And so it ends
So it has come full circle. I've got the huge two-and-a-half floors, three bedroom apartment entirely to myself again as I once did before. Except this time all the furniture's gone, so the place feels even more spacious and echo-ful. 'Tis truly the Bat Cave of legend, minus the Bat-Pole. I've given an honest try at sliding down the banister, purely as a replacement Bat-Pole, but it just cannot be done.
Anyway, last day of work today. End project was a bit disappointing: We'll still be publishing something, but at the very least it it will take months before it's ready. Most of the work I did turned out to be inconclusive for a variety of reasons. I still wouldn't have traded it for anything though, even if I did figure out that it's not exactly what I want to do in the long run. Lots of fairly awesome experience was gained, and some truly epic lap moments:
- Trying to recover a sample from the drain with James, and subsequently yanking a water pipe out of the wall spraying huge amounts of water all over the room and everyone in it while we frantically ran around trying to find the emergency shut-off valve.
- Hogging the building's only two x-ray machines, at the same time, for roughly a week straight.
- Breaking one of the x-ray machines. Then the other.
- Freaking out when I thought the room was flooding with x-rays.
- Spinning sealed vacuum tubes full of glowing, molten brass.
- Using picric acid. At government labs, they give the researchers full safety courses and lectures on using the stuff. James's safety course for me: "Put on a lab coat. Oh, and maybe some goggles if you're a girly-man."
- Literally running through the halls on the second floor, down the stairs three-at-a-time, through the halls on the first floor, and finally into the SEM room because we had a sample that oxidized in air like crazy and wanted to get it into the SEM before it all went to shit. We ended up freaking out some people in the building quite thoroughly.
- Rigging the tensile machines to run backward so that they crushed pieces of metal between two huge plates.
- Watching our rigged tensile machine fail, shooting a nail-sized piece of metal clear across the room as it slipped. "Err...saftey glasses, people!"
- Sending some samples off to be cut by a professional company, only to have the magnesium-cerium returned with a note saying, "Attempt to cut MgCe failed - resulted in a mini-volcano." Our response: "Sweet! Let's try it." Trying to drill a hole through MgCe did, indeed, produce a mini-volcano. Molten metal is not fun to clean up.
So that's it. Oh, news of the day: I found out the the guy who did the voice for Powdered Toast Man is the same guy who did the voice for Bird Man, who is the same guy who did the voice for Space Ghost. Also, Frank Zappa once did the voice of the Pope on Ren and Stimpy. I'd let Zappa be my Pope anyday, just as long as I could be renamed Moon Unit.
everyone needs their own light they can follow
Anyway, last day of work today. End project was a bit disappointing: We'll still be publishing something, but at the very least it it will take months before it's ready. Most of the work I did turned out to be inconclusive for a variety of reasons. I still wouldn't have traded it for anything though, even if I did figure out that it's not exactly what I want to do in the long run. Lots of fairly awesome experience was gained, and some truly epic lap moments:
- Trying to recover a sample from the drain with James, and subsequently yanking a water pipe out of the wall spraying huge amounts of water all over the room and everyone in it while we frantically ran around trying to find the emergency shut-off valve.
- Hogging the building's only two x-ray machines, at the same time, for roughly a week straight.
- Breaking one of the x-ray machines. Then the other.
- Freaking out when I thought the room was flooding with x-rays.
- Spinning sealed vacuum tubes full of glowing, molten brass.
- Using picric acid. At government labs, they give the researchers full safety courses and lectures on using the stuff. James's safety course for me: "Put on a lab coat. Oh, and maybe some goggles if you're a girly-man."
- Literally running through the halls on the second floor, down the stairs three-at-a-time, through the halls on the first floor, and finally into the SEM room because we had a sample that oxidized in air like crazy and wanted to get it into the SEM before it all went to shit. We ended up freaking out some people in the building quite thoroughly.
- Rigging the tensile machines to run backward so that they crushed pieces of metal between two huge plates.
- Watching our rigged tensile machine fail, shooting a nail-sized piece of metal clear across the room as it slipped. "Err...saftey glasses, people!"
- Sending some samples off to be cut by a professional company, only to have the magnesium-cerium returned with a note saying, "Attempt to cut MgCe failed - resulted in a mini-volcano." Our response: "Sweet! Let's try it." Trying to drill a hole through MgCe did, indeed, produce a mini-volcano. Molten metal is not fun to clean up.
So that's it. Oh, news of the day: I found out the the guy who did the voice for Powdered Toast Man is the same guy who did the voice for Bird Man, who is the same guy who did the voice for Space Ghost. Also, Frank Zappa once did the voice of the Pope on Ren and Stimpy. I'd let Zappa be my Pope anyday, just as long as I could be renamed Moon Unit.
everyone needs their own light they can follow