Do as I'm Doing

So, it was probably sub-optimal that I moved to the other side of the country, and then quit blogging. But, amazingly, only a week or two ago I had an actual request from someone that I update my blog. So, my adoring fan, this one's for you. (If you even remember who you are.)

I've been thinking lately about the difficulty in keeping in touch with my sisters. (Not doing anything about it, mind you. Just thinking about it.) Over the last few months we've been busy with moving and kids and life in general. And my sisters have been busy with moving and kids and more kids, and jobs and college and life in general. (Aside: I seriously don't understand how people survive with more than 2 kids. My house is about a foot deep in toys and blankets and clothes and mess. Is my sister's house 2 feet deep?) The specific thing that stuck out in my mind was that I'm really not sure that any of my sisters could give a description of what I do for a living these days. (Whether they could do that before I got a new job, we may never know.) So, for my sisters, and anyone else who is tagging along on this adventure, here is what Clark does at work now.

Hi, I'm Clark, and I'm a Process Engineer. My business card says that I'm a "Bulk Growth Process Engineer". Let's look at that title one piece at a time. "Bulk Growth" describes the fact that I grow big things. "Big" is relative, and in this case it means something you can hold in your hand. Our finished product is silicon carbide wafers. (see picture below) The bulk growth step is first, in which we grow crystals which are then sliced into wafers. One of the last steps that we do is to grow an epitaxial layer on top of the wafer. The epi growth is very thin, only a few thousandths of an inch. Which is why we get to describe our growth as "bulk". My dad gave me a hard time about the "Bulk Growth" part. I guess it sounds less than flattering.

Next comes "Process Engineer". The engineers are divided into three groups: Manufacturing Engineers, Process Engineers and R&D. I haven't used an analogy yet, so it's about time. If we were in charge of a fleet of cars, the MEs would be in charge of all the many day to day things. Oil changes, tires, fuel grades, tune-ups, that sort of thing. R&D people are at the extreme other end. They're in the back room drawing up some wild ideas for building a completely better car. You know, put the engine in the back, headlight that turns with the wheels, 6 wheels, fins, wankel engines, and all that good stuff. A lot of their ideas are probably going to fail miserably, but that's ok, provided that stumble into some really good stuff once in a while. In the middle are the PEs. PEs take something that is already working, and make a significant change, but without completely starting from scratch. The analogy here would be to re-build an engine, but leave the rest of things alone. (You like the car analogy? I'm trying hard to fit in in Michigan.)

So, before this gets any longer, what do I actually do? Well, today, I sat at a computer all day and drew pictures. (That's what I told Julia. And it's true.) We grow our crystals inside what is basically an intricate little graphite bucket. We put a wafer in there, along with a bunch of silicon and carbon, heat it all up until it's glowing and the silicon carbide vaporizes (it's like 2000 °C in there) and then condenses on the wafer, which slowly grows. Once it has grown big enough we let it cool down, take it out and slice it into lots of wafers. (We save some to repeat the process.) These graphite buckets are a bit more complicated than your average bucket, and we're regularly trying out minor modifications. One of my jobs is to produce the drawings that we send out to get the parts manufactured. Then, I set up experiments where I vary a few parameters, throw everything in the furnace and let it run for a few days and see if it worked or not. I collect up all the data and eventually get around to writing up a report detailing the findings. Is it better? Is it worse? (Or, better in some ways but worse in others.) And what have we learned in general about the whole process?

So, I feel like this has turned out both very generic and simplistic, but way to long at the same time. That's what you get for asking an engineer what he does.

Valentines day post: My new love

Some time ago Shannon brought home some Corn & Black Bean salsa from Meijer*. I'm in love. We seem to always be out of either salsa, or chips now. Just thought you should all know.

*Meijer (pronounced like "Meyer") is like Super Target out here. It's named after the owner, Fred Meijer. As far as we know, he's not related to Fred Meyer.

