Evening fun at the Michigan Tech/Trilink party by Gabriella Cerrato

On Tuesday night, I was invited to the party traditionally hosted by KRC, Michigan Tech University and Trilink Technical Services, during the Traverse City conference. I did not go to school at Michigan Tech (believe me, the University of Torino, Italy, is probably as far from Michigan Tech as you can imagine), but I have been fortunate to work over the years with several Michigan Tech grads. So, I heard a multitude of stories about the work hard, play hard attitude in the Houghton campus (i.e. the guys/girls walking to class in the middle of January wearing wooden clogs, shorts and t-shirts; the snowmobile races on the frozen lake in the middle of the night; the partying; and I could go on and on and on). Michigan Tech has assumed a sort of mythical status in my mind, which was only reinforced by the conversations going on Tuesday night at the party.

I also had a chance to see a long time and dear friend of mine, prof. Bill Shapton, who is now in semi-retirement (which means that he is not really retired). He has over the years invited me to give seminars and present papers at several technical symposia and always speaks highly of me. However, he always concludes by saying that the real reason for which he invited me was to hear me saying Ferrari with the rolling� (since I am Italian, I do know how to pronounce Ferrari correctly). A little blow to my technical pride.

Since the noise and vibration community is rather small, almost everyone in the business was at the party. It was a chance to catch up with old friends and ex-colleagues, exchange updated business cards and hear rumors. One of those is that DJ Pickering, our well-known North America Sales Manager, had left MTS two months ago. Well, I don't know where that comes from, but I can assure you that DJ is still at MTS and is as enthusiastic and competitive as ever.