MacGyver

Good paperclips are invaluable...

In 1992, I came to Nashville to look at Vanderbilt's engineering program. As an afterthought, I visited Lipscomb while I was here. One of their professors, Ralph Nance took a couple of hours out of his day to sit down with me, answer my questions about engineering in general and offer me some guidance on finding an appropriate program. During that time, I watched him interact with multiple students on a first name basis, both in and out of the department. I hadn't seen that elsewhere, and looking back, I can say that he talked me into going there - whether he realized it or not. I later went to grad school at the Univeristy of Washington. I remember wondering how I was going to stack up in a big school with a lot of Pacific Rim students, having received the majority of my engineering education at the time from three men (twenty years later they've got six ABET accredited programs). I was presently surprised. On a complete side note, LINKS2K make sure that you guys look at all of the scholarship options right now! Currently in America, we're graduating about 10K fewer engineering grads than are retiring each year. There's a true brain drain going on. Couple that with the fact that A LOT of foreign governements are sending blocks of their students to American universities, and essentially making deals with schools saying, "we'll pay full price for 20 students so long as you agree to accept all of them." I lectured in an engineering class at Vanderbilt the other day that had 20 students in it, and 16 of them were foreign nationals. You can posit anything you want about this from a political perspective, but what it means for the American engineering student is that there is a lot of scholarship money that's being left on the table every year. As a general rule, if you're working with a good engineering faculty at the undergrad level, you shouldn't have to pay a dime to go to grad school as an American engineering student. Vanderbilt is even having a hard time filling graduate fellowships due to the fact that so many of them have ITAR restrictions associated with them, yet they can't find American students to fill them. I'm always happy to talk with any perspective engineering students. We need more good ones in this country.

[quote name='peejman' timestamp='1354291976' post='852853'] Forgot about them, but agreed. A friend is teaching there now. We went to school together and worked together for a while before he decided to go back for his PhD. Thankfully, I already know how to work a post hole digger. [/quote] They've put together a great faculty. There's a lot of benefit to being small. I got my first engineering job based on one phone call. While I had no way of appreciating that fully at 21 years old, I later found out the my boss's boss had also gotten his first job based on a phone call from the same professor. There was no interview process, instead it was "that was the first phone call I've gotten from him in 10 years. If he says you're a good fit for us, then I figure I need to listen." Full disclosure: I'm on the board for the engineering school and am an occasional faculty member in their graduate program. If anyone's kids are thinking about Lipscomb, make sure to let me know and I'll make sure they meet the people they need to meet.

I know plenty of big school trained engineers who look down their noses at Tennessee Tech engineers until they work alongside them. They have a great program.

If you want a great engineering program in Tennessee, check out Lipscomb University. Small class sizes. Professors who care and are there because they want to be. Plenty of areas for undergraduate involvement - both in research and their awesome engineering missions program. 100% pass rate of the Fundamentals of Engineering exam 6 years in a row (quietly the best record in the state).

Got a super nice Leatherman PS yesterday. Nice to have a multitool without a blade that is "TSA approved". We'll see how that works out. Thanks SL1k! Worked on mine for a while last night. Still need to fab one part, but should be going out sometime towards the beginning of the week.

My personal favorite: http://youtu.be/A5PrqQLWmoU

[quote name='gjohnsoniv' timestamp='1354204538' post='852425'] Here was something interesting I found this morning: [url="http://9gag.com/gag/5955815"]http://9gag.com/gag/5955815[/url] [/quote] Saw this on Reddit the other day. Just be sure to allot some time every day for removing splinters.

I was in 1WTC the morning of September 11. I watched the planes go in and the buildings go down. I spent 9 months at Ground Zero looking at the devastation caused by that attack for 18 hours a day. I don't have to close my eyes to see it now. I can still smell it. I can say for certain that I have not been as safe on an airplane as I was on September 10, 2001 when I flew with a full sized Spyderco clipped to my pocket. If we wanted the airlines to be safe, we wouldn't use a government jobs program to do it. We'd let the airlines provide for their own security and suffer market consequences for lapses. Security theather is okay for pacifying the majority of the population and keeping up the illusion that we care. Just don't confuse it with actually being safe.

