a reenactment of a famous collaboration, starring eller.  I'm pretty sure this one wins the award for most random and ridiculous.  I have no idea what this means, and I'm okay with that.
• doyon limited.  Back when I thought Doyon might actually be hiring construction engineers.
• female working out.  Sorry guys, no softcore porn here.
• walls of jericho cross section
• walls of jericho resonance.

Well that was fun.  I now look forward to even more hits from these search terms as a result of mentioning them in the text of this blag.

Jerk Theory and the Law of Chastity

After my last post about 9 hours ago, I received a comment from one Colonel Crimson, who, I'm about 99% confident, is a SpUte fan (but hey, we all have our faults.)  After reading through a few posts on the Colonel's blag, there are two things that I want to say.

The first is that the tenants of 'Jerk Theory' or 'The Game' are at least half true.  Jerk theory basically states that women prefer men who treat them like crap; women will deny this left and right, but they often end up with guys who treat them like crap, regardless of how much they say they want a guy who's funny, nice, and smart.  In the words of the Colonel, women will follow after "alpha (α) males" (douchebags, essentially) while ignoring the "beta (β) males" who are less aggressive.  On the contrary, women will tell you that they want a guy who treats them well and respects them.  These two ideas are contradictory and neither seem to reflect the total reality.

Because of the evolution of the human race, there are compromises between aggression and docility (for lack of a better word) among males.  In primal human males, the trait of aggression was perpetuated not only because more aggressive men were more likely to pursue women with whom to reproduce, but also because aggressive men were more likely to be able to protect their offspring from outside threats and keep them alive to reproduce and pass on those genes.  However, aggression is not a universally beneficial concept in the realm of evolution.  A male who is too aggressive will be prone to killing his mate and/or their offspring and will not be able to pass down his genes.  Thus, there is a balance to strike between the aggressive and the docile characteristics of males.

Primal females had to strike that balance, and try to find a man who was aggressive enough to protect their offspring, but not so aggressive as to kill and eat them.  We can observe similar behavior in modern women.  The traits of aggression and docility are manifest as confidence and niceness (again for lack of a better word) respectively in men.  These ideas are not inherently mutually exclusive, even though one tends to take away from the other in the observed populace.   The best responses I've received from women have been at times when I was both confident and respectful.  From what I've been able to gather from my time on the Earth, women want a man who has both swagger and a deep respect for the woman who he's with.

Unfortunately, the traits of confidence and aggression often end being correlated with self motivation, greed, and straight-up douchebaggery.  Due to the nature of our evolution, the slightly more aggressive ends up edging out the slightly more docile and the aggressive man who treats women like crap ends up with more women than the docile man who tries to remember what his mom told him about being nice to women.  Thus, jerk theory is born even though a balance between confidence and respect would be more ideal.

I have to add as a slight disclaimer to this logic, that, in my adult life, I've generally pursued women who were fairly nice and docile themselves.  I'm not the kind of guy who goes after the b*tchy, slutty my-size Barbie doll.  If that's the woman you're after, then treating her like crap might just be the way to go.  And also, as if you couldn't tell from my last post, I'm not exactly the mack daddy of Heimlich County; these are just analytical observations I've made of other relationships as well as of my own along with a parallel to principles of biology to reconcile both jerk theory and what women do to reality.

Secondly, I'd like to bear my witness of the law of the chastity.  I was a convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and I've experience firsthand that sexual contact is not the way to long term happiness.  In the end, the only way to avoid the heartbreak and sadness that eventually come from illicit sexual activity is to abstain from it altogether.  I've felt empty and worthless as a direct result of the things that I've done, and it was only through the atonement of Christ that I was able to feel whole.  I have a testimony that marriage in the temple is ordained by God and I have set it as a goal for myself to make that covenant, despite all the stacked odds against me.

And to Colonel Crimson, if you end up reading this, I want you to know that I respect you, I really do.  You refuse to accept the bullsh*t that women dish out about just wanting a guy who's "nice and funny."  You've taken a step back, examined the facts as they really are, and realized that what we hear isn't usually what we see.  Naturally, I think your conclusions are slightly misguided, but I respect you for making them nonetheless.  Stay classy, my friend.

This Post is Gonna Get Like a Billion Pageviews

People who have just met me are often surprised to find out that I'm about 97% confident that I won't get married during this lifetime.  I think I usually come off fairly typical and maybe even desirable (though that's pushing it) when you first meet me and it takes a while to realize that I'm actually a stark raving lunatic.  This is probably why I've been engaged... twice... and neither of them has worked out.  Both fiancées #1 and #2 realized somewhere along the line that I'm actually a terrible idea.

The particular event that inspired this post was a bishop's fireside that, naturally, focused on finding a spouse.  Most of the people in my ward don't know me that well and were/might be surprised that I hurried off afterward to go cry myself to sleep.  I this might offer a little clarity for those who REALLY want to know.

As with my other posts about women, if you're easily offended or disturbed, please take the opportunity to look away now.  I'd also re-examine what you're doing surfing the internet, but that might just be me.

Let's examine the evidence of why I probably won't end up married anytime soon:

• My mother didn't love me enough.  More strictly, she didn't love me in a way that I (or sane people) could feel loved.  It's a terrible cliché, I know, but without the unconditional love of a mother or any other female figure in my life (which there was none) I have a hard time believing that a woman might love me, personally, for who I am. 
• My mother tragically skewed my view of women.  There's no two ways around it, my mother hates men, and it shows in the way she treats my father.  In her eyes, the only men who are worthy to live are the ones with big, fat wallets, and 12-or-more-inch long penises.  Since my mother is the only woman I really knew growing up, I somehow gained the impression that women didn't really like men, but tolerated them for the hard labor and spermatozoa.  In a cruel twist of irony, this song was made by Good Charlotte... any guesses at what my mom's name is?
• I didn't exactly grow up with the best example of a healthy and stable marriage.  My parents tell me they love each other, but it's really hard to tell by looking at them.  Their time together was usually dominated by my mom criticizing my dad and throwing crap at him while my dad swore profusely. The times they told me they loved each other were outnumbered at least 10 to 1 by the times they told me how big of a prick/b*tch the other one was.  When this is your mental picture of marriage, it's not exactly something you run out to sign up for.
• Contemporary western society doesn't exactly embrace men.  Why are men from all over living in their parents' basements playing video games all day?  It's because there's really no place in our society for those with a Y chromosome.  In courtship, men don't really have much to offer women these days, while women still expect men to significantly improve their lives.  Simply put, women still expect just as much from men as they ever did, but men have much less ground to stand on.  Additionally, society continuously deprecates men, but still expects them to have plenty of confidence and no insecurities.  At no time is this more apparent than when you ask men to approach women in courtship.
• I'm not exactly what you'd call a typical Latter-day Saint male.  There are two common simple, objective metrics by which a young woman can evaluate her future spouse: RM status and the relationship he has with his mother.  I'm not eligible to go on a mission, and as you can image from the reading above, my relationship with my mother is strained.  In baseball, I'd have one more strike, but with many women, I don't.  Women have a lot of other things they're looking for in a spouse that might eliminate me from consideration, but these are the two most damning ones.
• Nature and nurture.  In addition to my mom skewing my views of women, I was born with a chemical predisposition to not be very aggressive.  This was combined with the fact that I was an only child and spent much of my time without the company of other people my age, making me not terribly outgoing, or excited to socialize with other people.

