WIWMWILNY, Part 4.

Certain aspects of this apartment.

Our house in Loveland is big and beautiful and we both love it. I did not want to leave it. When we did leave to drive to NY I was sad. But, somewhat to my surprise, I had no trouble adapting to apartment life. There are a lot of advantages: I don't have to mow the lawn (there is none), I don't have to shovel snow, and I don't have to worry about things breaking (because someone will come and fix them), among other things. But there are parts of this apartment to which I won't mind saying "Goodbye and good riddance!".

- The dishwasher. I swear on my mother's urn that it is the worst dishwasher I have even seen. It is an old Kenmore. Not only is it small, but it is impossible to load efficiently. It's as though it were designed by the devil. It doesn't get dishes clean unless they're clean when you put them in, and it leaves black specks (I don't even want to know).

- The clothes washer and dryer. Only because they're small, not that I don't see an advantage in that. Doing a small laundry every three days seems easier than doing a mondo load every ten days. I won't do that at home for a couple of reasons. First, it won't be as convenient - the appliances are downstairs, not right outside the bathroom. Second, it would be inefficient to use our industrial-sized washer and dryer for teeny loads.

- The bathroom. It's too small, the shower is poor (even though I tried two different handheld shower thingies), and the toilet doesn't flush properly.

- The kitchen sink. Too small, of course. But the worst is that there is no garbage disposal. In 2011? Give me a break! Every once in a while I read some expert's opinion that what you should put in your garbage disposal is: nothing. PFFFFT! It's a convenience, and a big one.

- The kitchen. It's too small.

I still like living here, but I'm really happy to be going home. If Twila were still here... well...

The unblogged blog.

I had a personal journey, so to speak (I hope that isn't too new-agey), a couple of months ago. Readers of this blog were witnesses to it. My posts were atypically (considering everything) emotional, among other things. I thought a lot about blogging about what happened, but ultimately I decided to let it go, perhaps to another blog on another day.

This is not intended to be a tease. I just want to say that if you noticed something different in my posts, there was a reason for it.

State of the project.

It only took one day to repair the damage to FM1. It was ugly, but limited to one layer. Plus, the guys had some (unfortunate) experience at fixing that kind of thing.

I just requested that March 11 be formalized as my last day of work on the NuSTAR project. Unless something happens, that will be the last day of grinding on FM2. Twila will be flying out to drive home with me, which I think is awesome!

State of the project.

It has become almost certain that my last day of work and my last day in NY will be March 11. That's perfect, because it's a Friday. Twila is flying out to drive home with me, and if we leave on Friday we'll be home Sunday evening. I'd planned to tell NuSTAR today that I want to formalize that date, but....

It was a day like any day. I rolled out of bed at 03:30 and hitting the floor woke me up. I was mostly awake when I arrived at the lab. I was unloading FM1 and had turned to put a load bar in a tray, when I heard a disturbing noise. The brake holding the optic in place had slipped, and the optic had rotated and dumped about 8 load bar/strongbacks on the machine base. I noticed shattered glass when I was sorting out the mess.

Only one piece of glass had broken, plus some cracks in the underneath layer. I was calm. It didn't seem a huge deal. I'd seen worse. I texted the powers that be and later talked with Todd, who also was calm. Broken glass or not, life was good. But....

Later I heard from Todd that FM1 experienced another catastrophic crash like the one on Layer 106. A disaster. *** I just found out what happened. The computer controls how far the grinding wheel goes toward the optic. As the layer numbers increase the optic is getting bigger, so the wheel doesn't move as far. FM1 is now on Layer 127, but the number on the computer (which I didn't touch today, BTW :p) was Layer 69. Not good. *** It will take a few days to repair FM1. The ultimate completion date won't change, though, unless FM2 is delayed. Or unless FM1 loses so many days that FM2 catches up with it.

I decided not to say anything today about my last day, considering.

Rhino uncaged!

Our good friend Arthur, who is a Photoshop professional, let the rhino out of its cage!

(I made the link a little smaller for convenience. If you want the huge version, let me know.)

Alternate Bronx Zoo videos.

Tiger

Gorilla

Giraffes

Monkeys 1

Ring-tailed Lemur Monkeys 2

Monkeys 3

Monkeys 4

Monkeys 5

Monkeys 6

Monkeys 7

Monkeys 8

Monkeys 9

Bronx Zoo.

Tiger (video)

[everything is clickable -

if you have trouble playing the videos,

right-click on them and save them.]

Monkeys 1

Monkeys 2

Monkeys 3

Giraffes

Monkeys 4

Gorilla

Monkeys 5

Monkeys 6

Monkeys 7

Monkeys 8

Monkeys 9

Blog fog.

Twila arrived late Friday afternoon. I picked her up at the train station and we came back to the apartment and snacked on veggies. Then we watched TV awhile. I had to go to bed early because Saturday was a workday.

On Saturday morning I picked up a latte for Twila on my way home from work and we relaxed. Then we took the train to Manhattan. It was windy and cold. We went to Ann Taylor and Saks, and then saw "Miss Abigail's guide to Dating, Mating, & Marriage" off-Broadway. One actor was an ex-girl from "The Brady Bunch" and the other was a Mexican guy - the latter was good, the play was tepid, at best, tending toward lame. After the play we walked about 60 blocks and froze our butts off, but had a good dinner at an Indian restaurant.

Sunday we went to a really nice cafe in Irvington (go figure) and had lattes. Then we drove to the Bronx Zoo, which is amazingly close to our apartment. That evening we ate and relaxed.

Today the stupid shuttle came and took Twila away.

