There’s just something cool about putting 60,000 watts into something the size of a watermelon. This morning I was a being a fly on the wall down in the foundry where Adam Bike and his senior design group are working on some mold cooling techniques. Being the pic whore I am, I had my camera with of course and I recorded a minute or so of video during the actual pouring of the iron into a crucible and then into the mold. I have to say though, metal casting is about the least scientific thing I’ve ever seen. Not to mention it is dirt and loud in there too. Right up my ally. Next time they do it, they’re going to let do some of the pouring (I didn’t have on the requisit steel towed boots today).

In other news: T-minus one week to spring break . . .

In the glove compartment of my truck, I keep a bottle of Bud Light. Why you ask? It stems from the remote nature of the place I call home. I figure at some point, I will smoke a deer or a bear or something and do enough damage to render my truck inoperable. Nothing like a car accident to get the nerves going so the idea is to sit there, have a beer and relax until the tow-truck / cops arrive. However, this morning I opened my truck to discover some foul smell which could be only one thing: frozen Bud Light. Luckily the bottle didn’t break, some beer just leaked out from under the still sealed cap. So this morning’s 7:30 am breakfast before my Advanced Heat Transfer exam consisted of Count Chocula cereal and a slushy Bud Light. Gotta love the morning.

In my early afternoon shower, I decided to sit down in the tub and take a little break. You know, just let gravity and the hot water do their thing. So I looked down at my partially contracted leg and you know what? The femur is a big damn bone. I’m really glad I have a couple or I’d be really short.

I captured this pic a few days ago. I love being an operator on the Scanning Electron Microscopes. Brad sort of makes fun of me for it, but I contend it is an extremely valuable asset (and yeah, I believe he thinks so too, but it is still funny), But I love it that you could hand me anything and within 15 minutes, I could tell you exactly what it was made of; for whatever that is worth.

Something is ravaging my body . . . just when I feel better and try to do something all the life just gets sapped out of me. Its been like this for 2-3 weeks now. Shit. I think I’m going to go in on Monday and have the vampires draw some blood and hand if off to the witch doctors to see if it is indeed mono. I should probably get back to my 15 hour nap now - need to get that in before I go to bed.

Winter carnival: everyone’s favorite time of year. This one was probably the best on record for me. I managed to go out, have a good time, and still make in to work on time everyday. There are many stories floating around out there that should probably just die, but I’ll share one of the highlights.

There was some live music at this house called “The White House” (I’ll give you one guess why it was called that). Anyway, me and several others spent some real quality time there getting pretty tuned up. My good friend Webb was scheduled to arrive in town around 1:30 am so we instructed him to meet us downtown at the Dog (the White House is near campus). Three of us decided to leave the party a bit early to make sure we ran into Webb downtown. Since it wasn’t all that warm out and at that instant we weren’t really all that great at walking I thought it would be a good idea to attempt to hitchhike. So I toss my thumb up and some Jeep looking thing drives by, slows down and stops. That’s right kiddies: it’s a Houghton cop.

COP: “What’s up guys?”
ME: “Ummmm, hey, can you give us a ride down to the Dog?”
COP: [pause] “Sure, what the hell.”

So in a personal first we hop in the cop car under our own accord; me riding shotgun, the other two in the back. Low and behold, it wasn’t a trick either, he dumped us off on the corner right by the Dog. Ahhhh, have to love it when cops are cool.

That’s just a little sampling of some of the stories. As I mentioned before, there are many others our there and I can say with out a shred of doubt, I will not be running for political office any time soon.

But the picture of the week was probably this one taken on Wednesday night as we stopped in the lab to grab my digital camera.

Got Winter Carnival?
Watch it Live

While I was aimlessly strolling around my room, I cast an eye (or two) out the array of windows I have in the turret and noticed that I could actually see some stars. Usually during the nebulous expanse of a season known as winter, there is little to suggest that there is actually anything above the persistent layer of clouds. Some place deep in the back of my mind were few seldom have the courage to go, came the astonishing realization that I could possibly use the enormous telescope that usually sits in the corner near my desk and the 3 seven foot tall windows in the turret to take a closer look at these star things from the comfort of my own room.

As a first cut, I cleaned up some of the lenses, by my 8” primary mirror is pretty dirty and I don’t have the correct stuff to clean it here and since cleaning it requires removal and re-collimation I’ll just hold off until tomorrow when collimating it is easier. However, I was able to get a pretty good look at the moon before it went out of sight behind the roof line so I think this is actually going to work out pretty well.

I haven’t attended to many house parties this year but last night my friend Dan hosted a Sunglasses party. Great times, here’s a couple of pics (more on the facebook). And I swear I don’t have Lindsey’s pants on in this picture . . .

So the windows seem to be helping. The gas bill, who’s arrival I traditionally dread, darkened my doorway yesterday with some surprising results. Last year for the same time period, I used 1389 CCF worth of gas verses this year’s 554 CCF. The catch though, is it has been 22% warmer of the same time period but a 60% reduction in gas use would seem to indicate other factors in play. So I guess we’ll mark this one under the “win” column.

Since I’m writing this at the KBC, I feet it only prudent to extend an invitation to everyone to try the Winter Carnival beer they brought online yesterday. Wow, the Acme Anvil Ale is pretty much the reason that the entire campus of MTU was moving a bit slow today. Great stuff, but after two, I’d suggest a designated driver.

In the research realm, I finally kicked the last of my drawings out the door for the device I’m calling Thruster Two. The first iteration worked, but not exactly like it should. I’ve spent the last few months trying to wring out all the stuff to be learned from the previous versions weaknesses and from the ashes has risen Thruster Two. Though there is still some material lead times, I should have 90% of the thruster in my hand by mid next week. In a perfect world, this should be all I need to complete my PhD if I stick the landing. We’ll see though, the part count is at 20 (not including fastening parts) so that is a lot of things to get 100% correct. On the other hand though, the ideas have been rattling around / maturing in my cranium for quite a while so hopefully the slow and exquisitely deliberate approach will pay dividends. Along the same lines, in a move that basically stopped the rotation of Earth, I called for two parts to be made of aluminum! The former machinist saw that and nearly fell over. You see, in all the years I’ve worked in the ISP lab, I’ve never had anything made of aluminum due to its low melting point (1221 F) but today I needed some mounting plates that shouldn’t see above 800 F so it is safe to make from aluminum. But enough of this, there is beer to drink here.