…it tolls for me.

T-minus 6 days. I might as well just start learning new languages in which to say “screw me.”

I am learning the downside to grad school. It is the level of expectations placed upon you — the graduate researcher — by the guy making all the money and taking all the glory — the professor — while such expectations, being astronomical, are inversely proportional to the quality of equipment you are given to do your job. (In my case, on the off chance I find good tooling, I have a technician ever-waiting to help me screw it up. My pristine, water-cooled diamond polishing pads are now totally fouled up with grease and nickel oxide gunk after said smoking man insisted that lubricating with oil would produce better results than water. Yay.)

Back to the lab. We’ve abandoned any hope of having the PD measurement equipment in the lab, let alone actually connected to the TestStar computer. We’re going to settle for having induction heat running, Questar microscopes scanning, and hopefully the IR camera zoomed in on the crack tip for a pretty picture of thermal uniformity (God willing). All I need to do is get the smoking man to give me a Goddamn thermocouple monitor.

Top it all off, I’m coming down with bloody strep throat. Yay.



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