Rocky Top, you'll always be home sweet home to me. Good 'ole Rocky Top, Rocky Top Tennessee

In the remaining 38 minutes before my heat and mass transfer test, I figure it’s time for an update.

Engineers are nerds. We microwave our food in the hall while dozens of people walk around us. There are tons of opportunities to make new friends or simply smile at those who pass by. Instead, we stand in the middle of the hallway staring straight down at the floor but not because we’re shy. Shy people don’t analyze their footing because they need to understand their center of gravity. They don’t stand on the cracks and think about what caused them. They don’t wonder how the floor was constructed or its components fit together. Well, maybe they’re shy too, but they are way too preoccupied with cool things like floor tiles to ever notice.

BSG and RCW’s fiancée are at it again. Now it’s turned into, “well my boyfriend can beat up your boyfriend.” I’ll elaborate later if I have more time. Harsh words were exchanged two nights ago over BSG’s boyfriend getting a haircut and washing the result in the bathroom sink. Yes, some battles should be fought. Some people shouldn’t be afraid of confrontation when it leads to resolution. But most importantly, EVERYONE needs to grow up or go back to high school where they would better fit in.

The offers are finally here:
UT Forest Products $15000
UT Nuclear Particle Coating $18000
UU Carbon anything $21000
UT Teaching Assistantship PENDING

The one problem is I’m not a Utah resident. If I go to the U without said residency, I’m suddenly $10000 poorer.

Tennessee is a beautiful place right now, but Utah is much better for activity, no humidity, no mud, no ticks, and lots of mountains. I realized today that excepting two summers, I haven’t lived in Tennessee in almost seven years. I ask myself the question, "Self, where is home?" I respond, "Shut your hole!!! I don't pay you to think." Someday, he may insist on a real answer, but I figure I can procrastinate a little longer.

I've got to buy some shoes. These ones are getting lose; my feet are shrinking in the Sun, and it ain't fun.

My body is a funny thing. With the exception of the 8 final months of the mission and a week here and there, I’ve exercised at least three days a week since I was fourteen. Speaking of that time cumulatively, I’d say about 40% was spent running, 50% lifting weights, 10% doing random stuff like basketball, swimming, chasing lady-types, running from lady-types, etc. Looking back, I think I kept up this regiment partially at the expense of my grades. I did it to keep my sanity, and it got me through my major. I’m still trying to decide if it was worth it.

Anyway, this semester presented new challenges. My classes are of a different breed, and I’m not nearly as prepared as my new classmates. I have much less free time, and my physical routine has been the first to go. In the past, when I’ve missed a day out on the road or in the gym, physical energy quickly accumulates. If I don’t find a way to expend it, everything gets out of whack and I can’t do anything right in any area of my life. Due to school, work, and, ahem, other things, the past month and a half has dropped me down to barely twice a week. Last Thursday, for the first time in over ten years I found I didn’t WANT to go to the gym.

The sensation almost feels like fear. But wait, fear is what other people have. Still, if it IS fear, why am I feeling it? The thing that I like about racing or lifting is that no matter how good you get, it’s always hard, and, in my case, there is always infinite room for improvement. So why should the 5-lbs-weaker version of me hesitate? The difficulty is the same; the room for improvement is the same. The differences between the current version and the January version are unnoticed by everyone but me.

A few thoughts:
1. Going back to the gym forces me to acknowledge that January version could kick my ass. I’m afraid of him. The human side of me would rather be ignorantly neutral than understandably weak.
2. Going back emphasizes my digression which is in itself depressing.
3. My shoulder still will not permit military presses. I don’t like feeling restricted.
4. I’ve lost my drive to improve myself physically in favor of knowing my way around Navier-Stokes equations.
5. I’m in a funk. T’will pass with the season.

Maybe it’s fear. Maybe it’s a shift in ambition. I don’t know. The only certainty is that typing on this stupid machine is the last place I should be on a day like today.

And I'm flipping through the pages for a name to take my place.

