Sunday, January 4, 2009

Back in Cambridge...

My bus made it back to Boston on time, despite its best efforts to be late. (Long story.)

I decided to clean my desk, which I do maybe once a semester. To detail all of the interesting things I found would take way too much space, so I'll just pick one category of objects: cards. You may extrapolate the general randomness of things I found from this set. Here is a list of odd cards and card-like things that I found on my desk:

5) Juror card from September, 2008 at the Malden District Court. (I was Juror #3.)

4) The Visa Check Card that I "lost in an ATM" a month ago.

3) ID card, still in the sealed envelope, for the "internship" I had in 2008.

2) Business card of the Technical Content Specialist of Twin Cities Public Television.

1) Boat Owners Association of America membership card and $20 gift certificate to West Marine.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Happy New Year

It's been a while...

In the latest exciting news, our Cap Kart paper entitled - ready for this? - "A Simple Series Battery/Ultracapacitor Drive System for Light Vehicles and Educational Demonstration," was accepted for presentation at the 2009 Ecological Vehicles and Renewable Energies (EVER '09) conference in Monaco. Ridiculous title aside, it was a fun paper to write; if you'd told me last year that my first real publication as a graduate student (or ever) would come from this project, I probably wouldn't have believed you.

Cynical Shane would like to point out that this project, now accepted as real research by more than just me, was done quickly, simply, and inexpensively. Not that it was easy. In fact, there were more times during this project than ever before that I've felt overwhelmed by technical difficulties. But it stayed on schedule and on budget the whole way, and produced real experimental data from an actual physical piece of hardware. Which is more than I can say for some other projects I've been involved with recently.

Good Shane says: Look at that view! I'm happy and proud for the team that an idea which I knew was a good one has made it this far. I can't wait for the trip, which falls during my spring break, and the chance to see some other really cool projects in the field. It'll give me something to look forward during the Boston winter months.

All that's left to do now is dismantle the spinning disks of doom, which have somehow served their purpose without killing anyone, and get the kart out to the track some time when it stops snowing. (May?) Plenty of stuff to keep me busy in the meantime. Happy 2009.