Boom goes the dynamite.

I hope that gives you a good idea of why I'm so pessimistic about my prospects for marriage.  In my mind these all fit together fairly easily, but I'm not sure that I totally managed to communicate what's going on in my brain.  I think you get a pretty good idea, though.

Updatetastic

I'm about a month into grad school at THE Oregon State University, which means that I'm about a third of the way through my first quarter.  It's been pretty great so far.  My three classes in Lab Testing of Soils, Foundations, and Seismic Design have been enjoyable and I've been doing well in all three of them.  The thing that I like best about my classes so far is definitely the sparsity of assignments.  In both Lab Testing and Seismic Design, there are only about 4 or 5 assignments due throughout the quarter.  In Foundations, we have an assignment every week, and as long as they don't take 16 hours (like last week's assignment) it's really not too bad.

Also, as you might be able to ascertain from my post before last, I found some research with Ben Mason, who I think is a really cool guy.  He's also my professor for Lab Testing of Soils.  My thesis is going to be something along the lines of "Numerical Methods for Dynamic Soil-Structure Interaction of Multiple Building Systems."  Yes, it's a mouthful, but that's how most theses are. In English that translates roughly to "How soils in urban areas behave when the buildings on top of them start shaking in an earthquake."  Our goal is to try to get this research published in a technical journal and probably present it at a conference as well.  In the words of Ben himself, at the end I should basically be able to staple these two documents together and submit it as a thesis, we'll see how all of that goes.

I'm not starting this research right away.  In December Ben will give me some literature to review, and we'll actually begin with the research in about April or May of next year.  The research will really begin in earnest during the summer, when we don't have much else going on.

I also just got my own desk in the office for geotechnical engineering grad students. It's pretty awesome.

And my Alma Mater plays my new substitute Alma Mater in football tomorrow.  Just in case you haven't heard, I'll be wearing blue and will be sitting in the BYU fan section.  Prediction:

BYU - 30, Oregon State -21

Two Way Traffic

Followers of this blag might be surprised to learn that my favorite talk from the recently-adjourned general conference was a talk by Sister Elaine Dalton, the President of the Young Women organization.  In her talk, Sister Dalton discussed how three of her sons had recently had daughters and, at least in some way, looked to Sister Dalton for help and advice in how to raise them.  She said, simply, that the best thing a man can do for his daughter is to love her mother and to show to her what a loving and gospel-centered home is like.

This might be puzzling, based on my tumultuous and often antagonistic relationship with women as a whole.  However, that's just it.  This talk hearkens back to the root of my tumultuous relationship with women, which is that my mother didn't really show her love for my father in a healthy or constructive way.  I'd like to add my testimony to that of Sister Dalton, by saying that the best thing a parent can do for their opposite-gender child is to love their spouse in a way that their child can see what a healthy and celestial marriage is like.  I testify that the counsel that Sister Dalton offered to the men of the church applies equally well to the sisters when seeking counsel in how to raise their sons.  Women are more naturally predisposed to follow this counsel without even thinking about it, but I live as a testament that this is not always the case.  It is important that, regardless of gender, latter-day saints take care to love their spouses, for their own sakes, as well as for the sakes of their children.

I'm sure that, at some point, the Lord will bless me with a daughter, much like the sons of Sister Dalton.  When this happens, I look forward to following the counsel of this general officer and showing to my daughter what a loving, gospel-centered home is like.  To me, there is little more important in my future family life than breaking the cycle of gender-based contention that started generations ago, long before anyone on my mother's side of the family had the gospel.

The gospel of Christ gives us guidance to do things that we never thought we could do, like raising a son or a daughter.  I think that's pretty grand.

[Video of Sister Dalton's talk.]

Foresight

I have a testimony that the Lord knows which path in our lives will lead, ultimately, to the most happiness much more than we know it ourselves.  If we trust in the Lord... and even sometimes when we don't really, he will guide us toward the paths that will lead us to the most prosperity.  There are elements in my life currently that I never could have predicted nor have pieced together that has lead me to a great place, even in the midst of bitter circumstances.

I've pretty much blagged about all the elements of my life before, but have never really put the pieces together until now. 

My consideration of Oregon State University for a master's degree began well over a year ago while I was still under the impression that I would work in industry for a few years to figure out where I wanted to specialize before beginning a master's degree.  Like most of the other schools I began considering, my interest in Oregon State was based on their ranking in US News and World Report.  Though, unlike most other schools, Oregon State seemed to stand out at me as a good idea even though I'd never been to Oregon and had little experience with the university outside the '09 Las Vegas Bowl.  (In retrospect, this was an inspired decision.)

With most of the schools in the rankings, I could find one or more reasons to remove them from consideration based on their graduate assistant policies, grad programs, research, etc.  However, Oregon State, ranked at #41 (in an 8-way tie), managed to stick around.  While other schools lost favor, I couldn't find any reason to not like Oregon State.  The earliest list of potential grad schools I made in this blag was in March of '10, which would have been about the time I started considering Oregon State.

In July of '10, even though I still held out vain hope of finding a job, I decided to take the GRE just in case I wanted to apply to grad school in the fall.  This turned out to be another clearly inspired decision.

As my desires to continue fruitlessly applying and networking for jobs faded, I applied for master's programs at 7 institutions of higher learning.  As I began the process, it was fairly evident that I would have to pick a specialization, ready or not.  I decided that I had been trying to convince myself that I didn't like geotech and that that was really my favorite specialty after all.  Applying for the geotech program was a third inspired decision.

In March and April of '11, I was thinking that I wouldn't receive funding from any of the schools to which I had applied and that I would attend CU-Boulder.  I was wrong on both accounts.  I received funding for the 2011-2012 school year from Oregon State and immediately began the process of matriculating.  The tuition waiver and stipend that I received were the first immense blessing that I received on account of my inspired decisions.

On March 11, 2011, a megathrust subduction earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the northeast side of Honshu, Japan causing extreme loss of property and life.  A similar subduction fault exists a few miles west of the Oregon and Washington coasts, and the prospect of an almost identical quake hitting western Oregon scared the Benjamins out of the state government.  They will now be providing a significant piece of funding to the one significant civil engineering program in the state, at Oregon State University.  See my previous blag post about this here.

The professor who is spearheading much of this research (who did his undergrad at Georgia Tech) is brand new at the university, since they have been understaffed for the past couple years.  I just talked to him this morning and he said that administration and red tape would need to be taken care of for the next few months and that the research would begin in earnest in the first few months of next year.  To put it bluntly, the timing is perfect.  And since this professor is brand new, he doesn't have many grad students/other minions of his own, allowing me to slip in fairly easily.  Trust me, I'm at least as amazed as you at this point.

In summary, with foresight of a pair of unforeseeable events, the Lord was able to prepare a path for me leading to more happiness than I could have ever procured following my own plan(s).  I've rarely considered myself very keen on hearing and listening to the still, small voice of the Spirit.  However, will even the tertiary ear that I lent Him, the Lord was able to guide me.  And I'm sure that the guidance and blessings are not over.  My time in Oregon has only begun and there is almost certainly more in store were this much came from.

