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.
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.
posted by Nick at 3:59 AM
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