| January 20, 1992 | Issue 9 | Provo, Utah |
In this issue:
It’s Back!
After a rather long break, The Smithy is back in publication. At least while the school load hasn’t hit full force, I thought I would get an issue out. Especially since As the Wrathall World Turns is all the way up to issue XXIV and I’m embarrassed that The Smithy is not anywhere near that. Of course, I can always say that I only have 50% of the staff that they do.
Wilberg Wannabe
I’m in my second semester in the (immensely popular) BYU Men’s Chorus now. We’re getting ready for our concert in February with a slew of new music, including Bread’s If wherein we lucky first tenors get to sing soprano. And I don’t mean the soprano part transposed down an octave. We really sing soprano Sometimes it seems like our director, Mac Wilberg, pushes us too far.
But Dr. Wilberg is fantastic. In addition to being our director, he is also a concert pianist and a nationally recognized composer. Many of the pieces the BYU choirs performed for our Christmas concert were composed or arranged by him–including full orchestral scoring for several pieces. That concert, by the way, was professionally video taped and will be broadcast nationally on PBS for Christmas 1992.
We’re also excited to be performing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for a live broadcast of Music and the Spoken Word on March 1st this year.
I’m finding that Dr. Wllberg has been an especially practical example for me because I have been called to direct our ward choir. Apparently someone had leaked to the bishopric the fact that I had done this before in another ward, so I’m at it again. I have a recording of Men’s Chorus in concert, so if you would be interested in having a copy of it (and wouldn’t mind contributing a little to the cost of a blank tape and postage) let me know and I’ll send you a copy.
High Power Decoder Rings
In December your tax dollars flew me to Maryland for a couple of days of interviews with the National Security Agency. The NSA is the intelligence department over signals intelligence (including codes and ciphers) and computer security. They explained to me that they have all kinds of wonderful job opportunities for brilliant young computer scientists, all of which, unfortunately, are classified so they couldn’t tell me what they are.
The first thing we did (once we managed to get inside the building) was take some tests. One of these was a psychological evaluation wherein they used clever and subtly worded questions to determine if we were suffering from some psychotic disorder, like “True or False: People are out to get me” and “True or False: I think Nixon was a good president.”
Another test was sort of an intelligence-type test that covered vocabulary, number sequences (“Which number comes next 1, 3, 9, 11, _?”), and word problems obviously created by people who had failed the psychological exam.
We later caught the secret bus that takes you to the actual Fort Meade installation of the NSA. And you know what? Remember the officer in Dances With Wolves that sent Kevin Costner out to a deserted outpost then shot himself? Well I’m happy to inform you that he survived his suicide attempt and now works as a receptionist at the NSA. And he wasn’t the only interesting personality. There was a lady that worked in the cafeteria that had a seemingly natural talent for ventriloquism, because when she spoke her lips almost didn’t move at all. The words were completely unintelligible, but she has a good start. Only from watching the person in line ahead of me did I understand that “duhuhenikwiat” meant “do you want a pickle with that?” And of course, what would a secret agency be without a midget? The one we met took our pictures for our employment files-and she had to stand on an inverted trash can to reach the tripod. The best part was when she was behind the desk, because you’d swear she was sitting down until she came walking out.
For one of my interviews I was taken back into the secret part of one of the buildings. They had flashing red lights on the ceiling and my escort loudly announced my presence wherever we went so no one would say something classified. Talk about getting attention! Of course people had a tendency to break off in the middle of conversations and expeditiously flee the area. It was sort of like walking into a room and saying, “Hey, I’ve got the plague!”
Another highlight of the trip was when I had to get from the back to the front of a building to catch the secret bus back to the employment building. I didn’t have authorization to walk through the building so I had to walk about a half mile through parking lots and around fences to get there.
The polygraph test was perhaps the most interesting event. They asked me if I was really a criminal, a spy, or anybody other than Eric James Smith.
I’m not sure if I’ll get my summer job with the NSA, but I think that the experiences of filling out the applications (writing a life history, basically) and going through the testing / interviewing make the whole thing worthwhile.
Boring School Stuff
This semester I am very computer science intensive. I’m studying about computers and society, computer architecture, operating system design, and software engineering. If you know what those are/entail, then I guess you’ll get a warm Fuzzy feeling (in the back of your throat), but otherwise I won’t go into details. I also have a seminar type class of computer science related subjects, and to round off my technical semester, I have an archery class. You gotta have some fun sometimes, right?
Until next time, Love,
Eric James Smith, Ed.
Copyright � Eric Smith, 1989-1998, All rights reserved.