The Beaver is Doing the Richardson Dance

So, I have made my move to the great state of Oregon.  Both myself and my roommate are moved in and I'm pretty much loving it so far.  I found out that the roomy is actually 18 years old and doesn't have a driver's license, but that's not really a big deal.  The good news is that he's a computer (science) nerd and is pretty mellow.  So basically, we're both just socially capable enough to hold a decent conversation, but just socially awkward enough to leave each other alone most of the time.  It's pretty awesome.

The rest of my likes and dislikes I'll be putting into list form, so here you go:

Dislikes

• My apartment is in the middle of little Mexico.  Seriously, very few of my immediate neighbors speak English.
• The walls of my apartment are nothing but lumber, drywall, and air.  You can hear everything that goes on within 20 feet of your apartment walls, on any side.  Most this goes on in Spanish.
• Along these same lines, the door to my bedroom doesn't currently close... at all.  Neither brute force nor gentle persuasion will make it go to its home.  We'll see how quick they are on my maintenance request.
• More generally, the university is apathetic to the concerns of student housing.  Living in the 1-mile radius at BYU made rent slight higher, but it also provided some protections for students.  Namely, BYU ensured that student housing included furniture and mail keys for their students.  Since I've arrived here, I've had to spend a boatload of cash on furniture and I haven't been able to check my mail.
• The university and surrounding entities are profoundly liberal.  I went to a GTA orientation this week in which one of the presentations was on "The Diverse Student Populations of Oregon State University."  My dad suggested that this particular brand and level of liberalism was best described by the term 'pure collectivism,' with which I can hardly disagree.

Likes

• The people in my ward are pretty freakin' awesome.  I've never been quick to make legitimate friends, but it's been happening here so far.  
• There are more women than men.  During my Memorial Day trip up here, I figured that the ratio was about 60/40.  After attending this week, I'd estimate it's more like 55/45... either way I see plenty of women without feeling like I'm swimming in the estrogen ocean.  When you're an engineer, that's a nice change of pace.
• As I mentioned already, my roommate is pretty cool.
• The university has really nice accommodations.  The nice thing about going to a state school is that no one's all that apprehensive about spending the taxpayers' money.  As a grad student, I get my own desk and shelf space with my own computer.  It's pretty legit.
• Even in a disastrous football year, the students have spirit.  At BYU, students often walked around in other universities' apparel and wore pink and brown horizontal striped shirts to football games even when the team went 11-2.  I would always vomit a little in my mouth when I'd see someone wearing a USC shirt on campus (or even worse, the University of SpUtah.)
• I have my own car here.  Honestly, I'm sure how I survived 4 years as an undergrad without at least something resembling a motor vehicle.

 So far, I've been thinking that the state of Oregon and Oregon State University are pretty cool.  This might be really put to the test when I head down to the DMV to get my car registered in Oregon, but I'm going to need to actually be able to check my mail before that happens.  ;P

The Big IX

There's been a lot of talk, recently, about Texas A&M moving out of the Big 12 in favor of another conference. After being snubbed by the Southeastern Conference, the two biggest candidates are the Big Ten and the Pac-12, both of which would enjoy an increase in their ability to recruit in Texas. The problem for the Big 12 is that the departure of Texas A&M would take them from 10 teams down to 9, which, at best digs an even bigger hole for a conference whose brand is highly numerical, and at worst, breaks the conference apart.

Naturally, many people in the analysis business are discussing what teams could come in and fill the voids left by the recent departures in that conference. The name that's getting thrown around far more than any other is BYU. Now, before I go any further, I'd like to say that I do not represent Brigham Young University in any respect, other than being an alumnus similar to any other BYU alum in the nation and abroad. That being said, I think I can offer some insight into the circumstances that could lead BYU to the Big 12 Conference.

Starting this year, BYU will go independent in football and join the West Coast Conference (WCC) in most other sports, excluding a few in which the WCC does not participate. Institutions of higher education are rarely very organic, and BYU is no exception to this rule. This decision to change conference affiliation was well thought out and undoubtedly prayed over for months before it was made. At this point in time, BYU is committed to going independent and staying independent in football for years to come. BYU is also an uncannily good fit for the WCC, a conference of west-coast religious schools, in other sports.

While BYU is very committed to its current plan, it would be possible for the Big 12 to sweeten the pot enough for BYU to come on board. A year ago, the conference was not desperate enough to make those sacrifices, with its biggest anchors, Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Texas A&M remaining firmly in place. Now, with Texas A&M heck-bent on getting out of the conference and BYU being one of the few good teams left without an Automatic Qualifying (AQ) conference affiliation, the Big 12 might just have the incentive to give BYU what they want.

In my opinion, here's most of what it would take:

• Giving BYU full autonomy over its TV contract with ESPN. The biggest reason BYU went independent was to get out of the infernal abyss of The Mtn. television programming and actually get some nationwide exposure for the football program. They signed an 8-year contract with ESPN and will have many of their games broadcast on the unquestionably popular network during that time. The Big 12 would have to, in no way, interfere with this contract in order to get BYU in the conference.
• Limiting the term of BYU's Big 12 contract to the remaining 7 years of the ESPN contract. Basically, BYU would be free to walk away after 7 years with full rights to its broadcasting contract with no (that means zero) exit fees.
• Allowing BYU to keep certain already-scheduled opponents for their non-conference schedule. I mostly speak of Notre Dame, Boise State, Utah and Georgia Tech, but BYU would need to be free to schedule conference games around its non-conference schedule for games that have been scheduled as of the time BYU joined the conference.
• Allowing BYU to play Utah on whichever week they chose as long as they were a member of the conference. If Utah could get permission from their pimp, maybe we could have the game on rivalry weekend. What a concept!
• A big, fat check to any school with whom BYU has to abandon a future meeting. When schools back out of an agreed-upon meeting, they often cut the other school a check, just to make sure lawyers don't get involved. The Big 12 would need to cover any of these costs for BYU.
• An agreement with the WCC. Most everyone involved likes the fit of BYU with the West Coast Conference in sports other than football and would hate to see them move back out after only a year or two. The Big 12 would probably need to supply some cash and some exclusive scheduling rights (many to BYU) with the WCC for some years to come, but the terms would be negotiable.

The terms that I've listed here are quite a price to pay for a team that's not a perennial national "championship" contender, though such schools are becoming fewer and farther between. However, this is why BYU did not join the Big 12 a year ago, even though I'm sure there was at least some discussion between University and Conference representatives. The Big 12 was just not willing to pay the asking price while it still held together and had many of its best teams. BYU is also comfortable with and committed to football independence and to the WCC; and it will take a rather hefty sum to get them to pack up and move.

Will the Big 12 want a team like BYU enough to make the necessary compromises? Only time will tell.

Football and Other Unregrets

I have very few regrets about the decisions that I've made in my life so far. There are decisions on which I wish I had been better informed. There are also decisions that have been made for me that I wish had turned out differently. Though, I don't have many regrets, I've been out of control of my life for a high enough proportion of my time to create feelings of regret even though the word "regret" doesn't really fit. I've looked around, and I haven't really found a single word that fits this phenomenon very well, so I usual end up calling them "unregrets" because they are kind of like regrets, but they aren't.

