The Wedding of Chad and Chelsea

So the time came for another wedding. I still find it hard to believe that we're there....that I'm at the age where people are getting married.

As I took the plane ride home Friday for the wedding, I also came to realize that this chunk of time is the new official 'longest away from home'. I left home on Jan 6 to return July 19, so just over 7 months. So it really was a great feeling to look through the window over the prairies. All the square fields full of wheat, and canola and hay was a welcoming site.

Friday was also another big day, it was the release of the final Harry Potter. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! So of course, myself, Cory and Kyley along with the groom Chad in tow, headed to Chapters, Sherwood Park to be at the midnight release party. When midnight hit, it took us another hour to wade through the line and get the book, and since we all had to be up early for the wedding, we conceded and I read out loud just the first chapter during our car ride home :)

Saturday was busy as any wedding day usually is. 8am for breakfast, 9am to decorate the cars, 10 am get ready and be to Chelsea's parents house (site of the wedding) by 11am. The ceremony was beautiful in a lovely backyard. It was a pretty warm day, in around the 30's so inside the suit...well i was sweating off a couple pounds.

We then of course went for pictures downtown, drove around and started the reception by 6pm. And as per usual we heard some good speeches. Even Chad, who we usually make fun of, since he's known to mumble in front of crowds gave a heart warming speech. Then we simply danced the night away.

I like to Move it Move it was my official song of the night..because for some reason it was in my head all weekend. And Ta-da...another friend married...or as I like to say...another one bites the dust

Sunday was lazy, just lounged around then got on my flight home. I was going to try and convince the pilot to take a little detour on the flight home. The flight from Edmonton to Seattle is only 1.5 hrs...not nearly enough time to finally sit down and read Harry Potter. No go though, but i got pretty far on the book Sunday then finished it Monday...no spoilers from me, other then it was an INCREDIBLE book and a SPECTACULAR end to the series :)

I didn't take many pictures so i'm going to have to get them from my friends, but here's one good shot

I'm Moving to FRANCE!

Ok so negligent blogger Logan has done nothing over the last month. To be fair i've been a busy beaver working long days, playing some sports in the evening, that by the time I get home all I do is make some dinner and go to bed. And although I still have a lot of back posting to do (May Long and such) I have to post the BIG NEWS!

So here it is..

I got accepted to SUPAERO in Toulouse, France for a Masters of Science in Aerospace Engineering to start August 31st for two years

It's been almost two weeks now since I found out and I'm just beginning to believe it. For a long time I really was in a state of disbelief. I set goals high for myself, and I put more pressure on myself to succeed than anyone else can put on me. That being said...I always set goals i'm sure I can achieve. So when it came to being accepted to the graduate schools in Europe, I never assumed I would actually be going.

I really had no idea where I sat, as I had no idea how competitive it was to get into these schools. Plus I'll be honest, I'm not A+, 4.0 student. I had to really work for my grades and I came out with a B+ average....which I'm not complaining about, but it doesn't scream 'I belong in grad school'

Add to the fact that the schools I applied to...well they really are the best Aerospace Engineering Schools in Europe. So it really was an all or nothing shot. So when I look back now at how I got in, I can only assume it was a sum of all parts.

I had decent grades, usually B is the minimum to even apply for grad school, so a B+ isn't too bad. I had, what I can only assume, were incredible reference letters from two great professors at the University of Alberta, Dr Carlos Lange and Dr Lorenz Sigurdson. I really admire both of them and got to know them well through my tenure at the U of A. I was lucky enough to have great work experience. Between working with Dr. Lange on the Phoenix Mars Lander (to be launched in one month btw), to my IAESTE work exchange in Denmark where I was able to work with Finite Element Analysis, to my current job actually working for a company that modifies airplanes and helicopters! I mean, how lucky can you get with the jobs I've had. Of course there was also the fact that our 460 group was the Capstone Design winner as one of the best final design projects of our year, I made sure to mention that fact. And lastly would be my overall character. I had to write a 3 page statement of purpose that described who I was and why I wanted to go study Aerospace Engineering. It's never easy to write about yourself, but I tried to exemplify that I am more than just an engineering student, and that there is more to being an engineer than the all of the equations. So I guess all of that came through.

