...Can't Live Without 'Em

Reading through the posts in my blag, you may think that I'm kind of a misogynist douche who hates everything about women. When I went through all of my blag posts, I realized that that's kind of the impression that I gave. Let me assure you that I love women and honestly wish that I saw more of them (i.e. the 'Unfortunate' in the title.) Here are some things that I love about women, in the order that I thought of them.

• Women are daughters of God. God loves his daughters just as much (never more and never less) than he loves his sons. He intended neither to have dominion over the other, but that they should work together so that each could obtain eternal life.
• Women are generally more emotional. Whether this trait is inherent or learned is a matter of debate, but regardless of which it is, it is a fact of life. Women, in many cases, are conversely talented to men. That is to say that women often have abilities that men don't and vice versa. In a family unit, a man generally functions as the analytical, organized, and boring left brain while a woman functions as the sensitive, impulsive, and fun-loving right brain. These two work together to make a functional and cohesive family unit. Women are the Yin to Men's Yang, if you will.
• Women are often more charitable. Because of their emotional disposition, women are more likely to give of their time and their substance to help others.
  
• Women generally like children. One time, fiancee #2 said that she was going to "convert me to babies." That is to say that she was going to try to convince me that babies are inherently wonderful. This is not possible with me, nor with any man because men are generally more analytical and task-oriented. All babies do is eat, poop, and cry and they really don't do us much good for years after their birth. Basically, we evolved as a species because men like to make babies and women like to actually have them. Were it not for women's affinity for babies, the very existence of homo sapiens as a species would be in jeopardy.
  
• Women teach their children to function in close relationships. As much as progressive feminists despise traditional gender roles, they are kind of inherent in our genes. Basically, men evolved to keep the ravenous, wild beasts from killing their family and women evolved to keep members of the family from killing one another. Generally, it's a mother who teaches her children to play nice with their siblings and the other kids and makes sure that there's at least a little equity amongst her children. This, hopefully, translates into the close and intimate* relationships that we have in adulthood being healthy and functional.
• Women are generally good at multitasking. Men's brains often function in a linear, systematic way that allows them to focus intently on one thing at a time and to do that one thing efficiently and effectively. Women's brains, conversely, tend to fire in several different directions at once, which allows them to do many different things at the same time. Thus, there are many non-linear, multi-focused tasks that women can perform better than men, conversely to the linear, single-focused things that men can do well.
• Women love to talk. Hearkening back to women being more emotional, women are more likely to try to communicate across a relationship. Human nature and society often constrains women from speaking their minds, but it is a beautiful part of femininity. Inasmuch as I'm not clairvoyant, I love it when a woman actually tells me directly what she's thinking about.
• Women are often concerned with appearance. While caring too much how things look can often be detrimental, it is often important to care at least a little bit. Men generally don't really care how things look and it often results in things looking like crap. Women help balance out this effect with their affinity for appearances.

I might be able to come up with some others, but I think I got all of the most important ones. Women are great, and together with men, we are equipped with the ability to find happiness in this life and in the next. I hope that all women can embrace who they are and what makes them women. Until next time, folks.

*Unlike most Mormons, I don't use 'intimacy' as a euphemism for sex. When I say intimate, I actually mean intimate.

Annie Very Sorry

Today marks the second anniversary of the creation of this blag. As luck would have it, it's also the 100th post I've made to it. Here's a recap of things that have happened in the last 2 years and 100 blag posts in approximately chronological order.

• I bought a handgun.
• I decided to get a business minor.
• I read 'The Five Love Languages' by Gary Chapman. It changed my life.
• I saw then BYU tight end Andrew George catch a walk-off touchdown pass from Max Hall to beat SpUtah in OT.
  
• I applied for over 300 full-time civil engineering jobs.
• I got 3 interviews and no formal job offers.
  
• I took and passed the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam.
• I moved into an apartment with guys who I actually liked beforehand.
  
• I went to the Utah Summer Games Ultimate Frisbee Tournament in Cedar City and accidentally attended a Single Adult dance. (Notice the lack of 'Young' at the front.)
• I went longboarding down Provo Canyon with Scott Manning and still have the scars to prove it. I pledged that I would never ride/drive anything that didn't have brakes after that.
  
• I bought and have been learning to play the bass guitar.
• I appeared in 'The Food Nanny' TV program on BYUtv.
• I graduated from BYU with a BS.
• I applied to 7 institutions of higher learning to pursue a master's degree in civil engineering.
• I was accepted by 6 of those institutions.
• I found out that I would receive funding from Oregon State University and, without hesitation, decided that I would matriculate.

