I should give a Thanksgiving report. Well, maybe I shouldn't since it will doubtless make everyone jealous they couldn't be there but I am going to anyway.

This year we decided not to travel and just stay here. Since Thanksgiving is no fun with two people we accepted an invitation over to the Hall's house. This bumped their numbers up to just over 10 folks which is about right for a holiday celebration. This also justifies cooking lots of good food. Everyone had an excellent cooking day including us. We made butternut squash, mashed potatoes, a huge fruit salad with apples, peaches, mandarin oranges, cantaloupe, raspberries and strawberries. For dessert we contributed 2 pies, pumpkin and keylime. When we got there there was also Turkey, green bean casserole, salad, cranberry sauce, stuffing, rolls and 2 more pies, apple and lemon meringue. It was a grand feast and everything was spectacularly good. We had a late lunch and didn't really eat any dinner because we were all so full.

We also watched Stardust. I love that movie, clever, clean if a bit violent, and imaginative. I like it better than the book. I don't know why, I like Neil Gaimon and Terry Prachets concepts, worlds, and stories but I guess I just don't get the British literary humor. It is clever and funny but not enthralling. In the case of Stardust the overall story is the same but the characters, conspiracies, interactions are more alive and intriguing. Instead of just being there, the type of thing you just accept and move on the movie seems to make you sit up and take notice and cause you to wonder. I suppose it is like the difference between deadpan humor and a stand up comic routine.

Anyway, other than that we have been very much enjoying the long weekend with a couple of trips to the store, excitement over the coming Christmas season and some time relaxing at home working on projects and watching movies.

Finally I have pictures uploaded and labeled. While I would have liked to do it here there are well over 100 pictures and LiveJournal just isn't the method in which you want to post that many pictures. Facebook on the other hand has a much better system for uploading and viewing them but not all of my friends and family have accounts but Facebook provides a link to photoalbums that anybody can click on and view. So I have 4 from Halloween.

First the week leading up to Halloween at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=124820&id=769051191&l=324039edb8
This is a small smattering of pumpkins infront of my mom's house, some carving pics, and some close ups in the dining room.

Second is a highly recommended set of pics from Halloween day: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=120733&id=769051191&l=377e0979be
My only warning is it will take you a while to get through them 250+ pumpkins requires a lot of pictures to document properly. This was all done the day of at my aunts house in Caldwell and by the time we left there was only a couple of pumpkins on the steps.

The other highly recommended set of pics which is of reasonable size is the album that consists uniquely of pumpkins I carved: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=120746&id=769051191&l=28bb47b00d
I also rejoice in the fact that I singly handedly carved more than most families do in the month of October, my total being 30+. The first 25 were detailed carvings with the 5+ being pumpkins that made up the tail of the snake. They were done using a drill that the battery was dying on. Still they count and I don't know exactly how many there were as Veralyn did most of them but I came and poked holes at infrequent intervals whenever I could squeeze a little more life out of the drill.

The last is the day after: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=124809&id=769051191&l=d2bd14a3a2
This was disposing of the unwanted pumpkins and the setting up some of the pumpkins for a continued display in front of my parents house. They usually keep a fairly substantial display up until Thanksgiving.

That was what I went home for a week for. I had an absolute blast. The only downside was Peyton wasn't able to get time off to go with me. It was too bad she had to work but I don't think she would have enjoyed the cold house, the mess, or gotten the enjoyment out of the whole craziness as I did. I also had a lot of fun visiting with family and friends that I hadn't seen for a long while.

All of this craziness is thanks to my mother. She was the mastermind. She was an art major in College and usually finds some way of expressing it through every holiday although not always in conventional ways. This year was the year she decided we needed to do the 200+ pumpkins on my aunt yard since it was a Saturday and people were free to help. It was rather funny as we finished setting up and my cousin finished counting the pumpkins and came up with a total around 270. My aunt Linda, whose house and yard we had taken over, was in the back yard behind the house while I was in front with Veralyn. Nonetheless we heard the loud exclamations, "270! 270! I only contracted for 200! You set up closer to 300, you should have stopped carving an finished an hour ago!" Inspite of her protestations she was very good humored about the whole thing which one has to be in order to allow 200 pumpkins in the first place. However, she was under the impression this was a one time only thing and I doubt she will let it happen again, although I wouldn't be surprised to see 100+ some years.

Enjoy the pictures, I am ever so sorry people couldn't have been there first hand. It would have been fun. We would also have broken the 300 mark ;)

I just got back from a week long vacation with my family in which we carved and lit over 200 pumpkins for Halloween. It was a blast and it was sooooo nice to go home. Now I am getting back and sorting through things and going back once again to all those things which life consists of. At some point I will try to post pictures here. However there are a lot of pictures and right now I am not going to bother.

However I did want to post about the stake conference that I attended. We only went to the Sunday session since Saturday was Halloween and we had a previous engagement. Cecil O. Samuelson was the seventy that spoke. I found it funny that even though he was the President of BYU while I was there I had to go to my (old) home ward to hear him speak.

