Sunday, July 30, 2006

So I just got back from a 2 day excursion up to Olympia to check out my dads new 44' yacht. Its pretty nice. Has a bedroom in the back, a place where you can sleep in the V-berth in front, a living room with couch and a chair and tv in the middle, a galley, two bathrooms, and a dinette. Ohh, and a sun deck, and upper bridge. Everything was very classy with lots of teak wood trim and furnature and stuff.

Dwight and Janise came down from Seattle to show my dad and mom how to do some things, most notably the docking manouvers. It was nice to see them again. I havn't seen them really since they took my family for a ride up in Alaska for a vacation one summer. Everything went pretty well while they were teaching my dad how to do stuff, but the next day when they wern't around anymore, things sort of fell apart. There was lots of yelling involved with my dad giving poor instructions for what he wanted done, and the rest of the *cough* crew *cough* not knowing what the hell he was doing. Turns out.

So I'm spending this week at home. My dad's birthday was yesterday (a fact which he commemorated by saying what a great present it was for Dan Mouer to buy half his boat for him). He seemed to have a lot of fun on his boat. The rest of the week was supposed to be spent putting my airplane back together, but one of the critical components (the engine) isn't going to be done until around Tuesday. There are plenty of things to do before it gets here, but its somehow less satisfying cleaning grime off of baffles so they can be painted than it is bolting the enigne back onto the plane so the tail doesn't fall down anymore. Its not looking like I'll be able to fly it back out to Pullman. *sad face.*

Shannon, one of a very short list of friends who still comes back to Battle Ground for her summers is going to be flying back into town on Tuesday from California. She was down there for a family reunion, and brought one of her friends Aaron Rough with her. I met Aaron when I went up to visit Jeff, Shannon and Brad up at Whitworth last year. He's a nice guy, I like him. He gave me a chicken parmesean recipe which I've been living off of for the last several months. (mmm... chicken...). I may get to visit him too if he's still in town.

Anyway, I'm going to be here for a week, then a week after that, Cortni will be back in Pullman. I've decided that I miss her when she's not around. Among other things, the number of confections that appear in my apartment drops considerably when she's not in town. I think some time soon after that my roommate Dee is going to be showing up for the semester. It'll be weird living with someone again. I like Dee though, he's a good guy. Some of his friends annoy me though. I suppose you can't really be too choosey when you live in a town with a highschool graduating class of 7. (I saw a picture of his graduating class and thought it was his family or somethnig.)

I suppose I should make like a baby and head out. It's getting late, and I'm getting lazy-- er, tired.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

So I read something that made me mad today. Its a news article posted on the BBCs website about a 16 year old girl who was hanged for "crimes against chastity." W.T.F. Its insane! A girl had a crappy childhood, and was hanged for getting raped and mouthing off to a judge. Its completely unconscionable. Its the sort of thing that makes me not care if we go to war with the bastards. If it was a lynching, then it could be chalked up to a few misinformed people, but it was a state appointed judge who sentenced her, completely legally, to be hanged. There is NO WAY that a government should be allowed to do that.

Recently there has been a lot of talk about how the US shouldn't go around telling other countries that they can't have nukes. To my way of thinking, any country that is run by a bunch of fundamentalist psychos shouldn't be allowed to exist. Iran is technically a democracy. They have a president and cabinet composed of people who are elected by the people. They also happen to have a "Supreme Leader" who is put into power by a council of Islamic Elders from among their number. The Supreme Leader is the commander in chief of the Iranian military. He also gets to decide who is allowed to run for the presidency. Doesn't that seem a lot like the Democratic party getting to pick the Republican candidate? I'm no expert, but it seems to me that when a religious fanatic gets to decide who will be runing for public office, it isn't likely to be a fair election. "And now ladies and gentlemen, you get to pick between Fundamentalist-Supporter-Number-1, and Fundamentalist-Supporter_Number-2!" Idiocy. Oh, and more idiocy: "the legal age of sexual consent is nine" NINE! WHAT THE HELL KIND OF SEXUAL DECISION CAN A NINE YEAR OLD MAKE?!

