This weekend has been full of milestones, paired with some timely coincidences.
Good Friday marked the third anniversary of my mother's death; Easter fell on what would have been her fiftieth birthday. While I don't put any faith in numerology or believe there's any extra-special significance to those alignments of dates, it did serve to remind me of the meaning of the Easter holiday.
Eating a phenomenal meal with many family members doesn't hurt, either. :)
Saturday, March 26, 2005
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Congressional Shenanigans
Ever since the Republicans have effectively controlled all three branches of the Federal government, I've been waiting for progressively backhanded, shady-closed-door activities to take place. (The Cheney Energy Task Force meetings, ANWR oil drilling provisions (recently passed, dammit), Enron, squashing the CAFE auto efficiency standards, and more come to mind.) Following the actual election of Bush for a second round, and an improved majority in Congress, I expected more of our backwards, corrupt steps. I figure that it will take some egregious actions on the part of our Republican leaders to convince the nation that they don't deserve their positions of power.
While one would think that the actions of the House regarding Tom DeLay would be such an event, most Americans don't care. (Or likely know who Tom DeLay is.) Today, however, I've become exasparated with Congress much more than I ever have in the past -- keeping in mind that policies that I consider dangerous and harmful to the US are being implemented, by design, by the Republicans.
Today the House and Senate issued subpoenas to interfere with an exhaustive court battle in Terry Schiavo's right-to-die case. This is along the same lines where the Florida's Republican Legislature passed a law (which was quickly struck down as unconstitutional) enabling the Florida Executive branch (Jeb Bush) to overturn the court's decision. Now we're seeing Congress interfering with the sovereignty of the courts. Regardless of one's personal opinions on the case, this meddling should raise serious concerns among US citizenry. It certainly does for me.
For the Love of God, please let this poor, severely brain-damaged woman's wishes be carried out. The US Congress has much more important things to be working on (like balancing the $400+ billion defecit for this year alone) than holding publicity hearings with Major League Baseball stars and wasting time (and money) by holding Congressional hearings where the severely brain-damaged Schiavo, herself, [source] is expected to testify.
While one would think that the actions of the House regarding Tom DeLay would be such an event, most Americans don't care. (Or likely know who Tom DeLay is.) Today, however, I've become exasparated with Congress much more than I ever have in the past -- keeping in mind that policies that I consider dangerous and harmful to the US are being implemented, by design, by the Republicans.
Today the House and Senate issued subpoenas to interfere with an exhaustive court battle in Terry Schiavo's right-to-die case. This is along the same lines where the Florida's Republican Legislature passed a law (which was quickly struck down as unconstitutional) enabling the Florida Executive branch (Jeb Bush) to overturn the court's decision. Now we're seeing Congress interfering with the sovereignty of the courts. Regardless of one's personal opinions on the case, this meddling should raise serious concerns among US citizenry. It certainly does for me.
For the Love of God, please let this poor, severely brain-damaged woman's wishes be carried out. The US Congress has much more important things to be working on (like balancing the $400+ billion defecit for this year alone) than holding publicity hearings with Major League Baseball stars and wasting time (and money) by holding Congressional hearings where the severely brain-damaged Schiavo, herself, [source] is expected to testify.
Monday, March 14, 2005
I Fart In Your General Direction!
I was hastily interrupted at work today by an announcement from a co-worker that "there was a problem with grounding on SPRED." (It's the diagnostic I'm most responsible for on PEGASUS.) It turns out that today was spent ferreting out ground loops in our experiment.
The idea's that we have one giant experimental electrical grounding point (the same thing as the third prong in home electrical sockets). With big honking currents going through, say, our vacuum vessel, we'd like discharges to ground to go through the vacuum vessel straight to that single ground and not (for example) through a circuitous route through our expensive diagnostic equipment. This means that we have several ground paths: through the vessel; instrumentation; our data acquisition room; and the building itself. Each path should stay separated from the others. Essentially, we can't have electrical contact between two grounding paths -- which can be a huge difficulty to find should there be a problem! (Think two signal cables brushing against the machine -- then multiply by ~5000. That's just the cables.)
