Friday, August 1, 2008
I Was So Mad: Part Deux
So, in case some of you were deprived enough as children to have never read any of the little critter books, I feel bad for you. The picture below is the title of my favorite book in the series. Do you see a theme?
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
I Was So Mad
Okay, so I bought a new wonderful queen size bed on my birthday (July 14th for those of you who don't know) and decided to be extremely patient and wait until today, July 30th to have it delivered so that I could get a 10% discount. I have been looking forward to getting my bed ever since that day so I was so excited when today finally arrived. My apartment community has a policy where they will accept furniture deliveries for you so that if you are at work, you can still have things delivered without having to be there. You tell them in advance when the people are coming and they will go unlock the door for them and re-lock it when the deliverymen leave. So I made arrangements with the office here to have them open my apartment for the bed delivery. Well, I got a call last night that my bed would be delivered between 12:45 and 2:45 so I came home today, expecting to see a nice wonderful bed in my bedroom. Instead, I came home to a big empty bedroom that looked the same as when I left it. So I called Macy's (the stupid store I bought my bed from) and went through the whole automated message system only to have them tell me "Our office is currently closed, our office hours are from 8:30-5:00 Monday-Friday, please call back during our office hours." So then I started to get really mad because I didn't want to have to wait until tomorrow to do this, especially since 8:30-5 are exactly the hours I work! I don't think I really get all that mad that often, so this was bad. Things were being kicked, punched, and thrown; apparently I REALLY wanted my new bed. So I called mi madre and she helped calm me down and told me to try and call the sales guy who sold me the bed. Did that, he was gone for the day and the guy I talked to told me that they tried to deliver it, but when they knocked on my door, no one answered, so they left. I find this weird because no one is supposed to be able to get into my building without a fab and no one is supposed to be able to enter my community without a fab or checking in with someone; obviously neither of these things happened. Next, poor salesman from Macy's who had to take the brunt of my frustrations when he did absolutely nothing but be polite and patient with me, says they will have to reschedule the delivery. I ask for when, he says "we can probably get it out to you some time next week" and I proceed to get very angry again. He tells me he will have "them" (whoever that is) call me first thing tomorrow to reschedule it, but he's not sure how soon "they" will be able to do it. So, now its back to sleeping on my wonderful air mattress (that I had already stripped and deflated) until further notice.
I was so mad!
I was so mad!
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Cathy Burk: Patent Examiner
Well, I am almost done with my first week of work and so far it is great. So far all we have done is orientation related stuff, but tomorrow and next week we will start getting in to the knitty gritty (how do you spell that?) business of patent examination.
Just so that everyone is on the same page, this is basically how the US Patent and Trademark Office (pto) works. There are 7 Technology Centers (tc's) that all patent applications are sorted in to when received by the pto. Examples of the different TCs are communications, mechanical engineering, chemistry etc...and within each tc, there are different "art units" that are responsible for examining patents from more specific categories within the tc.
New patent examiners go through an 8 month training program called the patent training academy. As pretty much the whole world knows, the pto has an enormous backlog of patent applications. In fact, they told us that if everyone stopped submitting patents today, we would still have enough work to keep going for 3 or 4 years. In order to try and tackle this problem, they are hiring 1200 people every year until 2012. In order to teach the huge number of people how to be patent examiners, the pto has developed the patent training academy. This is an 8 month training program very similar to a college environment. We have lectures we go to every day and then smaller lab groups that are assigned to different trainers that act as our mentors and supervisors throughout the program.
My class has 70 new examiners in it, and we are divided up into 5 labs. I am in technology center 3700, which is mechanical engineering. Even though it is called mechanical engineering, it contains almost all of biomedical engineering as well. My art units is "Radiation, magnetic, light therapy, cardiovascular testing, respiratory testing". This means that all of the patents I will be examining will fall in to these categories, although I won't really start any examining until next week or the week after. I met with my supervisory patent examiner (spe) today for the first time, he seems really cool and layed back, just my style.
I am really looking forward to working here, now time to examine some patents!
