It is 11:42pm and I?m alone, sitting atop a bench in our unusually clean lab waiting. Waiting to get to vacuum, waiting to light the cathode, waiting. The last vestiges of day light faded some time ago and the rest of the world is off minding their own business. I glance over at my 2 liter bottle of Sprite and note how the mechanical pump has induced some sort of resonance, causing it to shake violently. I stare off into the corner there the pump controls live, waiting for an amber light to illuminate indicating that we?ve reached 50 torr and the blower will kick on in 30 seconds to usher us ever closer to that unattainable zero pressure point. For whatever reason, this induces a moment of Zen ? what decisions did I make along the way that led me to be sitting here, in the basement of some University in Michigan, in a space propulsion research lab, babysitting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment that is used to idealistically further humanity. All the people I?ve met, things I?ve learned, places I?ve been, everything. The light then illuminates, and I count down the seconds until it starts . . . 30 . . . 20 . . . 10 . . . 5 . . . 2. . .1, click goes a relay deep within the bowels of the controller and the 2 HP motor spins up to 3,450 RPMs in about a second and quickly settles into its usually smooth operation; all is well. It is at this point that I realize, I love my life.

Update 4:28 am
As usual, tranquility on the Vampire Shift doesn?t last long. Not long after midnight, I turned on the mass flow controllers (you can guess what they do) only to see that they we?re working right. Long story made short, I broke vacuum twice before I finally pulled them outside of the tank and re-plumbed the propellant lines. I guess those things can?t go inside the vacuum chamber after all. Anyway, I?m now running about 3 hours behind schedule but that doesn?t much matter since I started a bit early. Yep, we?re at 112.8 Kelvin (-257 F) going for 12-13 Kelvin (-438 F). Another hour should do. In other news, after cleaning out the vegetable garden in the coffee maker, I?ve managed to get a caffeine fix at this ridicules hour.

I wish I had a secretary that I could dictate my posts to. That would be incredibly handy. So, I bet you?re all chomping at the bit to find out what I did this weekend (and yesterday for that matter). Here goes:

Thursday ? After composing the previous post, I threw an inadequate amount of clothes in a bag and ran out the door, hopped in my truck and tore off to Minneapolis. Man is driving really starting to get boring. Sure for the first couple of hours, everything is fine but then my brain and I run out of things to talk about. That?s when the calculator comes out (I know I?m such a geek). At that point, I begin to answer all the stupid things involving numbers that creep into my brain. So I now know how many turns my wheels make per second if I?m going 80 in my Eclipse with 55% profile tires on 16 inch rims (about 18), how long does it take for the radio waves of 101.3 KDWB in the Twin Cities to reach me when I?m 76 miles out (.41 microseconds), since I?m approaching the antenna at 80 miles per hour, how much Doppler shift is there in the radio signal (a very, very small blue shift). You see, that keeps me entertained for a while anyway. So I finally arrive at my friend Brandon?s apartment when I run into one of my old girlfriends. I was surprised to discover that the hate is still very much alive. I was concerned she was going to jump the couch and take me out with a box cutter. Luckily I escaped unscathed and eventually made our way to this German bar called the Gasthaus. Apparently, the University of Minnesota Dental School crowd loves this bar. Oh yeah, I was hanging out with Brandon and his two friends ? that?s right count it up ? three incipient dentists and one beer drinking engineer at the table. There is this tradition at that bar ? the boot. It is this massive 2 liter beer that garners accolades if you can actually finish it. Apparently, these tenderfoots had never heard of the Engineer?s Song. Well after polishing mine off, then some of Brandon?s, I made believers out of them. So anyway, Brandon and I were dumped off in Dinky Town where we jumped around to a couple different places. When 2am rolled around, we headed back to University Avenue to in an attempt to find my brother. Despite waking up half of his house mates, we returned empty handed to the snake pit (god I?m really mean).

Friday ? I awoke in the morning and made the remainder of the trip home. Nothing too exciting there. I had a 2pm dentist appointment to have the filling that I ripped out many months ago replaced. At the appointment we talked about ? yep you guessed it ? the Gasthaus (I found dentists sort of have one track minds). Anyway, they drilled and drilled despite my not having any sort of numbing agent. I said I didn?t want any. The quote of the day was when the she said ?Ummm, yeah, at this point almost everyone is numb?. Sounded like a challenge to me. So I emerge a while later and returned home. I found this nice couch and crashed for about three hours. Upon waking, my parents took me out to dinner at the open house at the golf course. The food was great. For whatever reason, I was still super tired so I went home and actually ended up in bed by 11pm.