Introversion. I’m sitting in my lab, headphones on and an old Fuel CD loud enough to drown out the undergrads seeking help from the TA. Nothing else in the world matters. I rather enjoy this feeling. One thing I’ve learned about myself is that when I get stressed, I don’t want much to do with anyone. A luxury of being single is that you can disappear for a week or month, and it’s no big deal. Sure, people notice, but they have their own agenda to worry about. You’re not that important, and consequently, disappearing creates little more than a few ripples in their lives. Someday, I won’t have the luxury of singality, and I might, God forbid, have a family. So what am I going to do then? I can’t exactly ignore their calls and do my own thing, can I? I suppose I may find a way to relax, but the confidence of knowing I can disappear for as long as I need will be gone.

Objectification. Whenever you snuff out a match flame, your senses continue to pick up on things. You feel that the heat is gone; you see that the light is out, and you smell the smoke that remains. Chances are I’ll be able to tell you a lot more in a year, but one thing I do know about smoke is that it’s full of chemicals oxidized and not. In many ways, smoke is just as chaotic and complex as the flame that produced it. As I always do when a flame goes out, I sit back and observe.

This time, I’ve noticed that over the past year, I've felt zero pull towards the attractive girls that meander around me (yes, even in the Clyde, there are plenty). Why not? I’m single, right? I’m male, am I not? In light of EG’s post about WAD. I have a few thoughts (and by "few," I mean about a million, but lucky for you, I'm only going to share one of them).

I’m full of insecurities like everyone else. “When people see me, the first thing they notice is that I’m not smart/tall/good looking enough. Such qualities MUST be what matter most.” Yes, I notice those same attributes in other people; I’m a scientist, how could I not observe and compare? Though, I’m confident that these qualities are of paramount importance when people look in at me, they play third fiddle when I look out at them. Double standards are a funny thing, so funny...

Still it's hard, Hard to see, Fragile lives, Shattered dreams.

I realize that only a few of you care, so I’m providing a picture for those who don’t.

"Spouted fluidized bed coaters are used for applying coatings to tri-isotropic (TRISO) nuclear fuel particles for the advanced high temperature gas reactor (HTGR) and other Generation IV nuclear power reactors. The purpose of this project is to scale up coaters to production size by collecting detailed experimental measurements from the currently used 50-mm spouted bed coaters, intermediate size spouted beds (84 and 150-mm), and selected candidates for production scale coaters. In order to supply the required fuel particles for commercial reactors, 150 to 300-mm diameter coaters need to be designed. However, scale-up of the fluidization processes with chemical reactions poses unsolved problems. These processes are highly nonlinear, sensitive to boundary conditions and disturbances, and exhibit transients and unstable hydrodynamics. Further, the larger coaters will inevitably require distributors that are more sophisticated than the typical conical bottom.

Research objectives are to:
1. Design and fabricate fluidized beds with changeable nozzles, distributors, and other components.
2. Develop LabVIEW software for operation, control, data collection/synchronization, data archiving, and feedback control.
3. Collect detailed experimental data, including local gas velocities and signal conditioned high-speed inlet pressure measurements (1000 samples/second).
4. Develop an experimental matrix of parameters, which may include: bed diameter, cone angle and throat diameter, selected distributors, bed load (amount of particles), type of gas, gas flow rate, as well as particle properties (surface characteristics, sphericity, size distribution, density, bulk density).
5. Conduct image analysis using synchronized video from two cameras for spout shape (height and diameter), Poincaré sections for particle circulation, resident times distributions, and wall boundary conditions.
6. Develop correlations for spouted bed characteristics, such as minimum spouting velocity, bed pressure drop, spout shape, and scale-up.
7. Develop new measurement techniques and implement maturing technology, such as the ability to measure local particle flux, local particle momentum distribution, use fiber-optic probes for circulation studies, and local void fraction measurement.
8. Support instrumentation and control of hot coaters and address data measurement in the harsh coating environment of high temperature (2000 K) and chemical vapor deposition (coats everything).
9. Apply chaos and nonlinear dynamics concepts for process monitoring and control (hydraulic state, distributor restrictions, wall agglomerates, free agglomerates, abnormal events)."

Chances thrown, Nothing's free, Longing for what used to be.