Thought this article on tiny houses from the Washington Post this morning might be of interest in this thread: [url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/home-squeezed-home-living-in-a-200-square-foot-space/2012/11/27/e1a02858-2f35-11e2-ac4a-33b8b41fb531_story.html"]http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/home-squeezed-home-living-in-a-200-square-foot-space/2012/11/27/e1a02858-2f35-11e2-ac4a-33b8b41fb531_story.html[/url]

I use a long blade on an xacto.

I plan on including mine.

If you ever find yourself in Denver International with some time to kill before your flight, spend a little time outside of the concourse in the area that looks down over one of their two security checkpoints. The number of items you can watch TSA agents pocket in a short period of time is pretty amazing. That said, don't try the above exercise is you're somehow still under the illusion that you're safer on a plane today than you were on September 10, 2001. You'll leave sadly disappointed and disillusioned.

Nice!

There are some ways that fingerprints can become dimished from diseases like dermatitis, but it seems a lot more likely that he simply had an inexperienced person taking his prints. I was recently surprised when getting a set of fingerprint cards done that fingerprint taking has become a bit of a lost art. Since this particular government agency used an electronic scanner, and I needed a specific set of cards, there was literally no one in this agency who could take my prints. Finally, the director - who I'm pretty sure hasn't taken a print in 20 years got fed up with his staff and took my prints himself.

Making mine. Should be together sometime next week depending on the schedule.

Had a friend who had them out last year as an adult. He had a strange, but apparently not that uncommon side effect of post operative bleeding from the lingual artery. They think that had someone not been there with him and been able to take him immediately to the ER, he may well have bled out. Oddly, I think something similar happened to a young friend of mine last year as well. I don't know all the details of that one, but know he had to go back in the hospital a week or so after his surgery.

Saw this yesterday. Creative prank.

How about just ordering a[url="http://www.midwayusa.com/product/718196/yankee-hill-machine-barrel-thread-protector-cap-1-2-28-bull-barrel-plated-steel-black"] thread protector[/url]? Or, if you're set on drilling and tapping, you want 29/64".

That's great!

I hear Mitch McConnell is the leading advocate for extending the term limit right now. That way he can get all the Republicans in the Senate onboard with making Obama a two-term president.

I think that one of the things that makes this forum unique is that as a general rule, the staff is quite willing to communicate the reasoning behind their actions. That, and we have a membership that is generally unwilling to give troublemakers much slack. Y'all are pretty self-moderating. I would be hard pressed to recall the last 5 administrative actions that we've had to take off the top of my head.

How are those White's holding up, Neil?

And they think they're going to be able to do healthcare...

Who's going to listen to your argument and do something with this petition? Even if by some act of God you advance past the 11 votes you've got as of now and make it to the 25,000 signatures required to advance it to a mailbox no one actually reads, who do you expect to take up your banner? Find me one politician in 2012 who's going to go on the record and say, "I'd like to sponsor a bill restoring gun rights to people convicted of domestic violence." Their opponents wouldn't even need to make commercials about their record, they'd just play the tape of their comments. I agree that there are several problems with Lautenberg. Whether you consider it a 2nd Amendment issue, a 10th Amendment issue, or simply the fact that in many cases it's been applied ex post facto - there are a lot of Constitutional problems with it. It deserves to have it's day in court, and in fact the 7th Circuit heard a case on it recently and reversed a conviction. If you want to be involved in overturning this law, there are paths to do that. Get involved. This petition, however may as well be spitting in the wind. I'm closing this thread because of the above reasons. To all of you who are reporting this thread on both sides of the issue, I'll just say that we give our moderators a fair bit of leeway in making decisions abot what's appropriate and what's not. That's part of the reason they're here.