It Has Been A While

 hasn't it?

So what has been happening between my three latest posts and the one before? That was a 10 month gap, surely something noteworthy happened?

Well, as a matter of fact...

First, since August 2020 I has been a kolidge student. Yep, it's true, my company decided that what they really needed was a professional development program so they were offering free tuition in a partnership deal with local colleges. One of those local colleges is 10-15 miles from the house, so I jumped on it.

So why all of a sudden have I decided, at the age of 55 and closer to retiring from than entering the workforce, I needed a degree? Well, y'see, way back in 1990 I went through a Navy class called AVI-C7, which is an engineering level school. If I had been a smart guy, I would have gone straightaway to Navy Campus and finished a degree by taking the requisite electives. But I didn't. I did manage to get a few CLEP (College Level Examination Program) credits in for math and history, so I had that going for me (and in fact they did come in handy for this program), but I never got that degree. Mostly it hasn't mattered, but it's always been at the back of my mind that I should have gotten it done.

Now is a good time to mention that my 1990 credits were in electronics engineering technology, and by the time I was done with all my Navy tech schools I had over 60 of them. That's good enough for a BS/EET had I taken advantage of them. Unfortunately due to advances in computer technology, the digital parts of those classes have since been Overtaken By Events.

When I applied for the program at my local community college my company didn't want to pay for the Electronics Engineering Technology (AAS/EET) degree, which I have nearly enough credits remaining from my Navy days to qualify for after the electives are taken care of (all I needed was three classes; Digital Electronics, C programming, and Intro to Microprocessors). But, they were more than willing to spring for the AAS degree in Mechatronics Engineering Technology, which is an in-between Mechanical and Electronics kind of thing. Funny thing is, the same credits that I need for the EET degree are included in the MET course of study (the three additional classes needed for the EET degree are electives for the MET degree). So, when I get the AAS/MET, I will also get the AAS/EET degree at the same time, which means that even though they didn't want to pay for the EET degree, they will anyway. It looks like I should have it all done at the end of the Spring 2022 semester.

I took the summer off (not a stretch since there weren't any classes offered that I really needed) because since the Bat Flue Pan(dem)ic was apparently drawing down at the time the missus and I decided to do a little traveling. I had lots of vacation built up since we hadn't gone anywhere for a while, so we loaded the dogs up and off we went.

First we headed north, to southwest Pennsylvania, to see her folks, then westward to southwest Iowa to see mine. After that we went to Rapid City, South Dakota (actually to nearby Ellsworth AFB where we stayed at the campground on base) to do the tourist thing, and then to central Wyoming to see my daughter (the only one of my 5 children that I had a part in the creation of). From there we returned to Iowa, then back to Pennsylvania, and finally home.

21 days, 13 states, almost 4000 miles. It was a long trip, but we thoroughly enjoyed it.