why did I put that off?
As I've mentioned recently, my second experiment is running. Ideally I should have the next one ready to run before stopping this one. Tomorrow marks one full week of that one running, which is the minimum amount of time we should leave it "cooking" (the first ran for about a week and a half). Logic says that I should have another two capsules filled and ready to go by now. Do I? Nope. Since the weekend was lost to obtaining shelves, assembling them, and hanging out with a couple of visiting couchsurfers from Hungary last night, my plan for today was to attend Italian class and then come back here, grab a quick bite to eat and then get to work setting up the next two capsules. Instead I got back from Italian class (starving--I'm usually hungry by the time class is out, since it is a three-hour session, but today's topic was centered around food-words, so I was even hungrier than usual) on time for my boss to say that he was finally ready to show me how to polish the first experiment, since the epoxy in which it was set last week has had time to cure. That took nearly two hours (I did grab a bit of cheese and a handful of cherry tomatoes on my way to the lab, or I'd not have survived) and then I just went "splat" for much longer than I should have, catching up on reading e-mail, LJ, facebook and even blogs, long past when I finished eating my cous cous, veg and nuts. Eventually I wended my way back to the lab and welded the first end shut on another couple of capsules. And you know, I rather enjoyed the process. I've now done enough of these that the process of pinching the ends shut into nice, symmetrical* triple junctions is second nature, and the welding is easier. I do suspect that the voltage was a tiny bit higher than necessary today, since so much of the gold melted, but since it didn't open up a hole, I didn't mess with it.
I did briefly consider going on to the filling process straight away. However, once started the process can't stop till the task is done and it is sealed shut, and it was already 22:00, so I sensibly quit for the night. With luck I can get them filled tomorrow, and have them ready to go before I need them. However, I think if I hadn't spent a couple of hours goofing off on line, I might have managed to get them done tonight. Sigh. Oh well, tomorrow is another day, and, perhaps, it will involve only my accomplishing each task I think I should do without putting it off...
*ok, so there is only one plane of mirror-symmetry in these, but it still counts as "symmetrical"
I did briefly consider going on to the filling process straight away. However, once started the process can't stop till the task is done and it is sealed shut, and it was already 22:00, so I sensibly quit for the night. With luck I can get them filled tomorrow, and have them ready to go before I need them. However, I think if I hadn't spent a couple of hours goofing off on line, I might have managed to get them done tonight. Sigh. Oh well, tomorrow is another day, and, perhaps, it will involve only my accomplishing each task I think I should do without putting it off...
*ok, so there is only one plane of mirror-symmetry in these, but it still counts as "symmetrical"