Just so that everyone is on the same page, this is basically how the US Patent and Trademark Office (pto) works. There are 7 Technology Centers (tc's) that all patent applications are sorted in to when received by the pto. Examples of the different TCs are communications, mechanical engineering, chemistry etc...and within each tc, there are different "art units" that are responsible for examining patents from more specific categories within the tc.
New patent examiners go through an 8 month training program called the patent training academy. As pretty much the whole world knows, the pto has an enormous backlog of patent applications. In fact, they told us that if everyone stopped submitting patents today, we would still have enough work to keep going for 3 or 4 years. In order to try and tackle this problem, they are hiring 1200 people every year until 2012. In order to teach the huge number of people how to be patent examiners, the pto has developed the patent training academy. This is an 8 month training program very similar to a college environment. We have lectures we go to every day and then smaller lab groups that are assigned to different trainers that act as our mentors and supervisors throughout the program.
My class has 70 new examiners in it, and we are divided up into 5 labs. I am in technology center 3700, which is mechanical engineering. Even though it is called mechanical engineering, it contains almost all of biomedical engineering as well. My art units is "Radiation, magnetic, light therapy, cardiovascular testing, respiratory testing". This means that all of the patents I will be examining will fall in to these categories, although I won't really start any examining until next week or the week after. I met with my supervisory patent examiner (spe) today for the first time, he seems really cool and layed back, just my style.
I am really looking forward to working here, now time to examine some patents!
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Cathy goes to the big apple
Well, I went to NYC for the first time in my life this past weekend and for the total of about one hour that I spent there, I have to say, I didn't care for it. Before everyone gets all outraged, let me just tell you that I am only about 0.01% serious. Let me clear up a few things:
1) When I say I "went to NYC" I really mean I went to New Jersey to visit Matt and merely stopped in NYC to catch a train.
2) Since the goal of this trip was to visit boyfriend, seeing all of the sights in NYC was not really the plan, so all I really saw of the city was one block around Penn Station in the evening.
3) I was already worried that I wouldn't be able to find the right train, only to have those fears realized when I bought a ticket for and boarded the wrong train. Luckily, I realized my mistake before the train left, but still, it was pretty demoralizing
All that being said, my first impressions of NYC were not great, but I am definately giving the big apple the benefit of the doubt and would definately like to go back and see some of the better things it has to offer.
I've done a lot of research into cheap transportation between Washington DC and NYC and discovered a few bus services that offer one way tickets for as little as $1, however actually getting a ticket for $1 is pretty rare, the fares are always $20 or less one way, usually less than $15. So, I decided to give it a whirl and it turned out to be pretty great. I rode the boltbus, and arrived in NYC 4.5 hours after leaving DC. It really was not all that bad because the buses have free wireless internet and outlets on every seat to plug in whatever you want. Had I not forgotten my headphones, it would have been even better because I could have watched the movies I brought with me.
After the fiasco that was me trying to get from downtown NYC to River Edge, NJ, Matt and I actually had a pretty good weekend. We watched Batman Begins on Friday* in preparation for The Dark Knight on Saturday, which we both really liked. We also played a good amount of Wii sports; apparently I am not too shabby of a wii golfer :). I had to leave pretty early Sunday morning though in order to get back to Alexandria and still have enough time to get ready for my first day of being a grown-up, which leads me to my next topic...
Tomorrow will be my first day of work at the patent office, I am excited to start working there and to meet new people. I will let everyone know how it goes!
*I am pretty ashamed to admit this, but I think if I don't people will think I am misleading them. This viewing of Batman Begins was actually my first memorable viewing of any Batman movie. This fact forced Matt to seriously consider the future of our relationship, but the fact that I wanted to see the Batman movies worked in my favor. Thankyou for finally getting me to watch Batman :)
1) When I say I "went to NYC" I really mean I went to New Jersey to visit Matt and merely stopped in NYC to catch a train.
2) Since the goal of this trip was to visit boyfriend, seeing all of the sights in NYC was not really the plan, so all I really saw of the city was one block around Penn Station in the evening.
