Its been over a week since I've blogged.  I've tried loyal reader (all 0.3 of you, that's right, my target audience is the 0.3 of a child left over from the household average of 2.3).  I have been thinking and thinking of things to blog about, I thought about the rules of engagement during bug warefare (only kill if they bit or are infesting your kitchen), how much I love the band Coheed and Cambria (check them out, they rock) or how nice it is to get flowers for no reason.  But all these things didn't have the grit to make it to a full entry.  And why?  I just wasn't pissed off enough.

 

Today I have an entry and a half!  FUCK!

 

I have been entering numbers into my simulator Chemkin for ages now.  And up to now the results have been less than satisfactory.  (You can feel anger starting to radiate radiating, can't you?)  I have only one variable I can change to massage the results I want out of this simulator; temperature.  Temperature measured with a thermocouple of +/- 50 C accuracy and can only be measured at one spot, the rest is vague guess work.  Great...  The temperatures I measured were high but whatever, they were what I got and I had checked them twice. 

 

Today my prof came by to see my wacky simulator results and took a close look at the temperature and said "Hmmm...."  This was a loaded "hmmm" aimed directly at my sanity.  "These seem way to high" he says, and my brain starts to fry.  "I think we are just going to have to do these experiments again."    Bam!  Brain is fried!

 

So I spent today leak testing, fixing, weighing, eye dropping....  Its the nightmare all over again, except now I get to fight for equipment with summer students and weekends in the lab.

Three thoughts to prolong the weekend and then I'm starting my new work resolution; get stuff done! 

 

Thought #1

  I'm tied for second last in the NCAA pool.  Who knew that having no knowledge of basketball and just a faint hope of pulling off a miracle wouldn't work.  There is $5 I wish I had back.

 

Thought #2

  How does someone googling homemade ninja explosives end up at my blog?  Of course I just made it easier by typing "homemade ninja explosives" right there.  Let's see how far this line of crazy can go.

 

[ Update: Thought #2b This afternoon someone googled "lesbian shortstories" and got my blog.  I scratch my head in confunded amazement.]

 

Thought #3

  Uhhh...I forget.  (This is a great start to the work week... I need a tea!)

I'm working on excel sheets from hell and, on my compter, I have all the windows I need open.  Chemkin, Excel and ESPN's real time game update.

 

I don't know the first thing about basketball, other than there is a basket and a ball involved.  All the same, I've been hooked.  I've got $5 invested in a March Madness pool.  High stakes, no wonder I'm obsessing.  I chose my teams with diligence and care, taking the higher seed but paying careful attention to potential upsets (i.e. randomly).  My crazy office mate took a slightly different approach, her picks were based on the teams with a shorter name in order to save time filling out her scoresheet out. 

 

Duke all the way!

Rain, rain, go away.

Come again...well... Never!

Unless you want be watched by male plumbers on break while standing naked or in your towel waiting for the shower, I don't suggest that you go to the McGill Ladies Locker Room.

 

And McGill had the nerve to tell me that the plumbers felt akward about the situation. 

 

I wish this blog was a joke.

 

 

You just barge in and force me to reschedule my life.  You tell me its not working, knocking the wind out of my spirit.  For you I forgo my responsibilities and obligations.  You make me feel stupid and then to top it all off you get abusive and burn my fingers. 

 

You are a bastard!

 

If you weren't  a $10 000 Gas Chromatograph I would smash you into bits without a second thought!

Yesterday was a bad day.  It inspiring thinking, drrr....  Good thing I had already scheduled a swim (I do my best thinking in the pool).  And here is my conclusion, I am living a good life.  I have everything I need.  I am healthy and everyone I know is healthy, something that cannot be taken forgranted.  I'm not perfect and can't expect myself to be.  I can't make everybody happy, but I can try my best to help out where I can.  And I will NOT, like yesterday, let another series of unfortunate "bumps" turn a perfectly good day into a bad one.

I was out at T house last night (and am just getting it over now, ugh, I hate drinking) when Jason leaned over to me and told me that during last night's Habs game the on-air commentator said the only way to describe Christobal Huet's outstanding performance was "Ninja-esque".  I squealed with excitement, I'm not proud, but I did.  That adjective put almost all the things I love into one linking statment; cute goalies whose names are almost identical to mine, the Habs putting on a late season push for the playoffs and of course NINJAS!!! 

 

It also makes me feel better knowing that I'm not the only freak who would use a ninja rooted word to describe something cool.  Now that's ninja-nuity for you!

I used to doubt scientific method, now I am a confirmed scientific atheist. 

 

Today was result review day.  I sat down today with my infinite number experiments and their corresponding infinite data points and looked for trends with my supervisor.  We sat down together, decided that there were no trends and decided to make stuff up!  To greatly paraphrase, "You presented that temperature hump  at the Toronto conference?"; "Yes, sir"; "And no one questioned you?"; "No, sir"; "Wow, cause that is completely wrong. Oh well."

 

But to top these feats of experimental disbelief, my crazy officemate and I went shopping for results in my heap of infinite experiment.  Once again, greatly paraphrasing, "Do you have something that is 675C?"  "Yeah, here is one..."; "Hmmm do you have it in a 7 LPM?"  "No, but you can have the 11 LPM.";  "That will work, its kinda close.  Who cares if it is not the same flowrate, we are supposed to have some error."

 

This is for her final graduate seminar tomorrow.