Come August, my lease is up at the current dump I call home.   These damned leasing agents vultures have been walking people through this place like it is a whore house often with very little notice to me- this particular gem showed up at 5pm, which is when they shut down their soul harvester for the day.  Anyway, I finally got somewhat pissed.  Mainly because Lynn, Kristin and Adam Bike are crashing at my place after scuba diving down in Gilboa Ohio today.

So here’s my nice little FU:

Charisse,

10 AM isn’t really all that great for me (731 Packard). I have a lot of people from out town staying over.  Additionally, I thought you had to give me at least 24 hours notice so this 5pm blow-and-go nonsense is extra shady.  That and I’m generally annoyed that there seems to be so much foot traffic through this place.  After 1pm will be fine - but according to an email from 3:30pm today, there is another group coming then too - maybe you can carpool.

Dean

Pricks will probably still show up though.

NASA comes through again:

Water discovered on Mars

Good work boys, I want to retire there.

My favorite quote: “I just don’t feel I deserve health insurance”

So, in light of my recent absense from the illustrious deanmassey.net, I figured I should update the universe on what exactly I’ve been doing for the last ohh, 3 months or so. Since these are all substantial life altering events, a bulleted list should suffice.

• Defended my thesis, which went awesome - folks came up and all, good times. A few edits to do but nothing serious.
• Still working on the edits of said thesis ( I can see the all seeing eye from Houghton burning a hole through the leaded paint of my dumpy apartment - you were right Brad - but they are coming! ) Apartment?
• Moved into a dumpy apartment in the heart of the University of Michigan student ghetto in Ann Arbor Michigan. Ann Arbor?
• Took a job as a senior engineer at a small research and development company. I’d point you to the website it but it sucks at the moment. Bet you’re wondering about The House.
• The house is currently being managed by some very competant hands and I’ve retained my room up there so beware Houghton. Oddly enough, the house manager is the guy I bought my motorcycle from.
• I now almost exclusively ride a motorcycle - it is a Honda CBR 600 F4i and we’re in love.

That largely covers it I guess. I’m sure I will expound up on these points at some point but since readership undoubtedly dwindled to near zero during my absence - I’m not in a huge hurry or anything.

Either way though, I’m back bitches. Just renewed the domain for another 5 years.

Did it work?

Only 5 days of graduate school left.

Still breathing.

Still kicking.

Still counting . . . down.

Maybe next year . . .

I left the lab early today, that of course being a relative term, but had I stayed I certainly would have sustained the usual 1st to 2nd degree burns from handling a thruster that is still too hot; a situation that reeks of desperation though we’ll just call it “justified academic collateral damage”.

To be honest, the experimental stuff is not going so well these days due to a dizzying array of problems, but after 4.5 years and over 300 thruster tests I know my methods aren’t the problem. Rather “the problem” is the problem. The results of turbo hot temperatures and high voltages yield at best an awkward party with light beer and tequila and at worst a strange competition between a suicide note and a dissertation. But alas therein is the true problem - at some point I need to get on with my life - a sentiment shared by most rational humans familiar with my research. Others might have me continue to what end I know not but it would seem that the current trend in academia necessitates a “victory” at all costs neglecting the fact that there is often more to be learned during the buildup than a synthetic success. To that end, during my thesis proposal defense I suggested the concept of the Phyrric Victory:

A Pyrrhic victory (IPA: /’pɪr ɪk/ -) is a victory with devastating cost to the victor.

“The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one more such victory would utterly undo him”. (Dionysius 280 B.C. via Wikipedia)

What prompted this surfacing from the abyss? Three reasons: first, I’m clearly frustrated by the never ending war of attrition with the laws of physics and metuallurgy. Second, however this story turns out I want to document with some amount of posterity the pivotal moments in my life. And finally I need to finish stat or the one job I actually wanted will evaporate and thus the plight of Pyrrhus will come to fruition yet again.

What am I saying here? Not sure but I’ve had a lot of success with my research in the early days but things changed but now the hour grows late and the path has strayed further than anyone would have guessed.

I mean to write this about two weeks ago but you know . . .

So anyway, my flight back to Houghton from Rochester MN was . . . well typical? Under the advice of my parents I hopped on the internet to check in for my flight a few hours ahead of time and in between “System errors” and “Please Call for Details” my flight from Minneapolis to Houghton was first canceled, then rerouted to Detroit. Well, the Detroit airport is no place to spend Thanksgiving so I heeded their advice and gave them a call. Which something like this:

NWA: Thank you for calling . . . blah blah blah

Me: So I see you have me going to Detroit instead of Houghton. Well I guess I would like to talk about that.

NWA: Let’s see . . . type type type . . . hmmmm . . . type type type

Me: No seriously, have you looked at a map? Houghton is nowhere near Detroit. Detroit is actually further from Houghton than I currently am.

NWA: Please hold . . .

Me: (under breath) my fingers around your neck?

Eventually some random number generator cranked out the right flight number and all was well, on the internet anyway. So my folks drop me off at the Rochester airport, nay Rochester International Airport, and I begin the waiting. The flight was more or less on time which was good, and they even upgraded me to first class for the 25 minute flight (first time I’ve ever flown first class).

The funny thing about the Rochester Airport though is the cliental. Almost everyone hopping on that beer can with wings was in Rochester for the Mayo Clinic. This has some interesting implications as nearly half the crowd was in a wheelchair or has being lugged on to the plane by someone only slightly more mobile. Honestly, if that plane would have crashed, only me and the flight crew would have walked away unless of course we were clipped by the shards of hips, oxygen bottles, wheelchairs and other bionic parts from the balance of the passengers.

The contents of that plane really makes me wonder: how many old or infirm people have I accidentally killed in Rochester? Work with me on this one: so I walk the halls of the Mayo Clinic underground complex which essentially constitutes most of downtown Rochester and I had a cold so I coughed a bit. A ancient man passing gives me a murderous look knowing that my toxic wasteland of a body is propped up by the immune system of a hero and likely lives in mortal fear that if he catches what I have, he’ll surely be dead by sunset. Which is like 4pm.

What is the point of this post? I want to die in a glorious explosion where they have to sponge me off the wall instead of slowly rusting to pieces in a sanitary smelling room.

As the last post indicated, I flew home for Thanksgiving this year.  Unbeknownst to me though my parents had drastically trimmed down their fleet of available vehicles leaving only one for each of them - which is a very reasonable thing to do.  There was a spare work truck but that monster gets such horrid mileage I’m afraid Al Gore may descend from the heavens and kick in my windshield.
There was only one thing to do: ride a motorcycle instead.  I’ve been looking at buying my neighbors bike for a while so this was the perfect opportunity to check it out.  At some point or another you may have heard my say I know how to ride a motorcycle.  That was a lie.  Sure I have ridden before, but it was not pretty.  So on Friday I drove the land yacht to the DMV and passed the motorcycle written test.  With things all on the legal up and up, I drove back home, walked across the street and hopped on a crotch rocket.  Getting proficient didn’t take long and in no time I was cruising in traffic.

Fast forward a few days and I’m totally in love.  I’ve been using the bike as pretty my sole mode of transportation for my various trips into Rochester and uptown to Kasson.  Yesterday was the last day though as when I took my gloves off my hands were getting pretty blue from the cold seeping through.

Here’s a picture of the bike.  It is a 2001 Honda CBR 600 F4i and with any luck it will be mine fairly soon (now that winter is here and all).