3) I was already worried that I wouldn't be able to find the right train, only to have those fears realized when I bought a ticket for and boarded the wrong train. Luckily, I realized my mistake before the train left, but still, it was pretty demoralizing
All that being said, my first impressions of NYC were not great, but I am definately giving the big apple the benefit of the doubt and would definately like to go back and see some of the better things it has to offer.
I've done a lot of research into cheap transportation between Washington DC and NYC and discovered a few bus services that offer one way tickets for as little as $1, however actually getting a ticket for $1 is pretty rare, the fares are always $20 or less one way, usually less than $15. So, I decided to give it a whirl and it turned out to be pretty great. I rode the boltbus, and arrived in NYC 4.5 hours after leaving DC. It really was not all that bad because the buses have free wireless internet and outlets on every seat to plug in whatever you want. Had I not forgotten my headphones, it would have been even better because I could have watched the movies I brought with me.
After the fiasco that was me trying to get from downtown NYC to River Edge, NJ, Matt and I actually had a pretty good weekend. We watched Batman Begins on Friday* in preparation for The Dark Knight on Saturday, which we both really liked. We also played a good amount of Wii sports; apparently I am not too shabby of a wii golfer :). I had to leave pretty early Sunday morning though in order to get back to Alexandria and still have enough time to get ready for my first day of being a grown-up, which leads me to my next topic...
Tomorrow will be my first day of work at the patent office, I am excited to start working there and to meet new people. I will let everyone know how it goes!
*I am pretty ashamed to admit this, but I think if I don't people will think I am misleading them. This viewing of Batman Begins was actually my first memorable viewing of any Batman movie. This fact forced Matt to seriously consider the future of our relationship, but the fact that I wanted to see the Batman movies worked in my favor. Thankyou for finally getting me to watch Batman :)
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Cathy is on her own
Well, today brought about a lot of changes to the casa de Cathy. First of all, mom and Christy left me this morning to go back to Michigan, so I am now officially living on my own, I think I'm doing okay so far. I managed to straighten out my apartment a bit and empty out some more boxes, however I feel like there are still so many to unpack. My "accent wall" (my apartment community allows you to pick a paint color to have on one wall of your apartment that they will paint for you) was painted today . The color I chose is called grand canyon. It is a yellow color that actually doesn't remind me of the grand canyon at all, but I liked it anyway, so I went with it. It turned out great, it really looks good with the rest of my stuff. Here's what it looks like:
I also managed to put my desk together all by myself, it looks really good in the corner of my living room.
I also tried to assemble the table and chairs that I bought from Ikea, however I couldn't finish because I think some holes are missing in my chairs, so we'll have to see if I can resolve that issue on my own or if I need to somehow exchange them.
Tonight is the first time I will sleep in my actual bedroom. While the fam was here, the parents got the bedroom for snore and kid noise control. I did buy a bed, however it will not be delivered until July 30th, so until then, I am sleeping on an air mattress (thanks mom and dad!), however I did buy new sheets and a comforter so it should still be pretty nice.
Things seem to be gradually shaping up!
I also managed to put my desk together all by myself, it looks really good in the corner of my living room.
I also tried to assemble the table and chairs that I bought from Ikea, however I couldn't finish because I think some holes are missing in my chairs, so we'll have to see if I can resolve that issue on my own or if I need to somehow exchange them.
Tonight is the first time I will sleep in my actual bedroom. While the fam was here, the parents got the bedroom for snore and kid noise control. I did buy a bed, however it will not be delivered until July 30th, so until then, I am sleeping on an air mattress (thanks mom and dad!), however I did buy new sheets and a comforter so it should still be pretty nice.
Things seem to be gradually shaping up!
Moving In
Well, we made it to VA relatively unscathed and managed to haul all of my stuff up to my new apartment in only several hours.
We started in Grosse Pointe Woods on Friday afternoon with a fully loaded van and fully loaded little blue saturn.
After staying in Pittsburgh Friday night, we made it to Alexandria on Saturday around 3:00pm and began the long long process of unloading the van. We managed to make a really big mess in my apartment, but once we got things somewhat organized (I use that word very loosely), it looked a little something like this...
This is what the view looks like off of my balcony...
O yeah, I also turned 23 2 days after moving in and I got to celebrate it with a special visitor!
