Well, Richard Hull should be considered a national treasure. The man is simply the epitome of the stereotype of a truly serious amateur scientist. He is a continual source of amazing information, tireless effort on experiments and a fount of wisdom. He just put out a wonderful post on Neutron Safety that you absolutely must read. You should pretty much search www.fusor.net for the name Richard Hull and you'll see what I mean. Just simply amazing.
So I spent today fixing up the lab. Looking pretty good. Enough light now. Put in some power strips. I spent the rest of the day bending and spot-welding the final cage. Looking good. I'll send it down to Huntington to get it electropolished this week. Lord only knows how long it'll take to get done, but at least it will be in the pike. Still waiting for the back ordered ceramic balls for the support standoffs. Geez. SmallParts should have that in any day now... Yea.
I do have some good news. I ordered a copy of "High Voltage Laboratory Technique" from AstroLogos books. They apparently have the copyright on this book and reproduce it for a fee. It wasn't that expensive, and this is a classic work that I really wanted to have. Unfortunately, that was three months ago. Seriously. I ordered this Nov 21, 2002 and it still isn't here. Now, granted that they have to perform blood rituals to get this 1954 classic printed, but geez... The lesson is, NEVER ORDER ANYTHING FOUR DAYS BEFORE THANKSGIVING. I mean, I see this all the time. Every place I've worked has always scheduled a release in November-December. Guess what? It's non-stop holiday madness for the entire two months of November and December. People don't get over their new year's hang over until at least January 15th. So anything that has to be done during these three months just isn't going to get done. But humans in America still labor under the illusion that stuff actually can get done during this time. I'm one of the hapless fools that believe this, obviously.
But in theory, the long awaited tome will be here next week. It was sent Thursday... Let's hope it will show up.
Anyways, the HV cable should show up for the Bertan here pretty soon. I'm going to have the gas line spur removed, hopefully this week. I'm ordering some 2.75" nipples and I have some 2.75" blanks lying around. I'm going to talk to the good folks at Heat Wave Labs to get some dispenser cathodes so I can start playing around with some ion and electron guns. Everybody seems to be building them these days <g> so I should get with the program and start building some of my own hair brained designs.
So, lot's to do. Not much time to do it, of course. We had two people quit at work - for good reasons. One has his fiancé in France, another has his wife in Dallas, TX. But we'll still miss them very much. So, more workload for me - in addition to the extra load of interviewing replacements. <sigh> I really, really, REALLY hate this economy. It sucks something fierce.
In any event, I've been getting much better at organizing my time, despite all this madness. Sorry to harp... I'll get back to work :)
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