The Dominator

Do you work with this guy? (and I do mean guy)

Let me tell you about him. He is 23 years old. He is your co-worker. He is the stereotypical "I have an engineering degree...I know everything...And I am better than you" kind of guy. You've met him, haven't you? He won't agree with anything you say. He's a brown-noser who takes credit for your ideas with the bosses. He thinks he's superior to you and let's you know it in everyway he can.

Let me tell you the truth about the Dominator. He is INSECURE! Whether he has talent or not, he is totally uncomfortable with who he is, and he uses the above described actions to compensate for that insecurity.

AND... the bosses see right through him. You might feel like he is taking all of your glory for the real good hard work you do, but the good managers know and in the long run your positive work ethic will outshine him...period.

As always TBL says "DON'T BE THIS GUY!!!!!!!"

HR Unprofessionalism

This really gets under my skin. When a person is applying for a job, he has decided to make a big life change. So she goes through the application process and hopes for an interview. The timeframe that companies have from application deadline to notification of interview varies hugely. This is where I have my beef, any time frame longer than 2 weeks is just unacceptable. Those applicants have their lives hanging in the balance and need to know what is going on. Yet HR departments can have total disregard for the potential employees. Worse yet is when there is a long delay between the interview and notification of success/or not. Here, I think anything past a few days is out of bounds. I once waited 3 weeks between an interview and notification. It drove me nuts.

What can we do? Well when we serve on hiring committees, we should encourage our supervisors to push for reasonable notification of candidates. I do this with my supervisor all the time. We've all been on the receiving end and anything we can do to help those candidates is simply exercising our own professional responsibilities.

Locus of Control

On a scale of 1-10 (one low, ten high) estimate the level of control you have over your own life.

Now go to this site and take the survey:

http://www.dushkin.com/connectext/psy/ch11/survey11.mhtml

The site gives you a score relating to a level of control. Internal Control means you feel you are in charge of your life. External Control means you feel that something or someone other than you controls your life.

How does your score on my question compare with the survey? Are they similar?

Now for the important part. Do you feel comfortable with the answers? If you do, great. IF NOT, I ask you to write down a list of steps you could take to get you where you want to be.

This self awareness and self analysis are the most important steps in making change.

The White Devil

This post is about eating right. Coming from me, this is a little out of whack - I have not eaten right for about 90% of my life and I weigh 20 pounds more than I should.

But the evidence is clear, eating processed foods with high sugar content is about the worst thing a person can do for their health (other than smoking or drinking/drugs).

The real enemies are sugar (along with high fructose corn syrup) and white flour. They cause our bodies to chemically do some bad shit that ends up giving us big guts and a high propensity for diabetes.

The right way down the road to eating more healthily is to give these things up. Switch to getting your sugars from natural places like fruits and switch to 100% whole grain bread and pasta and eat wild rice instead of white rice.

I do my best to follow these rules and when I do, I feel better, my waist shrinks and occassionally I lose a pound or two.

Touring Engineering

This past Friday, the ICC Engineering students and faculty went to Duluth to learn more about careers in engineering. We started with 6 engineers from Minnesota Power talking to the group about what they do in their different disciplines (Thank you Maggie). Then Rodney V set up a cool demonstration of a fluid system designed to test the different methods for cleaning ballast tank discharges in Great Lakes ships. The day ended with an awesome two hour tour of Cirrus that Amber M set up for us.

Here's the great part - the students were so totally pumped by the end of the day. We can sit in classrooms and talk until we are blue in the face about why these young people should continue down the path to becoming an engineer. But that doesn't compare in any way with what they get out of seeing engineering in practice and talking to practicing engineers.

Do you have place we can come? We've got lots of money for renting buses. We are looking for great places to visit. You are the people who can help us out. Let me know if you have any good ideas. Thanks in advance.

Contact

As engineers we have a scientific training that makes us want empirical evidence to explain every phenomenon. If we can't prove it, we don't believe it.

As humans many of us believe in a higher being and we do so based on faith.

These two approaches can clash in our minds at different times in our lives.

Tonight, Gordy put on a showing of the movie Contact (starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey and based on the book by Carl Sagan) for our engineering students. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. If you have, watch it again.

This movie can help us science based thinker come to grips with faith.

Scholarship Drive

Take a guess what the college budget is for an ICC student living in our dorms?

.... over $14,000!

Just a few years ago that number was less than half of what it is now. It is a crime against society as far as I'm concerned. Nonetheless it is a design constraint underwhich we must go forward as a program. I am trying to solve the problem on several fronts by searching for money from the NSF and from private foundations. In addition, I am in the beginning stages of raising money on an annual basis from engineering alum. I started in August by writing to my former HCC Engineering students (there are 87 of them) and asking them to donate to ICC for scholarships. Guess what? They have! I have commitments from HCC alum for over $5000 by January 1st.

Now I will be contacting ICC alum. You will hear from me soon as I look to ask you to pay back those who helped you by helping our future engineers attain their education.

I pay over $1000 per year to this account as do Aaron/Carol, and Brad. We hope that you may be able to help to.

TBL: We are all at different financial situations and in different stages of life. I would only ever ask you to contribute what you could no matter how little or how much.