Jobs..yeah i cant wait to leave kansas

I really hate being a grad student not quite sure why i decided to turn down a 56k per year starting job to come here. i could be driving a new car, looking at homes, have a boat or classic car lined up but no...stupid tom decided to go to stupid grad school. it is becoming harder and harder this semester to stay afloat. my boat is quickly sinking after my two midterm exams and how i performed on them-lets just say it was not Tom on his best day. This fall alone, i have applied for 26+ jobs around the country, I only started counting recently and didnt count the few that i was rejected for. they go from the east coast to the midwest. from betchel corp, to constellation, to tva, to txu, to entergy, to westinghouse, to entergy, finally to the nrc. the sad thing is that i probably wont here anything back and i pissed away my chances by turning down the job. i could be getting my vacation time in a month, i could be on my own with my own apartment with all my friends around Tech. I could be laughing my ass off at my ex who got pregnant after unsuccessfully attempting to get me to come back to her after all the shit she put me through. but no tom had to choose the fail situation. tom had to think he was smarter than he is and go to grad school. all i want is a job in the nuclear industry, some money in the bank, a nice warm home, a classic car and a boat to go to the lake with. is that too much to ask for? maybe so....maybe so. I have met a lot of cool people that i wouldnt have met if i had stayed at ANO, nor would i have gotten to build my first computer and had a fail motherboard issue (might have been done sooner or later but still) probably wouldnt have done a lot of things but such is life. there are a few things i fail at and apparently making good life decisions is one of them at the moment.

Falling Fast: Poem by Tom

falling so fast
not sure how long it will last
wanting to hide
from all of the world that lied
stolen my soul
might as well go live in a hole
one day late
simply cost me my only mate
falling oh so fast
never thought it would last
will it ever end?
or will i have to mend?
the end is near
it has become oh so clear
fight the fight
try not to lose the sight
can only fall
if you cant get on the ball
and save yourself
from yourself

The day that never comes: Poem by Tom

the day that never comes
is the day i always want
must we always fight
for the days to be bright
death and gloom lurk about
it is over i dont not doubt
wanting someone to care
just for the time to share
but the succubus comes to
destroy and plunder you
darkness and despair has
taken over even as
the light still shines
faintly but still it shines.
when the light goes out
where will you be?
maybe you will be in rout
to see him who loves you
where will you be?
maybe saying love you too
i will await that day
where will you be?
maybe it comes before May
the sun will never shine again
i will never see the light again
i will never love again
i will never feel again
i will never see your face again
'cause the sun never shines again
i wish this was a dream
but it is reality it seems
a part of my soul has died
if only you had not lied
so we could have tried
nothing left in this world
all because of some girl
life has become unfurled
all because of this girl
the day is over now
my time is over now
this world wont miss me much
and i wont miss your touch
the day i always want
is the day that never comes

Randomness

It has been a while since i have posted and lots of things have happened recently. The research is going slightly better, took my first midterm of the semester (should be a solid b or a performance) but still generally unhappy. Did get to take out the xterra to pillsbury and did some sick donuts in water and had that thing spinning like crazy-makes me want a K5 Blazer so bad right now. Might have to invest in one sometime soon- like next year after i graduate. Get an 87 K5, stick a new 327 crate motor lift it 3 in throw some 33"s on it and some custom bumpers and a slick all black or gunmetal grey paint job with a lime green or chevy orange stripe. should be pretty awesome. not to mention anti fuel economy/global warming which should piss off the current government since it is a clunker by their standards. and to think i could run classic tags on it in a couple of years.
i feel like a free electron floating in space only to get trapped by some positively charged element yet desiring to be photoelectrically annihilated in a spiral of chaos. which reminds me of my license plate that i think i want..87chaos and if i cant get that it will be chaos87.
i dont feel like doing much at all. should be ordering a new computer soon since my work laptop is basially died on me. i can literally here the HD spinning-haha.

ramblings of a long week

I hate detection and detection based research. I would much rather being doing anything but it.
I also hate that the music industry has become greedy bastards and screwed pandora over. I like having more than 40 hours of music before they cut me off.
in other recent news i think i am going to do the hukilau later on this evening for kicks..why i am not sure it should be quite entertaining..maybe i will post it on youtube..and maybe not since nobody reads this anyways.

so um the push for electric cars....

