As the last post indicated, I flew home for Thanksgiving this year.  Unbeknownst to me though my parents had drastically trimmed down their fleet of available vehicles leaving only one for each of them - which is a very reasonable thing to do.  There was a spare work truck but that monster gets such horrid mileage I’m afraid Al Gore may descend from the heavens and kick in my windshield.
There was only one thing to do: ride a motorcycle instead.  I’ve been looking at buying my neighbors bike for a while so this was the perfect opportunity to check it out.  At some point or another you may have heard my say I know how to ride a motorcycle.  That was a lie.  Sure I have ridden before, but it was not pretty.  So on Friday I drove the land yacht to the DMV and passed the motorcycle written test.  With things all on the legal up and up, I drove back home, walked across the street and hopped on a crotch rocket.  Getting proficient didn’t take long and in no time I was cruising in traffic.

Fast forward a few days and I’m totally in love.  I’ve been using the bike as pretty my sole mode of transportation for my various trips into Rochester and uptown to Kasson.  Yesterday was the last day though as when I took my gloves off my hands were getting pretty blue from the cold seeping through.

Here’s a picture of the bike.  It is a 2001 Honda CBR 600 F4i and with any luck it will be mine fairly soon (now that winter is here and all).

Ahh heading home, as in back home long ago, for the first time in 10 months.  I decided to fly since the price was right.  $245 gets me 5 miles from where I am to within 15 miles of where I want to be.  Since gas is so damn expensive, I figure I would come out on top by flying.  Math is simple: $180 in gas + one speeding ticket > $245.  Fly it is.  Anyway, I’ll be in the Kasson area until next Thursday so give me a ring.

*sigh*  It will be another two weeks until I can subject myself to more underwater brutalization.  Unfortunately with Tech going out of session for a little while for Thanksgiving I’ll have to resort to falling down the stairs with chicken wire and cinder blocks to simulate the weekly beating. Last night’s underwater hockey was the usual blood bath - chopped up hand, several boots to the face/torso and someone’s vain attempt to gouge my eye out with their elbow.  I thought for sure I would have a worse black eye than I do today, in fact it is actually not too bad at all - just sort of a bruise that looks suspiciously like the outline of a goggles.  Not to be too graphic but my contact was actually ripped off my eye and somehow ended up in my goggles where I was easily able to recover it, toss it back in and get underway.  Talk about a one in a million chance there.

Dear Advanced Vacuum Systems, in honor of the catastrophic failure of one of the pieces of equipment I desperately need to complete my PhD, I bring you a 2 minute primer on how to correctly size a friggen bolt so it doesn’t shear off and shoot large pieces of metal across the room:

(source)

Shear stress on a bolt:

The maximum shear stress theory ..The theory associated with Tresca and Guest.

This is very relevant to ductile metals. It is conservative and relatively easy to apply. It assumes that failure occurs when a maximum shear strength attains a certain value. This value being the value of shear strength at failure in the tensile test. In this instance it is appropriate to choose the yield point as practical failure. If the yield point = S_y and this is obtained from a tensile test and thus is the sole principal stress then the maximum shear stress S_sy is easily identified as S_y /2 . (ref to notes on Mohrs circle)..

S_sy = S_y /2

In the context of a complicated stress system the initial step would be to determine the principle stress i.e. σ₁, σ₁ & σ₃-
in order of magnitude σ₁ > σ₂ > σ₃..
then the maximum shear stress would be determined from

Maximum Shear Stress = Ï„ _max
= Greatest of ( σ₁ - σ₂ ) / 2 : ( σ₂ - σ₃ ) / 2 : ( σ₁ - σ₃ ) / 2 = ( σ₁ - σ₃ ) / 2

The factor of safety selected would be

FoS = S_y / ( 2 . Ï„ _max ) = S_y / ( σ₁ - σ₃ )

The theory is conservative especially if the yield strength is more then 50% of the tensile strength..

For the simple case of a tensile stress σ_x combined with a shear stress τ _xy . The design FOS +

FoS = S_y / ( σ_x ² + 4. Ï„ _xy ² )^1/2

For a case of a component with σ ₁ > σ₂ both positive (tensile) and with σ₃ = 0 then the maximum shear stress = ( σ_x - 0 ) / 2

I made some of Mom’s Chicken Soup tonight with Cindy and while the chicken was boiling, she showed me this website that pretty much combination of things I was looking for:

• Education
• Touch screen game (we were on the kiosk)
• Helping fight world hunger

I give you: freerice.com

[23:44:30] Andy: i should move to saudi arabia
[23:44:47] ShiftyEyesMI: i want to move to Mars

I resumed my attendance at underwater hockey a few weeks ago and I’m glad I did. Not only is it a great workout but it is also a subtle form of Fight Club. People are constantly at the surface bleeding and holding throbbing wounds from getting grated like cheese on the pool bottom, chopped up like cheap steak by a stick or getting kicked in the face like a red headed stepchild. As such, every Wednesday morning my fists look like I spent most of the night punching a bucket full of drywall screws. Look around at people’s hands - if they look pretty beat up, they might be on The Team.

Last night I had a bit of a break away and enough air to potentially do something with it. Just then, an Angel of Judgment (could have also been someone from the other team) descended from the surface and crushed my head with their club, errr hockey stick. Right across the temple. Everyone knows things sound strange underwater but the sound this made was really different than you would expect. Instead of a meaty thud similar to striking a honeydew melon, it was more like the sound of hitting a coconut with your fist - higher pitched, less substantial sounding. It was quite fascinating and it was not followed by the usual ringing of the ears that follow my head’s collisions with objects. Of course I had to immediately surface but I did eventually make up for it with a goal later on. Unfortunately it is still sore but no visible points or really regions of glory. Perhaps next week.

Why hello again.

Starting off: so we had some problems with unauthorized access at the Manor about a month ago so it was clear the compound needed to be secured. As I was setting off to install new locks and make 10,000 keys for the small army that lives here it was suggested we do something a bit more drastic. Biometric fingerprint locks. Oh hell yeah. So a quick survey on the internet and it was clear that this is actually reasonable solution to the problem. So $245 later, i have a Houghton proof biometric fingerprint identification lock on the kitchen door. Here’s the pic:

Yes that is right, it has the cool blue bad-ass factor as well. That alone should deter some of the riffraff. Hahaha just kidding, this is Hancock which basically has lunatics crawling out of the woodwork. Well now they stop at the door anyway.

Also, an odd sort of demo kiosk showed up at the house last year. We finally integrated a computer into it thereby turning it into an effective mp3 player / storage unit for the 1st floor. The best part though is the touch screen interface. Sure it can get to be a bit annoying sometimes, but properly scaled scrollbars and such makes it quite palatable.

Of course old habits die hard and Paint on a touch screen computer is absolutely irresistible (we actually just put a link to it on the desktop). Naturally, our true maturity shines brightly through.

Oh how I’m going to miss college.
But hmmm, it is snowing now - and accumulating - won’t miss the weather that is for sure.