Of course the biggest unregret of my life is not being able to serve a full-time proselyting mission for the Church of Latter-day Saints. When I was 18 and 9 months, I decided that I was going to serve a mission for the church, but the missionary department had other plans, and my mission papers ended up coming back negative. In case anyone is curious, you don't actually get any paperwork back when you're not allowed to serve, you just get called into your bishop/branch president's office where he informs you that you will not be serving a mission, but I digress.

I was inspired to write this post today because one of my good friends asked me a very simple question today:

"Did you play football?"

I was wearing the BYU football shirt new for the 2011 season, so it was a perfectly reasonable question to ask. In all honesty, at 6'2" and a couple bucks and change, I'm surprised that I don't get asked more often, but it made me think.

I would have loved to have played football. I can't remember a time in my life where I didn't like football and watch it frequently. I even have the build of a guy who could play in the NFL, not that I necessarily suppose I would have made it that far. The position I would have played is tight end, for which I would have been perfect. In addition to my impressive ability to catch things (footballs in this case), I have a plethora of lower-body strength that would allow me to effectively block other players, my size and larger. Simply put, I would have loved football and football would have loved me in return.

The problem was that my father had a borderline-irrational fear of me blowing out a knee and never really being the same again. For whatever reason, he allowed me to play catcher in baseball, (my knees did just fine, my ankles actually took the worst of it) and ride a dirt bike around like a madman, but not play any position in football. Since we have way too many lawyers in this country and every organization morbidly fears getting sued for all the contents of its balance sheet plus some, there's a mountain of paperwork that has to be filled out before anyone can play any sport. Since I was under 18 at the time, I could not vouch for myself, but required parent/legal guardian signatures for everything. Since my dad wasn't having it and my mom wasn't going to sign anything that my dad wouldn't sign, I was hosed.

I don't want anyone to think that I don't love my parents or that their decision ruined the life of fame and luxury I could have had playing in the NFL (or merely going to college for free). I just happen to disagree with them on this particular thing. I believe that I possessed enough cognitive and emotional ability, even at the age of 12, to make that decision for myself, and I don't think I would have regretted it. I could even understand requiring me to quit if I got injured even once, but I think totally forbidding me to play based on the possibility of injury was unreasonable.

I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes things in life get decided for you regardless of your feelings for the outcome. The important thing is to choose wisely how you react to these situations and not dwell on things that you cannot change. If you're a man or woman of God, you have to recognize that He has a plan for you regardless of whether you end up playing football, or going on a mission, or a whole host of other things. And maybe trust the decisions of your children if made with wisdom and discernment. :)

On a totally unrelated note, I've decided that, if I ever have the money and resources, I'm going to get myself an Emerald Toucanet and build it a climate-controlled, steel-framed plexiglass structure on the back side of my house.


Now there's a decision I wouldn't regret.

I Am, Indeed, Ready...

...for some football.

Of course, I'm speaking of college football, since I haven't watched much in the way of pro football in the last 6 years. This year, there will be two teams that I'll legitimately cheer for, the BYU Cougars and the Beavers of Oregon State. These teams do play each other this season in Corvallis, where I'll be in grad school. Not only will I be cheering for BYU, but I'm 99.99% confident that they'll win the game, and 85% confident that they'll embarrass OSU like a bunch of dirty n00bz. If the game was played today, my prediction would be:

BYU - 37, Oregon State - 17

but week 8 is quite a ways off.

Now, my thoughts on the seasons for both BYU and Oregon State, complete with best case, worst case, and most likely scenarios.

BYU

Worst Case Scenario

Record: 9-4

Wins: UCF, Utah State, San Jose State, Oregon State, Idaho State, Idaho, New Mexico State, Hawaii, ECU

Losses: Ole Miss, Texas, Utah, TCU

Naturally, the worst case scenario begins BYU football independence with a 3-game skid. However, I believe that with the (lack of) strength of schedule, BYU should be able to make and impressive run at the end of season including a bowl win in the Armed Forces Bowl over East Carolina University, who I predict will be C-USA's #3 this season.

Most Likely Scenario

Record: 11-2

Wins: Texas, Utah, UCF, Utah State, San Jose State, Oregon State, Idaho State, Idaho, New Mexico State, Hawaii, ECU

Losses: Ole Miss, TCU

For this scenario, I gave BYU a win against Texas and a loss against TCU. In reality, that could easily be switched up to give a win against TCU and a loss against Texas, but I don't think the most likely scenario ends up with BYU winning both, as much as I would enjoy that. I honestly don't think Utah is going to beat BYU again this year. Last year, Utah needed the help of the officials to beat BYU by one point in Salt Lake. This year, the teams aren't much different and the game is in Provo. Most scenarios, including this one, have BYU going to the Armed Forces Bowl against the C-USA #3.

Best Case Scenario

Record: 13-0

Wins: Ole Miss, Texas, Utah, UCF, Utah State, San Jose State, Oregon State, Idaho State, TCU, Idaho, New Mexico State, Hawaii, LSU

Losses: N/A

Of course, the best case scenario has to end up with the Cougars going undefeated. If BYU went undefeated, despite the (lack of) strength of schedule, I think they would end up being chosen for a BC$ bowl. This year, the order or selection is Fiesta, Sugar, Orange. While an undefeated BYU could be picked up by the Fiesta Bowl, I think they would favor a 2nd or 3rd place SEC/Big Ten team or an undefeated Boise State team. Since the Orange Bowl will be forced to take the Big Least champion against their will, that leaves the Sugar Bowl to be the most likely scenario for BYU. Since the 1st place SEC team (my prediction - Abalama) will probably end up in the "championship" game, that would leave the 2nd place team for the Sugar Bowl. My prediction would be Louisiana State to play an undefeated BYU in the Sugar Bowl. Naturally, there's also a scenario in which BYU loses to LSU, but that wouldn't be the best case scenario.

Holy War

BYU - 27, Utah - 21


Oregon State

Naturally, Oregon State's outlook is a little more bleak. Don't forget that BYU has won infinitely more national championships than Oregon State (or Utah).

Worst Case Scenario

Record: 3-9

Wins: Sacramento State, UCLA, Wazzu

Losses: Wisconsin, Arizona State, Arizona, BYU, Utah, Stanford, Cal, U-dub, Oregon

A losing record means no bowl bid for Oregon State. Under this scenario, OSU would be 1-4 in games in which I am present and would be 0-6 on the road. In the words of Simon Cowell, "Dreadful, absolutely dreadful."

Most Likely Scenario

Record: 5-7

Wins: Sacramento State, UCLA, Arizona State, Wazzu, U-dub

Losses: Wisconsin, Arizona, BYU, Utah, Stanford, Cal, Oregon

Similar to last season, I think OSU will end up just short of bowl eligibility. It's possible that Oregon State could match up well against Cal and come away with a win and a shot at bowl eligibility, but with the game being played in San Francisco, I think Cal will be able to edge them out. One could also argue that Washington has a shot at beating Oregon State. However, I think that, without Jake Locker and in Corvallis, they're not going to be able to overcome OSU's scoring ability.

