Stephen’s update:
So, over the winter break I spent too much time playing Civilization. In the game, you can choose “civics” for your civilization that give different bonuses. You choose slavery, feudalism, even emancipation. Being the good-natured gamer I am, I like to get to emancipation quickly. Unfortunately I’m not as lucky as my virtual citizens. There are some elements of the modern, real world that aren’t in such a big hurry. In fact, the recession has actually pushed society backwards. Back in the “boom” years, as some lawyers call it, law students could fairly easily get high paying summer clerkships during their first summer. Post recession, however, only the very top students (top 25% or so at UT) get these clerkships. The rest of us compete to offer our services for free to whoever will take us. That’s right – we compete to be slaves.
Fortunately, I’ve approached the end of my part in the competition. I’ve received an offer from the State Office of Administrative Hearings right here in Austin. It’s perfect for so many reasons, but I won’t bore you with the details. The best two things are that it’s here in Austin, so Alisha and I won’t have to be separated (we’re kinda spoiled that way) and I’ll learn about several different areas of the law.
Alisha’s update:
I feel like my life is pretty stable compared to Stephen’s. No long breaks. No insane exams to take. No worries about summer internships. Just work. Every day.
I’ve really been enjoying my job, though. It’s an environment involving rubber band wars, taco deli Fridays, and building Lego robots when you have extra time. As long as you don’t knock over a VP with a scooter (which apparently has happened) and you do your work excellently, things are pretty easy going. I’ve recently moved up to support a more specialized line of products. I support “distributed controls” which basically means that I support devices that you can stick in a rainforest or on a glacier for ten years at a time and acquire updates continuously and wirelessly. That kind of thing. It’s fun to talk to customers about what they’re doing with our devices: coding the controls for crash tests, testing DNA by the billions for identification purposes, something involving sheep on treadmills. NI doesn’t necessarily make things that are cool by themselves, but we like to take some credit for all the cool things we enable.
A few pictures of our recent life:
These are pictures from a recent hike we went on with the Jeff and Jessica Kitchen and Chad and Leilani Williams. Most of the pictures are courtesy of Leilani, who is much more attentive to her camera than Stephen and I have ever been. We had our own little adventure right in the middle of Austin, complete with rock-climbing, rock skipping, tree shimmying, and stream hopping. There were blood and bruises and laughter. Aren’t the boys cute on their rock?
I bought these for Alisha for Valentine’s Day. Now she knows I love her .
I also took her to the Turquoise Grill, where we drank some delicious Ayran, a Turkish yogurt drink you should all try at some point. Don’t put it off! (Really, it seems that Turks like to put yogurt in everything: you could drink yogurt, eat yogurt, get anything smothered in yogurt) The best part, though, was the lamb chops. Not only was it the most expensive plate on the menu, it tasted great. I’ve fallen in love with lamb since Australia, but it’s always so expensive here. I’m sure Americans could improve the environment and save some money by raising more sheep and fewer cows. Afterwards we joined some friends to watch Sherlock Holmes, where we enjoyed lots of slow motion shots of trees exploding and mental, telepathic boxing/chess matches.
Stephen your game reminds me of an episode of Stargate Atlantis where Shepherd and McKay (not sure if you ever watched that show) but play these civilization game on the computers in Atlantis and than find out it is a real place in the galaxy.
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