Understanding Engineers......

I found this amusing... maybe someone else will too!



Two engineering students were walking across a university campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?"

The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday, minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike, threw it to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want."

The second engineer nodded approvingly and said, "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit you anyway."
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Understanding Engineers - Take Two

To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
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Understanding Engineers - Take Three

A priest, a doctor, and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularl y slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, "What's with those blokes? We must have been waiting for fifteen minutes!"

The doctor chimed in, "I don't know, but I've never seen such inept golf!"

The priest said, "Here comes the greens keeper. Let's have a word with him."

He said, "Hello, George! What's wrong with that group ahead of us?

They're rather slow, aren't they?"

The greens keeper replied, "Oh, yes. That's a group of blind firefighters. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year, so we always let them play for free anytime."

The group fell silent for a moment.

The priest said, "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight."

The doctor said, "Good idea. I'm going to contact my ophthalmologist colleague and see if there's anything he can do for them."

The engineer said, "Why can't they play at night?"
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Understanding Engineers - Take Four

What is the difference between mechanical engineers and civil engineers?
Mechanical engineers build weapons and civil engineers build targets.
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Understanding Engineers - Take Five

The Graduate with a science degree asks, "Why does it work?"
The Graduate with an engineering degree asks, "How does it work?"

The Graduate with an accounting degree asks, "How much will it cost?"

The Graduate with an arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
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Understanding Engineers - Take Six

Three engineering students were gathered together discussing the possible designers of the human body. One said, "It was a mechanical engineer. Just look at all the joints." Another said, "No, it was an electrical engineer.

The nervous system has many thousand s of e lectrical connections." The last one said, "No, actually it had to have been a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?"
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Understanding Engineers - Take Seven

Normal people believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
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Understanding Engineers - Take Eight

An engineer was crossing a road one day, when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful princess." He bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket.

The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for one week."

The engineer took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, "If you kiss me and turn me back int o a pr incess, I'll stay with you for one week and do ANYTHING you want."

Again, the engineer took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket.

Finally, the frog asked, "What is the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess and that I'll stay with you for one week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?"

The engineer said, "Look, I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend, but a talking frog, now that's way cool."

St. Patrick's Day

So I thought that this clip was pretty funny about the next major holiday coming up.... Saint Patty's Day. Absolutely classic.

jimmy fallon st.pat.

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ENJOY!

Ode to Valentine's Day

I love Jimmy Fallon.... If you need a short break, check this out....

Valentine Medly (SNL)

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UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Hey everyone... Just a note... Some links will end up not working yet since I'm just building this blog. Hence the following.......

Anyway, sorry for the inconvenience. Thanks for reading!

Christmas Update Part Deux

Thought it would be nice to start things off with a little bit of Elvis....
It's so funny, they only look like German Shepherds about 10% of the time. I think it's because we're all so used to seeing police dogs and pictures of adults that we forget that they go through this really awkward phase in the middle......Anywho.....

Alright all.... I'm back. I don't know where the drive to get this whole thing caught up came from, but I figure I need to capitalize on it just the same. Not that I'll be able to document everything that's happened in our short married lives, but I can at least take a good stab at it. So, for anyone who reads this and finds it redundant....sorry....and tough beans. :-)

So Christmas was filled with fun, friends and family. Oh, and all the experiences that come with it. A lot of people came into town for Christmas, which made it really nice. Jim and Kathie came in from Baltimore, MD and it was great to catch up with them. They've really become digital friends. It's sad that we don't get to hang out anymore, no more football games, no more movie nights, no more backyard BBQs, but it's great to know that we can and do still stay in touch. When they came in for Christmas, we were able to steal a couple hours from their busy schedules to go out to dinner. We forced them to pose for some pictures since we just had gotten a camera and needed some practice using it!

It's always really good to catch up with old friends. It always makes me feel slightly disappointed because I wish we would have had BUSHELS of more fun before they left. Oh well, a PhD is only like what.....4 years away? Not to shabby. Actually, Rach and I brag about our friends the Gwilliams @ Johns Hopkins U all the time.