Yeah I don't see a big EPIC FAIL on the governments part. Our grid is stretched to its limits as is and we have yet to address any new base load generation power plants. so what happens when we all go buy electric cars and plug them in at night? I will tell you.. Rolling to total blackouts/brownouts across the country. Solar and wind do not have the capacity factor nor the efficiency. so you have one of two options. Nuclear or Fossil fuels..It takes years to construct either plant, longer for the nuclear due to the licensing procedures. At the moment with no construction going on, you are looking at 2016 for the first new nuclear plant..I do not track the fossil plants but i do know that a new one has been proposed for west Kansas.
What does all this mean to you? well with the new "cap and tax" bill you will pay more because of your increased energy usage. suffer power loses at home while you are trying to relax and watch that favorite sitcom of yours, and be forced to listen to the misses complain why you haven't fixed the shelf in the bathroom yet. good job environmental nut jobs....your efforts are as futile as the mission accomplished sign presented by Bush on navy ship.

A random wednesday blogging

It is pretty bad when an engineer has to do the work of a programmer..it is worse when the engineer hates programming. but neither of this is as bad as what happened yesterday...
as many of you know i hate jimmy carter. he turned his back on his nuclear background and royally messed up my industry. but at least he got captives freed. It is completely pathetic that nobody in Washington could free the two illegal immigrants (two very dumb lady journalists who decided hey lets go into NK and do a story for al gore's news related company) so they send in Former President Clinton...His wife couldnt do it, obama couldnt do it, nor could pelosi, reid or any other asshat in DC. Those who couldnt do it are too worried about socializing the country than its own citizens..watch out.. it is very clear that obama has a lax foreign policy and a do not care attitude or he would have gotten them freed many weeks ago. It took Clinton one day...ONE DAY and obama couldnt give them one day of his town hall meetings that spam the air waves with mass propaganda about how great his health care plan is and how much it will NOT raise taxes for anybody but the rich and small businesses. the later of the two not really mentioned until you look at the figures. tax increases on companies who pay out more than 350k per year on salaries. Say each person is 50k each then you have a company with 7 people.. if that isnt a small business then what is.
cash for clunkers has seemed to kick-start the economy or has it? fact. it will take time to tell.
opinion. no, people have been wanting to trade in cars for various reasons but due to the economy and the unknown of the auto industry they have continued to drive their cars hoping they would last longer but due to the rebates and insane amount of savings they jumped on the opportunity to save money and get a new ride. i believe that when the program is over we have another dip in the recession.
in all honesty fix the damn economy before you force socialized medicine down my throat. you only have a year left before your democratic congress may turn into a republican one and ban every piece of garbage you try to push through. you can stop it if you were smart but why listen to me...history will repeat itself.

Random thoughts on a Tuesday

I had a case of the Mondays yesterday and just didn't feel like doing much. But now I am fired up about another interesting topic. As many of you know my younger brother just got married roughly 3 weeks ago so good luck to him and his new wife. But this brings me to my topic of marriage.
marriage is legally defined as a social, religious, spiritual, emotional, and or legal union of two individuals that creates kinship. Marriage is an institution in which interpersonal relationships are acknowledged by the state and a religious authority. Like it or not marriage has been performed by a religious institute for the last, oh I don't know....the beginning of biblical era to be socially correct. Those of you that know me, know that i am not the most religious person on the planet and know that i have my personal issues with the bible and some of the inaccuracies IE the earth being only 5000 years old give or take when C14 and other forms of radiodating and sciences tell us it is far older than that. But I digress, marriage is a union between a man and a woman. It is defined by the bible, which impacted every one of our lives in some form or fashion. Call me a homophobic idiot, but a marriage is between two people of different genders. It must stay that way. I understand that there are an ever increasing amount of homosexuals in the world and that they feel the need to get hitched to show the world who they love and that they are proud but marriage is not the correct way of doing such. People who are for gay marriage argue for equal rights and separation of church and state and here is my argument to them. You are guaranteed certain rights that are only bound to you by the Constitution of which marriage is not one of them. You are also to not be treated unequally by federal or state laws. Nobody is telling you that you cant go marry a person of the opposite gender so you have the same right as everybody else. shallow of me? quite possibly but you will live :). marriage is a religious act therefore the state/feds should not be doing anything about it, whether legalizing or illegalizing. The government needs to step in only when a constituional law is broken IE Arkansas not recognizing a gay marriage license from Vermont...Which is bound to happen if not by those two state but by others..I believe there are close to 15 states that have made it illegal and 7 that have it legal. What needs to happen is this. leave marriage alone and revamp the civil unions under federal law and allow heterosexual couples the choice to get married traditionally or by a civil union in order to keep separation of church and state valid. Leaving it up to the individuals what to do but giving them the same benefits as a traditional marriage. This way you dont get the crazy rightwing/leftwing extremists marrying pets, trees, cars, etc.

