Growing Up

Above is a picture of a Porsche Panamera, a four-door Porsche. I knew it was a Porsche as soon as I saw the picture; it has Porsche lines and profile. It just looks fat. And the spoiler definitely needs some work before they begin production in April 2009. More pictures here.

More pictures here as well. I've uploaded nearly every picture I've taken with my digital camera to Picasa, Google's Web Albums service. All the albums are geotagged. I've also started geotagging each individual picture on Google Maps. This takes a little while, since for some reason there isn't any way to connect Picasa tagging with Google Maps tagging, at least as far as I can tell. The start of my individually tagged photos is here. Navigation can be done by clicking on the place markers or clicking on the links on the left (one link per picture).

I'm growing up.

I have a degree in Industrial Engineering and a minor in Business Administration. Four years of college are complete, and I have the diploma to show for it.

I have a full time non-summer job with the world’s largest technology distributor and a leading technology sales, marketing, and logistics company. That's a quote straight from a wikipage about the company, Ingram Micro. Initially, I'll be helping to work on this project. I leave this Sunday for a week at their corporate headquarters located in Santa Ana, CA. There I'll be training, learning about projects, and meeting people that work at the corporate headquarters. Air travel, hotel accommodations, and rental car are paid by IM.

I have a house. Well sorta. I signed all the paperwork, and put a $1000 down so far. The seller has agreed to my offer. Pictures are in the slide show in the previous post or in the album here. The house is located in Lebanon, about twenty minutes from work. Settlement is slated for June 30th. The house is 1323 square feet and semi-detached, and has three bedrooms. It has a front porch, a back deck, new roof, new furnace, and new water heater. It also has a shed in the back yard, and a detached two car garage.

I have a car. My parents gave me the Ford Taurus as one of graduation presents. I have the title in hand, though it still needs to be transferred. My parents are pretty cool. It's cause of them that I was able to have an amazing credit score, which qualified me for my home loan. They allowed me to have a checking account and bank card as an early teenager. Plus I had a credit card at a ridiculously young age.

People seemed surprised that I am graduated, have a full-time job, a car, and am buying a house. Given, I was slightly concerned that I might not have a job straight out of college (I knew I would have one eventually). And graduating was not a concern for me. The house is the next natural step in my mind, after graduating and securing a full time job.

Rent or Buy? For me the numbers plugged in were:
Monthly rent: 900
Home price: 115,500
Down payment: 5.25
Mortgage rate: 6.375
Property taxes: 1.23

The results? With the default 1% home appreciation and the 3% rent increase, I only need to live at my house four years in order to break even in terms of throwing money away on rent. Which is pretty close to my calculations that resulted in five years.

People are also concerned that I won't like my job and then I'll be stuck with this house. To which I say, many people hate their jobs. Plus I am nearly completely certain that I won't hate my job.

Industrial Engineering degree
Job
Car
House
Something else I want
Computer

Etc

30.

My House Slideshow

Done with College

As of 11:33:20 AM EST on May 6, 2008 AD, I have completed all college classwork. I am done with college.

/celebrate

Ramblings

My last semester of college is almost complete. I have done a lot in these past months I suppose. Three major projects: The Arena simulation competition, the collaborative Hershey project, and my own library work flow analysis project. Plus all the stuff for classes, such as a major group project report, individual competitive strategy report, and major group project presentation. And speaking of presentations I've done quite a few of them. Eight to be specific, all related to my three projects.

And after all that I've seriously come to realize that it's all for naught. I didn't get paid to do these projects, in fact, some cost me a little bit of money (entry fees and the like). After all these four years of learning, doing projects, gaining experience I'm not that much farther ahead in the world in terms of financial standing, political power of any sort, or in a position to apply my knowledge.

Which is what it comes down to: it's not how much you know, it's who you know.

Today I followed up on one of the jobs for which I interviewed. The position is no longer even a position. They said they'll keep me posted if it becomes a position again, but I was throughly disheartened since that was the job that I wanted the most out of anything I've interviewed so far. Right now I just want a job, even if I hate it. I'm young, and my generation is predicted to have eight to twenty careers in one's lifetime.

But back to school. I have a keyboarding final tomorrow. Bach's Minuet in G from the book of crazy easy minuets he wrote. I also have a theory test for that class on Tuesday. Finally, I have a take-home final for Geophysics due on Monday or something. I have essentially twenty-six days of nothing. I wish I could just start working full-time right now.

But speaking of back to school. Maybe I should consider going to grad school or pursuing my MBA. Who knows. I do know that it is significantly late in the application process for anything like that.

Actually, after looking around, I'm completely wrong. I could go to Drexel for example for Masters in Industrial Management or MBA. They're on a weird three semester schedule and the deadline for summer term is June 6. Though I don't really want to live in or near Philadelphia. Drexel's online MBA would cost around $41,040. Not bad. Or there's always Quality Engineering Six Sigma at Villanova.

Still, I sort of want to be done with school. I want to go work full-time and make money. I want to buy a house and buy a Porsche. But in the short-term I need to find said job (or investigate further into more school), buy double AA batteries for my Xbox controllers, and pick up my car from the shop (state inspection and emissions).

Decrease variability, increase control. Narrow scope, escalate focus. Efficiency is beauty. It's all what who you know. 30.