So in the end I actually got accepted to all of the school I applied to which was really just incredible. But I have chosen to go to France and I will now make another post with some info about the school and why I chose it.

A Friendly Visit

So the week started off with Damien and Lisa coming down to visit me!! They left Tuesday and got here Wednesday night. However 'someone' locked their keys in their trunk, not 10 mins after they got here. We tried to play criminal and use the ol coat hanger....but we failed. No life of car jacking for me. Eventually AMA came and opened the car for us. So while I was working they drove around the area, out to Mt Rainier then up to Seattle. They checked out the aquarium and Pike's Place market. Overall just a great time.

And of course they shared the BIG NEWS with me. Damien proposed to Lisa on the car ride down at a waterfall in BC called Bridal Falls. Awwwwwwwwwwww! I'm really happy for them, the wedding is set for July 5th of next year. And I get to be Damien's best man! We've known each other age two...man we're getting old.

So they came and saw my work on Friday and then we headed up for the start of the Long weekend. We stopped in Vancouver and toured around downtown. Ate at a little restaurant.

It was really cool that they came and visited me. I've put the pictures of their visit in the Gallery with the rest of the May Long....which which will be the next post.

So behind

So you know when you get behind...and so you don't start something because you feel you have so much to catch up you don't have the time. But you just end up getting farther behind.

That's where i'm at with this blog. So busy these days and hardly home enough. And i'd do some catching up tonight...but it's 10pm. And i had volleyball last night, then started work at 6am this morning (overtime). Then went for 'Mountain Bike Wednesday' with the guys from work, came home and ate dinner and here I am.

So soon i shall post about
-Damien and Lisa coming to visit me!!!!
-May Long Weekend Canadian Edition in Kelowna
-May Long Weekend American Version at Sasquatch
-My new bike
-My month and a half ago first cold water SCUBA dive haha
-Test flying the airplane!!!

See what i mean...man...i could use a whole evening just to blog...*sigh*

Good night

Logan

DCR Wednesday

So I thought I'd post about how my work is going down here, since I haven't done that for a good while.

Work is great! It was definitely the right decision to move down here for the job. The experience I'm gaining just can't be compared. I've been designing tooling and then going down to the shop and talking with the personal down there about how it will be formed, what problems they might have. Then watching as it's being made and used.

All of last week I was working overtime and starting work at 6am. Those 5am morning were definitely a little rough but it was worth it. We are getting our plane ready to flight test and as such we have a massive computer control center in the back of the plane that basically records everything that is going on while the plane is flying. We've got over 50 different parameters that we will be reading. They go from about 24 thermocouples for measuring temperatures at various spots around the engine compartment, to pressure readings in the exhaust, to prop RPM and turbine RPM, to position of the flight controls such as elevator and ailerons. We measure outside air temp, outside pressure, stall warning signal, even the force it takes to pull back on the control stick.

So as such, I was in early all last week helping to calibrate them all. That is making sure that they are reading correctly and everything is working fine. It's one of those jobs that goes really easy...until something goes wrong. When something isn't reading right, the troubleshooting begins. And in some cases that took days trying to figure out where the problem is, checking all the wiring diagrams, checking the actual wiring, checking the instrument. And when you have 100's of wires all coming out of the back of the computer...it's a mess. But we are almost ready to start flight testing!!

Today was my first DCR wednesday. DCR stands for Drawing Change Request. Basically these are made when somewhere down the line after we have finished our drawings, somebody noticed a problem. It could be that the vendor we specified on the drawing changed names or went out of business. Or it could be that a specification for the type of material has been outdated and a new one needs to be specified. Or it could just be that we missed something in the design and when they actually went to put it together..things didn't fit, and they have a solution.

Well I guess the DCR's have been piling up, with everyone too busy with our projects to get to them. So we had official DCR wednesday where we would all plough through them and get them done. Well there was 186 of them, spanning back 2 years!!!!