After birthday, the three girls (me, mom, and sister) pretty much shopped for two days straight. I picked out a new bed after 4 stores and ~5 hours of testing out different mattresses. We also made the obligatory trip to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy the same stuff that I feel like I buy every time I move (where does it all go???). We also went to Ikea for the first time ever, I was so excited to finally see what it was all about. I could have spent three days there, however I was disciplined and only bought a desk, table and chairs, three lamps, two bathmats and some other smaller things. I started putting some of the furniture together, however I am having a wall in my apartment painted tomorrow, so I have to keep that area clear, so I will probably wait a few days before I put the rest of the stuff together. I am pretty much fully wired now, except for a few internet issues I am having, I even have an actual land line phone (I know, I'm old fashioned).
Well, tomorrow is the day I officially get abandoned by my family and have to really start making it on my own, yikes! Hopefully I can stay busy with all of the tasks I still have to complete while I have free weekdays. I will post again to let you know how well I handle the being on my own thing, and when I get some furniture built so that my apartment doesnt look so sad.
O yeah, I was completely awful about taking pictures during this whole moving process (partly because I was undisciplined and partly because my camera was packed) so all of the pictures in this post belong to mom and are published with her permission. Thanks, mom!
We started in Grosse Pointe Woods on Friday afternoon with a fully loaded van and fully loaded little blue saturn.
After staying in Pittsburgh Friday night, we made it to Alexandria on Saturday around 3:00pm and began the long long process of unloading the van. We managed to make a really big mess in my apartment, but once we got things somewhat organized (I use that word very loosely), it looked a little something like this...
This is what the view looks like off of my balcony...
O yeah, I also turned 23 2 days after moving in and I got to celebrate it with a special visitor!
After birthday, the three girls (me, mom, and sister) pretty much shopped for two days straight. I picked out a new bed after 4 stores and ~5 hours of testing out different mattresses. We also made the obligatory trip to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy the same stuff that I feel like I buy every time I move (where does it all go???). We also went to Ikea for the first time ever, I was so excited to finally see what it was all about. I could have spent three days there, however I was disciplined and only bought a desk, table and chairs, three lamps, two bathmats and some other smaller things. I started putting some of the furniture together, however I am having a wall in my apartment painted tomorrow, so I have to keep that area clear, so I will probably wait a few days before I put the rest of the stuff together. I am pretty much fully wired now, except for a few internet issues I am having, I even have an actual land line phone (I know, I'm old fashioned).
Well, tomorrow is the day I officially get abandoned by my family and have to really start making it on my own, yikes! Hopefully I can stay busy with all of the tasks I still have to complete while I have free weekdays. I will post again to let you know how well I handle the being on my own thing, and when I get some furniture built so that my apartment doesnt look so sad.
O yeah, I was completely awful about taking pictures during this whole moving process (partly because I was undisciplined and partly because my camera was packed) so all of the pictures in this post belong to mom and are published with her permission. Thanks, mom!
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Moving Out
Well, today I moved most of my stuff out of my apartment and into the van back to Grosse Pointe. Then it will all be repacked and moved again to Alexandria, VA. I remember when we did this for Ted, moving him to Dallas after he graduated from Michigan. I turned 13 during that trip (summer going in to 8th grade), which means it will be almost exactly 10 years to the day after Ted left, that I leave the mitten to embark on my own adventures in some other part of the country. Do you feel old yet, Ted?
We are leaving Michigan on Friday the 11th, and I move in to my apartment on the 12th. Luckily Dad has business in DC during the week that I move in, so the fam will get to stay until Wednesday the 16th to help me get moved in and settled (and make several trips to Ikea). Also, Matt is going to come visit and help me move in on the 12th-13th, so that should make it a little more enjoyable.
We are leaving Michigan on Friday the 11th, and I move in to my apartment on the 12th. Luckily Dad has business in DC during the week that I move in, so the fam will get to stay until Wednesday the 16th to help me get moved in and settled (and make several trips to Ikea). Also, Matt is going to come visit and help me move in on the 12th-13th, so that should make it a little more enjoyable.
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