Obamanation or the upcoming U.S.S.A

I am thoroughly convinced that Barrack Husein Obama is a communist and idolizes the former USSR dictators. His 14 tsars of various responsibilities are simply puppets. Bill Cunningham accurately depicted Obama's administration by leaving the American population with change only. We do not need nationalized healthcare (obamacare aka sociolized medicine), we do not need to spend trillions of dollars to bail out companies that were irresponsible, we do not need to cap and trade. He is trying to get all the power he can and add a "S" into the USA, thus earning the title of United Soviet States of America...It pains me to even type that or think about it. My forefathers fought for my freedom. Now is our time to fight the tyranny of the current administration for the freedom of our children. We do not need to bury the middle class in so much debt that we essentially have children born into debt that they will never be able to get out of. IF all 300 million people were to pay off this debt that is rising close to 2 trillion dollars, we are all responsible for 6700 dollars. When we have children they are now resonsible for that amount of money. That is paying it off right now. Personally i do not have 6700 dollars to pay the government so we tack on all the interest and we easily owe close to 10,000 dollars. It is insane, that is an additional amount to the already paid taxes we pay. And if this Cap and Trade bill add another 3000 dollars to your taxes. An average family that makes between 100,000 and 150,000 dollars per year has to pay between 5,000 and 10,000 dollars already every April. Now add on this money and every middle classed family in the country has to write the government a 23,000 dollar check in April. 23,000 dollars! Where are they supposed to get this? Most of America is within 1 fatal family injury or illness away from bankrupcy. We live paycheck to paycheck, some worse than others but still.
If you respect the founding fathers and what this country was founded upon then you need to be against this frivoulous spending. Let me remind you what we were founded on. LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. How can we pursue happiness if we give every dollar we save to the government, how do we live with only change in our pockets, how is this liberty and freedom? It simply isnt. The American people do not want what congress is giving us. They are supposed to do as we say. We elect them to lead us, NOT use their power to get what they want.
That is all my readers.

Cash for Clunkers..A trade in program voucher

When I first heard of the idea of this I admit, I thought it was going to be a good idea. But once I got the details on it, Needless to say I am against it. This car voucher which gives any post-84 model that gets less than 4 mpg than the new car you want is worth $3500 or $4500 if it gets 10 mpg less. BUT it does not allow you to trade in a car and get the voucher, the voucher simply substitutes as a trade in. Totally useless unless you car is not worth $3500. So all of us with modern early 2000 model cars that were thinking about trading the car in for a new one that got better mileage or to celebrate a new job/recently graduation you are better off keeping your clunker. This clunker program only affects people driving cars worth less than $3500 but those who drive cars that are in that nature cannot afford a new $24,000 car.
thank you government for being even more wasteful time to create this useless program. thank you very much....

