And round again

It's Friday lunchtime again in Ireland (and lots of other places, I wonder whats popular for lunch in Morocco) and you know what that means! Food! (and another blog post from myself it seems).

This week has been unexpected in many ways, it seems I am moving out in the next month or so, with Kevin, which will be really cool, and scary too. I've been talking about it and planning to for around 2 years now, been occasionally looking at places online and such. But only viewing a place for the first time this evening. I didn't go and ask anyones advice about it at all really, mostly because I'm not 100% if this is going to happen really. Feeling a bit deflated this morning, so I wont probably post as much as I should.



Prof. Lunney is back now, had a group meeting on Tuesday morning. Went pretty well, getting sick of saying that I'm waiting on stuff to be built. I'm just going nowhere, fast. I just need to get a proper tooling system setup at home and I can do half the jobs I need during the evening. I'm not saying I don't appriciate having people around who have expertise in things I have only passing experience with but when things aren't thought out right it leaves me having to start the work they said they would do, only 2+ weeks later. But I guess these things happen and everyone makes mistakes. I just want to get started on the experiment already, I thought I'd be started mid-February, not mid-May! The experiment itself is going to be full of challanges, with allignment, energy optimisation and then ensuring my measurement tools are seeing the full picture.. it's going to take a long time to get it properly running. And I would like to be in full analysis mode before August so that come September I have an idea of what my transfer report is going to say. Not to mention the fact that I'm presenting a poster in June and have very little of my own work to show. I wish I could put the drawings of my setup up here or go into more detail but I think it compromises my IP in terms of the research aswell as my publishing if it comes to it.



Other than that I have started to seriously put together summer plans, which makes me feel happier to think about. This summer should be fun, with moving out, holidays and hopefully experiments, I should be all smiles. Lets hope eh? This coming month is bringing a very important day too, I will have been with Odette for 4 years on Monday. I'm still really happy and in love with Odette, so I don't really find it hard to believe in that sense, but then again I've spent nearly as long with Odette as I have "with physics" lets say, so that's pretty crazy I think (not only the fact that I think I'm an item with "physics").



For my birthday off my dad and everyone in the house I got a 1:24 model of a de Havilland Mosquito (a wing span on the model of nearly 69cm), it will be an experience to build such a big model. Need to buy paints now though, will buy them off the Airfix site though, cheaper, and might buy a 1:72 model of the TBF Avenger too, sure why not eh?

Also I got my gun licences approved, so €160 quid total for both and I've got it sorted for the next 3 years. Pretty glad to have it approved, want to go shooting with Dave in the club he joined. Be nice to get some practice in while the evenings are bright. Always nice to know you can shoot straight.

Walking Toast City

The grass is always Different on the other side, it isn't necessarily always greener. Sometimes greener is boring anyway, sometimes it's the white flecks or the yellowy stalks that make you want it, that's what makes it interesting. Or maybe it's the feel of it under your feet, it might be just as green but very soft and springy, now that's what I'd be looking for.

My camera collection growing well, not that I really planned it, or sought to expand it, cameras just keep finding me. I really have to get a load of film for them all and buy a dark room lamp and some chemicals, I'm sure I could develop the images in the lab myself and it'd be a nice new skill to have. Will have to talk to Stephen K. about it.



I feel that I've been eating well lately, perhaps a little more than I usually had been, the Saturday market food is fantastic in Temple Bar, I love the cheeses and the different pesto, olives, hummus and such. So damn tasty.



But things like that are making my time fun, which makes it go by too quickly, and then deadlines are approached with little to show! OhDear. This was the last week before magnetism questions due up (Monday @10am) fingers crossed I get lots of 'em done quick, I still have a lot to go and I wouldn't like to have to spend my whole weekend stressing. But I definitely want to get as many done as possible! Don't know how good failing a second postgrad. course would go down... But I wont fail, I'm sure I wont >.>

In other news the vacuum chamber works! New base plate in place on the bottom with the pump attached and pumped down to 5E-6 mbar in an hour on the first try. So that's one good thing to report. I still have to get some of my stuff from the workshop so experiments aren't on the go ahead quite yet, but soon!



