6:06 PM// RTI Update

So here's the latest happening with RTI: I received what's called a "contingency offer package" which is an official written job offer; but it is contingent upon RTI being awarded a contract for which they deemed they needed to hire people in the first place. I'll be making more money than I was at Virtual Reality Aids, Inc. and receiving a very generous benefits package that makes my last health plan look like a daily-beating package. The dental plan alone is 40 pages long. Anyway, this provides some vindication that my gamble was a very good one.

If all goes well, I'll start work on April 4, 2005 as a "Simulation Behaviors Engineer" in the Division for Technology Assisted Learning. I'll probably be in a team of about 5 people working on several aspects of RTI's virtual reality learning software. The aspect with the highest "coolness" rating: most of the software is for training military personnel, which requires various levels of restricted access clearance. Check back in April when I have more details on what I'm actually doing…

4:02 PM// The Stealth Squad

This is another story that is a consequence of growing up in a small town and being friends with Mike.

In high school, my good friend Mike and I would sometimes drive to the least light-polluted place we could find and sit on the hood of one of our cars and watch meteor showers or stars while commenting on life. It's very relaxing and I highly recommend this activity for getting your thoughts out. This story takes place along a rural highway just outside of Oak Ridge. Because this particular highway ran parallel to the bank of a lake, the only connections to the highway were small gravel parking lots where people would park their cars and dump their motor boats into the lake. Officially, these little gravel inlets were city parks that had official closing times after dark. Apparently they were occasionally patrolled by Anderson County Police.

I will take a brief moment to discuss the difference between Oak Ridge City Police and Anderson County Police for those not familiar with the difference. OR cops are the nicest, most helpful people you will ever encounter. They usually speak in complete sentences with appropriate diction. They even have a sense of humor. Anderson County cops are the manifestation of the small hick town, evolutionarily backwards, power-crazed cop stereotype. It's difficult to cut through their thick accents to comprehend what they're grumbling at you. And even if you could, you'd still be left with the task of rearranging word order and swapping verb tenses to decipher this mess of Hicklish being thrown your general direction.

So one night, Mike and I decided to go star gazing and drove down the familiar highway. When we made it to the "park", charitably described as a clearing of trees near a bank, we noticed two cop cars hanging out on one end of the car park. They had pulled up next to each other, but facing opposite directions the way cops do so they can talk to each other while sitting in their cars with the engine running. They had their parking lights on. Remember, Mike and I are specifically looking for an area void of light pollution so as to better watch the night sky. The cops are not exactly in stealth-mode. We decided not to pull up right next to them; instead we drove right past them and parked at the other end of the lot.

As I had been telling a story to Mike as we drove, we didn't immediately hop onto the hood of his car. Instead we remained inside the car while I finished my story. Within a couple of minutes something happened that I hope to never have the pleasure of again. During the 120 seconds we'd been sitting there chatting, one cop had snuck up directly behind us, and the other took up a position perpendicular, so that he was facing the driver's side door. I should mention at this point that they were still in their cars. Simultaneously, they turned on their highbeams and search lights and drove at full speed, stopping a few feet from the trunk and driver's side door. Damn! How did they get there? I guess they figured we hadn't seen them when we had driven right past them two minutes ago, what with their cloaking device and all. I mean, I know cops think criminals are stupid, but if we had criminal intent, why would we park 10 feet from two cop cars with their parking lights on? How stupid did they think we were?

They approached our car with caution, adjusting their belts nestled about their soggy midsections. One cop grumbled something that I translated as "whatju buoys up to dis evenin'?" Mike replied, "oh, nothing. Just pulled in to have a chat." They cop came back with "big mistake. Park's closed suun." It was hard not to laugh. What did the cops think they had here? These two cops were given the momentous task of guarding a gravel lot with a five car capacity in the middle of nowhere, and they needed to flex their authority a bit with a coordinated pouncing? Meanwhile the other cop was looking suspiciously around the exterior of the car. Looking for gunports? I can only guess.

After a few inaudible growls, he reassured us that we were "free to go". We promptly left. Now there is a shining example of America's police force who so richly deserved their donuts that night.

4:02 PM// UT Knoxville Cop

I grew up in a small town in Tennessee near Knoxville. Since there was not much to do in Oak Ridge after 9pm, nor was anything open, we would often venture to the bustling metropolis that is "K-Town". This story took place a few years ago when Mike and I were freshmen, and Mike was attending the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

On one of our usual, nothing-better-to-do type nights, Mike and I decided the evening would best be spent attempting to triangulate something using a map, a compass, and a tall landmark, such as the Sun Sphere (iconic World's Fair thing in Knoxville). We'd never attempted anything so bold before, and it was an interesting application of math. So we set out around midnight to triangulate something.

It immediately became apparent that we needed to get above street-level because we couldn't look very far in any direction; we needed to get above the many short buildings in our way. So we drove to the top of a parking garage. This seemed like a nice plan until we discovered the iron beams used in the garage's construction were interfering with our compass. This led to a discussion regarding compass construction, which quickly became our new evening venture.

Somehow, we ended up wondering around Knoxville at 2am looking for possible compass construction materials. So we decided to park near the Knoxville ?walkway? to further discuss the nuances of compass construction while getting some fresh air. The closest place to park was on a street between UT's campus and a parking garage. On the other side of the garage was the walkway.

So we ventured down to our coveted walkway and had a nice long chat/walk. Well, around 3am we decided it was getting kind of late and we headed back towards the car. The most direct route from the walkway to the car was to pass through the parking garage, which, at 3am on a Sunday, was quite empty. A car drove slowly down the street as we made our way out of the garage towards my car. Later we would learn this was our neighborly UTK cop.

We got in the car and started down the road with intentions of finding our respectful homes in Oak Ridge. Naturally, there was a construction site in the middle of the road we happened to be on, requiring us to make a small detour. Because we were so close to Mike's dorm, he was most familiar with that immediate area, we turned into the dorm's parking lot to regain our bearing. During this process, the cop, who apparently found something suspicious about two young men emerging from an empty downtown parking garage at 3am, had made a U-turn and was following us. As soon as we pulled into the dorm's parking lot, the familiar glow of pulsating blue lights washed over us. Apparently, we had made some suspicious moves and now that we were on his "turf" he could apply the rigorous investigative skills of the UT police force.

He explained that he pulled us over because he wanted to know what we were doing in a parking garage so early in the morning, and he reminded us of his authority to pose such questions as we were now on UT's campus. Of course, we had only passed through a parking garage after being on the UT ?walking? for nearly an hour, so we had no idea what he was talking about. We said something to the effect of "we weren't in the parking garage, officer; we were just taking a walk". Even as I said it, it seemed like I should make up something. "Just out for a walk" is exactly what I would say if I was doing something suspicious. So I thought about explaining the triangulation quest we had begun, which subsequently turned into a quest for appropriate compass materials. But I think he would have employed the safety blanket that is the Patriot Act and promptly shot us both in the face for that response.

So instead we stuck with the "don't know what you're talking about; just out for a walk" routine. I expected the drug van to pull up any second. Instead he told us that he had nothing on us and we were "free to go". I love it when authority figures say things like that; as if there was ever any risk that I wouldn't be released for doing nothing.