As we can see, it's been a great time. I'm totally looking forward to next two years worth of Unfortunate Dudefests. :D

Brethren, Our Prayers Have Been Answered

I knew a guy at the Colorado School of Mimes who was a member of the church and attended the institute. He told me a story that I found very entertaining, that I'm going to tell you now. To put this in context, Mines is a school wholly dedicated to engineering, and as such has gender ratios similar to the engineering building on any campus. The recruiters were actually being congratulated because they were up to 24% women. Well, as you could image, the student ward in town was one in a series of unfortunate dudefests. Basically, it was a bunch of single engineers, a couple people from Metropolitan State College of Denver who lived in the area, and a few married engineers with their wives. Single women were a scarce resource. So, this guy's story was that, one Sunday, he was attending the area family ward instead of the student ward. While he was in that ward, the BYU women's basketball team walked in and sat down among the congregation. And in his own words, "If this had been in the [student] ward, the bishop would have stood up and said, 'Brethren, our prayers have been answered.'"

That's kind of how I feel today, but not about women, about money. This morning, I emailed Kathy Westberg at Oregon State to confirm that she had received a written confirmation of my acceptance of the graduate laurels scholarship. She responded that she had received it and that everything was set. Literally 5 hours later, I received another email from Kathy saying that I had also been selected to receive a graduate teaching assistantship. Needless to say, I was very flattered at that point that the school of civil and construction engineering thought that high of me. I have asked the Lord repeatedly to help me find graduate funding and he has clearly softened the hearts of those at Oregon State University such that money has been flowing in my direction therefrom.

So, this assistantship involves basically the same thing as the scholarship plus a job. So, I still get three quarters of tuition remission, but along with it, I get $1738.03 a month in exchange for 20 hours of work a week as a teaching assistant. Is the equivalent of about $20 an hour more than I've ever made? Why yes... yes it is. By about double. I like this.

The only caveat to this assistantship is that I have to have health insurance. Thanks to our good friend Barack Obama, I am still covered under my parents' health insurance, though Oregon State really wants you to buy theirs. In order to waive the university's insurance, you have to provide proof that yours provides at least as good or better coverage than theirs. I called my parents' insurance company today and requested a copy of our insurance coverage that will be here in 7 to 10 business days that I can then send to the university along with an insurance waiver form. I'm going to submit the paperwork, even though it's hardly even worth it at this point. The university's health insurance only costs $43 a month, which is deducted from the stipend tax free. Put simply, I'm going to turn in the insurance waiver, but if it gets rejected, it won't hurt my feelings too much.

On a somewhat separate note, I found out from the Corvallis institute website that you can submit requests for roommates by sending an email to the institute. This will make finding a roommate with morals significantly easier. I like this as well.

Brothers and sisters, my prayers have been answered.

Teh Grad Skoolinz

Since several people have asked me about the grad school situation, I figure I should offer a bit of an update. As you may or may not have read in this post, I applied to 7 universities to pursue a master's degree in civil/geotechnical engineering. At this point I have made no final decision on where I will be attending school in the fall. I am still waiting on admissions decisions from two schools and, to date, no school has offered me funding. This will probably happen sometime in March or April, so I don't expect to make my decision before the ides of April (the 15th for you non-Shakespearean types.) Here are updates for each of the schools to which I applied:

• Virginia Tech - I got an admission letter to VT about a month and a half after I finished the application. I also found out that there is indeed a single's ward in Blacksburg, though it would most likely be the next in a long series of unfortunate dudefests. The Virginia Tech geotechnical group is also having a graduate open house next week on the 25th and 26th. They offered to reimburse me for travel costs up to $600, thus I will be in Virginia at the end of the month.
• CU Boulder - I haven't yet gotten a physical letter from the university, but the geotechnical group and the civil engineering department have recommended me for admission, which means that it's coming any day now. They're also having an open house for admitted civil engineering grad students on March 4th to which I have already RSVP'd. The university hasn't offered to reimburse for anything, but the professor who sent me the admissions email offered to pay out of his own pocket for my parking because he was excited to meet me.
  
• Oregon State - I received an admissions letter from Oregon State a couple of weeks ago. As unfortunate as it is, the graduate open house for OSU's civil engineering department is on March 4th, the exact same day as CU Boulder's. I found this out from the department's prospective grad student website and not from a formal invitation, which is one of the reasons that I'll be attending CU Boulder's. The other reason is that CU is 20 miles from my house and I will have just gotten back from Virginia 4 days earlier. Under the circumstances, a 20-mile trek sounds much more inviting than a 1300 mile one. I will still probably visit OSU/ Corvallis, but not for the civil engineering grad open house.
  