"Physicists - making it up as they go along" I am a horrible example of this, I hate to say it, but I don't know everything... I just pretend to. Please, don't hate me, I tried, I know you all only love me because I'm so cleaver, and bright, not forgetting witty and breathtakingly handsome. Hah, yeah so anyway, I really have to stop making up answers based on educated guesses, just because they're educated doesn't mean they aren't guesses Isaac. Gotit?! haha, go tit...

So last night was Jane's going away party, another friend vamoosing. And Arann is heading off too, didn't manage to see him since my birthday and didn't really get to talk to him then. It's weird to think of not having these people only a phone call, bus ride or train journey away.



I really do hope to go visit them over there. I'd like to see Canada and it'd be great to hang out in foregin lands with friends! Haven't done that! I'd also get to see Kelly which would be fun! Yeah, I think I will have to go to Canada, to many parts of Canada. And drink milk from a bag. Hah.

So yeah, it's another Friday lunch time, and I've just had a bowl of muesli (damn tasty stuff, still haven't tried it with cranberry juice instead of milk). I saw Odette a good amount this week, do want to move out with her, be great, and be nice to see if after a month we are killing each other at all, doubt we would be, but be interesting to see. Be hard to manage pizza with Kevin though, will have to go to his house, or make sure Odette goes out. Unless Odette likes the crusts on Mizzonis'.. hmmmm could work out. But in the short term I think I'm going to move out this summer with Josh, be weird but I'd enjoy it. I'm also thinking about going to NJ to stay with my aunt and uncle, Odette would be coming with me which would be fun, we've both been to NY but never together. Just have to arrange all that. Lots to think about!

Either way it should be a good summer, will have some of the college things that have been weighting me down finished and will hopefully be in experimental mode which would be nice. Sick of having all these little things standing in the way!

Another week flying

*NOTE*
For the first time in a long time I put thought into a blog post, I hope this is okay and doesn't scare anyone, I'm not dying (any faster than usual). This post was written between two days, the 14th and 15th so that I could get all the ideas I wanted to out into the world.
*/NOTE*

I think I'm coming to terms with who I am, at least a little, or a little more than I had done before, although I guess I wasn’t the Me I am now then anyway.
Now I don't mean what I'm about to say as a statement of how I always am, anyone who says they always are anything (other than alive) is either lying or very consistently on a heavy cocktail of drugs.
I think that I am a cheery, I won’t say happy because that's more internal than external, and I think that I'm more outwardly, conversationally happy than I am happy by the look in my eyes or the feeling inside.
So, I am a cheery, mild-mannered (that is to say push over, in most senses), annoying (in a passive way, I hope), unobservant (except about pointless mundane things like insects, animal tracks or other such banal, useless things to notice), argumentative (in a conversational way, at least that's my aim, mostly I think I come across just as an obstacle to Fact), a lazy person (and a bastard of one apparently, thanks Enda), a clean person (I clean when bored, irritated or otherwise full of undirected energy), completely not self-style-conscious (not that I need to tell anyone that)... I’m losing steam on this one, and I think it sounds stupid and pointless. Nobody needs to hear what I think I am because they all know what They think I am anyway.
[I was also told once, by most of my closest friends, in one sitting, that I was the most passive aggressive person they knew. That my social habits showed malice and thirst for vengeance and that I should sort this out... That surprised me, as I didn't know I was being so obvious about it.. Hah. No, really I didn't think I was but I guess they'd know!]



I've become conscious of the people who are reading this, people beyond the one or two I thought might and beyond the few I thought might happen upon it now and again (the best thing about writing things like that, knowing some of the people who might read it, is getting to try to guess which one of the groups they will assume I meant them to be in). So I will probably be adding clause upon clause to my statements to ensure that I am not taken too seriously and that people don’t think worse of me for anything I say.



Another big thing is that Enrique, the guy whose work I am in essence fallowing on from, has finished his thesis, viva, and corrections and is leaving for the states tomorrow morning to begin a 9-5 job. I really am going to be a long way from all my answers this time tomorrow. He was one of the nicest people I've met in a long time, he was always good for a chat, always had at least part of the answer I was looking for and I must say I envy his certainty in God, a lot.

