VTmotoMike08

I feel obligated to respond to defend myself and so everyone doesn't think that I totally suck at engineering. Last week, my professor asked all of us who had a job offer in my senior level civil engineering class to raise our hands. In a class of 40- 50 students, exactly three raised their hands. Civil engineering closely follows the construction industry, so that is part of the reason it may be worse for us than other types. Virginia Tech is known to have a good engineering dept so thats not the issue. I have also been applying for jobs on the other side of the country (Denver), so when they see the distant address, I feel that scares some off from considering me because of the uncertainty. When it comes to being an entry level civil engineer, I have the total package. I have a decent GPA, several good internships, extra cirriculars, and have held several leadership positions. So if you were trying to suggest that I suck and am just bitching about being unemployed, well, thats just not accurate.

Tell them it is like an orgasm and a car crash at the same time. Its not, but it will make them want to do it.

I don't remember the R word because I don't read this forum all that much. Anyone care to enlighten me? PM would be fine.

So would the whole canyon thing mentioned before be legal? Seems like the AGL below the opening point is whats important, not necessarily the AGL from the takeoff or landing point.

Ya dude, you are being a dick. What were you thinking? Besides the whole "doing a nice thing for some one you care about" aspect, it will take you more time to apologize and make this up to her than it would take to just watch the movie.

All good points. Anyone familiar enough with the industry knows that there are relatively few firms that just do wind farms and PV. Most firms that do it also have a variety of other services. This helps keep people busy when one type or work slows down. As for grad school, this has been one of the most competitive years ever according to one of my profs who manages that area at Virginia Tech. Everyone thinks that since the economy is so bad, they will just go to grad school for two years and wait it out. Well.. everyone does that and then it becomes a lot more competitive. I didn't apply- not right for me at this time, I'm tired of school and I need to make money!

Replying to a couple things here. Thanks for the replies so far. I'm not attempting to blame Obama for the current mess. I am well aware of what he inherited. I do want to see some of his talk about green jobs come thru with real _measurable_ results. I know enough people in the civil/ environmental/ construction industries that if job creation will actually happen as a direct result of his policies, it is a good bet that I will hear about it. So far, I have heard nothing, but I concede that it is fairly early. You can bet I will tear him a new one on these forums if it has been all talk and nothing meaningful. I suspect that there might be a gap between what the government is telling us this money is being spent on, and what it is actually going towards I did not mean for this thread to be about me, I really wanted to see if anyone had seen measurable results and job creation from the stimulus, but since people started talking about my situation... http://www.linkedin.com/pub/10/a32/b41

Agreed. I too have noticed that the soil/ ground water remediation field is going fairly strong. Unfortunately for me, it is a specialty, and you are really only competitive for these very technically complex jobs with a master's degree in environmental engineering. I have had some classwork in the area and I might apply anyway if I find something that suits...

Briefly, yes. Someone else told me about USA jobs a couple months ago. Not trying to sound like a cry baby but 1320 jobs is actually not that many considering the entire scope of the civil engineering field and how big the federal government is. And (for my case) most of those are not entry level jobs. Among the major, nationally known engineering companies, the common sentiment from the recruiting directors that I have talked to is that they have about 10% of the openings for new college grads that they have had in past years I imagine that the government job pool is about the same, maybe a little better.

I have read some, not all, of the official text, but I know there was some money in there for both maintenance of existing infrastructure and construction of new facilities, especially in the energy sector. Good point, I'm not sure which section the "shovel ready" clause applied to, I will have to look it up. I know that, at least in the municipal water sector, many projects were halted mid-design because they knew they would not have the money to actually build it (couldn't get the loan, etc). Shovel ready might apply to those only. It sure would be a shame if that act passed without the forcible language to make the renewable energy projects happen sooner rather than later.

First choice would be Denver, second choice would be anywhere else that is similar in size with good recreational opportunities. I'm not trying to live in the middle of no where, but I know I will need to be flexible. I kinda see myself working in site selection, permitting, and then construction management (which I have some experience in). I will leave the guts of the turbines to the mechanical engineers, I know these projects take all types.

