I’m going back to Bozeman!!!

After much deliberation, I decided to go back to attend one of my highschool friend’s wedding. I’m so happy for them, they have been together for more than 5 years and apparently very happy together. I’m more or less using this as an excuse to finally spend the time and money that I should have done so long time ago. Either way, I’m happy that I’ve finally made the decision. ^_^

In other news, I’ve had this song running through my head all night…

While at work yesterday, we started discussing simple yet necessary ideas that result in a more efficient society in general, and this became a rather interesting point of discussion. Finally! Someone came up with a great idea to put more ketchup in a packet as well as new dispensing mechanisms. In fact, one of my coworkers were complaining about this very problem a few days ago!

Here’s the new thought of the day: If we actually thought of ways to solve the small annoying issues we see, perhaps we would could millionaires just off of commission.

I didn’t even bother to wake up until about noon today. I just love having 9/80 fridays.

However, when I finally did wake up, I had “Last Friday Night” stuck in my head. Whatever I was dreaming about must have been related to a wild party of sorts. haha.

This evening I went to my first baseball game… ever. Cincinnati Reds v Baltimore Orioles. It was a lot of fun, but it went in to the 12th inning due to the long, slow, drawn out tie game. so 4 hours later, Pat and I was just deciding to leave if they can’t score when the home run hit finally occurred. lol.

Read this the other day and found it to be amusing. I do hope the farmer gets .apples before Apple does. I’m sure that Apple would pay exorbitant amount of money to buy that from him and he would be rich enough to forget about farming for the rest of his life.

Along the same vein, I think new start-up company names will be more creative now to create a domain name that is unique enough to still be available. Watching this development will be interesting.

So after a year hiatus (it always happens with all my blogs… I’m working on it), I’m back with what I hope to be a new start.

Of course my first action was to read through some of my older posts and amusingly enough, I’m back working with the same group this year for the summer (I’m also renting from the same people again, so sometimes it feels like deja vu)… apparently not much has changed/improved over the last year so there wasn’t much missed.

I was just watching this on Youtube and was once again reminded of Weird Al humor.

Tomorrow is 9/80 friday, so I get to be lazy. Hopefully, I’ll have time to go to a fabric store to pick out the fabric for Sheena‘s costume. I’m planning to have that by Otakon, but whether it actually happens it another matter.

 

 

On friday, I went to work especially early so I will have time to go out for lunch with Christian and Nick, and still leave work fairly early in the evening.
I was just counting on it being another boring day of measurements with the high-voltage equipments. I was however, extremely careful on friday because my manager had reprimanded me on how careless the procedures were regarding the specific measurements made using the equipment. the exposed wires, and metal knobs didn’t help. Any shorts or arcing would have been fatal. I realized that perhaps it would be wise to be more cautious, I even wrapped exposed component with electrical tape to the best of my ability.

I was rather happy since it should be the last day of measurements, and the entire week and a half’s worth of tedious monitoring, and adjustments were starting to drag my mood a bit. And since it was a Friday, it was just that much better.

I was sitting at the computer, monitoring the measurements, with a little more than an hour’s worth to go, I suddenly heard a loud crack that was akin to a gun shot. My training race through my mind as I started shutting the High voltage equipments down and stopped the programs. It was the first time I felt this level of panic, but managed to keep everything in check as I examine the situation. A few minutes later, I finally realized that the equipments are all in order, except for the projector light bulb. It didn’t just go out, but literally exploded. There were even glass shards outside of the projector unit. My manager (whom I called in at this point) said replacement might have to wait until monday, which would be a pain. So instead, I unhooked the optical fiber from the projector unit to the microscope, and managed to do the rest of the measurements using a key chain mag light (that I found randomly in the lab) borrowing the same illumination system, held together with electrical tape. It was some improvisation.

After the incident, my manager found a replacement in storage and for the most part of the afternoon, tried to replace the bulb in a projector unit that was clearly labelled “No User-serversable parts inside”. This involve a lot of shaking loss screws out of a box with a small opening, and digging around for usable tools. More improvisation for the win.

In comparison, today was rather dull. I spent all of today figuring out Excel Macros using Visual Basic, and using it to do data analysis. Bleh… I almost fell asleep.

I felt really refreshed after Memorial’s Day weekend and was all ready to go back to work. Unfortunately, Fate (or perhaps research in general) is unkind.

I got in Tuesday morning to find the lab a mess. Apparently they pull the plugs over the long weekend, and managed to upset all my labview programs. An hour later, along with Harold (who did most of the work lol) we finally got the computers to talk to each other coherently and got the program straightened out.

However, my misfortune didn’t end. On a whim, I tested the oscilloscope probes I’ve been on the measurements, and found them to be faulty. The lab technician previously mentioned that the test wasn’t necessary since the tests I’ll be doing won’t do any damage, but apparently it was incorrect. So 3 wafers later (I’ve been doing a wafer a day) I spot checked the results and found that I’ll probably need to redo the measurements… >.

Talk about a bad case of the Mondays…

C’est la vie… n’est pas? *sigh*

After having dinner with family today for Memorial Day, I drove up to Baltimore to my host family place, where I’m staying while working at Northrop Grumman this summer. As I walked through the door, my host dad started a movie on their projector and I stayed to watch it with them. Although I knew the word “Hachi” meant “eight” in Japanese, I had no idea what the film was about.

As the movie ended, I realized that I was in tears, only because the story was heartbreakingly sad. For anyone who has not seen this movie, I highly encourage it. Since the movie was based on a real-life story, I now know why there is a statue of a dog named Hachi (which I knew previously from Skip Beat… I admit to reading much manga.)

A Redo or revision of the technology sketches:

Title: Quilt pattern

Quilt patterns created by using images of fractals, internet maps, and circuit boards and diagrams arranged in 3 in x 3 in squares.

The original sketchbook entry.

Days and Nights of the Dead

by Gash Girl

http://dollyoko.thing.net//LOSDIAS/INDEX.HTML