Sorry for the lack of updates lately, I?ve been a bit preoccupied. You see, I attended a pumpkin carving contest last week back in Rochester MN. Trouble is, I was the pumpkin getting carved. I should have been suspicious when it was hosted at the Mayo Clinic but I won anyway. What my prize you ask? Well, I managed to wrap up with week with no less then 37 stitches. Not too shabby.

Actually I was there for my usual biannual slice and dice appointment with the skin cancer gurus. Nice people, but they sure know how to bring the pain. Anyway, everything worked out in the end but I now look more like I couldn?t figure out how to operate a blender and things went horribly wrong.

Last Friday I received my 11am wakeup call from the nice folks in the dermatology department saying they needed just a little bit more of my skin to complete their authentic Dean Leather couch and if I would kindly be there at 3:30pm they could get what they needed. Well, I guess I?m one of those people who deals with uncomfortable situations with humor, so I?d like to present the Top 6 exchanges heard at the Eisenburg Desk 7B (outpatient surgical dermatology):

#6. Me (at the reception desk): Hi, I need more pain in my life.
Receptionist: Ahh, you must be Dean Massey then?
Me: Ummm, yeah. But you weren?t supposed to be able to guess that.

#5. Nurse #1: We?re going to take your blood pressure and pulse now.
Me: Make sure you write that in ink so I have proof that I came in here alive.

#4. Nurse #2: Geez, look at this, four females (both doctors were females) and one male patient.
Me: Is this where I get hand cuffed to the bed then? What could go wrong here?

#3. Me: So what type of blood do I have?
Dr. #1: Well, I?d say blood type red.

#2. Dr. #1 (as she?s chopping me up): I wonder where Dr. #2 is?
Me: Yeah, she?s always late. Just like a blister, only shows up when the work is done.

#1. Dr. #1 to Dr. #2: These blades sure go dull quickly now.
Me: Sorry, I guess I should have used moisturizer or something.
Dr. #1: Naw, it is just your rock hard abs that?s doing it.

All told though the whole thing was very strange. I mean, imagine watching one of those ER blood and guts kind of shows on TV, then looking down and seeing much the same thing going on to you. I?d say it was sort of Zen like, but it was really just creepy. The whole thing lasted about an hour but miraculously, KROC (the radio station we were listening to) didn?t play a single commercial during the entire time. The really crappy part though was that in keeping with tradition, I was back in my truck on the way to Houghton by 5pm. The (sound?) reasoning behind this is that I get a couple hours of pain free driving until the litocane wears off. Then of course it is pure hell. They wouldn?t give me any codeine or any other fun narcotics since I was driving leaving only Tylenol which doesn?t work on me (ibuprofen thins the blood which is obviously not a good idea). Too bad too because I was looking forward to spending the weekend drugged out of my mind sucking my thumb and watching the walls melt. So a bit south of Duluth I pretty much lost my mind. I could feel every single one of the 78 holes they had so graciously imparted me a few hours earlier. By the time I hit the Wisconsin-Michigan border my average speed was around 80. I?d just like to thank the Michigan State police for being someplace else that evening because it was going to be a frosty day in hell before I stopped.

Anyway, it has been 3 days now and everything is healing very well although that has probably been helped along by the standing death threat I have to anyone who hits me. I can?t wait to get those stitches out since they are itching like crazy. So next Friday me, Dr. Dre and a six pack of beer are going to sit down with the provided suture removal kit and have a grand old party.

The only semi good thing to come from this mess though, is that I had my PhD qualifier postponed until next Monday (as opposed to tomorrow). I?ve been studying my ass off though. I?m not quite ready to 0wn that bitch yet, but I?m a million miles ahead of where I was last year.

Well, it has been a while since I poured any gasoline on the political fire. But with Bush being sworn in/at within the last few days, perhaps it is time again. I won?t pretend like I?m the first to cover this one as it has been on Fark, but the Washington Dispatch has an article about these asshat ?Protest Worriers? who infiltrated a anti-war demonstration, threw up pro-Bush signs, and proceeded to get the beat down they deserved (guess you can tell where I stand on the issue). Read the article (its short and funny). There is also a tremendous orgy in the comments section with the usual left-vs-right throw down.
I?ll summerize:
Right: See, left wing hypocrisy ? anti-war hippies starting fights. GW is teh bomb!1!!!!
Left: Liberal does not equal hippy, and anti-war doesn?t mean pacifist door mat.
Right: Face it, lost. Four more years. Four more years!! Support our troops!!!!
Left: *sigh*

And then it degenerates further into pigeonholing and the like with the occasional glimmer of reason in there. It is pretty amusing though watching people go just plain apeshit.

As long as we?re on the topic, since it is quite clear (unless you have some reading disability) that I am most certainly not the right-wing conservative type. But just where do I stand you may be asking? Well, since I?m sitting at the moment, I?ll have to defer you to the internet, and this fascinating website called Political Compass. I took the test and was placed as a Economic Left/Right: -5.25, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.36 so basically a left leaning libertarian. Interesting (and not really surprising). It only takes about 2 minutes to take and is an interesting although the content and explanation take a bit longer to read (and are worth reading).