In other news, I discovered that I botched the wafer that Kyle and I have put a whole bunch of time into. Turns out that the oxidation process thats required for the boron diffusion process requires more time than we gave it in BOE. Long story short, we shielded our wafer from the boron we intended to implant on it. One weeks work down the drain. Bah. Tomorrow I'm going to go home for a week, so I don't think I'll get started on another wafer until I get back.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

So I've been a slacker, and haven't kept this blog up to date. I'm a horrible person etc. etc.

I received some good news from my boss yesterday. She seems to like what I've been doing and offered me a job during the school year taking whatever hours I like. I really like the idea of having some income during the school year to cover all the random stuff that pops up. I might even try out some MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer On-line Role Playing Game).

So tonight I went into the "office" (read: clean room) and prepped a wafer to apply a coating of "Protek". I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I get the impression its a sort of plastic that you can spin on the wafer like photoresist. With any luck, it'll be a pretty easy process. Kyle told me that the process takes about 3 hours to do, which I'm not opposed to on principle, but I have a sneaky suspicion that it'll be about 1 hour of work, and about 2 hours of sitting on my hands waiting for it to bake or some such.

I'm also learning about the award wafers they make for graduate students who did their thesis on a MEMS related topic at WSU. They make two of 'em for each person, one that they get, the other that goes into a display outside the MEMS lab. It has their name, and their thesis title and year they did their thing, all in gold plating on a wafer. The process is pretty cool. Turns out they don't apply the gold in the areas they want (like gilding or gold leaf or whatever its called), but instead sputter gold (blast it off a brick using plasma in a vacuum chamber) onto the wafer, then using a photolith process and a developer, they disolve the gold away from the spots they don't want it. Pretty neat, really. I wanted to see if I could make one for myself or for my friends (completely unrelated to WSU), and it looks like I might be able to, but it'll cost me like 50 bucks.

I gave my presentation in Anthro 201: Music in Society today. It went well. I started it by playing the opening few bars of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Bach. Sort of a Phantom of the Opera theme. Then I gave a really short history of classical music, playing period music for the class as I talked. I had Gregorian chant into a Bach Invention (with the dual melodies, one played on each hand on a piano) then into symphony music. It was very well receved, and I got 25/25 points for it. The paper I wrote for the class (sort of a final) I scored 98/100, which I'm pretty pleased about. I only got an 82 on the second test though, so I'm not exactly sure what my grade is going to be, but it'll either be a B+ or an A-. In hind sight, the class was ok for the most part, but really uninteresting to me. I laughed when I read the course evaluation. I've filled a bunch of them out for my engineering classes, but the ones in the Anthro department were pretty different. The engineering ones are filled with questions like: "The instructor presented the material in an understandable way", "I have learned the material presented" and the like. This one had a bunch of "After taking this class, I feel that I have a greater appreciation for different cultures" and "The instructor presented a non-biased view toward the material." A subtle change, but it ammused me. There's no such thing as a biased view towards engineering, except perhaps in a favorite method of solving a problem or some such.

So last spring I was roped into seeing the film version of the Broadway play "Rent," which is about a bunch of unemployed gays and transvestites who all have AIDS. After seeing it, I felt like I should shower. Now, I'm not homophobic, or anything like that, but the whole thing gave the impression that if you're successful, generous, or healthy, you are somehow inferior. Long story short, it made me angry. Today, a girl in my Anthro class gave her presentation on the movie. I probably should have seen it coming. In class she often piped up with rather feminist points of view, and brought up "socioeconomic class" several times. (I've found that anyone who uses the term "socioeconomics" tends to believe on some level that being rich is a crime.) She went on for her allotted time talking about how the movie puts a human face on so many underpriviledged and poor souls who just need a helping hand and to be understood and so on. . . While she was talking, I was almost literally grinding my teeth together. My personal goal is to be able to contribute to society in some way that is meaningful, and pays well enough that I can take care of myself and my family one day. I personally don't think that I'm a bad person for thinking thats a noble goal. Apparently, that makes me a horrible person. Ohh, and I'm homophobic because I don't support gay marriage. (I'm all in favor of letting gays/lesbians have legal protections, just not BECAUSE they're gay/lesbian. If EVERYONE were treated equally, then there would be no reason to get married in the first place, because marriage implies an unequal relationship with a person than with everyone else.... a rant for another day.) Turns out.