• Washington - UW has found a little favor in my sight since I made the last grad school post. This is mostly because they confirmed with me that they had received everything they needed for my application, which at least partially made up for their previous ridiculousness. However, my impression so far is that the university as a whole is massively bureaucratic and runs like molasses in a Minnesota winter. I think I'd still like to go there, but it seems that other universities want me a whole lot more than UW does. I haven't heard anything about my admission or a graduate open house, but they have received my FAFSA, which is a good sign.
  
• BYU - All of the components to my application were received by the university on the 11th of this month (4 days before the deadline.) I expect to hear back from them in the affirmative sometime soon. The problem with BYU is that I'm pretty certain that I won't have funding for the first two semesters that I'm there. Dr. Rollins has the funding for earthquake drain research all lined up. The problem is that the proposal detailed using the shake table at the University of Buffalo, which is booked until the spring of '12, thus I cannot take advantage of funding until after Winter semester '12.
• Purdue - I didn't get into Purdue.
• UCLA - After dealing with all the bull detailed in the last post, I've decided to strike UCLA from the record. I'm also thinking, at this point, that I didn't get 3 signed letters of rec to the civil engineering department at all, much less before the dealine. I'm also pretty sure that no one has even looked at my application, or any of the others, since they were submitted, even though UCLA had the earliest deadline of all the schools to which I applied.

I'm excited about the prospect of going to grad school for a master's degree in the fall. However, at this point, I'm even more excited about the prospect of the waiting game being over.

The One You Wish Was the One

Over the past few weeks/months/...eh probably not years... I've found my heart in possession of a woman with whom I have somewhat regular companionship, yet not an incredibly deep relationship of any sort. This is most definitely nothing new to me. I've found that the 6th grade (for most people, more like the 8th for me ) has continued more or less indefinitely until the present day. I find myself applying an intricate methodology for assessing the desirability of a woman analytically. When I find one who scores high in my own mind it's only natural that I would want to make her mine. Yet, all this analysis has omitted one of if not the most important factors in building relationships, emotion. Thus there is total dissonance between the formulated desire to form a relationship and the actual entrance strategy. In more plain terms, my mind is telling me, "Heck yes, hit that!" and my heart is telling me, "Whoa, back off there cowboy, them's choppy waters up ahead." I'm not sure my analogy really worked there, but I'm going to run with it anyway.

So, back to the story with which I started this blag post. There's been one particular woman on whom I've been crushing on like a dirty, 6th grade n00b. In my own mind she's just perfect. She's about the kindest person on the face of the Earth. Our senses of humor are very compatible. She's at about the optimal height for a man of my height. She has a valiant testimony of the Lord. She has achieved an optimal physical attractiveness, one which attracts me very much to her, but doesn't result in a dudefest at her apartment every night. And the best part is that she makes me want to be a better man than I currently am, both with her example of testimony and with just the woman that she is. I suppose that we would make a very good (not to mention cute) couple. And thus I present to you my analysis.

The emotional side of my relationship with this woman is quite the contrast from the analysis which I just described. When I'm around this particular woman I feel like my shoulder devil is a full grown man and my shoulder angel is out to lunch. There seems to be a voice whispering in my ear, "William, you know that you don't deserve a woman who's made of pure awesome like this one." or "You couldn't even keep that woman entertained, much less happy... bwahahahaha!!!" (PS-I know who that voice is, I need no council there. I did call him my full-grown shoulder devil after all. :P) Looking at these claims analytically could and would disprove them, but there is little if any analytical cognition when in the presence of women made of 100% pure awesome, it's all emotion. And as long as the emotion reigns there seems to be my full grown... maybe even morbidly obese, shoulder devil there to deter me.

As previously touched upon, I'm not entirely sure what the solution to such a problem would be. I'm sure that with faith in the Lord all things are possible. I have faith that he will guide me and aid me in everything that I need to do. I've felt that he also wants me to struggle with such a trial as this in this life so that I might be able to learn valuable lessons about the gospel and the principles of exaltation and eternal increase. As such, it is up to me to decide when I am willing to make the necessary sacrifices to be able to overcome these trials with the Lord's help. Will this happen in a timetable which will allow me to woo the woman who currently holds my fancy? Probably not. Will it be worth it in the long run? Certainly.