Well, after talking with the boss, I still have a job as it turns out. That email sent out claiming they were pulling my funding only applies to teaching assistants not research assistants. Would have been nice if they would have mentioned that in there. On the other hand, I should have found that out first before flying off the handle, but sometimes it is more fun to conjure up a shit storm and then run.

Some points of clarification though ? when I said that I do the work of two people, I didn?t mean that I was doing other people?s work. What I meant is that there used to be two people working on my research project but they?ve since been reassigned to some other project. In essence, we are understaffed by about 2-3 people. That is what I meant.

Anyway, I have that damn PhD qualifier coming up again in two weeks so I?m going to go and work on that.

I finally managed a five hour nap this afternoon after the test. I feel sort of semi-human again. So the thruster test results . . . mediocre. It worked fine so far as the smoke test goes (meaning I assembled it just fine) but for some reason the discharge current is still too high. I have my theories as to why but those are left to another day (perhaps). I shot some video of the thruster running today and uploaded them to my home directory for general consumption.

Thruster 1 [5.3MB avi]
Thruster 2 [10.5MB avi]

The test was ended after about 6 hours of thruster operation. I told Brad that I?d pulled all the rabbits out of my hat and was pretty much at a loss as to why the thruster was misbehaving and cryopump was not real happy. I took off around two and when I awoke this evening I had a wonderful piece of email waiting for me. Sometimes I swear my inbox is just one big game of Russian Roulette.

Subject: probation (yes it even had a small ?p? because the ME department is literate like that)

It has come to the Mechanical Engineering Department’s attention that your GPA has fallen below 3.00. This means that you are now on probation according to Department Policy. You will remain on probation until your Grade Point Average is a 3.0 or better. While on probation you will be ineligible for any Departmental Support.

In order to graduate you must earn a 3.0 or better grade point. You may retake the courses in which you did not earn a B or better, or you may take other courses to increase your GPA. If you have questions please feel free to contact me in regard to making an appointment with Dr. Subhash, Director of Graduate Studies.

And then 13 minutes later from Brad:

We need to talk about this.

Hmmm, maybe I should have just stayed in bed. Nice and callous Brad. I just sometimes wish that when my career is being flushed down the shitter, I?d get more then a six word sentence. I knew at the end of December that I was on academic probation but there is one key phrase though that has really caught my attention: ?While on probation you will be ineligible for any Departmental Support?. And with those 11 words a lot of things have changed. Apparently then, I?ve now lost my funding as well as financial aid. Not 100% sure on the funding part but if that is the case, then some things have changed here. There is no way I can afford grad school unsupported with 8 day?s notice so for the third time since this disaster known as mechanical engineer grad school started, I?m confronted with some options (and if the loss of funding holds true, grad school here isn?t one of them). In a way I?d feel sort of bad if I had to bail come this Friday since although MEEM B007C doesn?t revolve around me by any stretch of the imagination, my departure will cause some substantial delays as the realization that I was doing the work of two people takes hold (and no that?s not and over statement either, the proposal I work on was designed for two grad students plus Brad and at last check I count only me and ocassionally Brad in this particular trench).

I have to concede this whole situation is pretty ironic. I placed nearly everything else in my life on the back burner to bust my ass to win the approval of my superhero advisor who can quite literally walk on water; so much so that I?ve managed to effectively flunk out, mitigating everything to a bit of a moot point. And there are others who slowly plod along at their research but do better in classes that have only a peripheral relation at best to what happens in the lab. Furthermore, it isn?t that didn?t learn the material in my classes, I was just semi-chronically late on the homework but I did just fine on the exams.

But these are concerns for tomorrow I guess. Enjoy the movies (they may be the last).

I am so tired now, and for good reason since over the last two days I?ve maybe managed 5 hours of sleep. Why you ask? Good question. I wish I knew the answer. I just can?t fall asleep. I?ve spent hours just laying in bed, trying to drift off but to no avail. Take Today (capital ?T? since it has really been several days), I woke up Monday morning around 3 am and couldn?t go back to sleep. I decided to be productive and did some more work in the lab figuring that things would work out perfect for my impending vampire shift. By 6pm as Mack and I finished our ?good luck on the test? beers I was sort of tired. The plan was to sleep from 6pm to 2am and run the test. Well, I slept from 6:45 to 9 and stared at my ceiling from 9-midnight. And now six hours later, I?m a couple hours ahead on the test schedule and a strange sort of lucid tired. My short term memory is gone, but my higher functions still work (hopefully or I?m going to get electrocuted in an hour or two). I?m quite certain that if things go well with the test, I won?t get back home until like 7 or 8 tonight.

