Brian Gourley:  

CLASS OF 1997
Brian Gourley's Classmates® Profile Photo
Kennewick, WA

Brian's Story

Life Hello everyone, Lets see here lots of stuff has happened since High School and college. I'm married! Jennifer and I got married 2005 July 17th. It was the best day of my life. We went to Thialand for our honeymoon and that was my first trip out of the country and it was awesome. I highly recommend going there it was one of the "cheepest" trips but yet a very intersting and beautiful country. We visited Bangkok, Chang Mai, and Chang Rai, while we were there. Bangkok was very dense and a lot of sections were very dirty. All of the Temples were clean and kept up and great. Lots to see and a ton of cheep shopping can be done at MBK. Also the conversion rate was 40 to one of our dollars and wasteful meals went for roughly 5 USD at restaraunts. The hotel meals were the most expensive! Also I highly recommend going to Chang Mai. There was a lot to see and do but it was more of a moderate paced environment. Bangkok was a high paced environment and Chang Rai was very slow paced. Anyways tons of fun! Jen and I have two dogs. Lilly is a basset hound and Calvin is a cardigan corgi. Lilly is very social and has to greet everyone everywhere she goes. Calvin is a typical reverse herder, bark first, run back do dad and bark again. Both are great dogs! Jen (my wife) and I have a little side business that we've started. We are advertise that if people would like for us to sit their dogs while they go on vacation then we shall. It's great we get to experience other breeds of dogs and get paid to do it! Jen and I bought our first house last November and it is awesome. We are living in Bothell WA. We have .22 or .25 of an acre and the house is a single story rambler. We just painted it and I've been working on the yard all spring summer and now fall. It had a horrible moss build up so I've gotten rid of that and am working on filling the patches with grass. We also put in a Japanese Snowbell! My wife and I are really into landscaping :). Also I am getting into Bonsai. I am starting my own seedlings. Currenly I am growing Sacred Japanese Cedar, Crape Myrtle, Japanese Zelkova, and Ginkgo Biloba. School High school. Andy, Tim, and Micha - Thank you for being my friends and putting up with me. I latched on to you three, you inspired me, impressed me, and opened my eyes to many things. You challenged me and I remember having a lot of good times with you all. I'm sorry I've lost touch with you guys. Also Micha I'm sorry for the stuff I put you through. My biggest crush and also happens to be regret was Tracy Burns. I remember being in Chemistry class and it was the last day of school and she wrote, in pen, on the back of my Taz shirt. At the time I was very lets say sheltered. It never dawned on me until the next year that she might have liked me. I was just upset that my favorite shirt had been ruined. I was 16 what can I say? Needless to say I didn't have my first date until 18. Not to say I didn't try! But lets just say they were failed attempts and it would take me a while to regroup! Drama Group! All I can say is that I loved helping out with what I could. I remember sitting sometimes just watching what everyone was doing trying to learn everyone's jobs and roles. I hope you know that I was always very proud of all of you and loved you all. You all did great jobs at the plays and we all put in a lot of effort and time ...Expand for more
to make it what it was. Katie Jones, Trouble maker extrodanare. I'm just joking. Many a nights were spent playing fuseball and your house. Not to mention mission impossible being burnt! Again though I do owe you an apology. Same deal as Micha, I put you through some bad stuff and I regret how I ended our friendship. I'm sorry for that. Over all High school had its really hard days that I never thought I'd live through. Looking back those days are very silly. But I would do it all again because the one thing I can not deny is that with out every one of those days I would not be the person I am. The past affects the now and guides us into the future. Thank you all of you I would not be where I am now with out every last one of you. College WSU graduate. Now if anyone says anything about bad about beer, hard A, or mixed drinks then shame on you! There were good and bad times! I met my wife there (good)! I survived the Mechanical Engineering program (good). Personally I will warn any prospective ME student, if you want to pursue this degree look for a University that it's number one speciality is engineering! WSU had an Ok program, there are some very excellent teachers like Mr and Mrs Richards!, Dr Chuck!, Prof Crow, Hani (Dynamics! DEFINATELY TAKE HIS CLASS!!!!), Dr Hutton, Dr Granthum, and Mr and Mrs Jayaram. They are what makes the program good! But I did have the chance to take Fluids over at the U of I just eight miles away and I made some friends over there. I got to see their extra cricular projects and also their engineering labs and I was very impressed! They were able to get teams assembled to do alternative fueled cars/trucks. Ford sponcered thier high breed truck project! You see the Hybrid explorers on the road today. I got to see the prototype in UofI's garage. Its an engineering school and the school is now focusing on other programs as well. WSU's programs like this are driven primarily by the student body and do not have many champions in the faculty that drive the projects. It's just like football or any other team sports. Yearly you have a switching of the team members but for many years you still have the same manager or ownership. This is what enables projects or teams to drive towards a long term goal or drive a project. You have to have common leadership and college students are just learning what that is, they need good role models and examples so that they can pick and choose and become their own leaders. Well that's my opinion! Workplace Well I am going back to scholl for my MBA in January. Currently I work for Aerojet as a Manufacturing Engineer. It's tons of fun, my first project was working on Spring Gas Generators for the Shuttle. They are used on both the Orbiter and the Solid rocket booster (SRB). I shall be shipping my last unit in two months! I've manufactured and shipped back to the customer 14 in the past year. It's what I'm good at, I'm very schedule driven and have made very good decisions regarding priorities. If I do say so myself! Otherwise my company is primarily involved in making the thrusters for satilite systems and fabricating the fuel delivery systems and controls. Also we have been getting into safety products like the crown victory fire supression system. It is a system that is being installed on the police curisers and shall save many officers lives.
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Photos

Calvin
Wedding Photo
Just a sun set on the Palouse.
Coug thru and thru!
My grumpy little hound dog!
BS Graduation
Jen (My Wife) In a Orchid Farm in Thialand.
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