Yesterday I successfully defended my PhD thesis, "Oxide Inclusion Behavior at the Steel/Slag Interface."

You must now refer to me as

DOCTOR GEORGE.

I have an extra big plastic potting... uh... pot that we kept a succulent-type thing in, until it got infested with mealy bugs.  Since I wanted to do something with it, after trashing the grossness that was the dead, sticky, bug-encrusted succulent-whatever, I got a bunch of soil and planted sunflowers!  They were doing really well on our ancient ( Read more... )

I am in the last few months of my PhD, I think.  I think I might finish by September.  I'm working 11 hour days, mostly, though I spend a lot of that in front of the computer trying to get a fluid dynamics program to work.  Odd that I come home and spend more time in front of the computer.

I've made a water-oil tank for the thesis, the purpose of ( Read more... )

I haven't posted in this thing in a year and a half.

http://boingboing.net/profits_of_fear.html

Article about the inventor of the neutron bomb. Long, but absolutely fascinating.

A few weeks ago Nee and I are hiking home, taking the very steep hill out of CMU, rush hour traffic... rushing by, when my mom calls. My grandma probably has cancer. It's limited to her kidney, the doctor insists, so they should remove it right away. He wants to use a new technique (GROSSNESS ON) that makes a little hole, allowing them to reach ( Read more... )

The current discussion about where Nee and I should move to is between renting an apartment with character, no washer/dryer, more expensive, and no garage, and a rather boring and tight house with a fairly new washer/dryer, is cheaper, and has a garage (there are other places, but they do not assist the example). The latter also has the oldest ( Read more... )

Copper is a superconductor.

Aluminum is a semiconductor.

The reason why magnesium oxide has low heat conductivity is because it is known as a low heat conduction material, therefore it will have low heat conductivity.

So my PA driver's license expires at the end of this month.

I have not been sent a renewal form.

I cannot renew my license online until the information is current.

My address is not.

I cannot update my address online without a PIN number.

I cannot have a PIN number unless my information is current.

What?

I'm hopefully getting a bike for my birthday, and am looking into aluminum bikes (I like the lightness, also it's a little high tech... I'd shoot for carbon laminate purely for that reason, but that's really expensive). There are several nice bike shops in my part of Pittsburgh, and I'd like to get one from them. But the girlfriend, who is ( Read more... )