We have a laser at work for evaluation. The output is 8 Watts of 532 nm coherent collimated light (this is a lot of energy, it can easily vaporize metal). It’s only going to be here for the next couple of weeks, so I’m trying to think of awesome things to do with it after-hours. I’m planning on at least playing with water, food, and combustables. Perhaps I’ll make a laser pen.
Please submit your suggestions in the comments! I’ll try to make some videos, but no promises.
Closing at forty MPH, I have a choice to make. Driving a car, you just slow down when the guy in front of you does. I don’t like to slow down. I stomp on the gear shift instead of the break, and tuck my elbows in.
I’ve been driving a motorcycle to work for about eight months now. It’s a fifteen minute drive each way (twenty with traffic) over surface streets. No freeway, which is actually more dangerous than it sounds. When you’re on the freeway everyone is going the same direction. On the back roads you get pickup trucks popping in from the farms, tractors crawling along at jogging pace, and a sprinkling of insane bicyclists shaving the barely paved shoulder. Also, it seems like a third of the vehicles are those giant semi-trailer trucks that you can’t see around and accelerate like a bad head cold.
So now I’m closing with the mud-flaps. He’s probably going thirty, and I’m maybe doubling that. I’m sure not watching my speedometer. Looking down while your passing on a two lane road with a big trucks going both ways is just bad form. Also, it’s broken, just reads zero most of the time. Speaking of time, I’m now approaching a terrifying closing speed with opposing traffic. (more…)
Worked late today finishing the particle scrubs. When I got back to quarters (just a little bit ago), there was a message waiting for me. Apparently three departments love the idea of cleaning all of the air-handling equipment before we make an insertion on Planet Four. I notified Dirk that we can’t possibly have all of that done, with our normal duties besides, before we reach planetary orbit in a couple of weeks. We’ll see what they decide.
With any luck I’ll be tagged for full time duct scrub duty. Fantastic.
Heard a couple of engineers complaining about the temperature in their quarters. Apparently they are propping their doors open at night. Almost makes all the hassle worth it. Spent most of today finishing the disassembly. Tomorrow is scheduled doing the in-place particle scrubs.
The heat plates slide into static baffles, which the air has to flow over. The particle scrubbers have reach into the convolutions in order to pass the particle count tests. If the plates were integral with the baffles then everything would come out at once. I asked the engineers about it during lunch today. They said it had something to do with manufacturability, fluid efficiency, and mass savings. Whatever it is, they’re the ones suffering, not me.
Had a scare today in life support. There was a pure oxygen leak. Had to evacuate two sectors for a purge and scrub. No detonation, thankfully. I think the oxygen levels for the whole ship rose above 0.3% before it was contained. It’s easy to forget that just one major failure could kill us all. EP-61-4 is looking more inviting by the hour.
Got pulled from the cushy landing vessel maintenance to work on that thermal dump unit shut-down. Apparently Dirk really sold that request at the A-tor meet. Maybe he saw the irony? Anyway, today I was swimming in thermal paste and pump plates. How do you design such a complicated heat transfer unit? Looks like Earl may be right after all, I’m dreading re-assembly. Plus I’ve got to do a particle scrub on the baffles while I’m at it. I hope those engineers really suffer this week. I know I’m going to.
Scheduled lunch in PA-A as soon as I got pulled from SSF duty. Very relaxing today. No one around.
We’ve started decanting and initial preventative maintenance on the landing vessels. Very dense to work on; Mostly just checking brand new systems for corrosion and double lubing everything. Kick can sometimes disturb internals, so flight crew is doing SSF testing. It’s time consuming, but mostly involves sitting around waiting for the test suite to give the ‘all clear’. I wanted to help set up the stimulators, but we don’t have the equipment on board to repair them, and flight crew is tight on procedure. They said the SSF suite costs as much as all the food on board. Crazy.
Speaking of food, had lunch in the hangar today. Those flight crew have it easy. Delivered meals, expensive equipment, unlimited rec access. Of course, they’re pretty much at the mercy of every system and department on board. I think every A-tor has ruined flight crew’s day at one point or another. At the end of the day, I’m glad to be maintenance. (Yeah, that was for you Dirk. Guess which part!)
Occasionally, we meet with a Midas thought, massive, unexpected, totally transforming. It will transmute the landscape of our thoughts, if we let it. Gold is a poor structural material, however, and this transformation often leads to wholesale collapse. The worlds in our heads which we imagine to be real are rarely designed for such weights and spans as eternity presents.
Thoughts though (like Midas powers) can be flinched from, resisted, repealed. How often have we stepped forward over the ever murky depths of knowledge, slenderly on a whim or thought, and saw heaving up from beneath a concept like Leviathan. “Behold, you are overcome at the mere sight of him…” and all the soul can mutter is “what…” as the masonry congeals into metal and begins to yield under its own weight. (more…)
The mission is going forward! The whole maintenance team spent the day re-tuning the drive nodes for orbital insertion. I had a bit of trouble with the doors; It seems they recognized my crew ID and went into high-security mode. I had to get Dirk to clear me for access. Not sure why security is such an issue; I’d feel safer if everything was unlocked.
Lunch in the arbor was pleasant. Cathy and Don spent most of it talking about possible alien pathogens and how they could be counteracted. As far as I can tell Cathy prefers inoculation while Don supports designed counter-predators. I’m just hoping that there aren’t any bugs to begin with.
As I was writing this log, the service fee came in for having lunch served in a non-standard public area. Figures there’s a reason no-one else is doing it. It’s not prohibitive though, and the arbors are really pretty. It reminds me of my mom’s garden back on Shohs. Still though, I can visit after hours without incurring fees. Why are there fees anyhow? It’s not like the bots are doing anything in their free time.
I’ve been reading through the writings of Fredric Bastiat. There are so many great statements in there, and whenever I find one I want to tell everyone. My resistance to quoting him has been waning, and it finally snapped today.
Although he states a very specific case, I believe this is his idealization of the speech that any government official should make, from the heart, on taking office. From Economic Harmonies by Frederic Bastiat:
“We have tried so many things; when shall we try the simplest of all: freedom? Freedom in all our acts that do not offend justice; freedom to live, to develop, to improve; the free exercise of our faculties; the free exchange of our services. What a fine and solemn spectacle it would have been had the government brought to power by the February Revolution spoken thus to the citizens:
So I’ve wanted to live on the ocean for a while now. The reasons are complicated, but it involves adventure, freedom, opportunity, ingenuity, and a bit of the “pioneer spirit.”
Anyway, I put up a site, www.dinasdwr.com that has some of my ideas on it. Right now it’s mostly a placeholder, but if you’re interested you can read it there. Then, if you’re still interested, you can post comments here.