Maybe I broke the part of my brain that knows how to sleep. Or perhaps it is one of those mental background processes running like crazy. I know I?ve had a lot on my mind the last few weeks but this is getting retarded. I don?t know what my brain is working on but damn, it better be good. It better come back with some like ?Dean, check this out . . . I?ve been working on this all week and here?s how we?re going to change the orbit of the moon?. The only thing I?m afraid of is when it finally gets it figured out I?ll just up and pass out for a couple of days. Probably in mid conversation too. Blah blah blah BOOM, onto the lab floor goes Dean until Thursday. Just cover him up, he?ll be fine. Anyone else ever have this problem? I thought about rocking the sedatives but I?ve never had much luck there and plus that seems sort of dicey anyway.

Sort of bored here so I?ll just keep writing. Today?s test will hopefully successful on all fronts (which actually does happen from time to time). Thus far, the new much more user-friendly mass flow calibration system has been functioning perfectly although I did have a thermocouple pressure gauge finally die (it had been walking down that road for a while though). So far as the thruster goes, the first thing is I?m just hoping that the newly designed thruster body solves this excess discharge current problem we?ve been having in the last 4 tests (which amounted to failed tests). So the first notch in the stick will be does it pass the smoke test? There is so much more additional instrumentation that needed to be insulated and covered that it took me nearly 20 hours to assemble the thing. So if it turns on and stays on, then after the warm up period it is on to full power performance measurements and (additional) thermal characterization. The thrust stand is always a bit of a Pandora?s box but I think we?ve reached an understanding: if it screws me again, I?m going to recycle it into beer cans and copper pipe. The thermal data I?m looking for is required to finish up my JPC paper so I can submit it for journal publication. So if the performance works out, Alex is going to take a bunch of probe sweeps to round out his data set from our work over the summer. So I guess if all goes well, we?ll both have just about everything we need for two journal papers. Well, its time to light the cathode now.

The day before a thruster test is always interesting. The terror of ?did I hook it up right? begins to build and won?t pass until the thruster lights some 30 hours from now. I?ve sort of gotten used to it but signing off as good to go is always a bit scary (since it costs about $300 to see if I was right or not). I?ve spent the last half a week or so doing assembly and other things and I?m really looking forward to getting this bastard running. Anyway, I have some pictures that I took about 30 seconds ago.

Here?s the thruster all mounted and ready to rock.

What is not so ready to rock yet is all the power supplies and instrumentation. It is close, but still quite the mess.

All told, the rack on the right can throw out about 20kW and that is joined by another 20kW on the other side of the room which as you can guess surely only means one thing: an afternoon of fun with electrons. Anyway, back to work.

Since it seems to be all the rage on the internet now to post what classes you?re taking I guess I?ll fall in line and cough up the goods.

MY 5250 ? Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). Let?s see . . . I don?t really have a good reason for taking this class other then the fact that I?ve always wanted to play with a TE microscope. Now I get to for 4 hours a week.

MY 5550 ? Solid Surfaces. This one is a bit more relevant. This class looks at what happens when two dissimilar materials come into contact. This has far reaching implications for my research so it should prove to be worth while.

MEEM 6000 ? Graduate Seminar. Well, this course is required and mainly consists of going to listen to a guest speaker every week for an hour. Not a bad idea in principle, but it is on Thursdays which are usually test days so it just blows a hole in my schedule. And on top of that, the speakers topics are usually way out side of the realm that I work in (like I don?t do plastic deformation, intentionally anyway).

MEEM 6999 ? Doctoral Research. Heh, this is sort of a softball class. I didn?t want to overload myself again I filled the hole (credit wise) with 3 credits of research. There is really no additionally work that I need to do for that so it should be a relatively relaxing semester from an academic standpoint.

I’ve being really putting in some serious time in the lab over the last few days. I’ve been met with all sorts of interesting results (most of which were unexpected). The most recent happened during one of my experiments last night when I ended up making some sort of copper-bismuth brass on accident. I showed it to Brad this morning and later on he sent me this email:

Saw this quote from Thomas Edison today that seemed to apply to your work:

“I haven’t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.”

I had to laugh since it seems every week or so I sit in his office and we hatch some new plan, turn it into solid metal, then a few days later I destroy it. Although in this last test I managed not to destroy any thermocouples, heater wire or much aluminum. I remember talking to some prof in the elevator one day . . . I had parts of the thruster in my hand with a thermocouple attached to it. Usually when I get done using something, it is just scorched black with wire exposed looking it just emerged from the fires of hell. He said something like “Nice thermocouple”. In my typical wise-ass way, I said “Yeah, someone told me you can actually use these things more then once . . . don’t know what that’s all about”.

Yay, most everything now works again. Man was moving a huge pain in the ass. A lot of not so well documented problems were discovered during the process but I?d like to thank both my previous hosting company as well as my new hosting company for both giving it their all (even at 1am in the morning). Although CWS, you really need to upgrade mySQL and PHP.

That said, it is great to have a voice again on the internet, but that voice regrettably has to be cut short owing to the need that I have class at 9am in the morning.

Just an FYI, I’m switching providers today so things may be a bit strange around here. I think I’m all settled in now and things seem to be working. However, if something is broken, kindly drop me a line.