Saturday ? This was to serve as the primary reason I went home. So I arrive at the graduation reception after visiting some other people, we?ll say around 2. Nothing really exciting was happening. My brother showed up a short while later so that livened things up a bit, but still nothing great. I was considering leaving and heading back up to Tech when I finally got to talking to my cousin Anthony (whose graduation it was). Wow, for the next hour and some change he delighted both my brother and me as well as my other cousin with the harrowing tale of how his latest relationship went nova. Full of intrigue, deception, questionable investigation tactics and of course a not so faithful girlfriend, it made me really glad I?m not him. But what a great story teller. After that, I ditched out and started my way back up to Tech. Having solved all the math problems I could think of, I took to taking pictures of things along the way. Here?s a good one of what my shirt saw the entire way. I decided then to give Ben (on of my housemates) a call. He lives in Duluth so I figured I might drop by on my way through. Nope, they were heading to his cabin, so I tagged along. The most interesting part of the night is when we tried to play hacky sack well after dark with only a single light on behind us (not to mention that we all had some unrelated coordination problems). It was fun, but sleeping on the floor left me feeling, well like I?d slept on the floor.

Sunday ? I finally get back and get to work on my paper for the Joint Propulsion Conference. You know, the conference coming up where in almost exactly two weeks from now I have to give a talk about this abstract. Incidentally, I should really get back to work on that.

In what is becoming an all too common occurrence, I?m going to back home to Minnesota as soon as I finish writing this. Why this time? One of my cousin?s from Pennsylvania is holding a graduation reception Back Home. Apparently, out east they don?t celebrate graduations like we do in the mid-west so they?re making the trip. I figured the least I could do is to drag my butt there plus it has been quite a while since I?ve seen that faction of the family. However, since I?m going through Minneapolis, I couldn?t resist making some calls so tonight I?m going to party like a rock star with some old friends and not worry about that conference paper that I have to have roughly written by Monday.

Oh yeah, we posed a little photo shoot today in the lab. The Michigan Space Grant Consortium gave me a fellowship so they wanted a picture in exchange for their $5k (so demanding I know). The crappy part is we just finished retooling the vacuum chambers there really wasn’t anything in them. Fast forward two hours and you have a thrust stand with out a cover, a hall thruster missing two anodes, no cooling water, no propellant, no mass flow control, but a bunch of different color wires and shiny things which always make for interesting looking pictures. Check them out: Work General Pictures

Alrighty folks, it?s time to find out how smart you are. What do you think I?m doing in this picture? And perhaps more importantly, why am I doing it.

Difficultly: Carp and Jason - forbidden from responding (since you know).
Clue: Yes, that is a rake in my hand and yes that fan is spinning.

Update: 10:10am Ok, link fixed now. Must test before posting . . .

I figured out a new way to post pictures that I think will work out much better. Before I had to select the picture, reduce it twice and throw it into my images folder which is becoming quite a mess. Now what I?ll do is just put all the pictures into a folder with each image labeled with the date it was taken. That makes it 1000x times easier for me and allows you to see the progress almost day by day. I just threw a few trial pictures up for the third floor, so check them out: The 3rd Floor

First, I must apologize for my absence the last week or so. With my cousin in town, I had a hard time sitting down and writing stuff.

On the house front, I didn?t get as far with things as I would have liked (as usual). Putting up plastic on the third floor is really proving to be a pain in the butt. To make things easier though, I stopped buying the 20×25 sheets and opted for the 8×50 sheets. At the moment, I sort of feel like the boy in the bubble up here.

Thanks to Jeb and Trevor, the front/side yard is now largely devoid physical evidence that no one had bothered to rake the yard since the dinosaurs died. I have no idea how many truck loads it took to get all that gone from start to finish, but it was way more then 10.

Yesterday and today I attacked some first floor wiring issues. I?m think I?m winning but I?m not really sure. I ran out of wire again today which marks the three-quarters of a mile mark for wire. Any bets on what the final number is? I hope it is 0.751 miles but that doesn?t seem too likely. Jason rolled back into town today bearing gifts (actually the manifestation of a gift). He got a killer deal on 3 evergreen looking plants so hopefully something cool will happen with those.

