One Forward Gear

Staging Lanes

soonerdead — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 22:25:13 +0000

For those that don’t know, the staging lanes are the section of a drag strip where all the cars that will be racing line up and wait their turn to race. So the title of the post implicitly states that this is the first in a series of posts revolving around the same general idea. So what is this idea you may ask? Graduation and future plans of working on Valarie.

I am 26 days away from graduating. Well. Kind of. In 26 days I *will* graduate, but I am contemplating going right back into the fire – to get my master’s degree in one of my minors. While I desperately want a reprieve, the drive to push myself further and further all the time and the desire to financially secure myself and future family are making me heavily consider going right back to school.

What this whole thing means for Valarie is that in 28 days, I have the first jobs for working on Valarie on my calender. Then, for almost every weekend and some weekdays, I have other jobs. I have a personal goal to be able to safely and confidently drive Valarie to Shelley’s house (and back) before the end of the summer. This means I will have to get myself in gear in order to accomplish this. Unfortunately Shelley won’t be around much this summer, so while I won’t have much else to do besides work and work on Valarie, I also won’t have her help and insight on what to do if I get stuck. Next post will be when I am closer to graduation and a little insight into my game-plan and the like.

Last time I was in a staging lane I caught an alcohol dragster’s exhaust to the eyes
– Sooner Dead

A Mime’s Box

soonerdead — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:34:04 +0000

I have seemed to of forgot a major part of being able to go out and race or drive or whatever with Valarie. The car. See with all the dreaming and drooling and other minor distractions (school, career, etc) I have seemed to forgot that the very first piece of this whole muscle car puzzle is to actually be able to drive the car. Actually, I am getting ahead of myself – I need to be able to start the car first, then worry about driving it. While I have a good excuse right now for not working on it – having all of, maybe 6 hours to work on it between school and trying to keep my career as close to full time as possible – I won’t have that excuse in about 6 weeks.

Of course that isn’t the only thing holding me back, I have quite a problem with anxiety and perfectionism, meaning I am constantly worried about things, constantly self-doubting, and by me wanting and almost expecting everything to go perfect, I only amplify the anxiety problems. Anxiety and perfectionism is something I have faced in everything I do, and I think it may be an underlying cause as to why I don’t do some of the things I would like to do in life. Anxiety and perfectionism suck the fun out of things that are supposed to be fun, and who wants to do things during their free time that aren’t fun? Work is work, but hobbies are supposed to be fun, and I guess between thinking I should be perfect at things and constantly worrying about not doing something right or being able to do something well enough to make it something I can be proud of and show others.

So that is what I need to figure out, and the one thing I do love about this blog, even if almost no one reads it – it lets me think and figure things out as I type them out, giving me better understanding as to what the issues are and how I need to fix them.

Winners find the flaws in conventional logic and exploit them
–Sooner Dead

Spring Break

soonerdead — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:01:21 +0000

Sorry it has taken me so long to post, but there is a good reason for it: I have been busy getting a job. Yeah, I know I already have two, but those are just college jobs and this one is the start of a career. This has been a very hectic few weeks as I interviewed, waiting for callbacks and doing even more interviewing. I even had a business ethics choice to make already and while I had a difficult choice, I had a lot of great people behind me, most of all my fiance. Speaking of my fiance, it has also been a rough week with her; she lost both dogs that she grew up with in less than a week.

So what this career thing means is that I will have much more time to spend working on Valarie because I no longer need to go to class all day, only to come home and have to worry about homework or tests. I work from 8am until 5pm and when I come home, all the rest of the time can be spent doing whatever I wish. The only downside is, because I will no longer be receiving student loans, I will be technically be getting less money, so I won’t have as much to go around to work on Valarie, especially since I need to be saving for the wedding and a home. As always, family come first over possessions, I would sell Valarie and everything else I owned before I put my family in any financial struggle.

I start my new career on Monday, so I will be busy learning the ins and outs of the job for a little bit and once school is out I may be able to really get a lot of work done. I hope to drive Valarie around a little bit this summer at least – and if I can’t do that maybe it is time to admit defeat.

