Burn it Off

my self-inflicted panopticon failed.

10.09.2008

irony

now ain't dis some shit.

so my master's thesis in mechanical engineering was the enhancement of an organic solar cell using nanomaterials. organic photovoltaics (and any type of organic semiconductor) usually relies on "metastable" hydrocarbon chains that have the ability to conduct, or in other cases, semiconduct. the problem with them not being very "stable" is that they are very readily oxidized. my thesis did not focus on durability at all, but only in the enhancement. my cells were good for one test immediately after removal from the vacuum chamber they were completed in and by the next day they were useless. they usually still conducted, but they didn't absorb any light. a huge plague...especially if for some reason (which happened) the testing station was being used or broken or something...meant my solar cells probably oxidized and were useless and i'd have to redo the experiment.

now the irony...i bought a Creative Zen V Plus mp3 player 5 months ago. i fell off my bike and fell right on it hard enough to bruise my thigh. funny thing was it still worked. it had some lines across the screen for a few minutes, but then it went back to normal. unfortunatley, in the two days following it got dimmer and dimmer until the screen went blank. completely black. still plays music but i can't see anything and haven't memorized the menus or my song lists *shrugs*. i look online and a LOT of people have had this problem, even without falling on it as hard as i did. some say few drops, some say this or that, others say not a single drop at all.

but they all have the symptom that it dims and dims and dims until it goes black. well GUESS WHAT? (and i'm hoping i've dropped enough keywords for people to find this), the organic polymers responsible for emitting light (remember high school physics? solar cells convert light to electricity. LEDs, which stands for Light Emitting Diodes, do the opposite converting electricity into light) OXIDIZED. Perhaps a sealing failure, perhaps a hairline crack...the polymers oxidized (slowly) and little by little lost their energy conversion (electricity to light) abilities. i opened mine up and despite being glued and taped up to cover as much of it as possible....it was cracked from my fall and hairline cracks extended to the edge of the seals and voila...oxidized organic semiconductors.

in my master's program i was so frustrated with those damn organic solar cells i couldn't WAIT to finish my thesis and move on. i'm done with organic photovoltaics (i still study solar cells btw) completely.

and then this goddamn thing comes back to haunt me.

i could buy a new one for like $30....the damn thing only cost $90. 5 months...150 days....60 cents a day (and i probably used it almost every day)...not horrible. but still, what fuckers. 90 day warranties can lick my balls.

on the plus side...i do have a $90 4 gig shuffle....i just have to figure out what setting it's in and see if i can modify it....FUCK.

blows.

*headbanging*

i have this weird affliction where (unsurprisingly if you knew me in college) a certain time in the evening, i wake up. today i was at work 'till like 8, got home and went jogging (5 miles....why am i joggin? i'll explain later) to work off all the damn coffee, ate a shit ton for dinner (eggs on rice w/ shoyu and furikake) and dozed off for twenty minutes. got up, got ready to go to bed, sat down and randomly decided to look someone up online..ended up on the old blog train reading the lively ones (christian had another bout of blogs, the muppet seems to have woken up and is up to her antics again....) and suddenly, i'm wide the fuck awake again.

this is often why i start drinking late at night. especially when i work late...WORST when i work INTO this phase of my night (like last night...was at work 'till 11 and still couldn't sleep 'till 2am...after half a bottle of wine). i swear i should just sleep 'till noon, work 'till 5, eat and take a nap, and just work from like 10-2. rinse repeat (ten hours of sleep? heh...unlikely). ehh, i'll figure it out.

joys of grad school (if you haven't heard, i'm still in grad school, finished a master's in mechE, in the phd program for EE...still in hawaii) i suppose. sometimes i barely have to go in except for classes. other times it's like one'a them real jobs (or worse). bullocks.

UH is really weird in that there's no real "community" there. columbia...we used to sometimes just chill on the steps ALL DAY just people watchin' and saying hi to passing friends. my friend eric (mexican eric) and i made it a point at least a few times at the beginning of spring to bring forties out and just be fuckin' bums all day. and when i say all day i mean ALL DAY. i remember once julio from JJ's came out and we ended up talking about the joys of giving women viagra...that was mildly disturbing.

but yeah, UH...nobody hangs out. there's a fuckin bar on campus that's never full. i've spent a semester and a half trying to start an ultimate club that doesn't seem to be catching, most of the people that work on my floor speak french (including the postdoc i work with) so they're kind of hard to approach. i guess there's just so much else to do elsewhere in hawaii that nobody has any reason to be in or near campus *shrugs*. even have a bunch of ultimate friends around campus that i never see ON campus. thigns like that i really miss about columbia. billion friends, right across the street in any direction.

but at the same time, yeah, it's hawaii and it's nice to get off campus and leave it all behind :) i can bike home and be in the water surfing diamond head in about 20 mins. flat.

went on a binge of hitting all the happenin' bars and clubs downtown EVERY WEEKEND for a few months. paid off some (on new year's eve my sister challenged me to date 10 girls in 2008....i'm lookin' for 6....way behind) and was good fun...but goddamn expensive. and not good for the body, haha. switching gears and surfing more than drinking.

oh, and about the knee, had to take about two months off after a knee injury from last spring refused to heal. unclear what was actually wrong but probably a condromalacia of the patella, fucked up cartilege behind the kneecap (i landed hard on it from a sprint from a layout D). didn't hurt so much i couldn't play, but kept reinjuring it, so decided to just go cold turkey. still aches, but i'm getting used to those. it's MUCH stronger now, and i picked up jogging to continue strengthening it and of course get my stamina back.

so yeah, that's me...work, surf, ultimate, vball too actually, chicks...tough life no?

i think i'll start blogging again...this was fun.