Dylan: (indicating burrito) I just can’t eat that.
Tommy: Why not?
Dylan: Well… it sorta looks like a male sex toy.
Tommy: (loudly) A male sex toy?!!
Outside, a half hour later…
Tommy: Really?! A male sex toy?
Archive for October, 2008
How come everyone knows about that product?
Friday, October 31st, 2008Turning on the steam…
Friday, October 24th, 2008So the heating system here just got turned on recently. We have a single pipe steam hydronic heating system. If we so choose, we can turn a knob and have steam flow through the rectangular fin pipe in the heating unit. Of course, with me and my roommate being endothermic, we have no need for the heating yet as it is not that cold yet. But apparently enough people complained that the steam system of the entire building was turned on. (It was probably those people from the warm climates with the lower metabolic rates.)
Remember though, we are given a single knob (metal, by the way, so it always burns to touch) that controls how much steam flows through the pipe.if the valve is turned all the way down, the superheated steam condenses on one side of the valve, creating a continual clicking noise from the liquid accumulation. Unless of course, high-velocity steam is shooting through the pipe. So one must replace the continual clicking noise with the progression of gaseous water and accompanying kinetic energy, no matter how unwelcome.
Unfortunately, outdated design in combination with the low specific heat of copper pipe means that with the 373+K steam in the pipe, the heating unit is hot (330+K) all the time and the knob can do very little about it, even with the valve cranked all the way closed.
The most effectively engineered part, though, is the convection system that effectively overheats the room every night. It’s nothing a forty year old window can’t solve. And as a delightful bonus, I get to hear the entertaining and uninhibited banter of late-night drunks, some of which have some hilarious stories to eavesdrop in on.
Of caffeine and on UDP
Saturday, October 18th, 2008Since most of you know me personally, you’ve probably learned by now that I don’t usually dabble in psychoactive stimulants, but I got a little desperate last night. I had to finish a lab report for organic chem in my lab partner’s room. So I asked him for a Mountain Dew, my first in 5 months. I was mostly in it for the 45g of easily catabolizable sucrose. I didn’t expect chemistry keeping me up all night but that’s exactly what the 55 mg of caffeine did. If you saw the timestamp for the last post, you’ll have an idea of what I was doing two hours before I fell asleep.
After finishing the lab report at midnight, I scootered back to my hall, but I was still jumpy. My heartbeat was keeping me awake, both auditorily and pulmonarily, so I went down to the computer lab to print my lab report, which I did, in addition to finishing and publishing the previous post, checking Facebook, prelabbing for biology, and printing out all of my Anatomy lecture notes. I got back up to my room at 3:00 (My roommate was already asleep.) and tried to fall asleep again. But I didn’t, so I resolved to finish my handwritten work for the lab report. So I did. Then I tried to go back to sleep at 4AM. But I didn’t, so I looked up the effects of caffeine on Wikipedia and deduced that the Dew I ingested at 11:35 must have exaggerated effects on me, a person of low tolerance and relatively little body mass. Then I read a Popular Science. I tried to study Biology but my brain was going too fast. I was dropping packets left and right. I was on UDP.
Sidenote: You can make up the name of an imaginary drug by taking a fairy tale creature and appending some random noun. Like Leprechaun hats or Gnome crackers or Unicorn Data Peppers.
I went to bed at 5:00AM after five and a half hours of unexpected stimulation.
I woke up at 7:26, which is terrible considering my 7:30 Bio Lab a kilometer away. I arrived at 7:37 thanks to me laying out my clothes for the rest of the week and prepping my backpack during the course of the night. The rest of the class was just finishing a video on sea urchin sex. Then we got to see the process in person as our TA walked around and added sperm to our oocytes. (Awkward!)
As all we had to do was draw what we saw, the lab finished early. I was really sleepy when I got back to Harrison at 8:30. I tried to sleep. But I didn’t, so I caught up on the lives of friends from around the world. Then I went to Ochem lecture. Then I went back to Harrison where I started writing this. Then I went to lunch with some friends. Then I went to Econ at 2:30. I got home at 3:40. I crawled into bed at 4PM and wanted to sleep forever. But I didn’t. Because I had work at 5:30.