Apparently I am about to join the rat race
–Sooner Dead

Weight Of The World

soonerdead — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:06:31 +0000

Forty-eight people and counting, that is how many have been found dead due to severe weather and tornadoes in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee as of the time of this post. Katrina killed about 1,800 people. As a meteorologist, the hardest part of the job is watching the weather, knowing that there is nothing you can do to stop the weather events that are taking place, and then hearing the death reports roll in. Sure, there are forecasts and warnings out to mitigate loss of life and property, but when severe weather rolls through a populated late at night, you know there will be death. Sometimes I just wish I could figure out a way to help stop the needless deaths by the weather. It is my life’s goal, and the ultimate goal in meteorology, to have 0 weather related deaths every day, now if I could only figure out how to do that.

Sorry for the dose of depression
– Sooner Dead

Hold On

soonerdead — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 07:17:53 +0000

Hello from New Orleans, or as the locals say “N’awlins.” The food down here is, in a word, amazing – assuming you like seafood. I haven’t stepped outside the seafood / Cajun / creole genre since I never get to eat this food at home. If it wasn’t for the fact I don’t much care for anything else in the city, I would live here just for the food.

Of course N’awlins isn’t all fun and clogging one’s arteries! I am very very busy while I am down here. I am always very busy. Why is that, you may ask? It’s actually very simple. Meteorology graduates out-pace demand for meteorologist on the order of 4 to 1. Well, jeez, that kind of sucks, that means for every job for a meteorologist, there are 4 meteorologists to fill it. That means to be competitive, I have to be one of the top 25% of meteorologists, in my national graduating class of ~600, that means I have to be one of the top 150 students. But wait, there’s more! Private companies (the ones I am interested in) only employ 30% of the total jobs. So, 30% of 150 is 45. So now, statistically, there is only 45 jobs available per year for me. Let’s have some fun and say about 50% of those jobs are purely forecasting, which is not what I do, 50% of 45 is 23 (rounding up). 23 jobs left. I think I would take those odds, be one of the 23 best meteorologists in a group of 92. Here is the big rub: I have to stay in Oklahoma, eliminating 90% of my potential job base, 10% of 23 is 2.3, and since there is no such thing as a 0.3 job, we are down to *TWO* jobs. Now I have to be one of the best *TWO* meteorologists in a group of 92, that is much harder, and the reason as to why I have to work so hard. But all this work will be paid off in the end you may say, right? WRONG. A BS in Meteorology pays, on average, slightly *LESS* than a secondary school teacher, and is one of the only sciences where the pay difference from a BS to MS isn’t enough to justify the extra time spent. It’s fun finding out how choices made so long ago can so greatly impact the rest of your life – and for the negative. The previous post said it best: “House of Cards.”

Sorry I went all emo, but these blog things are sometimes the best way to complain out loud and pretend someone actually cares, when, from what I have seen, not even the people closest to you do. I will try not to take it as personally that perfect strangers don’t care than I do when people close to me don’t care.

My survival, still so uncertain.
–Sooner Dead

House Of Cards

soonerdead — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 07:14:40 +0000

A house of cards, for those that don’t know, is an expression that describes something that is built around something that could come crashing down at the slightest breeze. I felt this was an appropriate title for the post because I feel like a lot of things I have going on right now are a house of cards. Valarie is in a garage at an apartment complex I do not reside in and only got in by calling enough people. Now I have been hearing that the apartment complex is struggling and I just got a call a day or so ago from someone representing them and looking over their records. I felt the easiest way to keep Valarie in a garage was to kind of stay below the radar and just make my monthly rental payments, but now I am not so sure how long they will be looking over the fact I do not live there. If they were to end my month-to-month lease with them, I would have no place to keep Valarie, so I am on edge and trying to figure out a way to be able to get the car drivable asap, all the while I am trying to prepare for the AMS Conference and the career fair so I get a great job when I graduate. I really want to work on the car, but time is hard to come by and I just don’t know if I have the aptitude to teach myself automotive restoration – I wish I could find a friend or someone to help.