Anyway, I suppose it doesn't really matter now cause the class is over *happy-dance*. This Friday my dad is going to pick me up and fly me back to Battle Ground so I can help put the engine back on the 172. It'll be nice to be up in the air again. I've decided I'm definitely suffering from low altitude sickness.

My dad just bought a boat. Its moored up in Olympia, which, conveniently, is where Cortni lives. On Saturday my folks and I are going to head up to take a little shakedown cruise with the incidental aid of Dwight Knecktle (sp?), Dad's old partner. I haven't seen him for a few years, and it'll be fun to learn about the boat. ("It's such a pretty boat . . . -- ship"-- Captn. Jack Sparrow).

Well, tomorrow at 9 I have to go in and do the Protek coating process, so I should get to bed.

Wednesday, July 19 - Sunday, July 23

My brother got married! And at this very moment he's probably lounging around on some beach in Hawaii. The ceremony was great. Everything was really well orchestrated, and most everybody knew exactly what they were supposed to do and when. Sherill was really excited the whole time, which was good to see. I've decided I really like her. She and Alex get along great, and I'm really happy for both of them. I can't express what a relief it was when the pastor asked if Alex had the rings and I could fork em over. They were burning a hole in my pocket. Every two minutes I would check to make sure they were still there. Sherill was so excited and happy and emotional she could barely get her vows out. It was really sweet.

The reception was fun too. It was in a big hall of a place, with buffet style food for everyone, and a DJ up front working the music for the dance floor. It was really hot in there though. No air conditioning, and 200 or so people heating the place up. It was pretty nuts. The toasting went well. I told the story of how my brother proposed to Sherill by first talking about how maple syrup was made, how you take the sap and boil it down and when you're done you're left with maple syrup. So now that I've said something sweet and something sappy, Sherill will you marry me. Well, I figured I'd stick with the theme of puns in her wedding, and offered her a piece of toast in a ziplock bag for my toast. Then I offered the obligatory sweet comment about how in love they are etc etc.

Taking the tuxes back after the wedding was an adventure. I rode with Terry Keatts back to the church where Cortni left her car, then we went to a Men's Warehouse to drop them off. Then we went to the hotel where my bro was staying to pick up his tux to return it for him, but by the time we got to the nearest Men's Warehouse, it was 6:20 and it was closed. Terry offered to take it and return it the next day though.

I drove home that night, which wasn't a bad drive. From Alex's apartment (where Terry and I went to unplug all his stuff and lock the doors etc) I had to get to I-90, which was made much easier by Terry driving in front of me and rolling down his window to point where I should exit I-5 to get on I-90. I've decided he's a nice guy. He graduated in May of last year and got a job with a company called FM Global, which is an insurance company. His job is to go around and take a look at all the facilities of the companies FM Global insures and see what can be done to make them safer. So he gets to interact with all sorts of people, learn what they do and how they do it, then offer suggestions on how they can do it more safely. The company is doing really well, and offers lots of perks such as a company car, comped gas, expenses, food, hotel stays, the whole nine yards. We talked at length about it, and it sounds like a pretty neat place to work. I'll be sure to send an application in.

So today I spent some time finishing a paper that is due tomorrow in Anthropology 201: Music in Society. Pretty exciting stuff. I have a test to take in that class tomorrow, which I'm also pretty excited about (sarcasm). On the plus side, once that's overwith, I'll only have a short presentation to give on Wednesday and I'll be done with the class. Now THAT I really AM excited about.