Best Case Scenario

Record: 7-6

Wins: Sacramento State, UCLA, Arizona State, Arizona, Wazzu, Cal, U-dub

Losses: Wisconsin, BYU, Utah, Stanford, Oregon, TCU

To be honest, Oregon State actually has quite a few heavy hitters in their coming schedule. I just don't think OSU has the weapons to go up against Wisconsin or Stanford and come away with a win. In one of the few scenarios in which I have Oregon State being bowl eligible, I have them going to the Las Vegas Bowl and losing to the Horned Frogs of TCU.

Civil War

Oregon - 35, Oregon State - 20

So there you have my preview for the teams which I'll be following during the 2011 college football season. I'm ready.

Une Année

One year ago today, I was standing in a line of others dressed in the black robes of a false priesthood in the Smith Fieldhouse of Brigham Young University waiting to receive my empty diploma cover. August 13th, 2010 was the day that I walked for college graduation. My degree was posted to my transcripts a couple weeks later and I eventually received my diploma in an envelope that said, "DO NOT FOLD" in big, red letters on the front. I graduated from college on Friday the 13th, and while the day itself was grand, the circumstances surrounding it seemed to reflect the lack of luck often associated with the date.

I applied for my first full-time engineering job in January of 2010, and made the mistake of not counting the many that came after that. I figure that I must have applied for at least 300, but I have no idea exactly what the number is. This mistake will not be repeated when I graduate with a master's degree, hopefully in June of 2013; I will counting the number of full-time engineering job applications submitted with as much precision as possible.

If I had indeed known how terrible the construction-sector job market was going to be in 2010 in December of 2009, this post would have been very different. I would have started applying for master's programs at that time and would have started almost immediately after my graduation from BYU with a bachelor's degree. Who knows what my life would have been like it that had been the case? I probably would have applied to about the same set of schools, but the funding scheme for this last year could have been much different, and I could have ended up going to a school other than Oregon State. As it is, I will be heading out to Oregon State in a little under a month to start the master's degree, and I'm convinced that that is where I need to be at this time of my life.

On a lighter note, I've decided that I'm going to reward myself with something if I find a decent-paying, full-time engineering job after I graduate with a master's degree.


That's a 2011 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R. My love of motorcycles started when my aunt Lory sent me a remote-controlled replica of a Kawasaki Ninja ZX-7R; and I've kind of wanted as close to real version of that bike since that time. I've been riding dirt for much of the mean time, but I've been looking forward to the day when I could get myself a street bike. The ZX-7R was discontinued several years ago as a result of the 750cc racing class being halted. That leaves me with the option of either the ZX-6R (600cc) or the ZX-10R (1000cc). The ZX-6R is not only the safer option, but in a strange piece of irony, seems to be more ergonomically suitable to a man of my size.

They're running about 10 large at this point. Considering the other costs I would be facing compared to the income of a full-time engineering job, that wouldn't even be hard to come up with.

Here's hoping that the next two (or so) years are better than the last one.

Options

In a little less than a month, I move to the great state of Oregon in order to begin a master of science degree at Oregon State University. Considering the nature of my arrival at Oregon State, I find it necessary to contemplate what I should do if I cannot find a full-time engineering job after finishing a master's degree. Statistically speaking, master's grads have done much better than bachelor's grads over the past 3 years. However, in 2008, bachelor's grads were still doing pretty good, and in the state of the economy, it's certainly better to be safe than sorry. So, here are some things that I could do if I cannot find an engineering job in the United States of America.

• Try to find an engineering job in New Zealand. Considering the state of their infrastructure, they could probably use someone with my skill set... and might actually have the money to pay me for it.
  
• Teach English in some strange 2nd-world country. Considering how well some of these gigs pay, I could do much worse. Namely...
  
• Teach Math/Science stateside. Considering the sad state of STEM education, there might be a job waiting for someone who can both multiply AND divide.
• Taco Bell.
• Panhandling. I would need to grow a beard first.
  
• Start an uprising against the current government scheme, the extremely wealthy, and the American Society of Civil Engineers.
• Sail the 7 seas and become a pirate.
• Illegally emigrate to Mexico and get on the dole... Oh wait.
• Find a sugar momma.
• Sell my blood plasma.
• Find/start a band for which I could be the bass player.
• Stand-up comedy.

The one thing that I can think of that definitely wouldn't be an option would be being a bum on my parents' couch... again. If you have any ideas, feel free to send them my way.

Program Plan

The Oregon State University Civil and Construction Engineering program (like most others on any campus) has a requirement that all students have a written program plan on file in the school office. Naturally, I'm way ahead of the game when it comes to planning. Since I don't know exactly what the schedule of classes will look like in the next couple years, there are some changes that could come to the plan as the class schedules come to light. For now, I've put the classes that I'm most confident will be offered during the term in question. An asterisk next to a class name denotes that I wouldn't mind foregoing that class in favor of a more exciting one (keep in mind, I'm an engineer, this is relative.) There's also a distinct possibility that my major/minor advisor won't approve this plan, though that seems unlikely, since it fulfills all the requirements as far as I know.

Fall '11

CE 507 - Stupid Semenar, 1.0 credits
CE 571 - Advanced Foundation Engineering, 4.0
CE 572 - In-situ and Lab Testing of Soils, 4.0
CE 589 - [Structural] Seismic Design, 4.0
13.0 total credits

Winter '12

CE 507 - Stupid Semenar, 1.0
CE 534 - Structural Dynamics, 4.0
CE 570.1 - ST/Shear Strength and Slope Stability, 4.0
CE 570.2 - Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering, 4.0
13.0 total credits

Spring '12

CE 507 - Stupid Semenar, 1.0
CE 573 - Earth Structures, 4.0
CE 575 - Earth Retention and Support, 4.0
CE 583 - Bridge Design, 3.0
12.0 total credits

Fall '12

CE 503 - Thesis, 3.0
CE 526 - Advanced Concrete Materials*, 3.0
CE 528 - Civil Engineering Project Management*, 4.0
CE 585 - Matrix Structural Analysis, 4.0
14.0 total credits

Winter '13

CE 503 - Thesis, 3.0
CE 514 - Groundwater Hydraulics*, 3.0
CE 527 - Temporary Construction Structures, 4.0
CE 586 - Prestressed Concrete Design, 3.0
13.0 total credits

Spring '13

CE 503 - Thesis, 3.0
CE 533 - Structural Stability*, 3.0
CE 592 - Pavement Structures*, 3.0
Geo 561 - Geology of Earthquakes, 3.0
12.0 total credits

This plan in particular makes for 77 total quarter hours (51 semester hours), even though I only need 45 quarter hours (30 sem). This is because students supported by school funds have to maintain 12 term hours per quarter.

I leave for Corvallis on the 10th of September, when I will begin this program of awesome. Just so you know. :)

The Algorithm

In order to solidify one's place in nerd history, one has to make a few things part of his/her everyday life. One of these is to try to quantify just about anything, regardless of how effectively it can truly be quantified. Another of these is to have a dysfunctional dating life such that one would be just as inclined to stay at home on Saturday nights and play MMORPGs than socialize with the opposite sex.