So it was actually pretty fun. Basically like a big treasure hunt. You start out reading through it, figuring out what the problem is. Then you go and hunt down the original drawings to see how everything fits together. Then we hunt down the person who wrote the DCR and do a little detective work figuring out why it was made, if it is 'really' needed, how this change will affect the parts around it....and on. And then we decide if this change really is necessary and if so we start the business of making the proper revisions.

Well I could write a couple more long paragraphs of some of the DCR's I ran into, and the treasure hunt it led me on, and the problems it created. Suffice to say I was pulling up old drawings from the 80's and had over 48 sq ft of drawings I was looking over. And then to top it off, I had to find an old digital copy that was stored away on a floppy disk and had to be booted on this old computer that had a copy of 'VERSA CAD' which booted from DOS!! It was craziness!!!

So a totally fun day and a great learning experience hunting down all this info and trouble shooting and making decisions as to whether this is truly necessary!

Tada! Now to bed for another day of work!

Logan

If Everyone Cared...

So I mean to post about the weekend before last and my first cold water Scuba. But I keep forgetting my camera in the car to upload pictures.

But I ran across this yesterday. It's the latest Nickleback video called If Everyone Cared. What a great video and powerful lyrics. I like Nickleback anyways and I've liked this song since I bought the album. But I really felt this.

Nickleback is donating 100% of the sales of the song and video to charity and thus far $500,000 has been given.

And as we lie beneath the stars
We realize how small we are
If they could love like you and me
Imagine what the world could be

If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody lied
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
Then we'd see the day when nobody died

A Wiitackular Easter Weekend

Puns on the wii are soo much fun. So this post is a wii bit late (I crack myself up)

So two weekends ago was Easter. I headed down to Portland to my Auntie Sherrie's place. Joining us was my grandparents and also Dyrk and Kathy.

It was just a nice weekend with family, I haven't seen G&G for...I guess it would have been Mechanical Engineering grad...(was it really that long...hmmm)

We had a nice big Easter dinner on Sunday, my first home cooked meal since....last time I was in Portland. And we did the whole Easter egg painting on Saturday. Stephy and I got in a 'color on each other with crayons' fight.

I also brought my wii down, figuring I would simply show them the cool stuff you could do with it. Had no idea the hit it would be! We logged over 13hrs of wii playing time over the weekend. And not just us kiddies, literally everyone played it and equally playing time. Stephy was the tennis queen, Samantha was the boxer, Grandpa is one of the best wii bowlers i've ever seen, Joe had the great chip in in golf, Sherrie had a lot of granny bowling moments, even Grandma and Grandpa went head to head riding cows. It definitely was the hit of the weekend.

I added some Easter pictures to the photo gallery
Easter Pictures

Some random notes:

• I have definitely inherited the sauce gene from my Dad. I love sauces. Yesterday I was at Fred Meyer (grocery store) and they had some marinades, regularly $3 each...they had 10 for $10!!! And wouldn't you know it they had 10 different kinds!! So now i have 10 different kind of marinades :-D

• Another personal accomplishment note. I went to Costco and DIDN'T spend $100! Really! I bought lunch stuff like muffins and granola bars and yogurt. Still came out to $83 but I was proud of myself.

• This weekend if my first Cowboy Action Shoot. My new Cowboy name is Kavalier Kody! So I'll have some pics to share of how that went. And more information on what Cowboy Action shooting is.
  

Cheers,

Logan

Wii-kend at Wazzu with the Parents

So this last weekend I headed east to Pullman Washington, the home of Washington State University, (WSU or Wazzu). It was a pretty nice campus, but I just love campuses. They just have that great atmosphere about them.

The reason is my parents were down for a Veterinary continuing education course over the weekend. So it was a good chance to go and see my parents as well as pick up some good ol Canadian supplies.

The drive was really nice. I took the longer route which took me through White Pass which is squished between Mount Rainier (the one in my picture) and Mount St Helens. It's really beautiful area down here. I decided to take a video of the area while driving through (safe right) but I didn't think of it until I was already out of the big mountains and lakes. But here is my driving video. It ended up being about 6hr drive, but it went fast because I downloaded the audio book Eragon to pass the time.

