Kyle Dickerson – Page 105 – If we had a Marriage, These Would be its Thoughts

Recruiting again

February 21, 2011 10:32 pm

Jess claims I'm the one who's supposed to be blogging at the moment. So here are some updates about our last month.

At the beginning of February we went to Provo for another Career Fair. We were looking for Computer Science students but didn't have much luck. We got a total of 5 resumes from BYU CS students. There were probably over 30 Mechanical Engineering students and a bunch of Chemical Engineering students. Which is fine, the Lab hires those people, but we (the two recruiters that went) are from Computations. So we don't really know a whole lot about what Engineering needs or is looking for.

We did have a whole bunch of CS students from BYU-Idaho show up though. Now, no offense intended, but, if we wanted students from BYU-Idaho....we'd....you know....go to Idaho to recruit them. I don't know anything about their CS program and it's probably fine. The two main issues are that 1) BYU has a good reputation at the Lab; BYU-I has no reputation. And 2) When we come to the Career Fair we stay an extra day to do preliminary interviews with students. BYU-I students leave at the end of the day and we don't get a chance to interview them. So at that point they're really not any better off than just submitting a resume through the website cold like anyone else. From my point of view (in terms of immediate employment opportunities) it's kind of a waste of their time and our time when they drive down and talk to us.

We drove out to Provo on the 1st. The Career Fair was on the 2nd. We had interviews and lunch with professors one the 3rd. And we drove back on the 4th. So it was a very quick trip. But we did get to see Erin and Co. And Mom was in town and we saw her. Jess got to see some friends while I was working and we got to bring back another stock of Jess' favorite bread.

So from a business standpoint it was slightly disappointing, but socially it worked out well.

The travel had its own special fiascoes.

We didn't have any weather problems, so that was nice. Clear skies there and back. Though, when we left Livermore it was ~50 degrees and when we arrived in Provo that night it was 6. It felt very cold comparatively.

Anyway, back to the travel fiascoes. On travel days Jess and I like to swing by McDonald's in the morning for breakfast-on-the-go. Now, for years, my go-to breakfast item at McDonald's has been their bacon-egg-and-cheese bagel. I've ordered this in Connecticut (my SAT breakfast), and several times in Utah, and several times in California. When we drove to Texas for Christmas I ordered it in Texas too. But Arizona and New Mexico knew nothing of this "bagel" I asked for. I wrote it off as a strange regional variation in the menu.

BUT! Sadly, McDonald's has apparently discontinued the bagel breakfast sandwiches nationwide. When I tried to order one in Livermore when we left I was told they don't have them anymore. And we saw signs to that effect posted in a McDonald's we stopped at during our journey. I'm quite annoyed by this.

However, the McDonald's betrayal doesn't end there. Oh no. Halfway across Nevada Jess decides she wants some ice-cream, a McFlurry to be precise. Figuring this shouldn't be too hard we pull off in Battle Mountain (sounds like it's straight out of a video game) and into the McDonald's parking lot. We walk inside and ask for a McFlurry and they say they're out of ice-cream. But they're kind enough to suggest a place down the street that has ice-cream (really it was the only other place that looked like it served food in a 25-mile radius). Fine, so we went in there, which was a little coffee shop place, and looked at the menu. We discover they don't offer what Jess is looking for. So we leave Battle Mountain dejected.

An hour later and we're going through Elko. We figure we'll try again. So we pull off the highway again and into the McDonald's parking lot. We go in and order a McFlurry for Jess and a hot chocolate for me. I know McDonald's redid their hot beverages in an attempt to be fancier or something, and I've tried their hot chocolate once since then and didn't like it; but I thought I'd give it another chance. We get our items and get back in the car. We fill up the gas tank before getting back on the highway. As we're pulling out of the gas station and on to the main road towards the highway I take a sip of my hot chocolate and gag. Not hot chocolate. It's some disgusting coffee disaster.

So I manage to get turned around and back to the McDonald's. The teenager behind the counter who took my order, made my drink, and handed it to me looks at me with a blank stare. I hand him the cup and say, "This is not hot chocolate." He look at the cup and then back at me and says, "It's not? sorry..." and wanders off to remake the drink. OK, no big deal, but it wasn't like the place was busy! We had ordered our food and he walked over, made the drink, and handed it to me. But apparently in the 8 seconds it took to walk to the beverage area he forgot he was making hot chocolate. Sigh.

Anyway, this time it is hot chocolate, but it's still pretty crappy. I guess in order to be "fancy" hot chocolate they also had to make it taste bad. But I guess that's what I get for growing up with the sophisticated taste of Swiss Miss. McDonald's is --this-- close to being on my blacklist. But Jess says I'm not allowed to blacklist McDonald's because she still really likes their biscuit breakfast sandwiches.

On our way back from Utah we decided we'd stop off in Sacramento and grab some Panda Express for dinner. So we find a Panda Express on the GPS which should be just off the highway and start working our way through Sacramento. But, turns out that Sacramento has changed their streets since the GPS maps were updated. It asks us to drive through a set of steel bollards and onto the sidewalk. We decline that option and try to work our own way around to the address, but after 10 minutes of getting stuck at one-way streets and not getting any closer we give up on Sacramento and just get back on the highway. I'd be ready to swear off Sacramento too, but our train is going to leave from there next Christmas.