An earlier speaker had mentioned a little child (I believe a fairly close relative) that had been at school and accused of not being a Christian when the other kids found out he/she was a mormon. When asked what constituted a Christian the other kids said a person who believes in Christ at which point after a thought the kid said, "well, then I guess that makes the devil a Christian too".

This clever story reminded Elder Samuelson of an event at which he was invited to speak about the mormons and have a question and answer session with other clergymen. After a discussion of the restoration, the early church in England (for that is where this took place), and the modern church he participated in a long question and answer session. As time was running out a rather petulant man asked how mormons could consider themselves Christians. While Elder S. had thought this questions had been answered he asked for the mans bible and if it would be acceptable to answer the questions by asking a few of his own first. They were all Clergy and there belief in the Bible had been established so he asked them 1) if they believed Christ to be the literal son of God and Mary and thus dual natured both eternal and mortal. Some bickering about details ensued but he testified he believed it as taught in their Bible. 2) He asked if they believed in the ministy of Christ and the miracles he performed. Again their was some discussion of allegorys and such and he cut them short for times sake and again testified that the Mormons beleive in the miracles and ministry as documented. 3) and most importantly in his mind he asked if they believed in the "passion" of Christ and his resurrection (evidently atonement is only used once and passion is how virtually all other Christians refer to Christ's sacrifice. Yet again people voiced their interpretations and discussed naunces going into flowers in the spring and so forth and yet again he cut them off in the interest of time to bear his testimony and state that mormons believed the account as written in their Bibles. At which point he posed his final question which was, Given all the answers to those 3 questions who did they think should be classified as true Cristians. At which point he said a little old lady elbowed the petulant man in the side and said, "I think he's got you".  I liked the story and thought it would be good to share and remember.

Anyway, later I will have to record all the other bits of this last weekend.

I should post about my trips for job interviews, I should talk about all I did, what it was like, what I learned, and the question everybody wants answered "how did the interview go?"  I don't feel particularly up to any of that at the moment because right now I have a great desire for nothing more than to curl up in my own bed and go to sleep.

As far as how did the interviews go, I don't think I put my foot in my mouth at any point or alienated the people I was talking to so they didn't go bad. As far as how good they went I guess I will know within two weeks.

Until then, good night.

Currently the work I am doing is teaching me there are all sorts of long, convoluted ways to describe a refrigerator, and this may or may not have anything to do with what the patent is actually about. I don't know if these guys have any sort of technical background, are native English speakers, or are just lawyers purposefully obfuscating the details.

At least if it takes twice as long I get paid twice as much.

So the process for getting a job is still going slowly and is still annoying but I do now have some work to do. There is a company that needs somebody to sift through and summarize some relevant patents. It is just a small job that shouldn't take more than a week but it is work and money and that is always appreciated.

Also worth mentioning is conference. I hate going to the priesthood session. I kind of hate the way conference is organized. 2 hour sessions with two hour breaks sound like a good idea until you realize that it is really disruptive of your day. This is not what bugs me about conference. It bugs me only about 30 min before priesthood session starts when I realize my day is shot and that now I have to dress up for this last bit interrupting things further. I hate dressing up, the clothes are not comfortable and they are useless because you are working so hard to keep them nice and respectable you can't do anything in them. Perhaps that is why they are designed to restrict motion, some mothers genius plan to keep the kids cleaner by making it so their kids can't play in them.

Let me reiterate I HATE dressing up, thinking about it gets me all riled up and angry. This bears repeating so frequently because words can not adequately describe my aversion so repetition must.

So I sat through the preisthood session frantically taking notes to take my mind off the fact I was wearing a tie and listening to the same people that earlier I had listened to comfortably in shorts and a t-shirt on a sofa. Pen was flying and I was getting some good notes, still upset but coping nicely. Then President Monson, the last speaker, got up and gave his talk about how we shouldn't be angry. Now why did he have to go do that?

Turns out I am not a very quick learner bucause at the end of his talk I was still indignant about being dressed up, except now I was feeling guilty too.

Since Peyton has posted it on her facebook and so it is out there for all the random world to know I thought I ought to post it here as well. Peyton is pregnant and we are expecting a baby of the one variety or the other in March.  

There I took some initiative and told someone. Peyton has been doing most of the telling. She even told my mom. This is all for a very simple reason; the prospect of being a father scares me to death. That and I am a little stinker like that, making her do the telling. 

Other than that not much in the way of news. Some thoughts on various matters. I found a recipe for some way yummy yeast rolls, now I need to teach my friend Kristy how to make them since she is leavening challenged apparently. I am still applying for various jobs although I really hope I get one of the others I have interviewed for already, they just sound cool. I also had a small victory over the sewing machine yesterday. I need to mend some of my clothes and handsewing while effective takes a lot of time, especially when you are as hard on clothes as I am and as busy. The fact that I was able to change the bobbin with a different color of thread, string the thread through the machine, and change the settings, followed by a successful trial run on junk fabric was a huge success. I have tried using the sewing machine before with marginal success, it seems to go fine until the beast realizes it is me trying to use the machine. Unfortunately Peyton is busier (and now pregnant to boot) than I am so I have to do what I can. 