Memoirs

Recently I've been thinking about what would make a good title for my memoirs. What title could I give that would summarize the advice I would pass on to my posterity. After some not-so-serious thought, here's some of what I've come up with:

"A Series of Unfortunate Dudefests"-[See Post Titled "Source of the Title"]

"How to Attract Women"-An in-detail chronologue of the exact opposite of everything I ever did.

"Lies My Mother Told Me"-These would include, "William, your father is a prick!", and "William, I'm gonna find that little Japanese girl that's been stalking you."

"Non-RMs are People Too... and Other Bull$h*7 You Wish Was True"-The trials of being a part of Mormon doctrine without being a part of Mormon culture.

"D4mM17 William, You Spilt the Motherephing Gravy!"-Actual quote from my dad. XD

"My Talent is Making Analogies About Balls"-Imagine this being said in an Elders' Quorum 'introduce everybody' thing.

"Sometimes the Crap Falls off the Paper Plate."-Making the best...and worst of lifes hard times... redneck style.

"Call Me a Massage THErapist"-My theory on how a man can be a misogynist without being a sexist or a chauvenist... PS-If you don't get this one, it's okay. It only makes sense in my head.

"The Least Interesting Man in the World"-[See Post "The Least Interesting Man in the World"]

"The Engineer Assumed a Safety Factor of 2"-At some point you just realize that you've got 'The Knack.'

"Enlarge Your Penis Just by Reading this Book!"-Only if I wanted to make a bunch of money then go straight to hell when I die... A good alternative would be to become a lawyer.

"I Kissed a Girl... And I Liked It!"-Two actually! It'd totally be worth paying royalties to Katie Perry.

"I Did Not Have Sexual Relations with that Woman."-Because I didn't! I guarantee it! Would I get sued by Bill Clinton? Yes. How would I deal with that problem? I would insure that all the groupie rights went straight to Slick Willy... 'cause we all know Bill's just in it for the nookie.

What's the moral of this blog post? If I ever tell you that I'm going to write my memoirs, I want you to backslap me and ask inquisitively, "You mean, 'Enlarge Your Penis Just by Reading this Book!'? Don't be a dumb@$$!"

The Source of the Title

I'm sure that there are some out there who might be wondering about the source of the title of this blog... Though it's probably pretty obvious when I mention the word, "Engineering," but I think it deserves a little additional explanation.

Yes, at this point I am an engineering student. In BYU's college of engineering and technology, there is a healthy 85% male population. These can range anywhere from the meat-headed construction management major to the epically white and nerdy electrical and computer engineers. Yet, all of these majors have one thing in common; they are all epic dudefests. This current term I am taking two engineering classes, geometric design of highways, and hydraulic engineering. Between the two of them there are two persons of the female variety, one of which is married... not a lotta options, if you know what I mean.

Yet, I also think it goes a little deeper than that. I don't know if it is at all warranted, but sometimes I think it must just be me. Case and point: last year I was FHE "father"/coordinator for both fall and winter in the BYU 67th ward. During the fall semester I was blessed to have three dudes apartments along with two womens' apartments. Honestly, I kind of expected it to be a dudefest at that point, and it wasn't a big deal. Then winter semester came around and the tables were turned... there ended up being about 6 dudes and 10 women in my FHE family; good odds from all outward appearances. Yet, the ratios still managed to remain about the same. Pretty much all 6 dudes showed up and about 3 or 4 women... it was disappointing. These "families" consisted of almost entirely different people. The only common denominators were me and one of my roommates from the previous semester. I mean, he had some pretty wicked gas every once in a while, but he generally kept it under control while at FHE. So, there was really just one option left... it must be me.

I haven't even had any career aspirations/considerations/back-up plans/dilusions that haven't been epic dudefests. Let's review them:

Geologist/Paleontologist-Dudefest
Mechanical Engineer-Epic Dudefest
Civil Engineer-Dudefest
Lawyer-Dudefest, and you go straight to hell upon death, which is another dudefest
Stand-up Comedian-It's about 65:35, but most of the women are lesbians... Dudefest
Carpenter-Dudefest... also Fiesta (Mexicanfest)
Truck Driver-The only women are the one's that get picked up and never seen again... Dudefest

I've highlighted Civil Engineering, because that's what I'm actually going into. I guess at this point, I must come to the conclusion that it's either just me, or the world is actually 85% men and there's a conspiracy by the Catholic Church and NAMBLA to cover it up. XD