The next major group of visitors we had consisted of the number 2. Rachel's grandfather DeTar and his new beautiful young bride came into town for Christmas as they always do. They are from Tallahassee, Florida. Mr. DeTar was a professor of Biochemistry and a couple other things at Florida State U and so is always good for an academic discussion. PLUS, he's got great advice for students dealing with the bureaucracy that is higher education. Don't let those Deans and Profs push you around, you pay their electric bill....well....with the cost of tuition at most institutions, I think we also pay for their mortgage, the vacation cabin in Aspen's mortgage, the loan on the yacht, and maybe even that daily jaunt to the links for a quick, 4 hour long, break from us. HA HA, oh the life. Anyway, it's always great to see the Floridian Grandparents.

PS... Yes Rachel, I know you don't like this pic, but you're gonna have to take one for the team since it's actually the only one with both Grandpa and Carla in it that we have.... MUHU HA HA.

Oh, and one of the Jolley Family dog, Copper, just for kicks. Hey, he needs some spotlight too, right?

So I'm starting to see why it's necessary to just stay on top of this blog thing. Everyone of my posts is nearly a novel....a couple problems with that. I don't remember what I've already written about in this blog at the top, adding pictures is a pain since I have to copy and paste them into the right slots, I get so lazy by the bottom that I have no desire left to spell/grammar check, and it's time consuming..... OH well, I don't need to go to class today, I have very little school homework (although I have pounds of LSAT homework) so I might as well start a few more chapters today, eh?

We had the Poulsen family Christmas party as well along the way. As is tradition, we force the grandkids to be our little dolls and play nativity scene dress up....classic. I think this was a remarkable year though, not only did baby Jesus' head not get popped off, but I don't think there was even a fight over him at all! WOW..... That was definitely a first. I've included a couple pictures below of the whole wonderful fiasco.

And yes, Bryce still loves Harley....and I think Harley might even love him back, despite the squished look on his face....PS, I think he's just about half a second away from taking a big licking taste of Bryce's leftover food storage on his face.

Other than all that, it was just a standard, good white Christmas. If you haven't gathered it by now, yes, my family does love it's dogs.....some one has to take care of all the mutts in the world, right? One day, we'll have our little dog, cat, horse farm/family compound and then we won't have to be the neighborhood rednecks anymore....we can just be rednecks... HA HA.

A couple questions are answered in the above pictures... Yes, you can fit us all in a very small room with lots of other stuff in it, and Yes, you can get a family picture with 4 dogs in it that are 95% doing what you want them to. Maybe that's because they're well behaved, or maybe it's because every one of them is in some sort of pain, or looking at what they thought could be the next meal......the cat walking underneath the camera... I guess we'll never know, will we.

And yes.... I still have a hot wife that hasn't divorced me yet! In my defense, I warned her that this whole marriage things was FOR-E-VER, but she said yes, and now she's stuck forever!

One more thing, before this epic ends.... you never know when your picture is being taken anymore... I bet you're already on YouTube.....no? You don't think so? Well, I can take care of that then. Anyway, smile!

Christmas Update

Yes, yes, I know... It's like 2 months after Christmas and I'm just posting. The overall rate at which I post is steadily increasing though, right? I can see why most people post weekly/daily/bi-weekly or somewhere in between... I can hardly remember Christmas! Doesn't even feel like it came and went. Well, where to start? Rachel and I spent most of our Christmas break with 2 goals in mind... Find time to relax after the incredibly rough Fall semester and get everything caught up and ready for the Spring semester so that we wouldn't be so stressed. Thankfully, we accomplished both of those reasonably well. We had left a bunch of little, unimportant things on a to do list because we just couldn't get to them during the semester....well....when you do that, for an entire semester, things really pile up.

So, where to begin?

I think the most major thing that happened over Christmas was the fact that Rach and I got a digital camera finally.... yes, we are finally into the 21st century with everyone else. As sad as it is, I think we were the last people in the modern world to get a digital camera. This makes posting pictures much easier! For those who don't know, this was the necessary outcome of some stupid thief. I don't just mean he/she was stupid because they stole my camera while we were on vacation, I think they're stupid because of the whole pile of cameras, mine was definitely the cheapest, non-digital 35-mm there.... At least go for the digital, right? Anyway, so now we can post pictures without having to scan them in and the whatnot.

insert random picture here.....

Something that had to be done, but wasn't all that fun, over the break was Corey's house flooding..... twice. So the first time it flooded and killed the laminate flooring in the kitchen. We ripped it out, and laid tile. Then the laminate in the living area was doused (both due to the poor plumbing of a refrigerator line by the crappy previous owner) and that floor was ripped up, partially replaced, and laid back down. So, moral of the story...... when buying a house, ask the owner to list EVERYTHING that they did themselves. Then, immediately inspect and fix these things. Especially if the owner was under 30 years old. Check out the tile we laid though, we were pretty proud of it....If anyone needs tile that you know....let us know, we're pretty cheap too!