(Never mind, youtube is doing site maintenance, i'll upload later)

Once there I basically hung out while my parents were in meetings all night. Saturday night I got my parents to try out the Wii!! We got into it playing bowling then I let my parents duke it out in baseball. They ended up tying the game. Wii're all winners



After that we packed up my car full of stuff. They brought down my wakeboard, a bunch of scuba gear, some textbooks, some African artifacts my mom picked up while there, some cowboy gear for cowboy action shooting and a hard drive with all my files and pictures from the home computer.

So thats it, then another 5hr drive home. It was definitely nice to see my parents again. We got to spend some time and i got to see where my mom did her Vet degree so that was cool.

Thats it. Hopefully more posts coming up about work and life. Until then. Skule!

Weekend in Whistler

So last week my roommates Dad and brothers flew into Seattle for a visit. And Wednesday they all took off up to Whistler for some good ol Canadian snow. So I decided to join them after work on Friday. I've never been to Whistler and haven't even made it out once this year snowboarding.

So I left work, packed and got out of here by 4:30pm. Hit Seattle during rush hour of course but then had smooth sailing to the border. I'm about 3.5hrs south of Vancouver. I opted for the truck crossing border which worked great with all of 4 cars in front of me. The border has been really good to me lately (knock on wood). This time they never even asked for any identification. Simply where are you living "Washington". Well then who's car is this (the Alberta plates) "Mine, I have dual citizenship". Where are you headed "To whistler for a day of skiing and then back home on Sunday" Have a nice day.

Thats it. So i bypassed downtown Vancouver, almost ran out of gas on the sea-to-sky highway, and eventually made it to whistler just under 10:30, making the trip just less then 6hrs.

Well my roommates brother Logan (yep another Logan) broke a bone in his wrist going off a cliff on Friday so he was out of commision. so I got to ride on Logan's lift ticket, making it a free day at Whistler!! Unfortunately conditions were pretty bad. It had rained most of the week and that trend continued on Saturday. Never skied before in the rain.....But I was just happy to be up there, and seeing Whistler. What a massive mountain!! I've never seen anything so big. It's incredible. You could ski there for 5-6 days and never do the same run twice. Really!

After that we started the drive home Saturday night. Tripp's (my roommate) other little brother Ashton rode with me on the way back for some company. So that was good. I dropped him off in Seattle and then headed back. Ended up getting home around 1am, making for one long long day. Boy was I tired. I slept like a rock, let me tell you. All the way until 1pm Sunday, which is not usual for me.

TTFN

Logan

Soloy Aviation Solutions

First off, thought this was kind of cool
http://www.winatriptospace.co.uk/
Pretty simply, just use 250 words and say what you think is the worlds greatest patent and you can literally win a trip to space!

Ok so here is the post about my job down here and what it is I'm doing. The links take you to more information, mostly from Wikipedia to explain better.

I work for Soloy Aviation Solutions www.soloy.com Here is a picture of my work, and also the great view of Mount Rainier I can see from my window (sorry dirty lens)! They are an aerospace firm here in Olympia, Washington. We do a lot of aerospace related side projects of which one of the big ones is our engine conversions. So one of the ones I'm working on right now is taking the Cessna 206H model airplane and taking out the piston engine and replacing it with a turboprop. In this case it is the Rolls-Royce 250 B17F. So why would we do this? Basically a turboprop is more powerful allowing shorter take offs and more weight, more reliable, uses Jet Fuel instead of AvGas which is being phased out due to the lead and is quieter to meet noise restrictions over cities and national parks.

One of our other big conversions is on the AS350 aka AStar Helicopter. We replace the engine with a nice new Honeywell LTS101-700D-2 engine.

We also have a lot of other projects going on from making new parts, to airplane upgrades like our whole law enforcement accessories with a bigger observation window, and infrared camera, a swivel seat and more headroom. As well we've done some work with with Honeywell like the engine mount on the side of a Boeing 720 so they could do in air engine tests.

