Busy Bee

OK, so I JUST finished that awesome blog about the driverless cars, and before I go eat my delicious steak, I will take the time to let you guys know what I have been up to...

1)   Definitely still in school :[  But, graduation is coming up!  I'll walk  that sweet, sweet walk in December.  On that glorious day, I will have earned my B.S. in Electrical Engineering with Minors in Mathematics and Spanish.  Then, I'm going to Disney World or Hawaii.  Or both.  Because I earned it.

2)  I'm still interning at Stryker (yay!!).  I've been there for almost a year, and I love it!  It's such a great company to work for - they've made it on Fortune's Top 100 Companies to Work For the last couple of years.  I'm working on a pretty impressive project for them where I have built a custom test fixture to perform tests on their video boards.

3)  I was recently inducted into the IEEE honor society, Eta Kappa Nu, and I have been elected Vice President!  I have so many great ideas for how to peak interest in the organization and fundraisers.  I'll tell you about those as they come up.

4)  I took the FE (Fundamentals of Engineering) Exam on April 14th.  For the afternoon session, I took the "Other Disciplines" portion because I heard it was easier.  If you guys are planning on taking the exam, I strongly recommend this book:

       FE Review Manual: Rapid Preparation for the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam

              Michael R. Lindeburg, PE

              ISBN: 978-1-59126-333-3

Such a GREAT study tool for preparing for the exam.

5)  I've started taking Zumba classes, and oh my gosh are they awesome!  Did you guys know I took dance lessons for about 12 years?  Ballet, jazz, lyrical, modern, hip-hop... then I went to cheer-leading.  I was unable to take dance classes at UNT because you have to be a dance major to take the classes, and it bummed me out.  I miss dance.  Zumba has been my fix!  It's so fun, and it really makes you sweat!

That's about it so far.  I think I want to elaborate on some of these topics a little more in the future.  But right now I'm hungry, and I want my steak.  

Driverless Cars

OK, so I lied.  I promised you guys I would update you on my life weeks ago.  Things got busy... but what else is new?!

Anyway, I got an e-mail from an Outreach Coordinator at Coupons.org requesting that I share a blog about cars that drive themselves!  My first thought - how in the heck would that even work?  I don't have an iPhone, but I hear that Siri is an idiot... if we can't trust a phone to answer our questions about who won the big game, how can we trust a car to drive us around?  Well just read this article... http://coupons.org/pages/cars... OK, I'm waiting while you read it...

First point -  Google is behind this.  Yep; their autonomous cars have logged more than 140,000 miles.  An engineer for Google, Sebastian Thrun, has devoted his life to this research.  His goal is to prevent young adults from being a statistic.  The number one killer for young adults in automobile accidents is human error.

Please check out these statistics.  These really opened my eyes to the real danger of driving.  You can be the safest, most aware driver on the planet, but that's not going to keep you from getting in an accident.  You always have to worry about the other guy -- the young girl texting her BFF about the new Twilight movie; the man having a hard day and using alcohol to get through it; the absent-minded engineering student trying to remember KVL and KCL for her Electronics 2 exam. You can control how you act behind the wheel, but unfortunately you can't control what the other drivers are doing.

Great stuff, right?  I had never heard of that DARPA competition, but holy cow that is amazing!  

This just makes me want to work for Google THAT much more.  I was checking out Google jobs today, and found that they are NUMBER ONE on Fortune's Best Companies to Work For - 2012.  Definitely my dream job...

But anyway, I hope you guys read the article, LOVED it, and will promise that after seeing those statistics, you'll drive safe.  Pinky promise.  Now.  K Thanks :]