Well, I believe I’ve accomplished what I came home to do. I made a mistake a few months ago so this emergency trip was to sort of “clean up” that mess. Anyway, everything is all on the up and up so I’m tenitivly scheduling myself back in Michigan by Tuesday early evening (after catching lunch with my brother in Minneapolis).

Something I’ve also noticed the last few days . . . it would seem that music trading on the internet is definatly on the upswing again. Personally, I usually use the Fast Track network and I’ve been having great luck this evening. This whole file sharing thing is kind of wierd in my mind anyway. Most likely since I’ve been trading mp3’s on the internet since I was like 12 so it is really just one of things that I take for granted (like in-door plumbing). From a moral standpoint, as soon as I start seening music videos with rappers driving cars like mine, I will continue to not loose any sleep over the issue. What do you guys think?

So I have this shirt. I really like this shirt. My parents got it for me for Christmas last year. Yesterday I realized though that when I put it on, there is about a 30% chance that I will end up talking to the cops before I take it off at the end of the night. Couple of cases in point: you can see me and the shirt in this picture. Well, a few hours later, the cops stopped by the house and told is to stop throwing kegs in the yard (just as an FYI, I threw mine the furthest). Which is funny since the previous night the police informed us that we could no longer throw kegs down a road over in Riply. Incidently, it was probably a good thing they didn’t come into the house and see the stripper and her ghetto ass pimp. I degress though, the next time that shirt showed its face was this summer when Dan and Nathan came to visit. Long story short, keg of beer + fire on the sidewalk = 4 minutes to the arrival of Hancock’s finest. That one ended in a house tour for one of the cops. One other time we were sitting on the front porch last spring and someone tossed a bottle at the house. We called the cops that time. This fall in Ann Arbor I ended up at the police station looking for someone we’d last wearing - you guessed it that shirt. And finally, yesterday, a mere 3 miles from completing an unscheduled trip to home in Minnesota, I pull out of a gas station in Dodge Center (the armpit of america) and head west towards Kasson. Yeah, I was just about out of town where the speed limit changes from 30 to 45 and I was doing 37. Anyway, cop nails me and pulls me over. Hassels me a bit then lets me off with a verbal warning. Not even in the county for 5 minutes and they send out the welcoming committee. So there you have it. This shirt attracts cops like it it’s job. I may as well be wearing a huge doughnut around my head.

I uploaded a bunch of pictures from last year a while back. I used to have a really nice index and stuff but the EE department kicked my ass to the curb and deleted my home directory with all the stuff in it. So it is sort a big free for all right now.

Anyway, here they are. And just as a little disclaimer, I don’t take pictures of the boring stuff I do so there’s no pics of me doing homework, working in PSpice or drawing up circuit schematics.

2:45am:
I’m on duty tonight babysitting the pumpdown for the thruster test later today. We’re testing a different thruster then usual so I had to come in a bit earlier (about 1:20am instead of 2am). Everything is droning on quite well now. At the moment, the tank is sitting at about 10 millTorr but that will be dropping off to 10e-5 Torr pretty soon. What the hell is a Torr you ask? There is a good primer with more info here.

In an attempt to brining to meaning to my life, I switched from my usual staple of diet Coke to diet Pepsi. I’m sort of indifferent. And no, I’m not on a diet, I just don’t like all that suger since it makes me crawl on the ceiling all spiderman like.

4:45am
The mass flow controller is on crack again. Interestingly enough, it is only off by a factor of two. I tell it I want 56 SCCM and it gives me 112 SCCM. That poor thing though has been coughing up blood since we dropped about 300 volts into the ground it uses. Oops. Hopefully fixed that problem though.

No offence to my Mechanical Engineering/Physics co-workers but the wiring in this place is largely . . . well . . . a steaming pile of shit. Look at it like this - imagine a house full of guys - so its going to be a big mess, people will walk around in their boxers etc. Now, toss a woman or two in the mix and things will start to change. That is sort of analgous to what is going on here. Although working under vacuum and in a plasma is well outside what I used to work with, I’d like to think things are getting electrically more stable.

