Paul's Background

Following Peter's format for ease of construction:

Family:
Wife: Kristene
Rachel, 5, Rebekah, 3, and Jacob, 1

Calling:
Executive Secretary (we really like our ward, I've been moved around a bit). Kristene is in Young Womens

Job:
Structural Engineer. My last really cool project : http://vegaspbs.org/index.asp?NID=367

Location:
Las Vegas—we've been here since we graduated in 2002 BYU.

Last Few Years:
After freshman year, I lived with Beesley for a semester. I went to DC then Brasil on a Mission (tudo beleza). Lived with a friend from back home for a year, then hooked up with PBJ, Alvin, Rob C. After a move, I met Kristene. We got married! We lived in south Provo, I did my Graduate Research on special nails in wood shear walls (I've got some great video), then we moved down here to Vegas and settled down. While we'd like to move away before Rachel wastes too much time in Clark County School District, we really like it here.

My mom told me blogging was a needful thing. So we did it. But we didn't do it thouroughly. http://plattin.blogspot.com/

Peter's First Post

Current Picture:



Family:
I married Cami in May 2000 in Logan, UT. Bryn was born in November 2003 (4 years old) and Calvin followed in April 2006 (almost 2)

Calling:
I'm currently 2nd counselor in our Bishopric. Our ward is fairly large, with about 300 active members. Most are young families here for school at Harvard, MIT, Tufts, etc.

Job:
I'm a research engineer at MIT Lincoln Labs, but am currently taking a few years to finish my PhD in Electrical Engineering at MIT. My research area is in decision and estimation theory.

Geolocation:
Lexington, MA. We just bought our first home (which turned out to be a very traumatic experience and not just because its lost 10% of its value since we bought).

Last 12 years in 100 words or less:
After freshman year I went on a mission to Netherlands and Belgium. I thought Misty and I broke up soon after I left, but it turns out she was waiting for me when I got home. We never really got back together, though. I met Cami right off my mission (Oct 98) and we started dating the next summer. We were married in 2000, finished our degrees (Math and EE, respectively) at BYU in 2002, then moved out to Boston where I worked for Lincoln Lab and she finished an MS at BU. She graduated, and then we started our family. I eventually went back to school for my MS at MIT, returned to work for a couple of years and am now working on a PhD at MIT.

More about me:
Since I'm vain, I'll include links to my personal/professional webpage, my goodreads profile, my imdb movies list and my favorite other online community

Opening salvo

Welcome to the Perpetual Virtual Symposium.

The intent of this blog is to provide all Merrill 1100 floor alumni a place to get together (virtually) and share thoughts, ideas, interests, etc. The thought grew out of a suggested virtual book club into an attempt to reanimate the tradition of the symposia we used to engage in. I'm also hoping it'll facilitate keeping in better contact with each other, helping us to better serve and support one another.

So this is it; hopefully more to come. My best hope is that this will turn into a vibrant place where we can all come to reconnect and enjoy the friendship we've formed.

I'll encourage everyone to make their first post a review of who they are and where they've been, but after that initial post, feel free to post whatever you want. If you do want to start a discussion with some thought provoking question, I'd encourage the use of post labels, just to make reading easier.