The · Thirteenth · Blackbird

Anyway, we took our bikes to New Hampshire last weekend, visiting our grandparents in Waterville Valley, where mountains abound. We got out on Saturday, and tried riding up Snow's Mountain, which is a ski slope with trails through the woods alongside. I say tried, because the parts we could ride on were very steep, so I walked up 3/4 of it; and because the trails through the woods were so rock-strewn that riding up them was nigh impossible. Oh, well. The ride back down was fun - very fast, except for the drainage ditches every 100 ft. we had to slow way down before.

So... have some pictures!

Here's Ryan, re-enacting a spill he took riding up the trail. He landed on a rock with the small of his back... not terribly fun for him. Truffles didn't seem to mind.

And here's me, riding downhill.

Ryan forgot his clip-in shoes, so he was riding on tiny pedals with regular street shoes... not fun! He was still doing better than I was, because he's crazy... until he tried taking a jump.

( Warning: Blood! )

But, he's no worse for the wear; next time, hopefully, he'll remember shoes!

It occurs to me that my last post was about my dying Titanium drive. It finally did die, after all; which is to say, the contacts stopped closing the IO circuit. So, I bought a new drive a while ago, which has an e-paper display on the side, keeping track of the used capacity. Yay, techno-gizmos!

My brother's post from Washington makes me feel guilty about not posting here more often. I'll try to keep on top of it a little better, since I should be more active this summer (since E has more free time, not doing homework and all).

Salud,
~T

I took the GRE this morning, and got (roughly) 660 Verbal / 750 Math.
Looks like I'll be heading to grad school, after a summer of applying
and another year of saving. Yay!!!

Things at work are shaky. For those who haven't heard, DayStar filed a
form 10-QSB with the SEC on Tuesday, describing a move from flexible
substrates to glass, the need to lay off 20+ people, and a move of
almost everything left to California. The move to CA and transition to
glass are contingent on funding, which has not yet been secured.

I still have my job, which I'm pleased about; there are rumors I'll even
be promoted to an Engineer (since I've been working in the capacity
thereof, despite being a Technician), which is very exciting. However,
if a promotion requires relocating to CA, it'd be very difficult to
accept. We'll see what the next few weeks bring.

Myself and a small cohort from work are evaluating algae-based biofuels
(diesel and gasoline) as an alternative direction, if DayStar leaves the
state. Pretty nifty science (you get more fuel out, for less energy in,
from algae than any other "crop"); we'll have to see about economic
viability.

Ryan is flying out to Washington on Wednesday to spend the summer (he'll
be back at the tail end of August), meaning I can use his bedroom for
diesel experiments. Fun!

Current Location:	24.97.39.9
Current Mood:	chipper

Had a bit of a data loss scare today. My flash drive (Cruzer Titanium) has a retractable USB plug, which is nifty (won't break off) but apparently imperfectly implemented. Yesterday morning, out of the blue, it stopped talking to my computer! When I tried plugging it in (to several computers, actually) it would flash a little, then Windows would report "USB device not recognized. The device has malfunctioned." Not cool!

Looked around online, and other people have had the same problem - it seems the circuitry is delicate, and wears down over time. Send it back to Sandisk, they'll replace it.

But... what about my data! I backed uip my e-mail in late September, but still - lotta e-mails since then. And the other stuff on there, too! Not cool!

Got home today, fidgeted with it, and finally got it to work again by partially retracting the USB plug. I should prolly get in touch with Sandisk about a replacement... scary.

Now I really want to build a big fileserver. I've started combing for components, hence the current location :-)
Needs eight SATA II (3.0Gb/s) hard drives (preferably 500GB+) and a hardware RAID 5 card. Plus, a motherboard with a PCIe slot on it. So... looking at around $2,500 here! Oh, well... have to see how much I can tuck away before student loan repayment starts.

Mmm... that's all for now.

LAN party at RPI the weekend before Thanksgiving (November 18-19). Join us if you're around, or can be!