Notes on Economy, Energy, and Hybrids

So like it or not here it comes..the low down on hybrids and the true ownership costs, the energy crisis, and maybe a little bit about the president and how he handles everything.

to start this blog off i will cover hybrids. while hybrids boast the high 30 to low 40 miles per gallon this isnt the true cost of energy that they do use..In gen 1-2 and all non plug in hybrids you have to factor in the cost of the batteries for them. these batteries only last about 10 years or 100,000 miles (the later to be reached in most circumstances). what happens after this has been reached? you are forced to replace the batteries which will set you back between 5-10 grand..i havent done the math on it but i know it makes true cost per mile higher, its just common sense. so basically if you buy a used hybrid, you need to go get a dunce hat and wear it. now plug in electric hybrids...a great concept and coming on to the market very soon..but where does this electricity come from? the wall? dont be ignorant..it comes from the electric grid which is 80 percent based on fossil fuels. so you arent any greener than that of a gas engine owner. not to mention that your electric bill jumps up and while you may save money at the pump you will put it into the pockets of the electric companies. so you really arent saving a dime and you definitely arent saving the world by driving a hybrid. leading to my next topic

with the increased usage of hybrids and general energy demand increasing where is this energy to come from? fossil fuels are not the answer because like the oil crisis they will only continue to get more expensive as mines are used up. solar is well expensive and does not have the capacity..it only works in the day time and most people work during the day and use little power at home. so now we all drive home in our hybrids and plug them in but oh wait a blackout occurs because we used up all the sun's energy we harnessed for the day..at best the capacity factor for a solar farm would be close to 60 percent which is assuming 60 percent of the day we are exposed to sun light and we have 100% conversion..both are highly unlikely. similar to solar wind is considered the next best green option. and like solar, wind has a low capacity factor..simply there is not the amount of wind required to turn the blades at 100% speed all the time. I believe the number is in the low 30s or 20s depending on area. what is left? dare i say the words...NUCLEAR!!! OMG nuclear its like the devil and its terrible, radiation is bad :( as many of you know this is a common view and it couldnt be more wrong. everything in this world is radioactive to an extent. capacity factors on nuclear plans are in the low 90s and it is the safest form way to convert a fuel into a power due to the extensive designs and regulations. nuclear is by far the only option to solve this crisis in a timely manner and not risk the rolling blackouts due to the irregularity of the actual energy demands of the only other two options. the ignorant population wants a magic power that comes free and is underground so they dont see it and is always there when they want it..well guess what it does not exist so face the system. the fact is democrats keep screwing the industry over. it started with carter turning his back on his heritage (he was either a nuclear operator on a sub or an engineer on one..but in the navy these two are vary similar positions) now we have pelosi and reid blocking everything and the poison has spread into the white house. we need nuclear and we need it now..the time to start building plants is now. the time to start training new engineers and scientists is now. use some of that stimulus money to give scholarships for students to study in those areas.. leading into my final topic

the president couldnt be more wrong on the economy...the national debt has risen substantially in the last 5 months and there is no plan to reduce it. now he wants to spend an addtional 1 trillion dollars to fix healthcare? this is the most absurd thing i have ever heard. i watched his abc special report on blah blah blah free healthcare blah blah blah lies lies lies. let me simplify it for you. bankrupt america. he is going to bankrupt america or put the country into a depression. it will have to pay for this somehow. it will come sooner than you think. the current recession may be lifting but when april 15th 2009 rolls around and the middle class has to start shelling out his first born child just to pay its taxes. i kid you not..it may not be 2009 but we will have another recession or depression because of this spending. taxes will get raised and the middle class will suffer as they have been since the beginning of the bourgeois in times of the monarchies of europe. we need a GOOD plan to pay for the debt we already have before spending any more large sums of money. period. and what about North Korea? the korean war has never ended..it is still going, right now they are just at a ceasefire agreement which came to an end at the end of may this year..the north koreans are looking for any excuse to invade and take over.we currently have roughly 30,000 men and women in that part of the world. they would have to fight off a 1.3 million man army..needless to say they would all not come out alive but it would cost us 30,000 america lives. appeasement politics do not work look at hitler and WWII. the only thing they understand is getting the literal piss bombed out of them. i say go for it. lets hit the capital city quick and hard. continuous bombing runs until they surrender. they dont have an airforce. so use the air to our advantage. block off the coast and get rid of the dictator before he makes this a nuclear grade conflict. and this whole iran situation..wtf you guys cant come have hot dogs and burgers with us because you killed civilians who rioted...seriously..like this is change this is the same old bush politics. i liked bush as a president but i did not like how he handled everything. change would have been to go in and offer to help quell the rebellion in a civilized manor..yes i know that the current president rigged the election but there isnt anything we can do about it. if we helped contain the rebellion as a peaceful act of kindness it would change the views of america as an evil empire. plus people would not be getting beat by our soldiers or killed. on the smoking ban garbage..i dont smoke and i dont like being anywhere around it but people have the right to smoke..it is not an illegal substance so get over it. people that smoke have been around it for their lives and you wont stop anybody from doing it unless you make it illegal (i dont think is right but still) targeting children..bad flavored tobacco products not so bad who cares if they have cherry flavored cigars or snuff...it gives the user a different flavor..i happen to love the smell of snuff or chew, i can thank an ex roommate randy for introducing me to the smell. i dont dip but i love the smell of wintergreen and other flavored snuff. you arent going to stop people from smoking unless you make it illegal so quit isolating a minority by raising taxes on it. all it does is take food out of the mouths of our children. i know you are questioning the validity of that statement so let me explain. the rich can afford the increased cost so no harm done, the middle class could give up a minor thing say not eating out at a restaurant on a weekly or biweekly basis to afford it but the poor would be forced to give up what? they would most likely buy less food in order to afford the increased costs of tobacco related products. less food means a kid could go hungry which is terrible. i disagree with spending money on bailing out any company whether it was AIG, GM, Chrysler, etc...all the automakers that were bailed out went bankrupt anyways..so a waste of70 billion dollars (50 for gm and 20 i think for Chrysler)

