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.

Making Life Difficult...

So, today I went dirt bike riding for probably the last time on my KDX 200 that I've had for about 5 years. You know what the sad part is? I sustained the second worst dirt bike riding injury, and definitely the most severe while riding the KDX, not that that's saying much. (The most severe being the collar bone I snapped in half while riding my dad's XR 250R.) Anywho, I'm not entirely sure what this injury is (I'm not going to a doctor, eph that. :P ) but my best theory is that it's a mildly sprained left thumb.

Now, in the past I've joked around about breaking people's thumbs if they weren't to pay me money that they owed me, but this injury has me rethinking such a proposition. Just in the past few hours I've found that there are a whole host of things that are very difficult to do with only one thumb. Some of these include:

Riding a dirt bike (duh!)
Firing a rifle
Opening a bottle
Buckling a seatbelt
Disassembling a Glock*
Unbuttoning a pair of jeans
Buttoning a pair of jeans
Tying shoes
Driving
Handling a DVD
Opening a bottle of pain medication for a sprained thumb
Drying oneself off after getting out of the shower
Opening a sandwich bag
Giving two thumbs up (yeah, should have thought that one through better)
Turning pages in a book/magazine
Washing one's hands
Text, OMG!

...and the list goes on and on. I guess at this point, for really the first time in my life, I'm truly grateful to be right-handed, if I wasn't I'd be truly ephed. And as you can see, a sprained left thumb isn't going to keep me or any other righty from furiously typing anytime soon. ;)

*Requires 10 very strong fingers.