Or not. I?m actually looking forward to school resuming (which it does today). Routines do me well. ?So Dean, what do you have for classes this semester?? Hey, good question. I have MEEM 5200 ? Advanced Thermodynamics (no thanks, didn?t like the not so advanced), MEEM 5210 ? Advanced Fluid Dynamics (that book looks evil) and EE 4261 ? Classical Control Systems (yes!!! and EE class again). I don?t think it should be that killer of a schedule, but then again I?ve been wrong before. Way wrong. Anyway, past my bed time.

Not quite actually. Tomorrow the carpet and windows are being installed. I have to work (as usual) so it is up to you guys to watch and make sure they?re doing a good job. The webcam will be up around 8:45 eastern when I head off to school.

Well, it’s been a while, so I figured that I’d give a quick update before I go into the lab. The third floor rooms are in the home stretch. On Monday, I’m going to have two sets of contractors bumping elbows up here. The first, is the windows. As I mentioned before, I coughed up $4600 to have every last crappy window on the 3rd floor replaced (even the huge ones). All the stuff finally came in so they’re coming on Monday and Tuesday to install them. Yesterday, I also lined up the carpet guys from across the street (that was another cool $1k) to put install some carpet on Monday as well. Hopefully though, they’ll be done by the early afternoon. Ok, off to work.

Ok, everything is in its proper place. Webcam is up and I am reducing my heating bill by $20/min (while spending $30/min). So, the link is here: http://24.236.184.24:8080. There may be some periodic outages while the camera is moved, but they should only be a couple of minutes.

Update: 1:54 pm
Well, the blower on the machine isn’t working. We’re trying to get it fixed or find another one. Dammit.

Update: 2:24 pm
Problem solved. t was a stupid solution too. Oh well, live and learn - the hard way. Heh, god this crap makes a mess. It’s snowing in here.

Update: Monday 9:04am
Webcam is still up, as am I. So, tune in and watch me clean.

I love this time of the year. Today especially. Within the last 5 hours, the population of Houghton has grown by several thousand. Yes folks, the freshmen are here. I can?t wait reach in to my lusidious tactics grab bag and take to the streets.

In other news, I?m blowing insulation in on the third floor tomorrow. And yes, the webcam will be on. I?m going to attempt to move it around with us as well. The show will hopefully get rolling by 10 am. Noon at the latest.

I believe I?ve come upon the solution to a lot of my problems. In case you haven?t guessed, the house has been consuming a momentous amount of my time lately. This time has come at the expense of work though which is causing some problems. I received the shake down of shake downs yesterday from Brad which in real people terms means that I haven?t been getting as much work done as I should (so now I have a turbo pump spinning at 28,000 rpm?s just in front of me). Admittedly, this is true. When you have two full time jobs, both will eventually suffer. Especially since one of them requires I keep strange hours.

So, the solution to this is the night shift. Around 2 am this morning, I finished wiring up an outlet at home, toke a shower and I?m back in the lab by 3 am. I?m currently working on a base pressure test of the new vacuum chamber ? that is, what is the lowest pressure we can attain after many hours of pumping. On top of that, I have some transient thermal modeling I should have done months ago, as well as some setup work for the next thruster test.

Either this plan will work, or I?ll just go plain nuts later today. We?ll see.

Running short on supplies again ? this time affixing agents are the bottle neck. Yes, that?s right, out of screws. Not really ?out? per say, but the clips need to be reloaded. Clips?
Screws?
WTF?
Take a look. This screw gun is the greatest tool ever.

Anyway, Jason and I are off to the bar for $4 pitchers with a box of screws and some empty clips.

Who would have guessed it? Fiberglass insulation itches. I?m calling it a night here in about 3 minutes. I made what proved to be a vane attempt to continue some house work, but I don?t think I want to slip in the sack with a bat of insulation attached to me.

Weekend in review: all told it was not too bad. On Saturday some friends and I took a little trip down to a Lake Superior beach. The weather was absolutely perfect. In the shower the next day, I was disturbed that I couldn?t get all clean when come time find out, the sun makes your body turn darker. Who knew? After that, it was evening of bar hopping in Houghton which is always fun. Sunday started a bit slow, but we still managed to get some drywall tossed up.

In other news . . . I?m mourning the loss of my camera (hence no picture). It suffered a stroke or something and refuses to turn on. I may perform an autopsy (and perhaps repair) tomorrow during work, but this might be just the excuse I was looking for to impulse buy that new one I?ve been raving about lately. We?ll see.

?What?ch ya do?n.?
?Just pull?n some wire, have?n a bud?
?True, True?.

I?ve had it. Wells Fargo is by far the worst run organization I?ve ever seen. Let me bring you up to speed on what has been transpiring . . . about 6 weeks ago, I started the ball rolling to get my line of credit extended. I was going to borrow against the increased value of the house. Simple. No problem. I should have money in hand in three weeks tops. We?re now on the frosty side of week 6 and still nothing. Get this though, the account has been funded, but they MAILED the check out. Yes folks, that?s right. They couldn?t actually walk down the goddamn hallway and deposit it in my bank account. Instead, they just dropped a $23,000 check in the mail without requiring a signature or anything. But of course, they didn?t send it to me like I explicitly asked several times, but rather to my parents back in Minnesota ? who are largely uninvolved in the day to day operations of the house. Jesus, I?m so pissed off I want to eat my computer. Instead though, I?ll likely just resume throwing beer bottles at the bank.
On top of that mess, no one there could actually tell me what my mortgage payment was going to be every month until after it was automatically withdrawn. This makes for some uncomfortable evenings as the bank plays Russian Roulette with my credit history. Thus far, I?ve managed to avoid having a check automatically bounced but it has been damn close. I feel like I?m playing dodge ball with grenades. The crappy part is the people I work with in Houghton are pretty nice. Sure they have a little trouble telling the truth sometimes, but they do seem to want to help. My problem is with the massive corporate infrastructure that has no interest in helping people. So I?ll say this about their customer service, you get ?serviced? all right, just not in the way you?re probably used to.

Almost done . . . so far, we’re on coat two of three (maybe four). Man, is it looking great but it is sort of raising the bar for everything else. Not that that’s a bad thing but stuff will sort of look out of place until I can drop a million dollars on furniture.

On the other fronts, tonight is electrical night. I have to finish wiring some stuff on the third floor as well as put Ben?s light in. I?m sort of dreading that since I have to rip up my floor, but it needs to be done.