In an effort to reduce winter break boredom, improve my writing skills and increase the amount of interesting this blog contains (minus one writing skills point) here goes nothing.
Met up with Dean, Sam and Ian the day after Christmas and strutted about the Maine Mall. Always a pleasure to see these gents but our time is always cut short. While milling about Best Buy, I discovered this spent nip of Black Velvet.... is it a thing to drink in Best Buy now? Is this what we are coming to?
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| But now you'll be even more susceptible than ever to purchasing warranty plans you simply do NOT need! |
We have my sister's cat, Charlie living at home now and he has acclimated very well here. After he fell from a tree a day or so after he arrived, he has been very calm and seems satisfied. Here is a picture of him guarding my door.
Here is Charlie helping put away the Christmas tree....
Sorry. I don't think I've ever posted a cat picture to the internet... just had to get that out of my system.
Anyways, I made a pilgrimage to Worcester with Cheney to meetup with the Lynch, Dougie, Corey crew for New Years. It was a small crew almost entirely of dudes (go figure) but it was a blast. Always good to catch up with some old chums and ring in the new year. I will say Doug and I went rogue for a little adventure of our own which involved a couple of very interesting bars. For the full account I'll have to tell the story in person though, it just can't be done justice in a blog post.
Today I dropped off my skis at the ski shop for a little clean up, hoping to hit the slopes this semester after a 7 year hiatus. I always enjoyed skiing but never found the time or enough interested people to participate. I have a couple of friends from Orono who are planning to frequent the slopes this season, so there should be ample opportunity to tag along.
This is the longest I've been home without working (in one capacity or another) since.... maybe sometime during MSSM. Even during MSSM it seems like the breaks were filled with something like rescuing a video project or just.... something. It has been a little bland and I have been sleeping an enormous amount. I think I went to bed at 11:30 last night and woke up at 12:30PM today..... I thought I died.
If all goes well, I should be beginning to assemble the lower end of my VW bus engine this coming Saturday. Pretty pumped about that and I plan on taking making pictures. Another thing I did this break was finally work through a tutorial on FEMM which is a free finite elements software package that allows you to 2D simulations for magnetics, heat and stress. Pretty sweet really. Also, extremely relevant for my line of work. Here is a pretty picture of some neodymium magnets in some very poor electrical steel.
I think I will be returning to the Orono area a little bit early this break so I can start research for inverter stuff. I'm doing a research fellowship through CUGR (I know right... cougar... get it) this semester with Professor Weise. We're doing some inverter research that coordinates with some fellows in the mechanical department who are making a wave energy converter. Apparently there should be a prototype for us to play with pretty soon. I'll be making some PCBs and stuff initially and then putting together some inverter stuff for us to actually use. Should be really cool and I'm really looking forward to it. Additionally it should be a good way for me to learn some tricks of the trade that may be useful when I start work.
Made a christmas gift to myself and bought this AWESOME flash drive. Is it overpriced? Slightly. Is it blazing fast and completely badass? Shit yes. Pretty pumped to save oscilloscope screen shots to this bad boy, talk about overkill.
I am currently trying to rid my dad's computer of an enormous amount of spyware. I installed google chrome and it wouldn't let me sign into gmail. It said the cookie settings were wrong. They aren't. Basically there is some spyware on there that redirects you to a bunch of stuff and is in someway interfering with the cookies on Chrome. For some reason it works on IE but does show an AWESOME tool bar which is infinitely useful and not inconvenient at ALL. Spybot didn't pick up on the issue either.... oh bother. It's pretty bad too, if I search for anti-spyware stuff it will redirect the links I click from google. Spyware has gone to a whole new level since I bought a mac. Maybe I should just nuke it and start fresh.
Also, this may be of interest to you guys: etotheipi guy's awesome guide to building stuff
Onward with winter break excursions!
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| The price is one minute of petting. |
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| Why do cats love boxes? You would too, if you were cat sized. |
Anyways, I made a pilgrimage to Worcester with Cheney to meetup with the Lynch, Dougie, Corey crew for New Years. It was a small crew almost entirely of dudes (go figure) but it was a blast. Always good to catch up with some old chums and ring in the new year. I will say Doug and I went rogue for a little adventure of our own which involved a couple of very interesting bars. For the full account I'll have to tell the story in person though, it just can't be done justice in a blog post.
Today I dropped off my skis at the ski shop for a little clean up, hoping to hit the slopes this semester after a 7 year hiatus. I always enjoyed skiing but never found the time or enough interested people to participate. I have a couple of friends from Orono who are planning to frequent the slopes this season, so there should be ample opportunity to tag along.
This is the longest I've been home without working (in one capacity or another) since.... maybe sometime during MSSM. Even during MSSM it seems like the breaks were filled with something like rescuing a video project or just.... something. It has been a little bland and I have been sleeping an enormous amount. I think I went to bed at 11:30 last night and woke up at 12:30PM today..... I thought I died.
If all goes well, I should be beginning to assemble the lower end of my VW bus engine this coming Saturday. Pretty pumped about that and I plan on taking making pictures. Another thing I did this break was finally work through a tutorial on FEMM which is a free finite elements software package that allows you to 2D simulations for magnetics, heat and stress. Pretty sweet really. Also, extremely relevant for my line of work. Here is a pretty picture of some neodymium magnets in some very poor electrical steel.
 |
| You know that looks cool. |
I think I will be returning to the Orono area a little bit early this break so I can start research for inverter stuff. I'm doing a research fellowship through CUGR (I know right... cougar... get it) this semester with Professor Weise. We're doing some inverter research that coordinates with some fellows in the mechanical department who are making a wave energy converter. Apparently there should be a prototype for us to play with pretty soon. I'll be making some PCBs and stuff initially and then putting together some inverter stuff for us to actually use. Should be really cool and I'm really looking forward to it. Additionally it should be a good way for me to learn some tricks of the trade that may be useful when I start work.
Made a christmas gift to myself and bought this AWESOME flash drive. Is it overpriced? Slightly. Is it blazing fast and completely badass? Shit yes. Pretty pumped to save oscilloscope screen shots to this bad boy, talk about overkill.
I am currently trying to rid my dad's computer of an enormous amount of spyware. I installed google chrome and it wouldn't let me sign into gmail. It said the cookie settings were wrong. They aren't. Basically there is some spyware on there that redirects you to a bunch of stuff and is in someway interfering with the cookies on Chrome. For some reason it works on IE but does show an AWESOME tool bar which is infinitely useful and not inconvenient at ALL. Spybot didn't pick up on the issue either.... oh bother. It's pretty bad too, if I search for anti-spyware stuff it will redirect the links I click from google. Spyware has gone to a whole new level since I bought a mac. Maybe I should just nuke it and start fresh.
Also, this may be of interest to you guys: etotheipi guy's awesome guide to building stuff
Onward with winter break excursions!
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