i agree with Thomas Jefferson, co founder of the USA, the government is meant to be wise and frugal. we are not acting wise or frugal at the moment. in fact it is the exact opposite.

The Dawn of 1/21/09

Yes that is the 1st day when Obama is president. Being a republican, myself, makes me cringe at the idea of a democratic president and democratically controlled congress, but like many of you think some change was needed. Over the past few days while i watch the late news on Fox Topeka (the only channel i get by the way) all of the talk is about this inauguration that is to take place tomorrow. With the state of the union, there is no way a republican candidate really had a shot at making a 12-16 year period of white house control. In my eyes all politicians are the same, they all tell you what you want to hear and do whatever they want to. They look out of numero uno or their party. They dont care about the people. Maybe I am cynical but so be it. So many people talk about how tomorrow is going to be historical, news flash: no matter who was elected; what color his/her skin was; or as previously mentioned gender, it would have been historical. It is a big ordeal when ANYBODY gets inaugurated as the most powerful leader in the world. It seems like utter nonsense that people are getting tattoos of this guy on their body, yes permanent tattoos of a guys face on their body. I dont know how you feel about that, but I can tell you I think it is beyond insane. Tattoos themselves are ok, I have tossed the idea around of getting one myself, but if I do get one, it would never be some girls name or a picture of anybody because I find that creepy and disturbing. I heard talk of his green inauguration and I just had to laugh. The day itself may have taken a lot of precautions to be green but what about millions of people that traveled on commercial airlines, private jets, diesel powered buses, and their luxury cars? That doesnt sound green to me. When the big automakers went to congress in their private jets they were told no because of their lavish trip on a private jet. Now there is nothing you can really do about the millions of people that are going to be there but marketing it as green? I just had to laugh. I am no politician and like I said before, cynical but absolutely nothing is going to change when he is in the white house. The troops will still be over seas, the economy will still suck as it will for the next few years, gas prices will still be all over the place, and the country will continue to spend more money than it has and go into a larger debt. I am not saying that McCain or anybody else would have fixed these issues, well McCain would have been a better leader for the military due to is military life. Obama is a great public speaker, but that doesnt mean he isnt like every other politician aka liars or in latin many blood sucking ticks. It doesnt mean everything is going to be magically fixed over night. I actually pity the man for the problem infested and troubled country he now gets to lead and have the masses blindly follow him and wonder if everything is going to be fixed. I will be utterly amazed if all of the problems even get addressed in the first 100 days, let alone his first term. Expect the best, get disappointed; expect the worst, get surprised. Who would you rather be?