This Week in Nuzzo History

Boom. Finished my finals, got an A- in senior project (FUCK YEAH). Just rolled into Litchfield and currently awaiting the arrival of my sister.... who was accepted to the accelerated nursing program at NYU yesterday! Hooray! I'm very proud and happy for her, she will be getting done work and moving to New York very soon because the program starts next month.... talk about a life changing event. Additionally today was Papa Nuzzos very last day of work ever, for real this time, no take backs. After working in Nuclear power for 40+ years I expect dad will further his skill set by welding more, fixing everything around the house, driving mom crazy and clogging the computer with spyware (Cheney has a running bet on how long the computer will last with my dad out of work). Hooray Papa Nuzzo!

Anyways, so that's sweet. Here is a picture of our completed and passing (notice how I don't say working) senior project. The project works to meet our specs but has some serious issues when spinning the motor.... it actually stalls the motor after roughly one minute depending on the speed of the motor. We kind of ran out of ideas of why this happens and definitely ran out of time to fix it, so we just had to free ball it and run it for our hardware show. It made for some unique discussions during the hardware show.

Complete with precision speed indicator and ninja surface mount soldering splendor!  

 We may be overhauling the design again with some significant changes by the end of the year because as it is right now, I am NOT standing in front of a crowd to present this thing.... that shit is too sketchy.

Also, they put up a wind turbine on campus recently mostly to collect data for a 1/8th scale floating platform test that will happen off the coast of Maine in a few months. The Advanced structures and composites center (the people behind all this deep offshore wind stuff, formally the AWEC) also just won a big grant funding their project. The other day they took it down to run a few more sensors up the tower I think, so naturally I went over to bump fists with other windymill folks. Met a grad student who worked there and knew about Pika energy, which was sweet. His name was Curtis (good name) and he told me to come by and he'd give me a tour sometime. Nice.

Windmills always look like a fish out of water when they're tilted down. 

For now, I'm making a turkey and going to kick back with the family tonight. Hoping to read a book over break, do christmas things and start assembling the engine for the bus. God it feels nice to not be at school and damn it feels good to be a gangster.