Also if anybody is concerned with how Peyton is doing (all you other people out there that have gone through it for starters) she is doing great. She is tired a lot, gets car sick easily, and dislikes pretty much all raw vegetables. Other than that no food cravings (although the amount of fruit she eats has increased), she is healthy, happy, and fine. No major cases of sickness although their is and underlying constant nausea. Evidently this is the worst after she brushes her teeth but only if it is a Sunday (that particularly amuses me). And yes, I am treating her well and will continue to do so.

Going to the career fair really created a lot of work for me in terms of applying for jobs. Unforturnately it is very slow going as most of want the same information, pages and pages of it, but there is no convenient way to get it to them other than filling out dozens and dozens of little boxes. While I have been distracted and trying to keep on top of other things I don't seem to get much more than 2 companies applied for a day. Big lots of nuisances with having to fill out pages and pages of information time and time again.

The company that scheduled me for an interview in Houston last week upon realizing I was from out of town switched it to a phone interview. So got something to look forward to this week I suppose. Now I just have to remember to be nice and prepared for it. I must say I did enjoy the dumping rain we had today. Lots of pouring rain and thunder and lightning. Quite nice. It even brought Peyton home to me early (by a little bit) since they were hearing about certain road closers (didn't affect us).

Back to job applications.

Well, I can't say that the career fair was fun but I think it went well. I seemed to talk to places that weren't having immediate interviews. I did have 2 already. For a naval shipyard in Norfolk and Harris communications in Melbourne Florida. Both interviews went well and both are going to be passing favorable reviews back to people who make decisions. Both are jobs that I would jump into the air and celebrate getting, as I talked with the people I got more and more excited about the job so here's hoping.  If they both made me job offers I would have trouble deciding which to accept the Naval Shipyard seems like the job might be a better fit while the Florida one sounds like the place might be a better fit.

Of course that doesn't mean my work is done. I still have about 30 other companies that I need to apply to and continue filling out jobs for. A lot of companies said go to our website and apply. I need to do that as well but I don't have as much hope because I don't think my resume is particularly strong as I don't have much in the engineering job history. No co-ops or internships. I am awesome and think I interview pretty well, but getting to that point might be a bit tricky.

The other job that I have an interview scheduled with is for next Thursday in Houston. The only thing is I don't think they realize I have no way to get there. It is a feel good moment and a bit frustrating, I also have no idea when or how I applied to them. In hindsight I should have kept better records since I have done so much of it and can barely remember what I ate yesterday much less what I applied for over a week ago. It is also a oil industry support company I believe and I am not near as excited about it. I've heard the pay is great but it is because they expect to own your soul, good for a single guy, hard on a family guy. Also I would hate to feel like I should take that job when I have ones that are infinitely cooler that I have a shot at. The thing is those other ones are extremely competitive, bird in a hand versus two in the bush.

But that is thinking too far ahead. Right now I have to focus on companies that were at the career fair and need me to do some additional application. I also get to be excited for opportunities and blessings. Go Me!

And I do remember what I ate yesterday, well Tuesday evening. After spending 2 full days wearing out my feet at the career fair we went to Olive Garden since they have their never ending pasta bowl going on right now. I ate 4 bowls and got another serving boxed up to take home. That is why I take advantage of the promotion whenever it comes around, hard to beat that size of a meal for $9 at a place like Olive Garden. It more than made up for the fact that I had missed lunch for 2 days straight because I was constantly at the career fair.

So there is a big career fair at GA Tech this coming Monday and Tuesday and I have been trying to look up all the companies that are coming. Recent alumni are welcome fortunately, the problem is GT is not particularly good at websites and hassle free design. I can search companies by Engineering and by Degree level (among other things), If I search for Graduate Mech Eng I get a list of about 80 companies, if I search for Undergraduate Mech Eng that are also looking for Masters level candidates I get a list of 98  companies (note there should not be any discrepancies here). Combining the lists of companies and subtracting out breweries I have a list of 110 companies that I can apply for. Not too shabby. (that is, bytheway, about 1/3 of companies attending)

The complaint is that this must mean companies are confused by the registration website as well. If they want people who graduated in Mechanical Engineering both at the bachelors and masters level they have to add it twice, Grad Mech Eng and undergrad Mech Eng. There are at least 30 companies who didn't realize this among them names such as Dow chemicals, HP, John Deere, Cooper, and others.

So I am an engineer and can figure this out, the fact that I am smarter than the university is dumb is overcomable right? Well, sometimes. Last year companies wanted you to submit a resume either 1) with the recruiter 2) through the company website or 3) through GT's website or any combination of the three including all of the above (Obnoxious). Well, GT knows what you are and if the company doesn't specify things exactly right it won't let you submit your resume through the website. I had companies that the recruiters said yes we want Masters level yet GT wouldn't let me submit my resume because "my degree level doesn't match requirements". I didn't worry as much about it because last year was a trial run to get the hang of things, I suspect this year will equal more frustration, because nobody, GT, me, and the companies inclusive, can properly manuver and manipulate the websites properly.