It turns out grad schools aren’t done with me quite yet. I just got an offer from Rochester. Good news? Meh. They are ranked a little better than Utah, but unfortunately they only offer Master’s students a half tuition scholarship. So we’re talking a $35,000+ a year difference from UT and Utah. Yeah, I think I’ll stick to my original plan.

The notes are old, They bend, they fold, and so do I

V is for a lot of things I guess.

I saw the matinee yesterday, and here are a few thoughts:

Overall, I liked the movie. It definitely had the George Orwellian feel, like Gattaca, Equilibrium, Fahrenheit 451, etc. One main difference, however, was the film's affinity for the word “terrorist.” On the MTV special, Hugo Weaving said he felt that the movie was a direct critique on the Bush administration while Natalie Portman said it was more of a general “get people to think” sort of movie.

I don't fully agree with either opinion. The movie didn't cause me to pose that many questions, certainly not any new ones. Protest through violence, justice through death, and the concept of redemption irrelevant. A sad world, but one worth discussing. The movie had a few unclear points. It could be a Matrix Reloaded thing ("it’s not confusing, you just missed a few things"), or it could be that the movie simply didn’t want to take the time to explain the less significant points.

As always, the previews are worthless. Among the three scenes with V slashing/stabbing bad guys, and only the final one is bloody. Maybe two or three “f” words and only a few other regular curse words. No sex and only a couple allusions. A few appropriately disturbing images of dead, naked bodies strongly resembling in those of Night and Fog. I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of unnecessary mature content.

**************SPOILERS*******************
Did V burn down the place or did he simply survive it. Why was he the “key?” The destruction of Parliament didn’t seem that important. Why did the government torture homosexuals instead of executing them on the spot? Why did #2 need V to kill #1(the chancellor).

You don't know how far you've gone, or recognize who you've become. When'd you grow to be so hard...sick of playing my part.

Utah.

Clean Coal – Tens of millions of government and private dollars going towards pollution controls on exhaust steams. The most immediate problem is mercury. How do you oxidize it to a halide salt be for the vaporized liquid leaves the smoke stack. Lots of exposure to reaction kinetics and experimentation. Coal gasification is the wave of the future, not combustion.

Combustion – Surrogate fuel design. Experimentation, characterization, and synthesis of artificial fuels with a small number of components in known concentrations that strongly resemble the real thing. Such fuels are easier to analyze and model. Researching them allows us to use the real fuels more efficiently.

Biomass combustion.

Wavelength specific laser grid development. By adjusting the wavelength of the lasers, detectors can be customize to look for various combustion by products and intermediaries yielding more accurate models and eventually better fuels. Great work to be done in the experimental area. Research and Development is fun, but I still have to eat once I graduate.

Carbon Dioxide Sequestration. We produce the stuff like crazy, so let’s put it back when we’re done. Meh. Interesting, but a little to narrow.

Oil Shale/Sand. How do we get it out of the rocks? How do we turn it into something useful. Possibly too much analysis. Possible too little English as a first language. Tons of job opportunities.

Two sisters at BYU, house in Logan, a few friends, Mecca of all things outdoorsy, charted territory, easy transition, NCG

Tennessee.

Nuclear - "One project is based on hydrodynamics of spouted beds that is important to particle coating. This work is for the Nuclear Engineering Research Initiative (NERI) for Universities, DOE, for nuclear fuel particle coating. Nuclear energy is now considered “green” technology, there is no melt down problem with Gen IV reactors and developments are being made to transmute and burn all of the fission products so there is no waste." Nuclear is cool. That's all there is to it. Fewer job opportunities however.

Biomass – see previous description. Progressive but possibly a lot of hoopla. Fewer jobs, lots of theory.

Parents, the farm, being out of Utah, my dog, home in the “home” sense of the word.

According to my horoscope, I'm supposed to avoid deceptively tempting offers and trust the advice of the "experts." So what does one do when it is the experts who are making the offers?