Enter the loopbuster. When clipped onto our 'main' ground point, this handy homemade gadget dumps a strong, modulated current to ground. Should a ground loop exist, the current will also seek its way through to the place where the unwanted contact is taking place. We probe for where the current is going with a wand that has an antenna at the tip; near the presence of the modulated current, it will render the current modulation into audio. While this is very cool in and of itself, even cooler is the message that is being broadcast: "I fart in your general direction!"
There's something to be said for being able to make your own gadgets -- and exploit programmable EEPROM's. :)
The idea's that we have one giant experimental electrical grounding point (the same thing as the third prong in home electrical sockets). With big honking currents going through, say, our vacuum vessel, we'd like discharges to ground to go through the vacuum vessel straight to that single ground and not (for example) through a circuitous route through our expensive diagnostic equipment. This means that we have several ground paths: through the vessel; instrumentation; our data acquisition room; and the building itself. Each path should stay separated from the others. Essentially, we can't have electrical contact between two grounding paths -- which can be a huge difficulty to find should there be a problem! (Think two signal cables brushing against the machine -- then multiply by ~5000. That's just the cables.)
Enter the loopbuster. When clipped onto our 'main' ground point, this handy homemade gadget dumps a strong, modulated current to ground. Should a ground loop exist, the current will also seek its way through to the place where the unwanted contact is taking place. We probe for where the current is going with a wand that has an antenna at the tip; near the presence of the modulated current, it will render the current modulation into audio. While this is very cool in and of itself, even cooler is the message that is being broadcast: "I fart in your general direction!"
There's something to be said for being able to make your own gadgets -- and exploit programmable EEPROM's. :)
Sunday, March 13, 2005
A Few Things
It's been nearly a month since I made an update. Tonight I can rectify the situation and procrastinate at the same time! Things are getting to be rather crazy in my line of work. Midterms are coming up this week (hence the non-study procrastination) and officially Spring Break is coming up next week. Unfortunately, it turns out that graduate students are expected to be working through the week. (The Real World rears its ugly head a few years earlier than I had expected!) At least there won't be the 800-lb gorilla of J.D. Jackson's electrodynamics weighing in on things over that week...
Work is also yielding some interesting prospects. I will likely need to make a trip out to General Atomics outside San Diego in the near future to work with the fusion group's plasma control system designers. Not bad for an after-finals trip, huh?
I also got something rather interesting in the mail today -- my first international Nigerian-419 scam delivered to my postal address. How they received my name and address is making me wonder... Anybody that would like to claim my $615,000 can simply provide me with all their banking information and a signiture, and I'll be sure to split things 60/40. ;) It's nice to see that the scammers threw away .78 euros trying to con me!
I've run across a hilarious web comic, which I will now be reading daily: Ctrl-Alt-Del. Two years of archives in two days. Pretty damn funny. (Did I mention procrastination?)
And, last but not least, should you not have enough blogtastic readings, you can check out one more: my girlfriend Kristen's. :)
Work is also yielding some interesting prospects. I will likely need to make a trip out to General Atomics outside San Diego in the near future to work with the fusion group's plasma control system designers. Not bad for an after-finals trip, huh?
I also got something rather interesting in the mail today -- my first international Nigerian-419 scam delivered to my postal address. How they received my name and address is making me wonder... Anybody that would like to claim my $615,000 can simply provide me with all their banking information and a signiture, and I'll be sure to split things 60/40. ;) It's nice to see that the scammers threw away .78 euros trying to con me!
I've run across a hilarious web comic, which I will now be reading daily: Ctrl-Alt-Del. Two years of archives in two days. Pretty damn funny. (Did I mention procrastination?)
And, last but not least, should you not have enough blogtastic readings, you can check out one more: my girlfriend Kristen's. :)
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