Am I racing an invisible clock?
–Sooner Dead

Michigan Adventure

soonerdead — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:37:33 +0000

I have been on a well deserved ‘vacation’ and visiting my family back home. As always, Shelley came with me and – as always – the snow melted just before we came up. Featuring I have been wanting to show Shelley a true ‘Michigan winter’ for some time, this was very disappointing. Luckily for both of us, however, unlike the previous years, this year had snow in our future. And not just a little snow – a lot – of snow. A front came through and dropped about 4-6″ on top of the ~2″ base of snow we already had. This isn’t anything to write home about, at least until the lake effect snow machine started up in high gear. Once the lake effect snow machine got going it started snowing heavy and it didn’t stop for anything. When it was all said and done we were sitting around 2.5 feet of snow.

We now had plenty of snow to go snowmobiling and plenty of ice to go ice fishing – and did we ever take advantage of this opportunity. In fact, Shelley found her new favorite hobby: snowmobiling. We really had a blast, but like all good things, it had to come to an end and now I am back home and it is time to start working again.

There is so much to do between now and the next month it is almost sad, but there is great opportunity to be had as well. I also really want to change Shelley’s favorite hobby from snowmobiling to drag racing, as she has never drag raced before. I want to get the car running soon, I need to get the car running soon – but this is all reliant on that little thing I previously mentioned called ‘will power’.

I slam the gas down and hear just stuttering
–Sooner Dead

Winter Intersession

soonerdead — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:46:49 +0000

Well it is that time of year again, when there is a nice gap between semesters so I can rest my busy head again. Unfortunately, this intersession is a little different from the last. I am very busy trying to get my AMS paper finished, withdrawing another paper, and also hoping to get far enough along with the tornadogenesis project that we can write a paper to KDD. That is a lot to have on my plate in the next couple months, all the while keeping an eye out for potential jobs and preparing to graduate.

I do have some ideas on how to work on the car between now and then though, so I am getting my mind all gathered up for a big push before next semester begins since I never know how much free time I will have after that. The one good thing coming up is that after I get a job and do the 9-5 thing, I will have much more time to actually work on the car. One other piece of good news is that I finally found the time to write up not one, but *two* more guides for your viewing pleasure! The new guides are replacing the license plate lens and installing a valve cover breather, as you can see all the guides I have posted here.

Just keep on trying ’til you run out of cake
–Sooner Dead

Atrophy

soonerdead — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 00:29:52 +0000

I was driving home yesterday, tired from yet another day going to school and working for over 12 hours again. It was around 11 o’clock at night and a fresh mist was falling on the ground, leaving a glisten on the roads indicative of traction begging to be broken. While Katrina may not be a muscle car, lots of low end torque and very little weight on the rear allows for some fun. It was at this moment I was about to put my right foot to the floor when my calf started to hurt. It was then I realized just how much I missed driving a muscle car around. Many fun times were had with Shelley and I in a muscle car, and I feel many more will be had. So now, as I work and go to school, it is as though every time I see or think about a muscle car it is just a dream I cannot reach.

Though with this school semester coming to a close, I hay have some good news soon.

I think I need to exercise my accelerator foot some more
– Sooner Dead

PS: I’m Still Alive

soonerdead — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 07:38:16 +0000

Typical… silence on the wire… I apologize… Like what happens every time in school, I overload myself with promises and guarantees that I just can’t backup if I give myself any time to just relax. This is the same problem that has reoccurred each semester. I think it is because by the time I enroll into classes and pick my work hours each semester, I forget what a nightmare the last semester was and in a moment of weakness or stupidity (or both) I try to do too much. Oh well, such is the life of me.

There are benefits to me probably cutting a couple years off my life from a bleeding ulcer or something – I have one really, really nice resume; and as such, I should get a really good stable job. So I guess losing those years aren’t so bad, they crappy ones in the later years anyway where I would probably spend all day drooling on myself anyway because the government would have already of permanently banned me from driving (and probably deservedly so if all goes as planned). Either way, this good stable job that exists in theory, will allow me both time and money to work on the car, save for a house, and buy things for Shelley (I trust she will read this, so I must put this in here). Give it time, the holidays are coming, and I will soon have a little bit to work on Valarie. Until then:

I’m doing science and I’m still alive
–Sooner Dead