Does It Make Sense?

What Stress?

You know how Advil has those adds? Hostess should too.

Martian Laundry Gone Wrong A window into the Martian Laundry Experience:

1. Put clothes in washer

2. Put Soap in Soap Slot & Quarters in Quarter Slot

3. Come back to mysterious puddle and open soap slot

4. Put soggy clothes in dryer and more quarters

5. Come back to soggy clothes that smell funny

6. Throw anything not absolutely vital to the week back in the laundry bag

7. Decide to hang pants

8. Discover you do not have a strong enough rope

9. Braid together several feet of plastic bag

10. Hang pants and spray with disinfectant

Alternative Method for same results:

1. Throw pants over chair, spray with disinfectant

2. Pour some water on your laundry bag

3. Throw some quarters out the window

This method is a more efficient means of achieving almost wearable pants, soggy funny smelling shirts, and losing quarters. 

“Torrefaction” and the Potato Principal

There comes a point at which my mind no longer wants to absorb new information and I become extremely distractible. Junk food and music become the primary motivators for staying at my desk. This is the point at which I consider my mind a fried potato. 

Tonight that point was hit with the word “Torrefaction,” which describes a process of heating a biomass fuel in an inert atmosphere (like nitrogen) to make it into a more efficiently burning source. Pretty cool right?

I’m working on understanding some Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) techniques for something I’m writing and hence came across the word. 

Today began at 9am with some light physics (literally physics regarding light)

Continued on with some dynamics that took way longer than it should have

Came back around to TGA hit “Torrefaction” and now my mind is burnt toast. 

Aside from interuptions for food, hygene and laundry (bothersome repeated tasks we’ve yet to find ways out of) today has been dedicated to engineering and yet here we are nearing midnight, still with more to do and a fried potato of a mind. 

A cheap solution to heat problems:

A dear friend is working a factory job and has had heat stroke several times due to the recent heat wave. Said friend is in a financial position that limits options and resources. Time to put my overpriced engineering education to work. Here's what we came up with.

Resources required:

Watter bottle, preferably plastic though any will work.

Long sleeve T shirt

Implementation:

Fill watter bottle with water and place in freezer with lid removed

Roll in T-shirt

Use sleeves to tie around body like a belt/fanny pack.

Limitations: This is a minimal, temporary solution. Once the ice is melted it will no longer help.

Benefits: Acess to a freezer, a bottle, water, and a shirt is all that is required.

Stardate 73155.1

Sol15

Earth date 9/9/2019

Today I try oat milk. Discovery: oat milk tastes very little like milk and very much like sad oatmeal.

One step closer to becoming iron man

Even Tony Stark would be impressed with this Iron Man suit. 🔥 

“The College Experience” On Being the Sober Friend

Many people seem to think that the Sober Friend, the one who doesn’t party, but will come get you and fix you up misses out on some fundamental aspects of the college experience. And yet in looking back I believe I got to experience some of the highlights of being drunk and/or high without the expense of the traditional substances. Then again, there were still the health services fees and engineering textbooks cost more than boose so...?

1. Master of Vomiting.

Yep...Noro. I can vomit while practically laying down on the toilet. The trick is to strangle the piping. I’m also quite skilled at running while nauseated and, knock on wood, haven’t missed the toilet yet. 

2. Waking up on the floor + awkward interactions with someone I barely know.

Whatever you do, don’t take a shower when you’re severely dehydrated. 

3. Inability to walk a line 

Albuterol after I had the flu

4. Memory Loss

Severe sleep deprivation will do that. 

5. Bloodshot eyes

Sleep is for people who don’t have a major statics project and circuits and a thermo exam due the same day. 

6. Anti-skunk smell procedures

The people across from me didn’t have to wash their laundry but I wasn’t about to get suspended for their lack of caution and found myself freebreeze-ing my room with the best of em’. 

7. The munchies

No excuse for this one. Three weeks four boxes of marshmallow fruit loops. 

Censorship of Suicide Prevention?

The other night our dorms held a “Trick or Treat in the Halls” event for the children in our Martian settlement. Prior to this event there were prepatory events, pumpkin carving, door decorating and removal of posters and signs deemed inappropriate for youth.

Some of these things made sense to remove. But among the things that were mentioned as necessary to cover, I wonder about two.

First of which is a cartoon ghost wearing a bra on a sign explaining the risks of breast cancer. Maybe it’s bad maybe it’s not. But doesn’t breast cancer awareness include the children? Don’t they see the advertisements on television? I’m not one to advocate for something being okay just because it’s been seen or said before, but I’m unsure that this needs censorship?

I am against the censorship of the suicide prevention sign. To censor this implies that the children won’t be affected by mental health issues before they are too old for the trick or treat event. This event includes children up to 12 yrs old. I was 9 the first time I recall mental health related struggles affecting those around me, but in all honesty I may have been somewhat aware of it even before then. I wouldn’t be introduced to suicide prevention till six years later.  I don’t think this is unusual.  When I mentioned this at one of the events, the others around me in a similar age group, the same ones who’d been planning to cover the sign recalled similar occurrences. They noted that they’d definitely known about these things to some degree by 5th grade. We can’t prevent these from being things that our youth have to deal with and giving them inadequate resources makes them things that they have to deal with alone.

In my experience, the deliberate censorship of mental health made it harder to speak about it because it seemed “bad”. Censoring it in the same way that drugs, alcohol, sex and excessive violence were made it seem like something that I “wasn’t spost’ to be aware of yet”.

It’s just a couple signs and in all honesty I don’t think their removal matters in the grand scheme, but I do have to ask: Does it make sense?

A Damn Good Friend

These days, life is stressful. Everyone needs a Damn Good Friend.

Weeks ago, this friend of mine brought me flowers partially pressed in a notebook. Upon receiving them they were pressed in textbooks. I turned to my textbook in search of clarity, thinking I would find myself a diagram. I found a different more beautiful kind of clarity.

To a Damn Good Friend, Thank You (:

Welcome to life on Mars