Birthday Report

I'm now 29. Woooo.

I am pretty much awesome. I got my birthday off because I exude awesomeness. So we went skiing. If there is anything more awesome than me, it is my wife. She is awesome. And hot. But mostly awesome. So she took me skiing in the city forest. We only fell down a couple of times. Did I mention it's cross-country skiing? I was disappointed that we didn't see any cross-country snowboarders. That would have been awesome. Also, rad.

So then we had a nice, relaxing day. I got some mail. I opened some awesome presents, including Cinnamon Toast Crunch from Julia (though no one is sure why, it was all her idea), and Shannon made me Monkey Cake, which was a creation from my own brain. Julia has been suggesting that I have a Monkey Cake for months, so it had to be done. And since Shannon is not cake decorator extraordinaire, we had to come up with a back up plan. We made a chocolate cake that included marshmallows, chocolate frosting, and pecans on top, and then sliced a banana for garnish. See, Monkey Cake. I think I need to send it in to a recipe contest. Maybe Sandra Lee can feature it on her show. It's Semi-Homemade!

Cocktail time! Gotta run!

The Book of Julia

Julia likes to read scriptures with our family.  Each night we try to let her "read" at least one verse.  We read it a few words at a time and she repeats what we say.

Tonight, Julia pulled out her Book of Mormon and asked who wanted to read a scripture.  She says a few words at a time, and we repeat what she says.  So far, she has a couple of favorite scriptures "memorized":

"And it came to pass . . . . that I Nephi . . . . did go . . . . go to the wilderness."

"And it came to pass . . . . that I father . . . did die."

"And it came to pass . . . that I Nephi . . . go and get the plates."

She's obviously his upon a few of the literary patters of Nephi's writing.  It is also interesting to see which things she is remembering from our reading.  (The second verse she likes is referring to Lehi dying.  Apparently this was pretty memorable.)

Michigan Minutiae

We've been in Michigan for nearly 2 months now, so I thought I'd let you all know what it's like:

- We live in a small town. How small? Between 10pm and 6am, most of the traffic lights in town are turned "off". They blink yellow one way and red the other.

- It's cold here. The lowest we've seen thus far is -4, I think. The wind chill at that point was something like -11. It's snowing right now, and Julia and Shannon have just come inside from playing in it.

- The butter is a different shape here. It has a smaller cross section, and is longer. Why? I have no idea what the purpose is. But it does mean that our butter tupperware doesn't work now, unless you've used at least 2 tablespoons.

- Back to traffic, they've got blinking left turn lights here. Blinking yellow means yield.

- Back to weather, it's cloudy here. Every day. We've been told that there are as many cloudy days here each year as there are in Seattle.

- Lots of houses and apartments don't have overhead lights inside, particularly in the bedrooms. We now own a lot more lamps than when we used to.

Now, back to watching the BYU football game, where UTEP has -40 yards rushing so far. (Their QB apparently doesn't know how to take a 5 yard sack. He avoids those so he can run back and lose 12 yards. I like this guy.)

Bum Jokes

Julia is officially 2 1/2 how, which means we've hit the age where anything can be made funnier by replacing any word with "bum". Examples:

From Blues Clues:

"We just got a letter, we just got a letter, we just got a letter, wonder who it's from"

becomes . . . .

"We just got a bum shake, we just got a bum shake, we just got a bum shake, wonder who it's from"

Or, if you're feeling slightly sacrilegious:

"The Lord commanded Nephi to go and get the plates"

becomes . . . . .

"The bum commanded Nephi to go and get the bum"

While Julia makes the jokes, the rest of us try our best to pretend they aren't funny.

X-ray vision

In my previous post, I made reference to x-ray vision. The typical view of x-ray vision is that it lets you see through or inside something. Let's clear up how x-rays actually work.

