Dave Graduated! BYU April 27-28, 2006

It is time. Finally the good times at BYU come to and end. It's been a great learning experience and I've made a bunch of new friends, but I'm looking forward to opening the next chapter in my life.
BYU does their graduation in two days. The first day is Commencement. This is when all 6400 graduates walk in the processional from the Administration building to the Marriot center. Then there is a bunch of talks and then we walk back out.
The next day each individual college has their Convocation where they read our names and we get our fake diploma. 

Alas, my stay at "the Clyde" has come to an end. The Clyde is a place where you meet a lot of guys who tuck in t-shirts, wear socks with sandals, and carry pens in their pockets. Though I don't participate in all of these habits, I am an electrical engineer and don't have many opportunities to get out of the clyde. I've spent many hours here doing labs and homework. Finally after all this time, I am being let out of the building. I graduated!!

Here I am in front of "the bent." It is the symbol for the engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi which I belong to.  

Here I am with my parents and grandpa Miller (my mom's dad). 58 years ago, Grandpa Miller graduated from BYU. Back then he said only about 4,000 people attended BYU. This year 6,400 people graduated with me. 

We are SO excited to have Dave done with school! FINALLY!  

Just in case you were confused, I graduated from Brigham Young University. 

Michelle's sister, Kimberly Baum and her husband, Brandon Baum are graduating too! Here we stand with the famous "Cougar." Careful guys, he looks ferocious! 

My cousin Blake Durtschi also graduated. He graduated Magna Cum Laude. Yikes, that's the top 5th percent of BYU's graduating class. 

Here I am with all my engineering buddies. From left to right: David Droge, Jared Smith, Neil Crapo, Brian Stirland, Ben French. 

Dave standing by Brother Brigham. Is he supposed to be in the flower garden? 

Apparently Dave has graduation mixed up with retirement! To celebrate I went golfing, so here is me strutting my stuff.  

My friend, Dan Hosford, went golfing with me. I won. :-) 

Hiking the Y

The week before graduation, we discovered that Dave had never hiked the Y. And everyone knows you can't graduate from BYU without hiking the infamous Y. So, we took the Hauth family (friends from our ward) and set out to put that experience in the books. 

On our way up, we stopped to take in the view of the valley.  

A view from above the Y. It took about an hour to hike up from the trail head to the top.  

Dave's version of the Y. See that white spot above him? Yeah, that's where we are going. Are we crazy? 

The boys, Brandon and Kaden Hauth, and Dave. They look super tired clear down there! 

Michelle and Maria Hauth. The girls pose for a shot on one of the many switchbacks along the trail.  

Kaden came on Brandon's back. What a cute papoose! 

Dave's Senior Project

Well it isn't much to look at, but this is the result of my senior project. The name of the project is software radio. Basically, we had to design the system that would receive a decoded signal travelling through the air, recognize that signal decode it and output the results. The reason it is called software radio is because instead of using a normal processor we had it linked up to a digital processor. We had to design all the circuitry to receive the signal and then write all the code to access the digital processor and do the decoding. The competition was who could receive the lowest power signal with the least amount of errors. It was a pretty interesting project. It may not be all that great to look at, but to us would-be engineers, this chassis was SWEET!! 

Here is the back view of our Chassis. 

We are building a House!

So our big news is that we are building a house in Syracuse, Utah (west of Layton). Dave will be starting a new job as of June at Hill Air Force base as a civilian contracted engineer to work on the F-16 computers doing simulation and other stuff on the software. Michelle will be moving to the Davis County School District and will be teaching 2nd grade at Parkside, the new Clinton elementary school.

Here is our little plot of land that soon will be our home. The hole will be dug June 26th and the goal is to be able to move in October 26th. This last week we had our design selection meeting where we got together and discussed all the upgrades we want as well as all the colors, carpets, cabinets, you name it. After nearly 4 hours, this is what we came up with.

Enjoy! 

Here is the map of the community we are building in. It is called Summerset. We are building a Cascade model. Our lot is #12 and the house will be facing into the circle towards northwest. 

Dave keeping watch over our lot. Hey get this board out of here! 

This is a picture of what the house in general looks like. The difference will be that the garage area will be all brick as well as the far left window area with shutters.