Jeffrey Carlyle
2006-03-06T03:52:29-06:00

2005 Year in Review

Posted: 6-Mar-2006 3:52AM CST
Topics: [JeffCenter] [Jeff's Road Trips]

So I only updated my website twice in 2005—once in January and once in February; so sue me. I’m lazy.

I guess the biggest news from last year is that I started my first real job on July 18, 2005. I’m now a full time employee of Motorola, Inc. I’m a senior software engineer at Motorola’s design center in Champaign, Illinois. Doesn’t the senior part of the title sound impressive?

I’m also still in school. I’ve completed the class work part of the Ph.D. program; so classes don’t interfere with my full time employment. Essentially I come home from a full day of work at Motorola, and put in several more hours of work on my Ph.D. thesis.

The operating system I’m working with for my thesis, Choices, is beginning to take on more of the aspects you’d expect from an OS.

Between Motorola and schoolwork, I also had time to do lots of other things in 2005.

Presidential Inauguration

In January, I went to President Bush’s second presidential inauguration with my friends Sarah and Naomi. They had recently moved to the DC area, and somehow managed to get tickets. We were closer than a lot of people, but the only view of the president we had was on a big screen TV. I also visited my friend Ellen who had also recently moved to DC.

Great River Road

For Spring Break, I drove the Great River Road along the eastern bank of the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois to Venice, Louisiana. My friend Brent happened to be in New Orleans for a conference about hurricanes—at the time, Brent, was working for the city engineer’s office in Gulfport, Mississippi. Brent had an extra bed in his room at the Hilton in downtown New Orleans, so my stay in New Orleans was free.

I’m thinking about repeating this trip again this year to see how much things have changed. Brent survived the hurricane season just fine and is now working for a private engineering firm.

Railmania

I went a bit crazy with railroad related things last year—both model and full scale. I visited a number of railroad museums and numerous train shows. Among these shows, I went to the Galesburg Railroad Days in June and the National Train Show in July. I also constructed a small N scale model railroad layout on a two foot by four foot base. Now I need to save some money from my new job so I can buy a house and have a bigger place to put my model trains.

My railroading highlight of the year was Throttle Time at the Monticello Railway Museum in Monticello, Illinois. For a small donation, the museum lets patrons operated one of their locomotives. For my Throttle Time, I ran the museum’s RS-3 locomotive. My train consisted of a gondola, a streamlined passenger car, and a Wabash Railroad caboose. My friends Ellick, Francis, and Moosa joined me on the trip to museum. Francis road in the cab of the locomotive and took pictures while Ellick and Moosa hitched a ride in the caboose.

St. Louis 200B Reunion

I got together with my former roommates from 200B several times last year. For Labor Day, I met up with Chris, J.D., Kyle, and Ryan in St. Louis. J.D. and I were the last to leave town; after everyone else left we took a leisurely boat ride on the Mississippi River and toured the Budweiser Brewery.

J.D. joked that he experienced every form of transportation that weekend. He flew into town, rode around town in a car, visited a railroad museum, and took a boat ride.

More Photos

See all of my photos from 2005 in Jeff's 2005 Photo Gallery.

Email

No update to this website would be complete without a graph showing the amount of email I get; so click above for an analysis of two years of email.

Holidays and 2006

Having a full time job had a predictable impact on the amount of time I spent at home in Kentucky for the holiday’s this year. I was barely home at all. I had Thanksgiving Day and the day after Thanksgiving off; as well as two days at Christmas time. I wasn’t able to take any vacation time off from work until the middle of January. I went a road trip to Key West for that vacation. Given my track record, I’ll post my pictures from that sometime in 2007.

It’s almost road trip season again!