So naturally, last Saturday night I was sitting around in my Animal House pajamas when I got a brilliant idea. I would make an algorithm to quantify what sort of women I'm attracted to. Could this actually be useful? Perhaps. While I was at BYU, I often ended up not going on dates because of the paradox of choice, among ...many... other things. The algorithm could give a hierarchy to queue, such that I might know who I should take out. I don't claim that it will actually work out that way, but at least it's a nice thought.

So, here it is:

R = 0 For S > B

where

and

A = Attractiveness

P = Subjective Physical Attractiveness on a 1-10 scale
IQ = Intelligence Quotient
σE = Deviation of Eccentricities
σEM = My Deviation of Eccentricities
T = Testimony Factor, 1-10 scale
C = Charity Factor, 1-10 scale
R = Responsibility Factor, 1-10 scale
B = Perception of Time Spent in Constructive Activity (B stands for 'Books'), Percent
Tw = Perception of Time Spent in Things that Look like Constructive Activity but Aren't (Tw stands for 'Twilight'), Percent
S = Perception of Time Spent in non-Constructive Activity (S stands for 'Shopping'), Percent
H = Humor Factor, 1-10 scale
FG = Pro 2nd Amendment, 1-10 scale
AR = Reciprocal Attraction, 1-10 scale

There are six separate pieces to this equation that all deserve to be looked at in more detail.

Emotional Stability, ES

The two sigma (σ) terms in the equation represent the number of standard deviations away from average the mental and emotional eccentricities of me and a prospective partner would be. In practice, this serves as the personality term of the equation. If I think that I and a prospective partner is way different from me, I could make the difference in sigma terms as high as 6, lowering the overall attractiveness. If I think that someone is similar to me in a way that would be conducive to a relationship, I could make the difference in sigmas zero, so that the 'Big 3' term wouldn't be divided up at all.

The Big 3 Parameter, 2P(IQ-70)/ES

The 'Big 3' represents the three points of most emphasis when looking for a date: looks, brains, and personality. This parameter can vary anywhere from 0 to 1200, making it approximately 46% of the equation.

The Spirituality Parameter, 8T*C

This parameter is a simple product of my perceptions of testimony and charity. I've expressed my desire to end up with a woman who has a testimony and who lives according to that testimony in the past. Any woman who's a member of the church will probably end up with at least 7s in both testimony and charity unless I know she's involved in sketchy activity. Variance of 0 to 800, 31% of the total.

The (Anal) Retentiveness Parameter, R(B-T-S)*H/25

Basically, I want a woman who's responsible, but knows how to laugh at things when they're funny. Through much of my life, I've noticed that there are often women who read and women who go shopping. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with shopping, I'm just making an analogy to priorities between something I find constructive, like reading and something I find mostly non-constructive, like shopping. In the world of books, there's also crap that looks good, but really isn't at its core, like Twilight. The same applies to life. As a side note, everyone needs to have non-constructive activity once in a while in order to remain sane. This isn't reflected in the equation and is one of its weaknesses. In order to keep the term from going negative (and thus punishing for humor) R is taken to zero when S exceeds B. I should also mention that this factor tends to not favor younger women, who don't look as responsible as their older counterparts, even though they could have been just as responsible at the same age. I considered using an age correction factor, but decided against it. Variance of 0-400, 15% of the total.

The Gun Factor, FG

I like firearms, and I wish everyone else did too. Especially for women in this day and age, knowledge of how to use a gun is a valuable tool that could save one's life. I have to bump down women who don't feel this way a notch, especially when their reasoning is something naïve like "Guns kill people." Variance of 0 to 100, 4% of the total.

Reciprocal Attraction, AR

People are generally more fond of people who like them. I'm not sure this needs any more explanation than that. Variance of 0 to 100, 4% of the total.

The theoretical total of this equation comes out to 2600 points, though that would be ridiculous, just like scoring a 0 would be ridiculous. Most women will probably come out to somewhere between 850 and 1750, though I don't know for sure because I haven't really tried it out much yet. However, I have tried it out, so here are some case studies.

Case Studies

The first evaluation is a woman (yes, she is real... as far as I know) who I find very attractive physically, mentally, and emotionally. This woman manages to remind me of my good qualities without really showing my bad ones. In short, she's a gem. We'll call this woman 'Exhibit B' for anonymity's sake.

Exhibit B

The next is of a woman who exemplifies the Everclean song, "Sweet Spirit" with tragic precision. She's a great person, but I could literally find nothing, from head to toe, that I found physically attractive about her, and trust me, I tried.

Sweet Spirit

This next one is a younger woman I met my senior year at BYU. She's weird, but in a similar way to me. She had great priorities and a sneaky sense of humor, though she ignored me about half the time, so I'm not sure how that would have worked out. We'll call her 'Princess Zelda.'

Princess Zelda

Now, I'm sure you'd love to know how fiancées 1 and 2 stack up. So here you go.

Fiancée #1 (Clearly thinking with the wrong head)

Fiancée #2 (Might have killed me in my sleep if we got married)

So that's how it works. As a footnote to this blag post, I'd like to mention that I developed this algorithm primarily with the goal of picking out dates and bringing order to the queue rather than picking a spouse. Personally, there's one big thing that's missing from this methodology that would be key to picking a spouse and that's sanity. The ES factor helps quantify it, but if fiancée #2 was to be truly rated on sanity, she's go from 1429 to -138 instantaneously. I like quantifying things, but I think picking the one should be a separate deal.

So here's to me (maybe) having a semi-functional relationship with women. Cheers!

.edu

In my blag post titled, "The Economic Recovery Plan," I talked briefly about property tax and education reform and promised that there would be a post dedicated to this topic in the near future. Well today's you're lucky day folks! I realize that my opinions on education may upset educators and progressive liberals of all sorts. However, I believe that, in order to right the US economy, we need to have some changes to our primary and secondary education system.

First of all, allow me to say that I do not advocate much in the way of cuts to the education system across the country. However, I do believe that there are some decisive changes that need to be made in order to make the system more efficient and get more value for the tax dollars spent.

Part of the cause of the housing crisis in the United States is that school districts funding is based largely on the value of the homes in the area. Higher home values means higher property taxes, which means more funding for local schools. Thus, educators and everyone close to the education system have been trying to push property values up. This, combined with I-bankers' casino-like gambling in the housing market, lead to a huge housing boom. Sadly, this sort of boom is always followed by a bust, which meant a sudden and dramatic drop in housing values and the associated property tax revenue.

Coming up with a solution to the property tax problem alone is a conundrum. Is there really any other parameter under which property taxes can be calculated and collected, or would property taxes have to be abandoned and their revenue replaced by hikes in other taxes? The best alternate system that I can think of is basing property taxes on the number of people inhabiting each acre of land with respect to the population density of the surrounding area with separate rates for areas deemed rural, suburban, and urban. However, in the end, I'm not sure that this would be better than just throwing out property taxes and raising income and sales taxes to compensate. I just couldn't tell you for sure.

Regardless of what method of taxation was used, the proportion of wealth taken in by the states cannot continue to increase with respect to income. For years, states have taken in billions more dollars to try to help fund public eduction while the nation's infrastructure rots to nothingness (said the civil engineer). I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it doesn't matter how well kids know their multiplication tables when they're dying of Giardia or Cholera because the state chose more money for education over a drinking water treatment plant. While it's working out alright for now, the track we're on is just not sustainable.

