Nachoman's summer 2010 enginehouse challenge.

[nachoman]

I did notice that Kevin had a bottle of Elmer's glue on his workbench... a bottle made from petroleum products! Kevin! :o

LOL. Gary, Gary. Didn't your dad tell you that glue was made from old horses, or was he trying to spare your feelings?

Seriously, I appreciate all the advice I have gotten here regarding my career situation. I certainly have nothing against the oil industry. I've got former classmates who got jobs in the oil industry - and did quite well for themselves. In fact, the oil industry gave plenty of incentives to my former university. I almost feel like my school should have been given NCAA probation for all the money, food, and beer they gave us. They even sent a class of 20 grad students on a all expenses paid 3-day tour of southern california . Every year, a representative from each of the big oil companies would come to my department and give a speech that we were required to attend. Afterwards, they treated all grad students to pizza and beer where we got to "converse" with the company representative without our professors around (they got treated to another dinner, that was much more extravagant than pizza). I am not sure quite what their goal was, but the rep from ExxonMobil was a fetching young lady who, for some reason, pretended to take a peculiar interest in my research that had nothing do with petroleum (I won't go into further details - this is a family forum ). And for those lucky enough, the oil companies gave the richest grad student research grants. My advisor forced me to apply for the oil company grant and somehow try to relate my landscape project to oil. That was probably the biggest load of BS I ever wrote . Good times, though.