Also, one of Ryan's mom's bathroom just for measure.

Rach and I did a little seclusion exercise after the semester ended....it was great. We went to Daniel's Summit Lodge for 2 night before Christmas. Wonderful. There were only 4 rooms filled when we were there, so we pretty much had the run of the place. Since it's geared toward adults, it has a separated spa/pool area that is open 24/7. Oh, and cell phones don't work there very well.... especially when they are turned off! ha ha. So we slept about 14 hours, watched several movies a day, went to the pool, hung out at the restaurant, and tromped around in several feet of snow. It was so perfect. I think after each semester we're going to implement this practice. Find somewhere to go that gets us away from everything. We could've just done that at home, but we wouldn't have.... we have to force ourselves to do nothing by putting ourselves in a place where we can't do anything.... it's great.

Rachel also got her wedding 'storybook' for Christmas. She loved that, it's been on our to do list forever, but her mom and the photographer got together and really did a nice job on it. Unfortunately we didn't have our camera yet, so I don't have any pictures of her opening it....sad.
Another major event that happened was my dad earning his scouting wood badge and another award. These are pretty big time scouting awards, taking years in leadership positions to earn. He really changed the scouting program here in our home ward.... basically from non-existent to thriving. It's all related to the potential number of eagle awards that could be obtained verses the number that are obtained. Anyway, I thought I'd throw in a couple pictures of that because it was really neat to see all the people who came to support him... mainly, his friends, which I haven't seen for awhile in a setting other than the deer hunt or at the cabins....so that was really cool.

Well, I think the next blog is going to be focused on everyone that we saw over the break, and I'll get it up soon. As for now, I'm off to judge an elementary school science fair!

It's Been A While

So I think this will be the title of many blogs to come, but hopefully not. It's been since the semester started that we've posted anything. This is mostly because we've been so busy that the last thing on our minds is writing about the chaos that is our lives. So, some things that have happened since the last post made....

We rented out the condo to a professor from British Columbia that is now teaching Music at BYU. If you've ever heard the name Ord, that is them.... Their daughter has a few CD's at Deseret Book apparently and every one of their kids is a pretty good musician. Hopefully the Y likes them so that we can have some long term tenants. They are in their 50's, and it's only him and his wife so they are perfect. I think our condo will be nicer than it was when we bought it when they're done. We were incredibly blessed to find tenants to fill it within 12 hours of our first post on Craigslist. I had to turn down several people in the week that followed, so I think we have a nice little investment.

Rachel is treading water but moving in her program at BYU. I think her nose is just barely above water, but with 3 weeks left in the semester (last day is the 21st of December), she can see the light of Christmas at the end of the first semester tunnel. She'll be way better in the second semester now that she's figured out the system and we set her school Macintosh TEX environment up at home..... And her professors said it couldn't be done, HA! They underestimate the power of the UTE Engineers. Anyway, She loves her field and that's what's keeping her in it. Since everyone except for her and her cube-mate are from BYU, they are the two that like to stir the pot so to speak and create some noise when the program takes a turn for ridiculously humorous.

Rachel had a tonsillectomy one week to the day before Thanksgiving, which made for some fun times over the break. She's healing well, but it really takes its time with adults. She is still sick in the mornings and incredibly tired, but getting better by the day. This is another reason her semester has been so difficult. Her tonsils were both the size of her doctors distal phalanx of his thumb....PS, he's the 6'8" father of an ex-BYU/Alta basketball star.....big thumbs. I told her to look on the bright side, she loves to sing, now she has a TON of more room in her mouth to help her out (not being a singer, I really don't know if it would actually help). Her professors, as intelligent as they would like to appear to be, think that it's "surgery that only little kids have" and "takes no more than 3-4 days to fully recover." Interesting people they are.

I no longer work at ATK, which is a huge relief. Trying to finish up my master's this year and taking grad level courses and working 40 hours a week was a little too much. I think I've learned my lesson a couple times now about overstretching myself. So I applied and got funding through NIOSH (National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health) so now I'm just a bonafide grad student. It feels really good actually. I really came to a quick knowledge that manufacturing engineering was definitely not what I got my bachelors to do. I worked around great people though. Currently I'm working on some side consulting projects for ConocoPhillips, and working in the lab taking and analyzing data for a Becton Dickenson study. I really enjoy the combination of engineering and human interface. I can crunch the numbers and run the formulas in all areas, but to actually design something at the request of someone in order to eliminate the risks and strains they experience on the job is very satisfying, very application based as opposed to theory based engineering.