Playing in the Dark

January 22, 2011 12:02 pm

While Jess was off at Cub Scouts last week I took the camera outside to play around.

I ended up with two images I rather like. I started by taking long exposure shots of the intersection near our apartment complex. I tried some really long exposures like 3-4 minute, but I wasn't particularly interested in the results. As I was messing with settings I heard an ambulance approaching, so I took a guess at how long it would take the ambulance to clear the intersection and snapped this 30-second exposure:
Once I was done with the intersection I moved into the patio area next to the shopping center. I took some shots of the fountain there and some of the moon rising, but didn't like any of the results. I thought the lamps looked kind of interesting though so I took a bracketed exposure and blended the three frames into this shot:

I believe it is a high-pressure, mercury-vapor lamp which is why it's so green.

Also, the camera club reconsiders everyone's competition levels at the start of each year. In the "Pictorial" category I've moved up from "Basic" to "Intermediate." A fairly large number of other members did the same though, so Pictorial Intermediate is now a pretty large group of people. I submitted two images this past week, but neither placed in the top 4 out of the 23 entries.

Victory for the Dickersons!

January 20, 2011 8:53 pm

As many of you probably recall, Jess and I drove to Texas in protest of the TSA grope-a-thon required to fly these days. Before the new, creepier security screening processes were put in place we had purchased airplane tickets with Southwest. When the change occurred I was particularly unhappy. I called Southwest and asked for a refund, which they refused to provide because "we don't control the TSA; it's not our fault."

So I moved to plan B: I filed a charge dispute with my credit card company (CitiBank) and carefully detailed why I considered the scenario to be a breach of contract. They conditionally refunded the money and sent the dispute to Southwest which had 60 days to reply. The reply just came through and my refund has been made permanent! Hooray!

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On a related note, an update about the letters we sent to the airlines and government officials. Every airline responded with a written answer. Most were along the lines of "it's not our fault, we can't do anything about it." But the response from American Airlines was very simple and direct:

Thank you for taking the time to contact us about the recent changes that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has made to checkpoint security screening procedures. We are monitoring our customers' feedback on this issue very closely, and we thank you for providing us with your impressions.

They're the only airline that didn't simply deflect the issue away from themselves. I appreciate that. The airlines claim they have no control over the matter and, ostensibly, they don't. However, they do have rather influential lobbying efforts which could certainly be brought to bear on the situation. And that's the goal I'm going for. If they get enough pressure and begin losing enough customers they will find a way to reign in the TSA.

Now for the responses I got back from the government officials. We wrote letters, (physical letters!), to our two Senators, our House Representative, the TSA, the FAA, and the President. We received exactly zero replies. In over two months not a single person, organization, or office responded to our concerns. No form letters, no acknowledgement of any kind. That really kind of bothers me.

The fact that no part of the government could be bothered to even acknowledge our concerns is why I have very little faith that anything will change until the airlines start lobbying for it. I've now learned very poignantly how little my opinion matters to the people who are elected to represent my interests.

Thanks America, you're really doing a bang-up job with that democratic republic business.

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So the scores are:
-1 to Southwest for denying me the refund when I asked for it on the phone.
+1 to Southwest for not denying the charge dispute when I filed it with my credit card company.
+1 to CitiBank for taking care of this for me (using a credit card does have some great benefits).
-100 to the TSA for implementing stupid "security" rules.
+2 to the Dickersons who successfully received a refund from a large company.
+5 to airlines for acknowledging my complaint.
-20 to government officials/organizations for not acknowledging my existence.

Baby Burro

December 18, 2010 3:36 pm

We're crossing Arizona today. We detoured across Route 66, taking the scenic route through Oatman. Just before town we came across some Christmas trees:

I include the car and surrounding area just to provide a proper sense of the middle-of-nowhere-ness of the location.

Then when we got into Oatman we had to wait for the daily gunfight to clear the road. So while we waited we got out and bought some kettle corn and watched the baby burro:
That basically made the scenic route worth it.

Freedom of the Press

December 7, 2010 8:12 am

President Obama while in China - November 16, 2009:

But I am a big believer in technology and I'm a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information. I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable. They can begin to think for themselves. That generates new ideas. It encourages creativity. (emphasis mine)

Hillary Clinton - January 1, 2010:

[President Obama] spoke about how access to information helps citizens hold their own governments accountable, generates new ideas, encourages creativity and entrepreneurship. The United States belief in that ground truth is what brings me here today.

Hillary Clinton about WikiLeaks - November 29, 2010:

It is an attack on the international community...

Sarah Palin about Julian Assange - November 30, 2010:

Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?

Senator Joe Lieberman - December 7, 2010:

It sure looks to me that Assange and WikiLeaks have violated the Espionage Act.

Philip Crowley (State Department Spokesman) - December 7, 2010:

What WikiLeaks has done is a crime under US law.

So much for Freedom of the Press and holding our own governments accountable. Also, as much as people are clamoring to charge Assange with a crime there's the small problem of him not being a U.S. citizen. Seems rather extraordinary to charge someone with a crime under a law in a country in which they neither live nor have citizenship. But Palin apparently has the answer to that, just call him a terrorist and kill him where he stands.

Regardless of how you feel about the leaked information WikiLeaks needs to be protected the same way any other news organization would be, including the New York Times which collaborated with WikiLeaks in processing the documents and deciding what to publish.