The Grass is Greener

April 09, 2006So here's our yard.  We're on the left, bordered by a crazy mutant dandelion farm.  There is literally a property line, as you can see from the pic.  I think we're fighting an uphill battle.  Jonathan recommends that we sneak onto their property and spread lye in the morning before it dews.  I think we should just burn their yard.

Us----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Neighbors


See?  The grass isn't always greener on the other side.  I happen to love my grass, and wouldn't trade it.  And besides, it gets better every day.  And in case you missed it, there was a transition away from literal.

JOB!!

April 09, 2006Crazy weekend... I finished my computer program.  I've finished the work, rearranged some stuff, and made it more efficient.  All in all, I'm very happy.  And the whole thing runs in only 16 minutes on my laptop.  I still have much to do, though.  I need to grade about 4 more homework sets, I have a meeting, I have a picnic, I need to clean the kitchen, the have to mow the lawn and I have to change the oil in the cars.  When it comes to prioritization, you must decide what's most important and what's most immediate.  By doing this, I determined the best use of my time would be posting on phusebox.

[Baby] - Virus

Well, Liz and I are home from church today.  Daniel has a virus, and we think the other parents would probably appreciate it if we kept him away.  To me, this just shows how much he is growing up and learning.  Daniel has learned that he must have a plan B.  If he can't make big people do things using his extreme cuteness, he can now resort to diarrhea.  I won't go into the details about how he implements plan B, but let's just say you'll need a shower and lye soap.

[Job] - I once was lost

I decided to send an email to the man who was had been listed as my potential mentor in that email from Oak Ridge.  He called me back in a couple hours and basically said that he didn't know what the second email was, but he was really excited about having me, and that I should prepare myself because we're going to be working on some really awesome stuff.  It's refreshing to see someone really excited about what they're doing, and I'm looking forward to checking it out.  Hmmh... I'm looking forward to work.  Somewhere, a small bird is hatching.

Happy Birthday Jonathan!

April 07, 2006The Jonathan I referred to in my last post turned 19 today.  So, congratulations to him.  He came over with his girlfriend and the four of us played Text Twist and watched Stargate Atlantis.  He's probably the only person up here right now that we trust to watch Daniel, so he kept him last week so Liz and I could go on a date.  Great guy.






In other news, I got two emails from ORNL today.  They came 7 minutes apart.

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

FIRST:  "Appointment offer"

Mr. Joshua Morgan:

Congratulations! I have been authorized to offer you an appointment at ORNL in the Higher Education Research Experiences (HERE) program. Details about your appointment are provided below.

Dates: June 5, 2006- August 25, 2006
Stipend: $xxx*/week based on 100% participation
Housing: $xxx/week based on 100% participation and permanent address over 60 miles
Division: Environmental Sciences Technology Division
Mentor: xxx
Mentor's Phone: xxx
Mentor's E-mail: xxx
Project Description: Work is in the area of heat, air and moisture transport. Literature review in Air Barrier
Systems. Material  Property Testing (measuring material properties).  Modeling heat and moisture in Building wall, roofs and basements.  Analysis of field and lab data, plotting of results using various softwares such as Excel and Origin.

Do you accept this offer? If so, please have an official transcript sent to me at the address below my name. Your appointment package will be sent to you in a few days.

<<Guide for Short Term Housing 2006.pdf>>

Cheryl Brummett-Brown

Program Specialist

SECOND:  "Recall:  Appointment offer"

Brummett, Cheryl would like to recall the message, "Appointment offer".

0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

I'm so confused.  So am I being offered a job or not??  I waiting for a response, so I'll let you konw.

* - Removed by me

The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Fall

April 06, 2006Well, today was mostly good, except for one particular experience.

Jonathan (few if any of you know him) suggested that the two of us go give blood.  That's fine... I can handle needles and I've given blood before.  I like knowing I'm helping people.  So he went first and I played with Daniel, then I gave him Daniel I they hooked me up.  6 minutes later, they unhooked me and I was ready to go.  I felt a little sick to my stomache, so I made my way towards the cooler to grab a sprite.  I got out a sprite, at which point I got that "stood up too fast" head rush.  I kept trying to open my sprite, and then I heard "hey buddy, I need you to talk to me."

After finally realizing that he was talking to me, I mumbled something like "okay, okay... I'm talking"  Next, I noticed there were a lot of people around me and everything was white and fuzzy, then I realized I was on the floor.  They helped me up and we stumbled to a nearby chair.  I think I passed out again, because I shut my eyes and was covered with ice packs and worried looks when I opened them again.  One ice pack behind my neck, one on my forehead, two in my shirt.  If I had been fully concious, I'm sure I would have been freezing.  As it was, I was just really tired and confused.  They kept making me talk and keep my eyes open, when all I wanted to do was drift away again.

After a while, they took off most of the ice packs.  I started to realize what was happening.  They got me my sprite, and I attempted to drink it.  20% mouth, 80% shirt.  Jonathan brought over the baby, and he gurggled at me a little.  I had some more sprite at 30% mouth and 70% shirt, and took the last ice pack out of my shirt.  I ended up sitting there about 20 minutes, I think.  It's kinda fuzzy.

So okay.  I can deal.  I'd be embarassed, but I don't remember well anyway.  So I passed out.  I later realized I hadn't eaten that day (I was stuck at 2pm), so it makes sense.  I just forgot.  The lady that took my blood had been enjoying her first day on the job, and the second.... incident.  I think I scared her  a little.

People pass out, right?  Well... most people don't spasm so violently that they bruise their own chest with their hand.  That's right, I noticed that my chest was REALLY sore a couple hours later when I went to scratch an itch.  Turns out, my body hit the floor, my head snapped back and hit the floor (loud enough that people heard the slam and came over), and then I spasmed.  So my butt hurts, my head hurts, the afternoon is fuzzy, and I have a huge mark and bruise on my chest.

Was it worth it?  Don't know.  I've been out the country lately, so they might not be able to use my blood.

Thermal Design

April 06, 2006Alright... I'll warn you right up front this is both a rant and academia-related, probably written much more for me than you.  The stress surrounding this project is building up and I need to vent.

If I asked you how quickly you could run through a room, you might give me a speed.  Maybe one side of the room is higher than the other because of a sloped floor.  You could probably give me an estimate "I could get across the room in about 8 secs".  What if I told you that the walls were only two feet apart.  Wouldn't that slow you down a little?  What if they were 18" apart?  Some people wouldn't even be able to start.  My point is, the size of the room affects the speed of something travelling through it.  Like a box has frictional energy loss as you scrape it along a floor, air has a frictional energy loss as it travels down a tube.  Small tubes have more losses and so air travels through them more slowly unless you compensate.

Here's the point: we have to pick a fan for our heat exchanger.  The idea is that you have a certain amount of loss you have to compensate for and you want a certain rate of air flow, so you need to have a fan that can provide that.  Well, you find a fan by looking at these performance curves that show flow rate versus head loss (head loss is basically a measure of the pressure loss that will occur if you try to push air through a pipe.  The higher the head, the more pressure your fan will need to provide).  Here's the problem: the charts are all giving us static pressure versus flow rate and not head loss.  This is the equivalent of me asking you to make me a chart of how fast you could get across that room at various floor slopes, but you can't account for whether or not the room is wide or narrow.  It's important that we include all of those other losses, because they'll be significant for our system.  So today we'll find the professor and tell him that his examples had head loss versus flow rate, but every company we have found only has static pressure versus flow rate.  What should we do, Dr. Marquis???

Okay... less frustrated now.  I'm meeting with him later today.  I'll let you know what happens.