The Life of a Contract Engineer: Week 1

Since I like series, and especially series that end, I'm starting a new Monday series about, well, my life. I figure I'll talk about... stuff. Just read it to find out what I say.

The first week of work was great! I put in my 40 hours and it was nice. My first day was a little stressful because I felt a sense of urgency that if I wasn't awesome from hour one they were going to fire me. Strange, but that's how I felt. Fortunately, I got over than and finished my first ANSYS simulation project by 10 AM the second day. Yep, about 10 hours into a new company and using a new software I finished a simulation that has practical application to work. My ego is still huge from that.

Fortunately for the size of my ego, the rest of the week turned out to be a little more challenging. I worked on a stress analysis simulation and another steady state heat transfer simulation. My quote of the week was, "I'm not interested in how much heat goes into the heat sink [in a steady-state heat transfer problem] I want to know how much goes out of it." Steady state means that what goes in equals what goes out. That is Heat Transfer 3003 week one: steady state conduction. My bad. Fortunately, I was corrected without much fanfare.

In the 12 hours and 25 minutes of my life that I spent running last week I ran 102.2 miles for a ridiculous 7:18 average (fast for me). That included a 7974 meter tempo in a blistering 27:09 which is faster than my open 8k 27:34 personal record. Then I ran 5xmile averaging 5:16 pace over the five miles with only about 300 meters in 1:40 rest in between each mile. Also in there I had a 15 miler at sub 6:50 pace. Plus I had a 23 mile long run at the beginning of the week at a decently fast pace. That's two very solid workouts and two respectable workouts all in one week. I wasn't expecting my week of running to go that well.

Other than that I kept writing on my manuscript and I'm over 20,000 words now. What Gen Y Wants You to Know was only 5300 words so I figure that getting past 20k means I have a significant amount to talk about.

Oh and since most of you will read this Monday, I'm going skiing tonight at Sunburst. You're welcome to come just give me a call or text.