At some point I may be headed home to help my dad work on the 172. The engine is just about done being overhauled, and all that's left is to clean up the firewall and put the engine back on. I'm excited to fly it. Hopefully the generator leaking won't be a problem, or can be fixed before we put it back together. Its a real bear to reach, and it was leaking from the seal there, which is when I realized that something was wrong. I wonder if the two things are related.

I'm going to go study for my test now.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

I couldn't sleep last night. It really sucked. Tossed and turned and thought about all manner of things for three or four hours before I just gave up and got up. I got some work done on the mems website. I added all the sub pages. My boss seemed pretty pleased with it.

I also rewrote the toast I'm going to give at my brother's wedding. I hope it goes ok. Truth be told, I don't care much for giving speeches, even short ones. I don't think I'm long winded enough. So what I'm left with is a couple of jokes punctuated with "to the bride and groom!" It'll bring new meaning to "short and sweet" thats for sure.

I'm going to miss an anthropology test for the wedding that I'll have to make up on Monday. I'm not really worried about it, but I have to finish writing a paper for the class as well, and THAT I'm not very excited about. I have to give a speech about that too. I'm writing about classical music as a western art form. Not amazingly interesting, but I had forgotten to write the proposal the day it was due, and it was the first thing that came to mind. I have the bulk of it done, but the part thats left is looking to be pure conjecture. I'm all in favor of making stuff up, but I don't really see the point in it. I mean, anyone with a halfway decent idea of what classical music is can theorize as to how big of a society is required to maintain it.

The class didn't turn out to be what I expected. The class is titled "Art in Society," so I expected it to be about the role art plays in societies, what functions it serves, etc. For the most part though, its like Crappy-Ass-Cultures 101. The Aztecs survived for hundreds of years in crappy environments, good for them. They didn't accomplish anything. They lived, they made some huts, they raised cattle, but they didn't progress. There seems to be a huge movement in favor of keeping with tradition, and going back to the old ways and stuff, but the fact is the old ways were just enough to survive on, barely, and with huge amounts of labor. Life spans of 50 years was considered a good run. I'd much rather live in a society that lets me not have to chase down my next meal, or bathe in sweat huts, rolling in dirt to dry off. I'm a fan of my indoor plumbing, freezers, Safeways and computers.

I went for a run tonight. Third night in a row. I'm up to about 2 miles at a stretch. My ankle doesn't hurt at all anymore, unless I really wrench on it (which I don't make a habit of doing.) I've discovered that I feel pretty good after going for a run. More so of course when I don't forget to bring my water bottle (as I did tonight.)

Tomorrow I have a friendly 5 hour drive a head of me to get to Seattle. I'm staying with my brother in his apartment for the weekend. Much better than staying in the bus. The bus is nice, and I get along great with my parents, but the couch is uncomfortable, and I really hate waking up to the sound of a coffee maker.

I've been putting some thought recently into how I want my home to look/feel when I get a house of my own. Its kind of fun thinking of the possibilities. Also interesting to think of how different from the way my parents house I intend for it to be. I don't know exactly when it happened, but at some point, going back to Battle Ground stopped feeling like coming home, and started feeling like visiting my parents. Its liberating, I suppose, but kind of sad too.

The parts are all in for the engine overhaul on the 172 engine. I can't wait to fly it again. The weather has been beautiful recently, and I've really missed flying. I wouldn't mind being able to fly out to Seattle for my bro's wedding, but there's no way that can happen. I should give Ed a call and see if he would be up for taking me up for a plane ride.

My desk chair broke a couple weeks ago. Being the brilliant mechanical engineer that I am, I figured out what broke, then figured out how to fix it. I had leaned back too far, which broke a square shaped washer that is meant to prevent exactly that from happening. Well, I didn't want to buy a new chair, and I sincerely doubt that they sell these little washers, and I don't have an allen wrench to get at it anyway, so I came up with an alternate solution. When the chair rocks backwards, the seat part pivots on a hinge attached to the post. My fix to the problem was to superglue 5 pennies together, and velcro them under the seat to act as a bumper for the hinge, so it can't go past a certain point. So basically, I fixed an 80 dollar chair with 5 pennies, a 45 cent bottle of super glue, and some leftover velcro that probably cost 10 cents for the amount I used. I'm pretty proud of me.

