All growed up

I have completed my first week as a regular working stiff. It is slightly depressing, but the pay is nice.

For those far removed from my every day life, I am working at General Dynamics in Scottsdale. I am working as a systems engineer which is what I wanted to do (no settling here!). The difference between systems and say just plain electrical engineering is that instead of working on some sub component like a filter or an antenna, I get to work on the large level design and implementation. I don't design the radios, I design how they are used.
The project I was placed on is near its end, so there isn't any design work to be done but there is plenty of work to do since we are in the deployment stage of a national radio system. (new hire insite: that's why my division is called National Systems Division!)
I am currently working on Rescue 21, a Coast Guard project that "takes the search out of search and rescue." I am sure I have mentioned it before, but hey.. this is my blog so you get to hear about it again.
Rescue 21 replaces a wide range of aging, obsolete VHF-FM radio communications equipment currently in use ("aging" as in the original system design was something like 1970.. not a whole lot of digital there.) One of the biggest improvements (besides capacity, reliability, and quality) is the addition of real direction finding capabilities. The new system can locate the position of a call to withing 2 degrees. Using triangulation, this works out to a search radius of something like 11 miles instead of the old 3o0 miles. This is a pretty nice thing to have when all you get is a 1 second transmission of "HELP" and then the radio goes silent.
Here is a nice little overview.

Life at GD is an interesting affair. I worked for another business unit a year ago and got a good taste of the corporate culture there. Things are a little different here.. not better or worse, just different. The facility that I work at has something like 5,000 people. It is big. It is easy to get lost since the room numbers don't follow any real logical order other than 1000s is first floor and 2000s is second floor. There is an on-site cafeteria that has some pretty good food, but you pay for the quality. Think $7.00 for a sandwich and a drink (but the sandwich is better than subway).
As far as the computers are concerned you are your employee number. You employee number is attached to you name in everything... which I guess makes sense when you have 30 John Smiths (actually, I think there are only 2). We have an instant messenger client at work. Its probably reduces the email load on the servers but that's about it. As far as I can tell people mostly use it to find out what the plan is for lunch. One of the downsides to having so many people working there: NO FREE COFFEE!! To keep all the robots happy though they put a Starbucks in the building. You can get Seattle's Best from the caffeteria or get your caramel mochiato if you have a 9 figure salary and don't mind paying a 2000% mark-up on sugar and coffee. One of my tasks next week will be to find a coffee maker for my desk.

So far I like it at GD. The group seems pretty engaged and full of nice people, it took the usual 3 days for them to realize my competency and assign me additional tasks. My main job is working with the Bill of Information group to configure all the equipment for each deployed site (like the IP plan of all the equipment and frequency maps for all the radios). I am also getting spun up on deployment procedures and will be a backup for the deployment team who actually set up the equipment and fix any problems or implement system changes on site. There has also been talk of hooking me up with the RF group to do site studies for radio coverage issues.
I am definately not an intern anymore.