Beer Lids

Don't try to unscrew caps that are not twist-off. Even sober you can easily slice your hand open and not even realize it until you are half way back to school and find that your shifting hand hurts right where you touch the shift knob. Pumpkin beer is almost worth it though.

It is time for a change

Ok so if you have not noticed I have been a wee bit absent from this blog...or very absent your call, but my semester has been without a doubt ridiculous...in a good way (I think)
As my mother kindly pointed out we are halfway through the first half of senior year (and commence freak out). I feel as if this semester is flying by and that I really have not had the chance to enjoy it...the primary culprit is school. I really do enjoy my classes (most of the time) as in I enjoy capstone when I am not in class and am working on my project (our professor makes us all want to cry). But I really do love my project and I hope it can make a pretty strong impact when all is said and done. I'll give you a preview of the overly catchy title:

Motiviating Student Advocacy in Sustainability:
Are our universities holding students back?

Make you want to learn more, well I will let you read the full 30+ page document (minimum) when all is said and done. Excited yet? Additionally Italian is a struggle like always and International business is really really really dry to say the least. My urban geography class is awesome though with the focus on sustainable urbanism etc etc, I love going to that class! Oh but did I mention that my capstone prof puts us on really strict deadlines whenever she feels like it and thus it owns my life.
Outside of that everything is great! I love what I am involved in and feel that I am really making a difference, plus Homecoming is next week so after that is over my schedule will be a whole lot more open and by that I mean a few extra hours a week to do homework. Hooray, but maybe that would mean I would get to bed a bit earlier.
Okay so I guess all is not bad...I just wish I had a little more time to breath, but I can do that after college!
Molly Dull came to visit two weekends ago (has it really been that long) but it was a magical experience, aka a lot of fun and well worth the break from life. Plus she will be here at the end of November with her accapella group and we all know we could use more M.Dull in life (plus she'll get to use her house key finally).
Off to my next adventure and hopefully you will hear from me more often.
Peace Out!

Using the Secret

Here it is, doubters don't get rides. Help me out and visualize yourself riding in my Ferrari. I'm serious, I would really appreciate it!

I'm keeping this thing alive

I am working on a project for my senior design class that is in collaboration with a company that makes plastic domes. This company is in Mt. Vernon Ohio, which is not at all close to Oxford. We decided that this past Thursday was a good time to go and visit Replex.

We got a Miami van. 8 seats for 6 people. Pretty comfortable. Except the seats are made of a cross between cardboard and rocks. I am pretty sure I fell asleep on the way there cause it did not seem like 3+ hours of driving. Did I mention I got up at 5:30 to start this trip? So around 10 we stopped to get a snack cause we were close. I picked up a rockstar and some mini crullers. A balanced breakfast.

When we got to the place we were given a tour of the facility. We were not allowed to film or take pictures because some of the machines they use are custom made and not even patented because if they were they would be common knowledge and the Chinese would steal the technology and make the parts cheaper. That was a direct quote from the owner of a company, an MIT grad who is in the process of building up his second successful enterprise. He came up with the machines himself.

After the tour and a lunch/brainstorming session, we went home. I got to drive this portion. It would have been faster on the way back except for the traffic, rain, and bathroom stops (not my idea). Those vans have huge blind spots. I almost ran two cars off the road.

I don't have my Ferrari F430 Spider yet, but I will soon. If you want a ride, leave a comment.

Epic Fly Kill

Matt, I can make fun of whatever I want. Especially when your come back is to try and out bore my boring post.

Just now I was in the bathroom washing my face when a fly started buzzing around the light. This fly was spastic, like trying to fly through the ceiling dinging of the light bulbs. I decided to put it out of its crazed misery. I finished washing my face and waited for it to seize itself into a position where I could get a good washcloth whack at it. When I got my chance, I nailed it! It went zooming into the wall across the room, got knocked out from the impact and fell straight into the toilet. I'm not talking rolling down the sides either, he was dead on in the water. I just made my own day.

LAB!

I don't really think Eric can claim my posts to be boring after describing how "cool" our steam plant is. Million-year-old dead body parts go in, hot water vapor + other stuff comes out. Whoop-dee-flippin'-doo.

But I can't turn down an opportunity to give an equally field-specific recollection of my day...

This morning, I woke up around 7:30, which isn't typical. I had to pee. After takin' care of business, I went back to bed. Then I woke up around 9:00, like I do sometimes. I took a shower, ate a breakfast of grainy flakes and dehydrated strawberries rehydrated in milk. It was pretty good, made me feel like an astronaut. I piddled around a little, then headed off to the lab like I usually do.

But today was different...we had new results! Protein A from G. metallireducens exists in two forms, but we only want to study one of the forms. To do this, we tried using a modifying protein which looks alot like the Tri-Force from Zelda (I had to look it up, don't judge, at least on that particular point). So a few days ago I set up a reaction to convert Protein A to the form we want. We seriously keep tubes that have more than .5 mg/ml. That's a lot. During peak hours...we don't run out. But that's not even the cool part. In another room in the building, we have an instrument that blows the protein to tiny bits and bends the fragments around a big loop using a magnet. It's pretty much silent. We got the results back from that analysis today...and our reaction worked!

One of my classes is canceled tomorrow, should be great.

NO LAB!

I got up this morning at 7:10 like I do many mornings. I put on suitable clothes for leaving the house like I do sometimes. I ate breakfast, it was a bowl of small, bland, stale cookies with milk. I packed up my stuff and off I went. BUT today was different. Rather than going to my thermo II lab like I do most Tuesday mornings, I was going to tour the steam plant! The steam plant operates on a cycle much like that of the Rankine cycle. There is a boiler, and steam is produced. In a Rankine cycle the steam would be used to spin turbines to generate electricity, but here it is used only for heat. The plant burns coal. This coal is burnt at prodigious rates. They have a silo that holds 500 tons of coal. At peak operating times, they receive several truckloads of coal every day. They feed into three boilers that are painted like carnival rides and have plaques on them saying where they were built. Seriously, the hoppers above the boilers are blue and the boilers are orange.

That's not even the cool part though. In another adjacent building there are two natural gas motors that are used for power generation at peak times. This is under contract with Duke energy. Like I said there are two of these motors. Each of them is an 8000hp twin turbo-charged v-18. When they are running, the noise level in the room is around 113dB. That is really loud.

I have a test in the morning. I am going to do great on it.