And now its past 1:10 AM, and it looks like its going to be another night of tossing and turning. I hope I sleep better in Seattle, otherwise I'm going to be a pretty big looser come wedding day. . .

Monday, July 17, 2006

I ran into a snag at work today. It turns out my boss wanted me to work on a project that can't work, at least not how she wanted. The MEMS group was having trouble with stress concentrations in membranes, and Cill wanted me to work on a possible solution. She wanted me to selectively boron dope a wafer, then put photoresist over the top so that when the wafer was etched through, a square of doped silicon would be left hanging onto the photoresist. The thought being that photoresist is flexible and wouldn't break as easily as the silicon. Turns out that the crux of the whole process is whether photoresist will hold up in the nasty-ass chemicals we use to etch the wafers. Turns out it won't. Which leaves me back at square one, a week later with nothing of note to show for it.

I came across www.youtube.com today and found some cool videos of Bobby McFerrin, who I havn't heard in a long time. He has a really incredible voice. Nikki and I swapped links for a while, both being suitably impressed. The website is set up so when you find a topic, it'll show you some related videos that you can watch. Somehow we ended up on a rock band playing cellos. I don't really care for rock music, but as it goes, not too bad.

Tomorrow I have a meeting with my boss to discuss things, it should be entertaining.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Pretty boring day today. I was supposed to go for a bike ride with Sean Collison, but he never gave me a call. I ammused myself by watching reviews for really terrible computer games on gamestop.com. Pretty ammusing stuff. One game (the worst rated of all time) called Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing was amazing.

Big Rigs is a game so astoundingly bad that it manages to transcend nearly every boundary put forth by some of gaming's absolute worst of the worst and easily makes it into that dubiously extraordinary category of being one of the most atrocious games ever published.

The basic idea in the actual game is that you pick one from four vaguely different trucks and then one from five vaguely different levels. You then compete against another truck in a simple checkpoint race. That's it. However, Big Rigs can't even get this basic concept right. The supposedly computer-controlled truck you're supposed to be racing against in the game never actually moves. It's right there next to you at the beginning of a race, but it has no purpose in the game. This is to say, actually, that none of the game's races have a purpose because there's no competition and no time limit. You win every single time. So unless you especially like seeing a winning-screen over and over again that reads "You're Winner!", there is absolutely no point in playing Big Rigs.

But let's assume for a moment that the AI trucks actually worked, and you could get a race going. Even if this were the case, the game still wouldn't be worth playing in the slightest. Big Rigs' controls essentially involve hitting the arrow keys of the keyboard in the desired direction and nothing more. The game provides no support for peripheral controllers of any kind, and there isn't even an option to edit the default keyboard controls in any manner. Your truck also handles pretty horribly. There are no physics here. You accelerate much too quickly to even be minutely realistic (especially when going in reverse, which lets you go from around 0 to 60mph in about five seconds, continue accelerating infinitely faster, and stop on a dime the second you let up on the keyboard), you can travel over the most rugged of terrain without any problems (including nearly vertical mountains), and you can turn in ways that cause you to jerk around in some pretty ridiculous manners.

Of course, the controls would only matter if you actually had to worry about running into things or crashing your truck, which, actually, is a nonissue. You see, you can clip your truck right through every object on a race course in Big Rigs, from the biggest of houses and walls, right down to the smallest of lampposts. Furthermore, bridges evidently don't actually exist, despite the fact that you can see them--driving over any of them results in you sinking right through them. It is also quite possible to simply drive right off of the literal end of a level when playing. Considering the fact that you can drive over these tall, seemingly insurmountable mountains (at least, insurmountable for an actual diesel-powered truck), and there are no level boundaries, eventually you can just drive off into literal nothingness and can hang out there as long as you please.