So, without further ado, allow me to unveil my ideas for trimming the fat off education so that (maybe) we could have drinking water, sanitary sewer, and transportation systems that don't suck:

1. Eliminate Bilingual Education Programs. Since I would have already deported the illegal immigrants, this wouldn't be as big of an issue as it might seem. Any child holding citizenship status and not speaking fluent English would be put into a rigorous English immersion program.
2. Reduce the power of teachers' unions and certification boards. The goal of this change would not be to reduce the pay of teachers, who already take in the shorts monetarily. The goal would be to take down the institutions that keep bad teachers in the classroom. In order to create better value for taxpayers, we need to have the most capable teachers, and not just the oldest and most social powerful, in the classroom. Unions and cert. boards are made up, largely, of current teachers, who have their own interests in mind. A set of bad teachers can stay right where they are if they're also on the cert. board by keeping better teachers from becoming certified.
   
3. Change the cert. requirements for teachers. To the chagrin of elementary education majors across the nation, I would remove the requirement of having a bachelor's degree in order to teach elementary and middle school. Before you tell me that that would only reduce the quality of teachers, let me present to you the brilliant, but impossible alternative. I've met a few people, among whom there were plenty of education majors, who graduated from reasonably good colleges still being dumber than a bag of hammers and not knowing the functional differences between there, their, and they're, nor being able to find the People's Republic of China on a map. What the American education system really needs is consistent testing of intelligence and communication skills for teachers. Now, we go on a detour as to why this little slice of reason will never happen. In the case of Griggs v. Duke Power Co., a group of black workers sued the power company for which they worked, for using intelligence tests to discriminate against minority workers. The supreme court ruled that, under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, companies could not institute any selection criteria, including intelligence testing, that would cause minorities to be less likely to win jobs. (If you don't find this a little ridiculous, you're part of the "Don't confuse me with the facts," problem we have in this country.) This ruling made it functionally illegal for any organization to use intelligence testing as a selection criteria for employment, including certification of teachers. Now just to be clear, I'm not trying to recruit the best and brightest to be teachers. This would be absurd, based on the current salaries of teachers. After all, those who can't do teach. I'm just trying to make sure that we don't keep morons as teachers just because they were the best we had 12 years ago.
4. Remove competitive athletics from government budgets. I like sports as much as the next guy, but much like the Bowl Championship Series of Division I-A football, competitive sports are a large burden on our government-funded education system. All funding for competitive athletics would have to come from approved boosters. Left to its own devices, this system would unduly favor the children of rich parents, who are already over-privileged as it is. However, with this reform, I would also require that all booster contributions be pooled by the state and redistributed based on enrollment. This way, East High School (Denver) would get a similar athletic budget to Cherry Creek High and all other schools of similar size. If a rich family is going to buy new equipment for their son's football team, they're going to also have to buy new equipment for every other school in the state. Also, any program found not properly reporting its booster contributions to the state would have those contributions seized and would not be allowed to play for one full athletic season.
   
5. Open up a can of whoop-@$$ on textbook publishers. Any undergraduate can tell you, "The price of textbooks is too D@mn high!" This would take the form of not only taking measures to reduce prices outright, but also to prevent publishers from coming out with frivolous new editions. Restrictions would be placed on how often publishers could come out with new books, and if there wasn't enough new, groundbreaking material in a new edition, publishers would be required to continue printing the old edition and selling it at the same price.
6. Open up a slightly less intense can of whoop-@$$ on technology companies. In exchange for not having their taxes raised, makers of computers and software would have to supply a certain number of desktops, printers, tablets, etc. to states for use in public schools. Any proceeds collected from the potential tax hike on tech companies would be redistributed to the states for the purpose of funding education.
   
7. Construct schools with a contractual design life. Many school districts are not held accountable for how they use their school buildings and when they replace them. Districts would have to commit to how long they would use a school building. The longer the design life of the building, the more money the district would get from the state in order to build it. The only way that a district could sell a school building short of its legal design life is if the costs of repairing the building, in absolute terms, would be greater than the cost of a new building.

The purpose of these changes would not be to restrict or cut the public education system. My main purpose would be to stabilize the costs to taxpayers in order to help create an environment conducive to economic growth. With the increased tax revenue that would (hopefully) come from economic growth, money could be allocated to other projects, like the infrastructure that's vital to anything remotely resembling our quality of life in the United States. In the long term, I would hope that both the funding for education and other government-funded programs could continue so that we, in the United States, can continue to have the quality of life we enjoy.

Unfortunately, the reforms I list in this post are almost as unrealistic as the one that I suggested in the last post, most of them for similar reasons. I can only hope that the feds and states of United States of America can make some priorities that actually contribute to the welfare of its citizens, especially the middle class. Though, I'm pretty sure I'm going to start learning Chinese, just in case.

It Must Be My Birthday!

Over the last 3 days, my homie, Tyler, and I have been in Phoenix (in the middle of July, and yes it is hot) at the MLB All Star Game. Since it was the day after my birthday, my mom got us a pair of tickets on the 3rd base line. We flew out on Monday, saw the game on Tuesday, and now we're back in the Phoenix airport awaiting our returning flight to Denver. It's been a great time.

The only Colorado Rockie elected to the ASG this year was Troy Tulowitzki. We saw him walking in on the red carpet, when they introduced him, and in the game and took a ridiculous quantity of pictures. Also while we were there, I picked up a Troy Tulowitzki NL All Star jersey, which I am currently wearing. It was quite a bit of money ($125), but for an authentic jersey that's actually not too bad. Other souvenirs that I obtained include: an event program, a pair of pins, and a lanyard. I thought about getting a gold-infused Home Run Derby ball, but for $46, I decided to pass on that one.

And the NL won; 5-1. Self, great day(s).

The 3rd Degree

A little while back, I set a goal for myself that I'd like to get another degree in addition to the Master of Science in Civil Engineering that I'm going to get from Oregon State starting in the fall (Go Beavers). I've talked briefly about possibilities for a terminal degree, but I haven't really gone into detail. The way I see it, I have three options: A Ph.D. in civil engineering, a second master's degree in mining engineering, or an MBA.

Piled Higher and Deeper

Long ago, my mother suggested to me that I was too smart for industry and should instead enter into the shiny ivory tower of academia. To a certain degree, she's got a point. Wading through endless concourses of the bullfunky that contractors, governments, and lawyers dish out isn't my favorite part about the civil engineering profession, but I'm pretty sure that I'd still enjoy the heck out of it. However, I've been inspired on multiple occasions by professors who don't actually work that hard and don't make bad money doing it. Professorship is one of the few professions where you're paid basically on your ability to be a genius, which I think suits me pretty well.

My master's degree is going to be in geotechnical engineering, which means that it would save me time and energy to get a Ph.D. in the same. Like most other things, not all geotech grad programs are created equal. There are also some places where I just do not want to live, ever. Inasmuch as Boston, MA and Northern California are two of these, MIT and Cal would not be viable options even though they have insanely good research programs. At this point, the three schools which I would be considering are the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, GA, the University of Texas in Austin, TX, and the newest addition, the University of Illinois in the Urbana-Champaign area of Illinois.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign academic logo.

