Late night = Late morning

Well, here I am; strolling into the office at an exceptional 11AM... Late night last night with 2 of the boys whom I haven't seen in quite some time. One of the greatest things about working for this firm is the flexibility in terms of time. As long as you are filling 40 hours throughout the week and keeping it more or less to 8(ish) per day - nobody cares, thus a lot of people have different 'personal' schedules.

Enough of that; now, the markets...good thing yesterday's post was before they opened because I took a huge hit on all my big boys (GOOG, AAPL, RIMM, GS, NKE, KO, etc.), but today is looking up! with RIMM kicking ass at a solid 2.63% up from yesterday, but all in the portfolio are green - meaning no losses today, but lets see what happens at 4:30PM. Hmmm...what to speak about engineering related... I am trying to post each day, but there isn't always something super interesting to post about - yesterday I designed a small chamber for a co-worker who has a submission date coming up... The accountant next to me is annoying when she argues back and forth with the Project Controls specialist... I guess today is going to be slow, I'll make revisions to the chamber design as per the structural and projects leads, and I'll continue modifying my Watermain model to annotate the field verified information - nothing big today, its a Tuesday....right...?

Cool Shit. I want to start posting cool shit about once a week, as I come across it - This is completely bias because its shit that I think is cool and/or new. Now it won't be the same day every week because that will force me to post anything. No cool shit next week? no post. This will also save me on days when there really isn't anything to speak about.

This Weeks Cool Shit: The new Audi RS5. Why it's cool? because I'm an Audi nut, its fast powerful and sexy. Period. Biggest problem - pricing. Some German will be shot at dawn for his mistakes - but goodness it is a glorious machine, I anxiously await the Nurburgring time and Jeremy Clarkson's review (the only two things that matter in the end). Now I want to talk about the pricing problem with it. It's $104,000 USD. Why is that a problem, aside from it being out of 85% of the population's grasp, is what it offers. It's supposed to be the M3 killer (as in the new V8 E92 model, not the straight 6 E46). The M has a 4.0L V8 under the bonnet pushing out 414hp, while this has the 4.2 V8 you see in a lot of Audi cars, just this one is tuned a little bit otherwise, you might as well save 40k and buy an RS4 (another super machine) This car does not compete with the M3, the price difference is over 20k, and therefor are in different financial leagues, will the Audi beat the m3 regardless of finances? Likely, the all wheel drive will help in power circuits, but in most courses the M differential in the real wheel, high revving M3 will be something hard to topple. We shall see what JC thinks though. Image will be attached to this post. Well let me knock off the day, my father's birthday today, I'm still groggy and can use some caffeine. Hopefully the markets do well, and Americans stop trying to sue each other for everything.

Early Morning Market

So; post number two today, a little earlier than the last one (although it says posted at 8:49 - it a'int true). I have about 20 minutes before the markets open this morning, so I figured I'd get this post out of the way before my day actually gets going. No I am not a Stock Broker, Day Trader, Futures trader etc., I simply dabble; and yesterday (as you might tell by the tone of my post) was not a good day for any bluechip or tech stocks.

Anyways, so before the market opens and possibly disappoints and since last post was a wee bit pessimistic, I thought this one should be a little bit more uplifting. Engineering...hmm, well what can I say; if you like it and are in the field good for you, if you don't care and aren't in the field; get the f*@& off my blog...kidding, keep reading.
I keep writing this stuff and taking sips of my horrible work brewed coffee and think; anyone who tries this stuff for the first time will vomit, by I on the other hand have become...complacent I suppose...
Anyways; Engineering. So yesterday there was no work, or I should say very little work, and since I am a salaried employee (as opposed to hourly waged) I must hang around and log what's called Professional Downtime which basically means I am doing dick all and am not being charged out to a client (making the company a profit) so this is not a good thing. But by the same token, you can't invent work - it is supplied to you by senior staff members who put you on Projects. Yeah Projects...something we don't have a lot of at the moment. Why you ask? Well, Let me tell you, you eager little engineer you!