X-rays let you see through your skin and look at your bones. This is true. What happens is that the x-ray go through your soft skin that is mostly made up of light elements. Carbon, oxygen and hydrogen are probably the three most abundant elements in your skin. They have atomic masses of 12, 16 and 1 amu, respectively. The x-rays react very weakly with the light elements and hit the x-ray film. Your bones are made up of many of those same elements, but also one more: calcium! Calcium has an atomic weight of 40, so it stops a lot more of the x-rays, leaving a white spot on the film. Ta-da! You can now see your bones.

The problem is in adapting this to other uses, like Superman's x-ray vision. It only works if you're looking through something made of light elements, to see something made of heavy elements, which has a film behind it. But apparently Superman can shoot x-rays out, which travel through walls (note: sheetrock is made of gypsum, which is made of . . . . calcium! (and sulfate ions, and water)) (also, cement or cinderblock is pretty good at stopping x-rays, because cement is made from limestone, which is made of . . . . calcium carbonate!) bounces off of soft people, goes back through the walls and then is processed by his hi-tech x-ray eyes. It just doesn't work.

So, even with fancy x-ray equipment, Julia would have been hard pressed to identify the sugar and paper sucker inside the paper bag. (Sugar is made of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and sadly, no calcium.) We're down to exceedingly impressive spelling skills and ESP as the top two explanations. And ESP isn't looking too likely.

Or maybe it was ghosts.

Julia the Psychic

Somehow, Julia seems to have developed special powers. She is constantly coming up with stuff that we can't figure out how she knows it. And this isn't stuff that she could have over heard, or seen on TV. As we are driving towards Target she says "there's Target". Can she read road signs? We just moved, and we went a way to get there that she has never been on. Maybe she can read, or at least recognize the Target logo.

But then puzzle me this one: A few weeks ago we drove past PetSmart. Julia says "can we go to the pet store?" She's never been to a PetSmart before. In St. George we had a PetCo that she loved to go to (its our poor person's zoo). How does she know what these buildings are?

And finally, we went out to eat at A&W a week ago. I don't know that Julia has ever been there. She got a kids meal. We pulled out her food, leaving the treat in the bag. I looked in the bag to see what she got, and told Shannon it was a "t-o-o-t-s-i-e-p-o-p". Shannon told her if she ate her food she would get a treat, and she said "a sucker". I asked her "how many suckers?". She said "two". I asked what color. She said "red". I asked for the color of the other one. She said "blue". But she was wrong. There was one red and one brown sucker. HOW ON EARTH DOES SHE KNOW THESE THINGS??? The bag was never tipped over such that she could see in. I checked, and the bag is not translucent enough to see what is inside when it is held up to the light. Either that girl knows what "t-o-o-t-s-i-e-p-o-p" means, or she has x-ray vision, or she has ESP. I just don't get it.

Small Things

I don't expect everyone one out there to appreciate this, but this afternoon at work I put my pen in my drawer.  Yes folks, that's right, I put my pen in my drawer.  It was a big day for me.

Update from MI

We are live and in Michigan.  Today was the first day of work, and things went fairly well.  Our stuff has not yet caught up to us, so we are still living in a hotel.  But, we managed to get library cards today, so the library is our new best friend in town!  (Because we have oh, so many other friends in town for the library to compete with.)

 

The drive went about as well as any 2,500 miles trek across the country with two small kids can go.  It was long, and very windy.  We did get to stop and see friends/family/former residences important people in Canon City, Lawrence, Olathe, Omaha and Nauvoo.

 

It's a bit early to have much to report at work.  After 1 day, I have a badge and a computer.  There is a phone there, too, but I'm not completely sure if it works yet.  I have my own little cubicle with my name plate already afixed outside!  (And a real desk with an actual drawer!  This is the big time FOR SURE!)  The first week(s) will consist of getting lost in the building, reading and asking dumb questions.

 

Our stuff should arrive here soon, so then we can start getting back to "regular" life.  (aka: life with constant internet access)