I am always being brought down these days, I just can't seem to find my meaning, and I'm not asking for help, after all it is My meaning. And I firmly believe in everyone's own meaning, I think that organised religion can only show you a path and be a guide. Once it becomes The path itself then the message is lost and you become subject to another man, and that isn't the point of the whole religious sphere, at least not in the true sense. It should be about learning, never about control.

Heavy stuff for a Wednesday night, but I guess once the mind starts running it reaches its own momentum without consulting its surrounds. Other than being brought down and staying down with a loss of faith as an ankle weight, I am down about life. It's nothing new to this blog for me to complain about work or family or friends, but it all comes back to my idea of where I am going and I have to say, that idea isn't what I thought it was. Not one bit. I mostly just want to enjoy my time, whether that means staying home and playing some stupid game or looking through hundreds of pictures to find ones I like for no reason other than collecting them, or whether it’s going to spend time with Odette watching crap TV and talking nonsense.



Anyway, enough of that talk, social dynamics are of great interest to me, lots of things are of great interest to me though, but where people think they belong in social pyramids and how people locate others is something very telling. I also really like to see how families develop, and how children of certain ages begin to bring home new social traits and challenge the way things are done in a house because of these new methods they've learned. I think the patterns people make around themselves, the groups of friends and the statistical averages which people so easily fall in to so often. Not that I’d ever want to study these things professionally, that would bore me to tears.

I really love still being a student, staying safe in the knowledge I have 3 more years without Real things to think about, just lots of physics to do. I’ve oh so many projects I would like to take on aswell though, but they would take too much time to undertake properly, so for now they all will just stay as dreams.



I thought I would post more, but I really did run out of steam, but I’d say if I made it any longer nobody would want to reach the end, if there is anyone who wanted to even get this far. Thanks for reading, as always opinions are welcome and requested. I do miss a lot of my friends, but I never know what social scenario I should try arrange for seeing them (/you).

N.B. I really hope anyone who does read this doesn't think I'm thinking I'm too big for my boots, I'm not thinking anything of the sort. I know where I stand in most of the levels of intellect, I just like throwing my hand in at fields of thought far beyond my level, it helps take away from the stupid, unanswerable questions I develop about things I'm wrapped up in day to day in my life.
It may not be the best way, as it will clearly take away from my ability to solve the problems at hand, but I really don't like the problems at hand unless they are almost fixed already and I get the credit for the fix.

Stupid has a twin

His name is Isaac. And on rare occasions Stupid pretends to be him, takes his phone, keys and friends and makes things crap just so that when Isaac wakes up the next morning (with a headache from being beaten unconscious by Stupid) he has to crawl around in pain and try and fix all the crap Stupid did. Only nobody ever blames Stupid, Isaac always gets the blame.

So I lost my keys, glasses and gloves somewhere between town and my house, on Wednesday night sometime between 12:30 when I was last seen and 3am when I woke my little brother to let me into the house. But it's not all bad, I also went on a rant about the Irish Defence Forces in Chad which is on video apparently, scared my girlfriend half to death thinking I was going to get killed or had been in the hour between drunken phone calls on my walk home (at least I think I walked home, my shoes were covered in fresh cut grass anyway). Bonus points all round really, I sure can show how great I am at social drinking.



On to other news, a man in TCD cursed this week, loudly, at discovering the vacuum chamber he was testing a newly repaired lid on wouldn't pump down with the lid it had previously, thus rendering days of tests void as some fault with the chamber exists with nothing to do with the new lid. Always fun to find out you've wasted a couple of days.

Had my last lab yesterday with the first year science students, more time for my own work now which is grand, though I will miss the extra pay. Magnetism course also wrapped on Tuesday, 42Q's to be answered and 5Q's to be written with answers for the 26th April, that should keep me busy in the evenings wahey. Had a nice weekend in my mam's in Louth, I was still recovering from the flu so I didn't go hiking, and I haven't went on any long walks (while sober anyway) in ages, leaving me very poorly exercised this month, but the weather is quite nice so maybe on Saturday I will walk places before I do more magnetism. Nice places, with trees and sunshine. I want a holiday.