In the last thread, it was suggested that I set up some sort of PayPal thing. In fact, the plants that Jason bought were paid for by an anonymous donation to the landscaping fund. I struggled a bit with this since I don?t want to seem like I?m begging or anything but in the end I figured what the hell, it?s your money. If you?re interested in doing something like that, you may want to check out the Donation FAQ. Otherwise, the link is on the left side.

The mirror test just registered some life . . . and in fact it is mine. This has been a rather tumultuous week ? filled with both success and defeat on the home front as well as the work front.

Unfortunately, I broke Trevor (my visiting 16 year old cousin) earlier in the week. He pulled some muscles raking leaves outside which when you look at the car accident he was in eight months ago, is understandable. As always though, every project in the house is crawling towards completion. The first floor bathroom is seconds away from being painted awaiting only the installation of a light switch (you mean everyone can?t see in the dark?). Yeah, we?ll I?m not being real productive just sitting here.

This sort of snuck up on me . . . but today is the 1 year anniversary for deanmassey.net. Sure I had the domain name a bit longer but didn’t actually start the blog until June 12th, 2003. So I you can take a look at the post that started it all, or maybe indulge in some statistics.

[Begin cocktail reception]

Entries: 179
Comments: 506
Hits: 262,644
Pages: 79,568
Visits: 28,223
Data Transferred: 6,236 MB

Either way, despite my best efforts, people keep coming back here whether it is motivated by curiosity or just to check out the latest injury and for that I thank you. So sit down, relax, and waste a little time reading on the internet.

Here’s a look at some of my favorites - they sort of capture the spirit of whole deal.
Destruction II and My First Lesson in Plumbing
Bathroom Picture
The Day the House Tried to Kill Me - New Injuries Page
Car Fire #1
Car Fire #2
Ok, I admit it, the magnet was dumb
So I stopped by after work . . .
Picture Time
Brit Hume
My Favorite Shirt
New Month - Change of Plans
Stuff to Think About
Good Night
Cypermethrin

After starting the previous entry’s flame war and then dropping off the face of the earth, I have returned from the dead. These days have just been so full of me doing things that it seems a week has already elapsed when in fact I?ve only been back for two days. But here?s a little summary of what transpired.

Thursday: That huge sucking noise heard ?round the world this afternoon was from the thruster test we were doing. It didn?t go so hot. Early on, it was discovered that one of our high voltage connections to the thruster had some exposed conductor. Plasma is really great at finding those exposed parts and then blowing them up. That didn?t stop the test, but it forced our operating point to be at about 1/3 the power of normal. The fun didn?t stop there though, in the probe assembly that sweeps the exhaust plume there was another wire malfunction that did end the test. FYI for the Spelling Nazi ? use the high temp stuff from Allied, not the crap you picked up off the floor since plasma has one function in life: to destroy electrical things.

Wednesday: Test prep day. I always like those since it means I get to sit in Fischer filling liquid nitrogen tanks. On the home front ? I hung another piece of drywall on the 1st floor and proceeded put another coat of mud on the second floor hallway. Then we went to the bar and became ?smart?.

Tuesday: Drove back up here and started a flamewar.

Monday: Scraped myself up off the floor in Minneapolis at my brother?s and continued my trip home. I also visited some grandparents and paid Texas Instruments (my former employer a visit). Brain fixed my hard drive and Grant continued to solicit me to come back and work for TI. FYI for TI: $250k/year plus benefits and you have a deal. Didn?t think so.

Sunday: Drove to Minneapolis and went out to dinner at the bar my brother works at with my parents. Proceeded to go to St. Paul for Grand Old Days . . . but missed it by an hour. Since I was in the area, I met up with Sean and Abe (friends from Back Home, Long Ago). Along the way though, my brother and I had his birthday shot at some bar and snapped this picture:

And just to go on record - I’m the one of the left and contrary to what everyone else in Minnesota things - I AM THE OLDER ONE DAMMIT!!!

Anyway, that?s really about it. A thousand miles and not much to show for it but some more liver damage and a few pictures. I guess I?m also heavy one 16 year old cousin now (which for concerned parties, incidentally is working out well). Ok, I need some food now.

So I?m toiling about, setting up my room. Putting this over there and that some place else when I came to a startling revelation: I?m wasting time doing this on foot. On go the roller blades. Productivity has increased substantially (although any gains in time are likely to be swapped for writing this entry). Yeah, I guess that?s it. I?m just super happy that a) I live on the third floor b) that I can roller blade up here since the floor?s down and c) that my room is so damn big (about 530 sq ft minus the loft) that rollerblading saves time.