Lost the words, lost the nerve, lost the girl, left the line

Holy Weekend Batman! Let’s see…

In the company of RCW and fiancée, MN (Male Nurse who was my roommate last year) and wife, and NCG (Non-Committal Girl, my most recent flare), I finally got to try out a new deep dish pizza recipe. The dough required about 1:10 cornmeal:flour, so the dough did not gain its normal elasticity after kneading. Because I was short on time, I could only let it rise once which hindered the texture and flavor. We made the sauce from canned, whole tomatoes which tasted great but the extra juice soaked into the dough and made it a bit soggy. None the less, the pizza was good enough, especially for a first attempt.

Next time:
Knead More
Rise More
Boil Sauce More
Try Asiago cheese

Saturday: Dancesport. Yes, I didn’t chicken out, and yes, I botched it. Yes, I’d happily go back and try again next year were I to stay at BYU.

I competed at the "slightly more coordinated than a 6 foot seventh grader" level, Bronze Cha cha. The first round was alright. When they posted the qualifiers for the next heat, I was certain I wouldn’t be moving on. Hello!! My hips and knees are made to move in one direction only. Me changing directions to a beat or even changing directions at all is like me wearing a dress. Yes, I’ve done it, and yes, it is only funny for the awkward effect. Looking up at the numbers, I noticed ours was there. “Hmmm, I guess the ones that are underlined are the ones moving on. It looks like around one in 16 are moving on. Meh…”

The second heat begins, “Hey! We’re better than that couple, and that one…and that one…oh well.” Intercom: “Couple 500 please come to the back stage” “Okay, Jenni (our instructor) must just want to give us feed back (we forgot to talk to here when we finished).” We go back. “You guys made the second heat. Why weren’t you out there?” My face slowly begins to grasp the magnitude of my pessimistic stupidity. “Quick! Go down there, maybe we can still get you in.” Thirty seconds later, we’re dancing, and by “we’re dancing,” I mean I’m fumbling around because I had zero time to mentally prepare and oh yeah, it turns out that wasn’t that good to start with. I missed a step and lost the beat. We had to stop for a few seconds to get it back, but the moral victory was already lost. I feel bad for my partner, but I’m sure she’ll survive.

My sister and NCG both told me I needed to act more confident, and they have a point have a point. Still, I think I need to work on my posture more than anything. The good news is that I'm the person that is motivated by his inablities, not discouraged by them.

Throughout the whole weekend, I picked up on a few RCW v/s fiancée quarrels. Maybe getting engaged after a month of knowing each other isn't such a great idea afterall. Among them the tense moments:
“I don’t want an indoor dog.” “We’ll talk about it later.”
“I don’t want to discipline kids for silly reasons.(i.e. your dad is 'silly' for grounding you for not shaving” “We’ll talk about it later.”
And finally, “My ex-fiancée wants a second chance. I need to go see him to be sure I love you instead.” “…” Poor RCW, he’s already lost that battle once.

Round here, we're carving out our names. Round here, we all look the same.

So phase two of midterms has past. Synopsis: Mike is officially smarter than the average BYU chemical engineer. As I’ve mentioned before, my strengths are stamina, complexity, and thinking well. Though these qualities are helpful, tests require other skills, thinking quickly and answering easy questions that are so fundamental, you can’t reason through them, two capacities I have yet to properly develop.

My Kinetics test went well, 139/150 with a 126 class average More time would have got me another 5 points at least. On the Thermo test, 64/70 on the difficult computational problems 14//30 on the quick conceptual ones. 78/100 with a 76.6 class average. I had plenty time, but I simply misread one problem and misunderstood the other.

Another example of my follies. As many of you know, I hope to call myself a man someday. One thing men don’t do is give up. So here I am, it’s 11:30pm, and I’ve already lost an hour purely from trying to solve the final part of a hw assignment. It just doesn’t fit. I cannot figure out why I can’t get the right answer. I’ve tried everything, and I keep going. Now, it’s man vs machine, I will NOT concede defeat. 12:30 rolls around, and I start getting somewhere. Finally, arrive at the solution, but MathCad keeps giving me the raspberry. Still, I feel I have won the moral battle by 1:15 when I head home. It’s about 2:35 when I finally fall asleep. I’m up by 7:15 the next morning, and in my lab by 7:40. I work on the problem a little longer. Still no final answer.