I am interested in hearing if anyone knows someone who has recently gotten one of Obama's "green jobs"? I mean someone you personally know who actually got a job that would not have been there if it were not for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. I don't want to hear about politicians saying that the act will create the jobs, I want to know of any actual specific examples. My situation is that I graduate from college in 6 weeks with a BS in civil/ environmental engineering and I want to work in renewable energy project design and eventually move into project management. Contrary to what you might think, this field seems to be virtually dead. Simply no one is hiring because no one has contracts to construct wind farms, do research on other technologies, or really much of anything. I have expressed my willingness to live virtually anywhere in the country, so this is not a local issue. The stimulus was supposed to help projects that could be "shovel ready" in 90 days (IIRC) so it is amazing to me that this field is so dead. So what's the deal? Was the stimulus act BS? OK, rant over.

Once saw a TI land a tandem with the pax who was his girlfriend hooked up backwards... don't have any other details because I was just a visiting jumper but we had our suspicions...

No, but I would gladly watch it for free on the internet

My assumption would be that it has to do with the motivation behind the attacks. Politically motivated = terrorist Generally insanity motivated = bad act by a crazy person Of course sometimes it is more complicated than that.

Thanks for the correction, I knew I was a little rusty.

O ya, that reminds me of the other equation! F= (M*V^2)/2 Force = (0.5)*Mass*Velocity^2 Which basically says that force is proportional to the mass of the object and the square of its velocity. If you care about calculus, that equations is derived by differentiating the first equation (F= M*A) that I posted. Good to dust off the memory from some old physics! Therefore velocity is more (twice as) important as mass in determining opening forces on a parachute (I think).

Just my thoughts, but we know that Force = (Mass) x (Acceleration) So it seems to me that they both play an equal part because there is no coefficients on either mass or acceleration. But then again, acceleration on earth is a constant 32 ft/ sec^2 so I guess we need another equation... ya forget that I said anything.

As someone else pointed out, I had misunderstood what was being said. I thought they were saying it was $100 bucks to put it together, then plus the regular $65- 80 for the reserve repack. So it really comes to like $25 for the assembly, which I think is reasonable.

Damn, is it really around 100 bucks like most people are saying? How much to just assemble the reserve? If it was me I would likely do the main assembly myself and save a few bucks. Hell, I could even put the reserve on the risers myself, let the rigger know that I did it (just in case), and save some cash- thats like 4 jumps. Edit: well, I guess I don't really know how to do the reserve toggles, so there goes that idea but 100 bucks seems kinda steep to me.

Take tomorrow off of work and drink until you can't feel feelings anymore... ...just kidding... but, no really... (yes, thats a Family Guy line)

Probably about 18, male, college student. There is a glorious day every spring in Charlottesville, Virginia known as foxfields. Thousands of college girls in sundresses as far as the eye can see. More alcohol than you know what to do with. Everyone sets up tents, cars, whatever you have and grills food all day. Basically a huge social tailgate. Rumor has it that there is also a horse race going on somewhere near this debauchery, but in all the years I have yet to see a horse. That is the closest thing I know to horse races. You could search any photo sharing website like webshots or flickr for "foxfields" to see some pics.

OK, so I poorly phrased my point, but you are also looking at in in too narrow of a scope. If I say that the grand canyon was caused be the erosion of the Colorado river over 10's or 100's of thousands of years, then we can look at rock patterns, erosion estimates, etc and come to the conclusion that erosion is the most likely cause. This is a legitimate scientific theory because it invokes natural laws to explain the world around us and could be proven wrong by contradicting rock patterns, etc. If you say that God took one big swipe with his celestial jack hammer because he knew we would want a nice place to go camping, there is no way to prove it wrong using natural laws. Having faith that God did it anyway requires you to abandon the laws that are well established and re-proven countless time each day. A reasonable person would then conclude that God did not do it. By examining further cases, the same reasonable person would probably conclude that God does not exist. Teaching ID in public school classrooms would be a slap in the face to the entire scientific process. So, if Louisiana wants to slap the scientific process in the face, then I agree that scientists should boycott the state. Fortunately for them, they will still enjoy the modern conveniences that science has brought to them. I am done with this thread. Enjoy this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Lw4gtT0t2s

Because if I was applying to a job or auditioning (which is pretty similar to appeasing the powers that be on a demo jump), I would not want my email address shown as recovercrachead _at_ dropzone.com. I applaud recovery, but I think its best to avoid showcasing it in that manner. Better to stick to firstname.lastname@anypopularemailsite.com Also, pulling high is generally safer than pulling low and I think even most whuffos could reasonably come to that conclusion. Better to show that you are using best safety practices and that you do not have a cavalier attitude towards safety.

You could start by not showing them your dropzone.com user name or signature line