Well it looks like we’re at our vacuum floor (2×10e-6 torr) so I better get to work.

6:05am
Fixed the mass flow problem. As it turns out, there was really no problem, someone just opted to incorrectly configure the pressure transducer (so it was just making crap up). Luckily, I wrote down all the settings a few weeks ago. I’ve started the black magic process that is cathode conditioning. We heat this strange material with sequence of various levels of power for various times in an effort to coax it into working.

Look at that bastard. Where does Fox find these people? In the last few days, I’ve rediscovered TV and while flipping through one of the 4 24-hour news channels, I saw this guy on Fox news. I feel tired just looking at him. Just think what he looks like before he does the Fox mandated line of crack and the makeup department puts in an afternoon retrofitting his face to make him not look dead. Not to mention that after I finnished laughing my ass off, every opinion that managed to escape his sagging jaw was some ultra-conservative nonsence that would likely cause me to piss on his car were it parked next door. Soland, I’d tell you to photoshop this one, but I think god did a pretty good job making the original look funny.

Moving on, not much happening here today. We’re shooting for another thruster test on Thursday. Unlike the previous two years, spring break will not find me on the beach in Florida, rather I’ll be up here in good old 49930 getting a little payback 187 on 315.

Alex was bitching this morning that I needed a new poll. Well, I’m a sheep and gave in so check it out so I can hear what the populus has to say about my future at 315 Reservation Street.

Today I spent about 5 hours sanding and painting in the hallway and the entry way. The obvious results thus far are nothing all that special. However, I figured if I didn’t post pictures, there’d likely be a riot. (Click for larger image).

Too bad the joint compound takes so long to try otherwise there would be a lot more painted. As for scraping off the rest of that wall paper . . . I’m sort of waiting until next month when I can afford an extension ladder. Probably not, I’m impatient so I can feel a solution brewing here . . . something about cinder blocks and 2×6’s . . . interesting. Better sleep on that idea.

Ahhh, finally caught up on my homework. That left me some time this evening to actually work on the house a bit. Tonights efforts were largerly focused around the 2nd floor. More specifically, I’m attempting to wrap up the walls in the 2nd floor hallway. If you remeber from long ago, it used to look like this. Tonight, I was putting up the last of the tape and mud. Ideally, I’d lake to paint tomorrow, but quite likely there be some spots to fix so perhaps on Sunday then. Also, Jake and I managed to open a door between our rooms (to run cable) that had been lock shut by no less then 7 locks since January 1959 (there was some news paper in there). Some of these people must have had some real issues . . . In anycase, I’ll toss up some pictures this weekend of the hallway, and the 1st floor bathroom remodeling.

I hate it when I’m right (actually, when I’m wrong too). This was waiting in my inbox:

I regret to inform you that you have not passed the ETF PhD Qualifying
exam. You will need to take and pass the exam next year to be accepted as
a PhD candidate in the ETF area.

Although, Brad brought me up to his office and told me before that (like 4:40). “Umm, yeah you’re gonna need to take that again”. I asked him how close I was to being kicked out out and he said in essence not very. So that’s good anyway. Then he shared a little secret with me that made me feel better. So, I’ve got some homework to do, but anyone up for a beer later?

So today is the day of reconining - by 5pm today, I should know if next fall I will work as a research assistant, or assistant janitor. I know I pootched that exam, badly. In my defence though, the questions asked were pretty esoteric and in no way (I think so anyway) gauged my understanding of the subject. Why you ask? Because, part of my research is in examining the heat transfer modes and implications of said modes in rocket thrusters. Since I haven’t been fired (yet) I can’t suck at it too badly. (Anyone else feel like I’m punting here? Yeah, me too)

Oddly enough though, my folks mentioned to me that someone from TI called last week. Unless my memory fails me, the name given was none other then the recruiting agent who I briefly began the perminant employment process with last year. In the end, I told him to give me a call in 4 years. I haven’t called back yet (will today though). What an odd twist of fate. Mothership calling employee A0217942 for $150k signing bonus? Probably not. Besides, until they toss the contents of my office into the snow, I’ve still have work to do here. (Resolve stiffens a bit).