Of all the ways to get injured in the house, some how managed to make my head bleed on my couch. I had just dropped by the house to take a quick shower and change since I slept on Mack’s couch last night, and I’ll be damned if I didn’t stay long enough to get hurt. You see, I bribe people to do my laundry and stuff and my bed was all nicely made so I figured I’d hop in for a minute and relax before going back to work. Yeah, should have just crawled in rather then trying to dive in and do a 180 mid-air. I made about 90 degrees before my head came crashing down on the top of my couch. It hurt like hell of course, but I was pissed when I found out it drew blood. It actually is not a bad as it looks; its just a little hole. Good thing it happened today too since this month was running out of days and god forbid I go a month with out sustaining some sort of head injury. Now if only my eye would stop twitching . . .

*yawn*
Sometimes this experimental work is really boring. I’m trying out a new heater and to avoid killing it before its prime, I’m really taking it easy with the welder (the welder is connected to the heater). 125 minutes in and I still have about 100 degrees to go before the thruster turns on. On the up side though, it has given me this opportunity to prove the world that I am indeed still alive.

What a week. I’m not sure if I’m burned out, or just turbo tired; probably the latter. The ISP Lab has done some fantastic work this week though (at the expense of 17 hour days). In any case, we fired the first documented bismuth cathode / bismuth thruster on Earth at like 1am this morning.

I can’t help but think that I’m totally working during the rouge glory days of the ISP Lab. That is just awesome. I’m sure as Brad’s program evolves, people will no longer use arc welders as power supplies and wire every thing that can crank out any sort of useful voltage into the tank. Anyway, I’m both honored and humbled to be a part of some crazy bleeding edge research program. The best part is, when it was first proposed to me it was under the supposition that the answer to the bismuth problem may be “no, this won’t work”; hah, well I know now that is not at all true. I run a bismuth thruster several times a week and let me tell you, that is one of the most strange things you’ll ever see.

Heh, nothing special about the title, just listening to some System of a Down when I wrote the opening sentence. I’m currently sitting at the second least used desk in my room writing this. In fact, this is only the second time my laptop has sat so close to my desktop computer. Why does this matter? My uber powerful, yet seldom used desktop computer is where my Year 24 video is being edited. You know, the video I promised like a gabillion years ago? Yeah, well I was working on it again. This damn real work thing has really been stifling what artistic ability I have. So anyway, no I didn’t forget about the video (hard to when it takes up 2.21 GB).

Yes, I’m off the Vampire shift now for this next day or two, and this is what happens . . . I’m up super duper ultra late with little recourse to fix it.

With less then two weeks until our JPC paper deadlines, the lab has now offically(?) gone into 24 hour a day operation. In what is undoubtably shocking, I’m on the night shift. Tonight’s task was to get Makela’s bismuth cathode running again (which it is) and for me to also run another thruster test if there was still time before the day shift comes on (10 am). Well, that’s not looking too likely at the moment since I opted to make some bismuth handling changes that will require welding which I can’t do until 8 am. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to wait until my next shift.

The down side of the vampire shift is that you get to interact with all the creepy night time wildlife. No, I’m not talking about some of those creepy grad students, rather I’m more concerned with the bird eating spiders that also call B007C home. We keep trying to kill the beasts by dropping boxes of metal and other heaving things on them, but they are getting pissed and are throwing things back at us. Bastards. Anyway, the battle continues . . .

Update: 8:42am Just got home and I have to admit, it is very strange to be having the usual after work beer at 8:30 in the morning. Time for bed though, since I’ve been awake for about 22 hours. G’night.

So yeah, I’m currently sitting in a tent, drinking PBR and playing rummy at a KOA campground down in Petoskey Michigan. My good friend Jason Walter is getting hitched tomorrow in Traverse City but we didn’t quite make it there tonight. Perhaps tomorrow?