So what exactly am I doing? Well I've got a bunch of different projects on the go. Some of which I can't talk about due to confidentiality (sounds cool to say that). I'm working on the fuel system report for the Cessna 206 Turboprop conversion. Basically analyzing the new fuel system to make sure that it's going to always deliver fuel to the engine no matter what kind of flying you are doing. We are also trying to remake some old helicopter parts that nobody is making any more, so i've been in charge of making the drawings for these parts and now writing a report to get a PMA which is Parts Manufactured Approval from the FAA. Basically just a certification that these parts are indeed safe and will work. As well i've been doing some sheet metal drawings for some other helicopter parts and various other reports and such.

Soon we will begin flight testing the Cessna 206H which should be lots of fun and lots of work. A ton of data to sort through but hopefully i'll be getting up in the air sometimes!

Other then that life is good. Keeping busy at work and learning lots...which is why i'm here right.

So there ya go! That's what I'm up to.

Here I am

First off, I got my new computer finally and it rocks! So nice and we've got the wireless going in the house. So it's pretty cool to just walk around the house with my laptop in my hand while surfing the web, listening to music. I like this, this is cool. Plus I uploaded what pictures I have from my camera....it's good to look at pictures.

So i'm in a funny mood tonight. Being down here has been a little harder than I expected. I mean work is going great, and i'm going to post all the details next about what i'm doing and such. It's the time after work. It was so easy in Denmark, living in the dorms there with so many people and things going on all the time. I just like being with people and doing things (evidenced by the infinite hours I spent in the dorm kitchen hanging out). I'm not used to....doing nothing. I've watched more tv in the last month then I think I have in the last two years combined. So here it is Friday night and I almost find myself dreading the weekend. What am I going to do? I figured it'd be so easy to come down here, find a soccer team, find some volleyball, some rock climbing/hiking/snowboarding or....well anything. I'm not really picky about what I do. But it hasn't been so easy.

But i'm curiously optimistic! It's getting lighter out all the time. The weather can only get warmer.... i think. And I feel on the verge....

An optimist is the human personification of spring.

Susan J. Bissonette

Alive and well in the U S of A

So it's been over a month since I posted, so first I want to say, yes I plan to keep using this site. I probably won't post as often as before, simply because life probably won't be quite as exciting as it was living in Europe...thus less to post about.

But nonetheless a lot has happened in the last month. But that will have to wait. Why the long wait?

Well i still don't have a computer. I finally got one ordered and got confirmation that it was shipped on Friday. So i hope by next weekend I will be online again.

I've had quite a few problems down here so far. The first started when I went to buy the laptop. I decided if they were offering 6 months no interest....why not. Well when i went to apply...I got turned down. Turns out, that I don't have any credit history down in the USA. So when I gave them my Social Security Number it basically said..."I've never had a job, never had a bank account"

So I had to do some working of the bank accounts to get the cash in hand to buy it. So I went to buy it and....turns out they only accept USA credit cards!!! What is that? Credit Cards are supposed to be international. So I had to call my Mastercard and get them to change the permanent address on file to my US address. So i went and bought the computer, but the order was 'pending.' Well they had to verify the order, so they called me on the phone. Problem is they have no way to verify it because it originated as a Canadian card. Sigh..... so we had to do a three way conference call, me, HP and Mastercard. So after an hour on hold...(while i was at work) we got things settled.

Next I went to open a bank account and deposit my first paycheck from work. Once again...turns out i'm a gliche in the system. I have dual citizenship to the USA and Canada but my both of my ID's are Canadian, my Canadian passport and my Alberta drivers license. Well i guess thats a no-no. If i have USA as one of my citizenships then atleast one of my ID's has to be US. So then I had to go to the Department of Licensing and get a Washington State ID card....even then they had to do some hand waving magic, because the bank laws say they can't give a account until the Washington state ID card is 90days old!! Luckily since i'm a 'special' case they made an exception.

So that is it. Hopefully by friday I will have my laptop and I can post some pictures of my workplace, and my new home, my new roommates and all that good stuff.

Peace to all!

Logan