Happy Birthday, Amy

I got next to nothing accomplished today. I was supposed to meet with a researcher on my project to get combustion data, but neither he nor I really knew what I needed, and my advisor is gone until Monday. He showed me some adiabatic flame temperatures and what those become at the throat and exit of a nozzle, but those are just numbers. They don't tell me anything about my project. So that was a bust.

I tried to write my last chapter of my thesis (last in order of finished thesis, I'll still have one more to write), but just wasn't feeling it. Also, my notes from my thesis board meeting were indecipherable. I could read them, I just didn't remember what they meant. They were all things I was supposed to address (or address better) as I finished my thesis, and now they're worthless scribbles. The one that I could figure out was Axial Heat Transfer, which I already knew I needed to address. I got about a page done before I just lost all motivation. It feels like some of my worst writing, and it's the most critical section. People read the intro to see if you're doing what they need, then the conclusions to see if what you did worked. Then, they might read the middle parts to see how you did it. I can't find a good voice for the section - it's too abrupt, too clinical. Clinical works well in describing the process or discussing differences in graphs, but conclusions need something more. I really want to write it more like a blog rant, with rhetorical questions and short, choppy thoughts. That doesn't work so well for a thesis. Maybe tomorrow will be better for that. I'd like to finish it by tomorrow afternoon so I can leave it for him for the weekend (he said he was going to pick up anything I left him either late Friday or Saturday). I usually wouldn't do that to a person, but this stuff needs to be reviewed pretty fast. That, of course, means I need to finish it pretty fast.

When I wasn't failing at finishing my thesis today, I was helping Lee get into his apartment. Locking our keys up happens to us all. While I've never exactly locked myself out of somewhere, I did lose my house key during Ice Storm '94 and was locked out for a couple hours. Well, out of the house, I went to a friend's house and wasn't even chilly. And junior year of high school, I had a 1990 Chevy S-10, no power locks or windows. I left my truck running, got out, locked the door, and went to class. I got a note at the end of 3rd period that my truck was running. I grabbed my spare door key (separate door and ignition keys at that point), opened the door, turned off the engine, and made it to 4th period before the bell rang. We just had to track down the apartment manager, meet him at his office, get a key, and open the door. Lee had turned the lock on the knob and walked out, but didn't have his keys. His extra set was locked in his car, and the car keys were with the apartment keys, inside the apartment. After school, he had more copies cut, and hung one set on the key-storage nail in my living room, just in case. I doubt they'll ever move from that spot until I move out, but they're there if he needs them.

I just can't write a thesis, NASA is having a very bad day. Not only that, I wouldn't be buying any tickets to space through anyone else any time soon. More tomorrow.