Then I go to class. “Hey Bobby. Did you get 6-14b on the homework?” “6-14b? We didn’t have to do that one. It was 6-14d we had to do.” Yes ladies and gentle men, it took me 2 hours to figure out 6-14b because I wasn’t supposed to know how to do it.

And that is why no man will ever love me….oh wait….

under dirt filled rainy nights with my socks stuck in the mud? Please come dive in puddles with me.

Jobs:
Lecture Prep Supervisor
Growth Center Grunt (sounds gross huh?)
Marriot Center Toilet Cleaner
White’s Fresh Foods Bagger

Movies:
Gladiator
The Wedding Singer
Dumb and Dumber
Maverick

Places:
Levis and Montreal, QC
Fall Branch, TN
Provo, UT
That’s it folks

Food:
Deep dish Hawaiian and bacon pizza
Any cut of steak over 12oz.
Pineapple Curry
Sweet and Sour Pork

TV Shows/Movies I've never seen:
Singles Ward
Desperate Housewives
The OC
Gilmore Girls

Vacations:
Utah (the mountains)
Ontario
Orlando
England…oh wait, dangit.

Where I’d rather be:
I’m actually rather happy to be here at the moment.
It would be nice to go home for a few weeks however.

Tags:
Meh. friends are overrated.

I'm not surprised and really, why should I be? See nothing wrong See nothing wrong. So sick and tired of all these pictures of me.

If I had the option of seeing everyone fully for who they are, I'd have a tough time deciding if I'd take it or not. A while ago, Katya compared it to seeing marbles. Sometimes I think it would be nice to see a person and instantaneously see his passions, pains, joys, regrets, hopes, and all the other things that make him him. I think the world would treat itself better if we could all appreciate the humanity we see in each other.

At the same time, I’m not sure if I could handle it. The world can also be incomprehensibly ugly. There may yet be further depths of human cruelty to be discovered. Individuals have great capacity for sadness. Right now, I don’t think I’m strong enough to absorb all of the world’s sorrow. I think it would consume the bit of hope I still reserve for myself.

Never the less, part of me wants to know those things anyway. Part of me wants to save those people. Part of me wants to rid the world of the consuming filth that pollutes it. Part of me knows that even I can drown in an ocean.

Right now, I don’t know that I can balance my personal and social ambitions. I don’t know that I can’t either. It would be a mistake to inundate myself with the world’s problems, but I think it would be a tragedy to ignore them completely.

To the bastard talking down to me, Your whipping boy calamity, Cross your fingers, I’m going to knock it all down, Can I graduate?

Random thoughts and events from yesterday:

“A Biofuels Fellowship at the Forest Product Development Center with David Harper has been announced. David is a co-PI on the chemical modification of biomass research with me. He is a great colleague who I have been working with for 3 years. He is an expert on biomass materials, their structure and chemistry. A major part of the engineering work will be lab studies of bio-oils from pyrolysis in fluidized beds. We have agreed that a Chemical Engineer would be an ideal candidate. This would be funding beyond the funds for two students listed above. If you are interested attending graduate school at UTK and in the utilization of biomass, I want you to apply for this fellowship immediately. There is a desire to fill this position as soon as possible and our desire is for it to be a ChE.

The attachment, FPDC Biomass Fellowship 01_2006, contains the fellowship announcement asking you to contact David Harper. If a duel degree in ChE and Forestry looks like an exciting opportunity, Biomass is the future! David and I have looked at the course requirements for both degrees and we think it can be done by only taking 3 additional courses.”

I took a 3.5 hour thermo test yesterday. By hour 1.5, I had 5/6 problems completed. By hour 2.5, I had 5/6 problems completed. By hour 3.1, I had the sixth problem almost started. This entry in the chronicles of the testing center has a happy ending at least. I finished the problem, and I’m fairly certain I got it right. Still, I spent 2 hours of my life figuring out how to find the enthalpy difference (read “heat”) between a saturated organic liquid at 0.1MPa and its vapor at 600K and 1.2MPa. May I just say that though I’m out of my mind for spending so much time on one problem, academia will be pleased with my actions? Read: Academia is also out of its mind.