Real high quality game, I tell you.

On the other hand (you have more fingers) I'm looking forward to Midieval Total War 2 coming out in November. The games are awesome, lots of strategy, tactics actually matter, the units aren't all carbon copies of eachother... bueno. One thing this game added that previous Total War games lacked is that individual units duke it out instead of just squads of units. They're still controled as a group, but when one guy stabs another guy in the chest with a sword, he actually takes it in the chest with a sword; he doesn't just fall over dead.

I went for a run today too. Mile and a half. I forgot to set a stopwatch, so I have no idea how long it took me, but probably longer than I can brag about.

Brother's wedding is coming up in a hurry. It'll be an event seeing the whole family. I heard my cousin Rob has a girlfriend now. Pretty crazy. I remember pushing him and Cindy around in a pipe-works cart at Gran's house. I feel old now. Bloody hell.

I was poking around online and came across the Lockeed Martin website. They recently christened the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter the "Lightning" as a throwback to the P-38. Its a pretty cool airplane. Thrust vectoring, VTOL, stealth, super-cruise... *technological orgasm* Good stuff.

My buddy Devin isn't doing so well. He's not getting along well with his dad, and isn't very happy. He's kind of in a tough spot because he's not happy where he is, but he hasn't opened any other avenues for his life. He didn't do very well at WSU, and is currently taking classes at a community college. And he needs a girlfriend.

Anyway, I'm tired and need a shower, so I'm going to bail.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Today I got to replace the EDP solution. Pretty nasty stuff. As it reacts with the silicon to etch it, a rather nasty sludge builds up, and eventually the whole batch needs to be replaced. I followed all the directions to the T, but Jeong got mad at me for almost throwing some paper towels in the trash after rinsing the container out three times with water. The directions said to throw it in the trash. I suppose I can't win. Not a lot of fun.

I etched another wafer today. On Monday I'm going to look at it under a microscope to see how well it turned out. Cill told me that the next step is to deposit some gold on the wafers to test the thermal conductivity. More stuff to learn.

I beat Red Alert... again. The AI in the game is remarkably simplistic. The last level is supposed to be really difficult, with the enemy dropping reinforcements at your doorstep by boat. Nice thought, except for the part where the boats always drop at the same location, and if you put four tanks on the shore, the boat can't unload and sits there till the tanks kill it. Oh well. It set the standard in 1994 I suppose.

Tyler Northrop came over around midnight and we played some Halo 2 for a while. It was good to talk to him again.

I have a big day of doing nothing tomorrow, so I'm going to bed.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

I've decided that Anthropology is more effort than its worth. Its a three credit class, that I'm taking over the summer, and I really couldn't care less about it. I just spent the last 4.5 hours writing a "case study" on classical music as a western art form. I mostly bs-ed it, and I'm curious to see how he takes it. He wants 8 sources to be cited for the rough draft. I only have 3, and they're all websites. He said something in class about not liking websites. It's looking like I'll have to go to the library and find a book or 5 that relates marginally with my topic, and paraphrase something just to use it as a source. I find it irritating that first hand knowledge of a subject doesn't count unless someone else has written it down and printed it. I mean, I know how to read music, and I can deduce why music was written in that way in the first place, at least well enough to summarize it for a six page paper. I really don't like having to give someone else credit for a thought that isn't novel enough to really need a citation.

In any case, I'm tired of writing, so I'm gonna stop now.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

I actually accomplished a lot today, considering I didn't go to work. I spent some time getting Dreamweaver installed and working on my computer so I can work on the website from the comfort of my own apartment. It turns out WSU is really anal-retentive about the formatting of their websites. They have a whole section on their website about the "Graphic Identity" of the university (http://www.wsu.edu/identity/identity-elements/index.html). Its just chalked full of useful information like "Circles. . . should be used to help create visual consistency, both within a single communications piece and across the spectrum of University communications." I mean, you know a com major sat in front of his computer for at least thirty-five minutes trying to string enough words together coherently enough to give the impression that what he does is important. There's also a big section about "Off-perpendicular camera angles" and how they should be used as often as possible in messages directed to external audiences. Apparently, WSU doesn't want to give the misleading impression that its students can hold a camera level. Useless bastards.