I've chosen to add the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign because of a textbook that I purchased for the master's coursework that I'll begin at Oregon State. I bought Soil Mechanics in Engineering Practice by Karl Terzaghi, Ralph Peck, and Gholamreza Mesri. Terzaghi and Peck especially were at the forefront of the research that became modern soil mechanics and Mesri worked with them in earnest later in their careers. Well, Terzaghi was a guest researcher at the University of Illinois, Peck was a professor there for years before he retired and later kicked the bucket, and Mesri still does some research there at least in some capacity. The University of Illinois has a fantastic geotech group and the civil engineering program overall is ranked 2nd in the nation (behind the aforementioned Cal.)

Before I move on, allow me to say that I'm going to work in industry for several years before I even think about going back to grad school. Even if I can't get a job in geotechnical engineering, I'm still going to find something. I don't care if I have to work 35 hours a week at Taco Bell, I refuse to go back to school immediately following the master's degree. Considering that most of Dr. Benzeley's master's grads had jobs last August when I graduated from BYU, I feel fairly optimistic about my prospects. I also have the goal of getting licensed as an engineer which is probably more important to me than the 3rd degree. In order to get licensed, one has to have at least 5 (or 4 with a master's degree) years of experience working under a licensed engineer. In honesty, it'll probably be another 10 years before this is even applicable, but I have nothing but time to contemplate the future and my career goals, anyway.

If I do decide to get a Ph.D., I'm not going to try to matriculate during an economic downturn like right now, where demand for research is low and supply of cheap researchers is high. No, I'm going to try to ride a wave of economic prosperity, when there's plenty of government research money to go around and, comparatively, not a lot of people who want it, because they're all in industry, making money.

As a side note, the PhD webcomic is hilarious. They're also coming out with a movie that'll be screened at university campuses all over the country. Check it out.

More of the Same

At the onset of this blag post, you may or may not have wondered why I would consider getting another master's degree in mining engineering. If you've read this post, you know why, but for the rest of you, allow me to explain. I saw a show on the Discovery Channel a couple years ago about guys who blew up buildings for a living. Needless to say, I found this to be awesome and would not mind pursuing this as a slight career change.

Now, the guys who were on this show had Ph.D.s in mining engineering and had spent most of their years blowing up dirt for mining operations. Considering that I'm getting a master's in geotechnical engineering with a "minor" per se, in structural engineering, learning to blow up dirt and/or buildings would be right up my alley.

The programs that I think would be best for learning how the blow stuff up in a safe and professional manner would be either the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) in Rolla, MO, or the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY. There's a guy or two at each of these institutions whose blasting research would pave the way to a prosperous career blowing crap up.

Massive Bullsh*t Ahead

At a time or two, I've thought about getting an MBA in entrepreneurship and/or engineering management and starting my own civil engineering consulting firm. Considering how many engineering firms I've seen close their doors and lay off their staff in the recent months, this isn't at the forefront of my mind. I'm going to keep the door open on this one, but I don't plan on visiting much, or anytime soon. I also have no idea where I'd want to go for it. I've looking into the programs at BYU, Georgia Tech, and Purdue, which would all be options, but really I don't have much preference at this point.

So there you have it. My options and plans for a third piece of paper that I can hang on my office wall, and more opportunities for people to say, "Wow, your* smart!"

* Yes, I did that on purpose.

Justice

Earlier today, a jury of her peers in Florida acquitted Casey Anthony (pictured on the left) of the murder of her nearly 3 year-old daughter, Caylee. Despite the chagrin of many across the country, I believe that the justice system of the United States and Florida reached the proper conclusion.

Before I go any further, allow me to say that, based on my knowledge of her life, Casey Anthony is kind of a despicable person and a burden on our society. She was a terrible mother, a habitual liar, and generally lived a life of deceit and treachery, opportunistically taking what she could from whom she could without remorse. She continued this deception when she was arrested multiple times in connection to the disappearance of her child and the various frauds that she committed in the mean time. There is a chance that she either killed her child, Caylee, or contributed in a significant way to her death, however, this suspicion alone is not enough to put her away for life, or to execute her, as the prosecution was seeking.

The biggest reason that I believe the justice system worked in this case was the evidence. There was no physical evidence that the child was murdered and did not die of natural causes, as Casey Anthony testified. Let's take a brief look at what the prosecution had:

• A hair that may or may not have belonged to Caylee Anthony in the trunk of Casey Anthony's car that may or may not have exhibited post-mortal behavior according to research from the University of Tennessee.
  
• A suspicious smell emanating from the trunk of Casey Anthony's car that was later found to contain a bag of garbage.
• Chemical analysis of the air from the trunk of Casey Anthony's car that found traces of chemicals "Consistent with a decomposition event" and chloroform. As a side note, scientists disagree about the exact chemical nature of air exposed to human decomposition.
• Google searches for "neck breaking," "how to make chloroform," and "death" from Casey Anthony's computer.
• Laundry bags, plastic bags, and duct tape similar to what was found at the crime scene were found in the Anthony home.
• A joke picture of one of Casey Anthony's ex-boyfriends drugging a woman with chloroform.
• Instant messages between Casey Anthony and now ex-boyfriend Tony Rusciano that may or may not have given motive.
• Imprints of old diary entries that spoke of how Casey Anthony was happy with changes in her life that had since been removed from the diary.
  
• A badly decomposed body identified as Caylee Anthony in a plastic bag with duct tape covering the skull in a wooded area near the Anthony home.

Now juxtapose this with what the prosecution didn't have:

• A solid cause of death.
• A murder weapon. (Which would be impossible to identify without a cause of death.)
• A confession.
  
• Any eyewitness accounts.
• Anything connecting Casey Anthony with intentional physical harm of her daughter, Caylee, in her death or at any other time.

Based on the evidence, I believe that Casey Anthony could not be convicted of murder even though she may have done it. Her motivations and alibis are sketchy, but the lack of real, physical evidence means that she should be only convicted on the counts of lying to the police, which she was. If we, as a society, genuinely believe the mantra, "Innocent until proven guilty," then we must consider Casey Anthony innocent, because she has not been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I congratulate the jury on ignoring the sensationalizing of the prosecution and examining the evidence as it really was.

Cases in the past have been successfully tried entirely on circumstantial evidence. However, I believe that this phenomenon is a departure from what the founding fathers of the United States had in mind when they established our legal system. Just because one has the motive and the ability to commit a crime doesn't mean that he or she necessarily will, and thus should not be convicted of that crime. If there is no real, physical evidence that a crime was committed, guilt cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and as stated earlier, the suspect must be released as innocent.

This is where it really helps to be a man or woman of faith. I know that God holds all the possible evidence in the case of Casey Anthony and does not have to rely on a jury of her peers to enact justice. He has seen her works and knows the motivations of her heart, in all their strangeness. If she did truly murder her daughter, she will have to answer for this act and all her other perverse and sinful behavior before God and all others present, and will have to accept the punishments which are just.

At this point, I will leave the judging up to God and hope that Casey Anthony can change her ways before it's temporally and everlastingly too late.