Current Location:	216.52.208.185
Current Mood:	I have me a job!
Current Music:	Phantom of the Opera OST

Ryan's off replacing his clutch with Dad, hopefully we can work on my muffler/exhaust system next weekend. We'll see. Article in NYT today about grease-fueled vehicles. Has me thinking about hybrids, which still require petroleum, and alternatively-fueled diesels, which don't. Or, certainly, not as much - they may need some to warm up the engine and fuel at first, then switch to a cleaner source once warm. Considering I'm driving ~220 miles per week back and forth to work, I'm using a lot more fuel than I'd like to be, and cranking out a lot of carbon-, nitrogen-, and sulfur- based emissions. If I ever have kids, they'll probably have spare heads in place of digits!

For now, though, I intend to fix up my car and tune it to be as efficient as possible. Now that I have steady income, I can't play the "I'm poor" card when it comes to maintenance. More weekend errands...

Off to read, jog, bathe. Have a relaxing evening!

Tastes wonderful in coffee. Especially if the coffee's not crap to begin with; if it is, though, the caramel flavor obviates some of the nasty. Huzzah!

It's rainy and wet. I have to give all my money to the landlord for rent. But, I get another check on Thursday... and it's all mine!!!

Current Mood:

apathetic

• First day: read an inch-thick stack of research papers to ``fill my head with ideas''
  
• Second day: Showered a glass square with selenium (a carcinogen) in a high vacuum (5.5E-5 torr). Recognized overshoot and oscillations as signs of poor process control. Grr.
  
• Third day: Repeated Se deposition, tuning the PID parameters to achieve better control. It helped!
  
• Fourth day (Monday): Learned to use an old profilometer to measure the film thickness... most people at the company don't like it, but it's a cute machine... more personality than the automatic one-button machine whose screen is perpetually broken. Suckers! The AS-100 takes some coaxing, but it gets the job done. Like HAL.
  
• Rest of the week was spent with further tweaking of the PID parameters (went downhill, actually, but I think I've figured out the problem).
  
• Today, I got to make my first plasma (a big glowing cloud of hot hot gas). Too cool!
  

How was your week?

``Once-skeptical scientists were soon holding conferences to discuss the findings and to design research strategies. A large meeting in Brest, France, in November 2000 attracted researchers from around the world.''

Hehe. Brest. Hehe.
Reminds me of middle school, playing Diplomacy with Tad-dad. I always routed as much traffic as possible through Brest, for obvious reasons. Yay for Frenchies!!!

Anyway, I used to be a lot more zany and creative with my post titles, contents, and gibberish in general. Recently, when I do post, it's usually mundane boring stuff, like taking a walk or getting a job. Boring! And so, without further ado, on with the mundane drivel.

In an irritable mood this evening... tired, hungry, feel like stabbing somebody. Maybe after dark, I'll find a hobo. Or, just eat something and go to bed, because my brains want to jump out of my head. Like in Pirates II, which, contrary to the opinions of some loonies, was pretty good! Considering it's the sequel to a film based on an amusement park ride, they did a good job being clever. Sure, it was mostly based on slapstick, and lacked the shiny new feeling of the first one, but still... Octopus-head saved the day.

Off to sharpen a knife. I'll post later, from jail.

Whether you own a pair,
or love someone who does,
eat more yogurt!

For every pink Yoplait lid you mail in by July 31, 2006, Yoplait will donate 10¢ to the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Go! Go! Go!

~T

Current Location:	New apartment. Yay!!
Current Mood:	happy
Current Music:	Traffic out the window

http://www.rpi.edu/~kellet/Cryptography.html

Edit: RPI is deleting my webspace. New link:
http://valhalla.ftpaccess.cc/Cryptography.html

Current Mood:	tired
Current Music:	James Blunt - You're Beautiful

-Dave

Current Mood:	CT, CT, CT!
Current Music:	Generic IPT Shenanigans

Magical Trevor

many thanks to Ada for bringing this up... 7 days ago...

Current Mood:	it's chilly in Troy...
Current Music:	Eve 6 - Nocturnal

no delay, more like an auto-response... gotta love IPT :D

back to Pride & Prejudice...

~Trevor

Random Guy: "I hate to stereotype by your hair, but... Are you guys interested in some really good black hash?"
Trevor, Ethan: :confused: "No!"
Random Guy: "Sorry! Just thought maybe... anyway, have a good one!"
Us: "STFU! Communist hippie compsci dropout..."

...or somesuch...

--Ethan

Current Mood:

I'm still awake??