I come to bury the Ides of March jokes, not to praise them.

So it was 60 degrees outside yesterday and sunny. I took a three hour lunch break and played ultimate for the first time since July. Wow am I out of shape. That plus rock climbing has left me so sore today.

I did manage to solve a problem I've been working on at the wall for about three weeks... So the climbing went well. But I have proven experimentally that my Triop Genus shoes are both excellent technical footwear and totally intolerable on flat ground. Yowch.

Gah! The launch for Saturday has been cancelled again! Bad field conditions once again will prevent me from launching the Nerd Magnet. Mikkel and I have decided to go to Tewksbury and launch some smaller rockets anyway on Saturday, because we're sick of waiting for a launch.

But in good news, all of the parts for my arcade machine control panel have arrived. This clear trackball is awesome. I can't wait to build it. And I know I've said this before, but the quality of service from Happ Controls is excellent. Also in the great service department is Hagstrom Electronics. They answered all of my hardware questions same-day and offered to send me parts I needed to work with their components, free of charge. How cool is that?

Happy Pi Day. No party this year, but I'm celebrating. I think I'll push my known digits up from 20 to 30.

This week is wonderful. I hope that I can live more of my life like I have this week. Everyday has been busy and interesting, with something new each time.

Monday was rocket team. We are having problems with the new engine design. It won't spin up beyond about 33krpm, and we need 36krpm. The issue is rubbing taking place at the sleeve bearing and gas separator. If we can't get it resolved immediately, we'll miss our opportunity to hot fire the engine over spring break. But since I won't be there anyway, this isn't a huge deal for me. Andy won the Lemmelson prize ($33k!!) and is now getting married, which will put him out of reach to the team until after the summer, and we need him to test because the test range is on his parents property. So if we miss the spring break firing test opportunity, we have to wait for September. It's a bummer, but in the meantime I'll have the payload test rocket to work on and there has been some discussion of making really small pressure-fed liquid fuel rockets just for fun.

Tuesday I went to Luka's place and we talked about my ideas for the rocketry flight computer. He helped me discover that I really don't need a ring buffer at all, and got me on my way toward testing, fabbing, and flying the actual product. Looks like it'll be too expensive to actually sell to anyone, but it'll sure be fun to build and use.

Wednesday was 6.270. We interviewed our new organizer candidates. We have some really good people joining up this year, it should be a great contest. Afterwards I went to Justin's compiler class again.

Today I'm going climbing with Mikkel and then we're going to paint rockets. I also started work today with Frostbyte on a souped-up propeller clock art hack thing. More on that later; it should rock.

Tomorrow I'm going to a party thrown by the Taiwanese Student Assication at Harvard. No idea what to expect there, except that I'm going to feel really tall. After that I'm going to stop by Tetazoo for some toga party action. Can't stay there too late, though, because...

Saturday I'm launching The Nerd Magnet! Possibly certifying for Level 1 HPR. Also, there will be a L-class hybrid motor launch. This should be great. When I get back from the launch, I'm going to a birthday party for a good friend.

Sunday, Luka is coming over to inspect the warehouse and take measurements for the shelving he has agreed to buy us. He's building some sort of enormous solar-powered wok for burningman and needs some workspace for it. In return, he's going to buy us really great industrial-grade shelving like they use at Home Depot. It'll be great for the warehouse to finally have stuff being built there, and to have shelving to put all our crap on.

Project de jour: rocketry flight computer. I've been tossing this project around since September, but now Luka and I are actually fabbing PCBs and the project can get started in ernest. Among the layouts on the panels we're making are a nice self-bootstrapping PIC programmer and a huge array of SMT->SIP adapters for prototyping SMT parts.

I've got a nice set of parts picked out that should allow me to make a four-sensor flight data recorder with 100 datapoints per second and 12bit accuracy. Acceleration, pressure, magnetic field vector, and temperature. The whole thing should fit on a board that is 0.7"x2" and will fit inside very small model rockets. The major downside right now is the cost. There are about $100 worth of parts on the board, without taking into account the cost of rather fancy board fab required for such density.

Well it's been a year since my surgery. The first several months of that year were spent in recovery, with no real exercise of any kind. During that time I put on a whole bunch of weight and I still haven't gotten rid of it all. I want my tone back too. Dammit.

But I'm climbing regularly again and I thought rock climbing was an appropriate activity for this evening. My skill level isn't quite back up to where it was a year ago, but it's getting there. My new shoes that I bought last term are great!

Why I moved out of my old apartment, Part XXVIII (a study in duality):

[after hanging up a rainbow column of paint chips on the wall outside my room at my old apartment] Evan says, "What is that crap?"

[after hanging up a rainbow column of paint chips on the wall outside my room at the warehouse] Alex says, "I think that's really cool. Finally we have some color in the warehouse!"

Let's see. Things have been busy around here so I haven't written much. I moved all my crap into my room and began unpacking. Albert and I finished the electrical wiring for our rooms so I now have power! My room is basically done. There is a lot of decorating left to be done and some more unpacking, but most of the basic infrastructure is done. The one thing I need still is a phone.

We started working on the kitchen last night. With the removal of all my crap from the kitchen area, we were able to get the kitchen counter, fridge, and stove put into place and decide where to run plumbing and electricity. Soon I'll be able to cook!

The launch two weekends ago was cancelled due to bad weather. Next try will be March 16th. Hopefully I'll be able to fly the Nerd Magnet and certify for Level 1.

I'm going to Los Alamos for spring break and will be visiting Milkman Dan for a couple days in Soccorro before that.

Yahoo Internet Life Magazine is doing an article on the Megaball.

Greddy asks, "Mouser, are you in a quantum state?"