In any case, the website I've been working on for my MEMS job looks a lot better than the old one (in my completely non-biased opinion).

Tomorrow I get to go in and grow oxide layers and dope silicon wafers again. Pretty exciting stuff. The lab is about as far from automated as things get, at least when it comes to the furnace. Its basically a big box with a door on one end that covers the openings to two tubes. The tubes are made of quartz, and are wrapped with electric heating elements. On the back side of the tubes are hoses that supply nitrogen and oxygen that let you control the oxidation process. Basically, you put the wafers in to the tubes, then let them bake at 1100 degrees for a few hours, then take them out. It wouldn't be so bad, except that if you put the wafers in or take them out too fast, they'll break because of thermal stress. So you have to spend 10 minutes slowly pushing the wafer boat in at about an inch a minute with a 4 foot long quartz rod, then 10 minutes doing the same thing again to take them out, then wait a half an hour for them to cool sufficiently to do anything with. When you add in the suiting up and down at either end, you've basically spent an hour poking silicon wafers with a glass stick. It's not so bad I suppose. There are a lot of worse ways to make ten bucks.

Well, its getting on toward 3:00 AM, so I'm going to call it a day.

Monday, July 10th, 2006

I feel like a traitor. I'm using a blog. Someone shoot me. Somehow this is all so egotistical. Since when does my opinion matter enough for other people to read? Wtf. Wtf.

Anyway... aside from being a traitor, I spent most of the day working in the MEMS lab. Its pretty thrilling. And by "thrilling" I mean pretty slow. And sometimes boring. I'm learning a lot, which is good. I'm getting paid to learn, which is even better. I suppose I shouldn't complain. -- but since when has that ever stopped me.

The MEMS group had a meeting this morning. Everyone got up and talked for a couple minutes about what they were working on. About half the group is working on trying to cool the engine down quickly, most of which involve using "wicks" to pull a cooling fluid away from the wafer surface. Its cool to think that things will one day be powered off of ambient heat, but its still a long way off.

For the last few weeks I've been working on etching silicon wafers to get an interlocking sawtooth pattern for better heat transfer. The program they're having me use to draw up the masks is CorelDraw, and its irritating. It's like using MS Paint, only with the added fun of typing in coordinates. For no reason at all, it sets the center of each object you draw as the start point. Normally I suppose that wouldn't be too bad, but when you're drawing hundreds of little rectangles, it'd be nice if you could just make one and array them.

My boss came up to me today and asked me to look into selective boron doping. She wants me to make small squares as thin as possible for some reason. She didn't really say there was much purpose in it, just that I should look into it. Seems like a strange thing to be after. But hey, it's another few weeks of 10 bucks an hour to etch silicon wafers and do photolithography.

I stayed up most of the night working on the MEMS website. I'm using Dreamweaver, which is pretty new to me. I haven't figured out how to export the webpage yet. I assume that the program will keep track of all the files it uses and can somehow upload them for me. I tried simply ftp-ing them all to the server, but it didn't seem to like that. Hurray for learning curves...

My buddy Jeff hooked me up with Command and Conquer First Decade a couple weeks ago. Its kind of fun playing games that are really old school again. I've been playing the original Red Alert. I had forgotten that at one point Westwood took their games seriously. Both RA2 and Zero hour were pretty childish. The game crashes occasionally though, which is a problem.

I have a big assignment for my Anthro 201 Art in Society class due Thursday. The class is really starting to strike the "who-cares" chord in me. Learning about cultures that survive in harsh environments is all well and good, but they really don't do much else. They all focus on religious artwork, the gods that are appeased by making masks/paintings etc. Its annoying. I believe in their gods even less than I do in the one's I've grown up with.

Well, its 4:15 AM, so I guess its bed time.