Rachel and I have moved through our progression one full step. I told her when we got married that when she could take care of a plant, we could get a dog, and when she could take care of a dog, we could get a kid....ha ha. Well, she killed her bamboo plant, but we moved on to a dog anyway, well, they found us. We were camping at Aspen Grove and found two German Shepherds sleeping in a tunnel under the road. After leaving them there thinking they were someone else's for a couple days, we decided to talk to the local sheriff and the townsfolk and then take them to the pound. After giving them 3 baths and feeding them a ton, they were too snuggly to drop off and the family decided to keep them. Now they are 45 pounds and 5.5 months old and just part of the family. Elvis and Hanna. Elvis looks like the nice gremlin and is long haired. He is Elvis because something attacked him in the wild and tore his left lip up pretty bad, so his lip is permanently curled. He's a tank. Hanna is the standard regular coat shepherd, and since they were found in Hanna, Utah, that's her name. She is much more petite than Elvis. The vet, search and rescue, and policemen we've talked to have all said that they look pure bred and Elvis will be around 100 pounds, Hanna around 70. They are incredibly loving and mature for their age since they had to live on their own (off a deer carcass) for about 6 weeks according to the vet. We found them at 12 weeks old. Let us know if you need to borrow a guard dog or two... ha ha.



We went to my Minnesotan family reunion as well. This was a great experience. Rachel finally got to meet that side of the family, and get another state on her list of places she's been. It was a great time. We then drove down and over to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to visit Rachel's brother and his wife at MCOW medical school. It was a great drive as we planned a lot of sights along the way. These included the Wisconsin Dells, Hastings, Red Wing, right along side the Mississippi river for half the drive, the Mall of America, and many other sights (not in any order).



So as you can tell by my novel, I'm fearful of when I might be able to post again. I have 2 finals next week, 1 the following. I have 2 big projects left to finish in that same time. Rachel....well.... she's swamped. She'll be done the 21st and starts again the 6th of January....not a very long break. Apparently her teachers assign "hour" values to her homeworks and projects....currently, she has 130 hours of homework due by the end of next week.... plus she works 20 hours a week for the department teaching labs, overseeing help sessions and doing any research that comes her way. So again, Christmas will be a great time for Rachel.

Anything else? hmmm...... We spent most of our summer at my parent's cabin. We made a goal to get outside more this summer, and we sure did....just not in the fashion we were thinking. The roof on the cabin was leaking and my parents got a bid for putting on a metal roof. Really cool I think.....I loved them in Texas. They are supposedly leakproof for a lifetime and incredibly low maintanence. Downside.....$1500 in parts, $7000 in labor.....yeah....no fun. SO, needless to say, I saved my dad 7 grand. All it took was about 5 weekends, a rock climbing harness, a toolbelt, and same slippery shoes and blessed knee pads. If you haven't seen the cabin, I'll have to post a pic when he develops them.... it was pretty nuts. I had to tie off to my truck on the other side and belay off the other. It's an A frame, that is steep enough you can't stand on it without the aid of the rope. add loose gravel and shingle chucks since they were 30 years old and it made for a fun show..... the neighbors thought I was the best entertainment going. So we shaved off the old shingles and trim, tar papered over the rest (hanging upside down from my rope), and then drug 20 15 foot long, 3 foot wide pieces of 12 guage steel up the roof while belaying with one hand and screw the sucker down.....that was just one side.... yep.... fun. Anyway, it really turned out nice and was a great experience. I got a nice set of funny tan lines too. It got really fun when the mountain west of the cabin caught fire. I would wave as the praying mantice like helicopter would barely overhead every 15 minutes to suck water from the lake in front of our dock.

We did hike to some fun places. The pictures I post below are from Arta Lake above Stillwater. It was a tremendously fun hike in a very light rain. We made raincoats out of trash bags and had to follow little pink tree tags because the trail got so little use it never really made a good showing.



Well, I think I better stop this blog now or it will never end. Hope everyone is doing well and keeps it that way. Until next time, good afternoon, good evening and good night. (Truman)