I did three things today I’ve never done before:

#1. Compressed a metal with 270,000 lbs of pressure.

#2. Attempted to sinter aforementioned metal.

#3. Shot a 45 in the SDC gun range.
Obviously #3 was the highlight of the day.  Rob, one of my fellow ISP’ers is a bit of a gun nut so he invited me to go shoot with him tonight.  That was awesome.  I never want to find myself down range of the business end of one of those things.
Tonight is another night in the ISP lab doing some more powder metallurgy. I already cobbled together my vacuum “oven” so over the next 3 hours I’m going to cook the crap out of it.

Wow, today was quite the random full day. To start things off, I scored an interview with Rockwell Collins yesterday at the career fair so 10:05am found me sitting face to face in the library talking with a recruiter. Just before that though, I ran into my old friend Dani just outside the interview room. I hadn’t seen her in years so we made some lunch plans. The interview went well though I wasn’t really being interviewed for a job they were on campus recruiting for. However, I think I wove a coherent enough story to land my CV in the hands of Rockwell Collins’ advance technology development team which with any luck will be contacting me in the not to distant future.

After the interview was over, I gave an in depth lab tour to my friend Phil who was in town recruiting for Boston Scientific. For some reason I do a better job explaining things when I have a shirt and tie on. Go figure. Once Phil bailed, Dani took me out for lunch down a Pilgrim River Steak House. It was really great to catch up with her and all of our mutual 1st generation college friends. Sounds like there might be a little DHH reunion in the making for this weekend.

With a food coma in full effect, she dropped me back off at the lab where hopefully I was going to get something done (other then walking around looking hot in my suit that is). I dropped in to talk to Brad quick while I still had my tie on and the first thing he said was “You go to court today?”. Heh, then he said that when I saw me all dressed up the first thing he thought was “Will the defendant please rise”. Lol, anyway I sort of gave him the quick rundown of how the next day or so is going to go. My die for some thruster parts was done so I lugged that 45 lb monster a 1/2 mile down to the M&M where I will be doing the powder metallurgy.

I hiked back to the lab, fixed a mass flow controller that I probably broke, did some paper work and waited for my molybdenum powder to arrive. Once it showed up I again marched back down to the M&M dropped it off an fleshed out tomorrow’s plan with Steve who runs the powder metallurgy lab. I’m sure you’re wondering exactly what is tomorrow’s plan . . . well it goes something like this:

Step 1: Crush the ever living hell out of the molybdenum powder

Step 2: Bake on 1,000 C for 1-4 hours until sintered

Tomorrow should be a fascinating day though since it I’ve never done any of this sort of thing before and if it works my research will be sitting in pretty good shape.

When I was doing my usual after work solo walk up to the SDC to workout I sort of took a mental survey of how things were going; more of a to do list if you will. As was hiking up past the forestry building in the incipient spring air (hey, I can be optimistic right?) I realized that everything is going pretty well for me right now. I finally feel like I have enough appendages to stick in all the pots. With managing the house, my research and trying to have some social life, I really felt like I needed a secretary or something since it always seems that I’m running around putting out some fire that cropped up out of nowhere. Anyway, everything just sort of feels in control now. You know when you fly - just after you finish landing and the reverse thrust vectors are turned off and you just sort of cruise into the gate . . . it is something like that. Sure there are still areas that need work, but at this particular instant (sans a phone call or email while I write this) I’m satisfied with my progress.

There’s been a major development concerning my graduation date and it would seem that my supposed intention of staying college forever will continue for just a bit longer. I’ve been invited to work down at the Jet Propulsion Lab for a couple of months this summer and lend a hand firing a Russian built bismuth thruster. Their design is significantly different than mine but nonetheless the powers that be though I would be an asset on the testing team. To say the least I’m both honored and completely thrilled at the chance. If all goes as planned, I’ll be down on the Caltech campus from mid-June to mid-August cranking away at the JPL hopefully getting some amazing data. The most longitudinally beneficial part (besides excellent networking opportunities) is the fact that my PhD dissertation then will essentially be the authoritative work on the subject of bismuth Hall thrusters. The only casualty of this opportunity is of course my May graduation date being pushed back to August or early September. Very small price to pay in my book. I still plan on walking in May though and with any luck most of my dissertation should be done then anyway.

Well that’s it for this installment.  For the night I have an evening of sipping a couple beers and sifting through some rather dense material on powder metallurgy. Should be interesting. Hopefully I can dedicate a little more time to writing on here. The funny thing is any given week I probably mentally compose 30 entries they just never make it out my fingers and onto the internet.

Yet one more Winter Carnival has come to pass; my final one as an MTU student in fact. All I can say is that I believe I’m becoming mortal since I can’t wring out the last few hours before the sun comes up day in and day out. I have to admit, that is certainly for the better. Naw, just kidding, I feel like an old man.

So far as previous Carnies have been this one was pretty tame for me. Mainly because I had to work which is always in the back of my mind: never be late again. Big buzz kill, but that buzz should probably be killed anyway (though it was almost dead on its own).

The only causality I induced was the accidental electrocution of a dog. I’m sure some eyes perked up at that one but it is actually quite benign, well for me anyway. You see, I was not informed that Mack had just installed a new shock collar on his dog and while attempting to call out Lynn and him (they went to be way way too early) I was jumping around and barking like an idiot. Meanwhile on the other side of the door, poor Kyla was barking back but getting shocked into next week. Oops. She’s fine but probably still a bit shell shocked.

The aftermath of Carnival has been murder on me though. After basically a week of doing nothing but self destruction, it is safe to say that I was sweating blood and rum during my Monday evening stint in the gym. That was pure hell but I made the equivalent of a suicide pact with myself that if I’m going to burn down the town the night before then I am certainly going to rip it up in the gym the following day. It is sort of like aversion therapy since 3 hours up there is enough to condition anyone to think twice about cracking that last beer.

In any case, the parties were good and I must say my house has some very talented musicians. Dan and Mark rocked out at the White House (near campus) last Thursday night and I must say a guitar and a violin is an amazing combination.

I was there too . . . very happy from the looks of it:

I’m doing some hydrostatic extrusion testing (basically how much pressure do I have to apply to get bismuth to pour out) and during pump down a few minutes a go I was trying to be especially industrious and clean the next test setup that i’m using tomorrow. Long story short, I ended up getting a shot of acetone in my mouth. Yeah, don’t do that. It tastes pretty nasty. But alas, work continues . . .