This brings up tonights topic: who has the better job. Of those of you I call my friends, I am really only aware of two other people who enjoy their job as much as I do: Andy and Dave. So I will now make a list to compare and contrast.

	Andy	Dave	Steve
Enjoys job	yes	yes	yes
Education beyond Bachelor's	yes	yes	yes
Perks	Flying whenever, where ever	Drugs	none
Museum exhibits on profession	no	yes	yes
TV shows on profession	no	yes	yes
Base Pay*	$163,999	$316,119	$60,661

*as per my best guess from CollegeGrad.com in NYC

Conclusions:

• Dave has the best job. He has all "yes", makes the most money, and does not even need all that money to get drugs.
  
• I have the worst job because I get paid pennies. However, I am cooler than Andy because I am in museums and on TV.
  
• Andy makes a fair amount of money for doing things that no one is interested in. This then begs the question "Why does he like his job? Is he dumb or something?"
  

Picked up the violin for the first time since the last time I picked it up, which is a very long time ago. I suck. There, I said it. I suck. Enough about that.

Carolyn, Dave and I went to see Bodies The Exhibit a few days ago. Click on the link and you will basically get the gist of the display. The space was gigantic and there were endless body parts and cadavers. I was personally a little nauseated by all the carnage, but Dave and Carolyn seemed pretty in to it. Actually, Dave had an absolute blast, which bodes well for his career choice. Do not feel bad that you may not be able to see it; Dave has a book that pretty much has pictures of everything that you would have seen at the exhibit. It shows every organ, nerve, blood vessel, and little thing you could ever want to see or ever have thought to see. There is a reason I did not want to be a doctor and it is not because doctor's marry ugly women.

I was sitting at the Chinese fast food place wondering what I was going to write tonight, when a random lady comes up to me and says "You should be back there helping them out." The cooks were very busy, the phone was ringing off the hook, and apparently, because I have black hair and black eyes, I must work in a Chinese fast food restaraunt. Never mind the fact that I am wearing a professional, long, black wool coat, button-down shirt and tie. I was confused and quite mad, but I decided to cut the elderly and confused lady some slack and replied: "Maybe if they gave me my food for free I would."

"Oh! I'm sorry, I thought you were his [she points to owner] son. That is why I was playing with you."

OK, I felt a little better; it is a fairly honest mistake. The owner does have his daughter (I think it is his daughter) work the counter, so if I were his son I should be helping him out. The fact of the matter is, though, that I am not his son and just because there is another asian standing in a Chinese restaraunt does not mean that we are all related or even friends.

To be honest with you, I was not that offended. She was old and harmless and I could tell she did not mean anything deragory. She apologized three times more after the initial event. This just goes to show that even if you live in a minority neighborhood, there is still some racism.

I just got back from a lecture by Leslie E. Robertson, founder of Leslie E. Robertson Associates. This guy (and his firm) has designed a whole bunch of famous buildings, including the World Trade Center, SONY Building (formerly AT&T Building), Shanghai World Financial Center (under construction), and the Bank of China Tower (with architect I. M. Pei). I have had the pleasure of listening to him lecture while in California, and even had a pre-seminar meeting with him. He is old but he is a lot of fun, as structural engineers go.

Today he lectured on high-rise buildings, all structures he helped design. He talked about the structural framing and thought processes behind each structure, things that worked and did not, and added his own personal commentary on random events. He especially enjoyed showing construction photos from back-in-the-day when there were not nearly as many safety regulations. He had a little time left over at the end and gave a mini-course on how high a building could go, theoretically speaking, as if the audience was full of architects. It made for a very entertaining talk.

His last example was stolen from NASA: At a certain distance from the earth, an object will neither fall towards the earth nor move away from the earth. One idea NASA had was to simply build a structure and tie the top of the structure to a rock in space. This way the rock would be supporting the structure. He then commented that the structure would need to be at the equator. Can you figure out why? Can you think of somewhere else on the earth this could work? (I know the answer because he told me, but it is not that hard to figure out)

Last Friday I was given the opportunity to tour the New Jersey Transit Hoboken Ferry Terminal in preparation for my newest assignment. Ladies and gentlemen, I will be designing the new Hoboken Ferry Terminal Clock Tower. If you scroll down the link, you will see a drawing of what the ferry terminal used to look like, and if you go even farther down you will see a picture of what it currently looks like. In the photograph, you can see a big radio antenna. We are tearing that bad boy down and building a new clock tower to look like the one of old. I will only be designing the things that you folks will never see and the architect will be designing the exterior surface. I was not very excited at first when I was put on the assignment; it is a pretty straight forward braced frame structure with a few details for cladding and things. However, once I was brought out to the site and shown everything, I could hardly believe that I was going to take part in such wonderful restoration. It is also a lot of fun to run around crawl spaces and mechanical rooms of old buildings. I compare it to an adult sized jungle gym.

One of the highlights of our little tour was the inspection of the clock tower foundation. It is a giant concrete slab (about 3 feet thick) that sits on a bunch of timber piles (columns going down into the river bottom). Four of us put on waders (imagine fly fishers) and dropped down a hole into the water. We walked about half way around looking when I got stuck in the mud. Literally. I coul not move my feet; as I tried to pick one foot up, the other would sink even deeper. The project manager laughed at me, the contractor laughed at me, and the on-site foreman lauged at me. Then the foreman came over and pulled me out of the muck. Not my finest hour, and I was a little concerned when it happened, but the experience as a whole was the most fun I have had on the job in a long time.

Quick points

• I saw Colleen from California and her new boyfriend. I am very happy for the two of them because he does not appear to be a sleaze bag. For those of you that do not know, I am extremely protective those I call friends. If I did not like the kid, he may not have left the city in one piece.
  
• I got to see "Sweet Charity" (Broadway musical) starring Christina Applegate (from "Married with Children"). I saw it once in highschool and was thoroughly impressed. Since it came out on Broadway again, I wanted to see what a real production was like. Let me just say that I was not disappointed. Christina Applegate did very well.
  
• I have waited and finally seen "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." It was excellent and recommend everyone to go see it. When I read the book, the atmosphere was not nearly as dreary, but I guess the director can do whatever he wants.
  
• Now I am waiting to see "Rent" and "Memoirs of a Geisha." If you have not read the latter, get off your lazy bum and do so. It is an excellent book.
  
• I appear to have gotten my television watching under control, but it is a bit too early to tell.
  

I will post better later, but needed to get that out before I forgot.

One of the most aggravating things I see on the subway is parents listening to their music or reading their book and completely ignoring their child who is sitting right next to them and has nothing to do. There is a perfect opportunity to interact with their offspring, spend some quality time together, and get to know one another better. The adult is more concerned with their own well being and entertainment than their kid's. What makes it worse is when the child starts to entertain himself and gets yeld at and told to sit down and be quiet. If dad thinks he is going to be so bored on the train that he prepares himslef with an iPod, what makes him think that his son is going to fair any better armed with absolutely nothing?