Remember not too long ago our friends to the south loused up the economy pretty bad - for everyone causing a global recession? Well although they are generally bad, it is good for our industry because the government injects "stimulus" funds into infrastructure, which theoretically; creates jobs for the masses. This is why sometimes our jobs (working for a Consultant; more on the different streams later) are labelled "recession proof". Not entirely true - here's why: Imagine a huge explosion that you can safely see and not get burned. Now imagine you are just far enough to not get burned by much to close to avoid the following shock wave (JPS analogy, copyright 2010, all rights reserved). We are now experiencing the shock wave; all clients (municipalities) have been given a deadline of which they MUST spend any and all allotted "stimulus" funds by. This caused them to take any work they may have had planned for 5 years down the road, brought up and rushed out. My opinion: any rushed job is a poorly executed job, and thus; the citizens of that city or region suffer with shitty infrastructure that may or may not get repaired, but will need it.

EXAMPLE:

Sole Sourced jobs: a job given to a firm with a proven track record and in good standing with the client, as opposed to the normal bidding process that most jobs are won through. Sole Sourced jobs are rare (from municipalities rather than private clients or high level government: DND) because they aren't "fair" to all consulting firms, so they are only performed on occasions where some kind of deadline warrants the need for speedious action.

Now, not too long ago we received an odd job from a client, which was; to review the technical details and designs for a job about to be tendered by another (fairly respectable) firm - which has never happened. Basically the client is burning any and all stimulus money they have for fear of a reduced federal budget...great! So, my company got payed a lot (enough for me to put a down payment on a home and buy a serious high performance German sports car) to have us "review" their work.. what? you don't trust your originally selected consultant? Pathetic.

Anyways, the market opened 4 minutes ago, time to read the news and see how much more money I will lose today... Until next time

Mo Money, No Problems?

Hello to who cares,

Maybe out of boredom, maybe out of interest; I have created this blog for anyone who cares for an insight into the world of Engineering at a large multi-national Engineering conglomerate. To keep my nuts out of a vice, I won't be mentioning my company name but suffice to say it is a big player in the 'world'.

The title of this Blog - somewhat of a double entendre: the change can mean either the relatively low income I receive, or the change we would all like to see in our world. It will all depend on the day and my mood.

If I could go back to high school, at about the time of selecting post-secondary education, would I do it the same? Definitely not, but everyone would do something different with the knowledge they have now right? The job I have DOES pay the bills, but it doesn't keep a smile on my face: something more important than one could think. Engineering kind of falls in the middle of "shitty job but wicked fun" and "shitty job but AWESOME pay" which may seem like a good thing, but let me explain:

When I went into this career (schooling) I was the semi-geek who watched all the construction related programs on TLC and Discovery Channel, and loved them (no i do not watch any of them anymore). In addition to that, I was told that this is a highly lucrative profession. The problem with the term "highly lucrative" is that it is all relative... A high school career counsellor who earns about 35-40k per year would assume ANYTHING over 45k is lucrative, which I admit, sounds not half bad...until you get into real life.

EXAMPLE:

Let's say you earn 50k per year before taxes, which will equate to approximately $2,800 per month after taxes. Now, you have car payments (because that $50k look OH so good when you signed on) of about $300, then insurance for say $200, then gas for about another $200. Are you as good at math as I am? because that leaves $2,100 for others, which sounds good, but I am far from done. You also have cell phone bills, food bills, rent, entertainment, plus all the other things that life has to offer. Assuming you spend NO money on entertainment you may be lucky to have $500 bucks at the end of the month saved, and that is nothing when you suddenly hit huge payments you never plan for such as a car problem, a large birthday, a vacation once a year - you'd be lucky to have saved $1000 dollars at year's end!

Now enough of my whining, point of the story - you want vacation time and fun go teach the 3rd grade, you want to make some scratch get an MBA. Some may say MBA's are a dime a dozen, anyone who says that doesn't have one and makes $12/hr. MBA's in them selves ARE a dime a dozen, but every MBA comes with an undergrad degree, which (some disagree) separates the runners from the riff raff. Any idiot can get a history degree and a MBA from a non-target, but someone with an Engineering degree and MBA, or the coveted JD-MBA (available at U of T ONLY in Canada) is a rarity and a better investment than Microsoft shares in the late 80's.

This blog has turned into the financial part of the "change" (as in pocket change), hopefully tomorrow is a little more optimistic and engineering related, after all this is the first post