WORK: If no disasters happen, my last workday will be March 11. The current plan is for Twila to fly here and for us to drive home together in two days. That plan is very subject to change, depending on circumstances.

Guest Post: Bricks and Bread.

This post has nothing to do with New York, or NUSTAR or anything else related to TwiDurf in NYC. Sorry.

When I was in college, I used to attempt to make bread. Occasionally, it came out OK and was actually edible. More often than not, though, it came out of the oven as a hot, dense mass of baked flour. It was barely edible when it was hot, but as it cooled, it became something more akin to a construction grade brick than food. Those loaves were guaranteed to break your teeth, if not your entire jaw. Needless to say, everyone thought these brick-loaves were rather funny. In our sophomore year, my room mate's parents came to visit for a few days, and I again attempted to make bread, which came out predictably brick-like. Before they left, they went to a local bookstore bought a book for me: "Bake Your Own Bread" by Floss and Stan Dworkin.

In the book, I learned that my problem was probably not getting the yeast going properly by not using hot enough water, and not letting the yeast, salt, sugar (or honey), and water mixture sit long enough. Even better, I learned that all of that kneading I had been doing was unnecessary! If you use a hand-mixer, and you run it for about 10 minutes after you've mixed the liquid ingredients with the first cup or two of flour, it does all of the same work of making the gluten sticky that the kneading does. After that, the only kneading you need to do is whatever it takes to get all of the flour into the dough.

If you want to try it out, here's a challah recipe for you. It's become a tradition for us to make this at Thanksgiving and Christmas. This bread makes really good French Toast.

Ingredients:
Group 1:
2 pkgs active dry yeast
4 teaspoons salt
3/4 cup honey (room temp)
1 3/4 cups hot water (about 125 degF)

Group 2:
2 cups white flour

Group 3:
1 1/4 cups unsaturated oil (e.g., canola, safflower, or soy)
3 large eggs (room temp)

Group 4:
5-6 cups additional white flour (note: up to 3 cups of whole-wheat flour can be substituted for the white flour)

Group 5:
Egg white from one large egg
Poppy or sesame seeds (optional)

Mix the Group 1 ingredients in a large bowl, and let sit for 5-10 minutes until the yeast makes a good foam.
Add the two cups of flour from Group 2, and run your hand mixer for 10+ minutes.
Add the Group 3 ingredients and blend well.
Slowly add the (Group 4) 5-6 cups of additional flour. Don't feel the need to use all 6 cups, the less you use, the lighter the bread will be. Remember, you don't need to do any kneading, so you can leave the dough slightly wetter than you might otherwise.

Cover the bowl and let it sit in a WARM place for 1-2 hours until the dough has doubled in size. If it never doubles, don't worry, it will most likely come out fine in the end. I usually put the bread in an oven and set it to Warm for a few minutes, then turn off the heat. This can be a problem, see below.

After the dough is done rising, or you're done waiting for it, pour it out on a floured board, punch it down, and separate it into however many braids you want to make. I often do three, but sometimes I make 4 on the bottom and 3 smaller braids on top. This recipe is sized for two normal sized loaves, but since I usually make it for a holiday dinner, I use a large glass pan and make it as one large loaf. Roll the dough in your hands to make long strips, then braid them together. When finished, pick up the loaf and put it into the pan. There's plenty of oil in the bread, so as long as you're using a non-stick pan or a clean glass pan, there's no need to grease the pan. I usually use a bit of corn meal to make it easier to get the bread out when it's done.

Let the dough rise again in the pan, until about doubled, then brush with (Group 5) egg whites, and add the seeds (if you want them). Put the bread into a cold oven and set the temperature to 325 F. Bake for about 50 min, or until a long toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. My oven has very uneven heat, so I have to watch it like a hawk to prevent the bottom from burning.

This is what happened in December when I used a plastic bowl:

Yeah, leaving a plastic bowl in a warm oven is a bad idea.

This is how the bread comes out:

Usually, we color the braids red and green for Christmas. The year this picture was taken, my youngest daughter decided we should color one of the loaves at Thanksgiving, too. I have no recollection why blue, green, and purple were picked. It tasted much better than it looked!

Adventures in the Outback.

[I wrote this originally using voice recognition, so if I missed something weird while editing, that's what happened.]

Before I proceed, I should state that my normal routine when I get home from work this to have coffee, fruit, and toast. That's all good, but if I don't eat something substantial within a couple of hours, I become hypoglycemic. The symptoms are weakness, sweating, and a muddled mental state.

Yesterday morning I went to the bank to get a cashiers check, and then came home and got things together for the car dealer. I was just about to leave the house when I felt a little woozy. Fortunately, I had a solution handy–Clif bars. I bought them for hypoglycemia emergencies. I ate one and, just to be safe, ate another. Then I headed off to New Jersey.

My GPS, the Navigatrix, took me on a strange route. There were many small towns, suburban lanes, and twists and turns. Finally, I got to the street the dealership was on. It was one of those streets from hell. There was a similar one in front of my father's apartment in Florida, and I hated it. They're diabolical. Six lanes, three in each direction, a speed limit of 55 mi./h, and all kinds of businesses on each side of the street. That's one more thing not to like about New Jersey. I followed the Navigatrix until she said, “you have arrived at your destination.” But no Subaru dealership was in sight. I continued down the road and saw many dealerships, but still no Subaru. Finally I turned off the highway/street and called the dealership. When I described where I was, she said I was about 10 min. away. She told me what to do and I headed back to the street. But I couldn't find it. I pulled in a driveway and set the Navigatrix to find the dealership again. That got me back to the main road. I followed the directions I'd received on the phone and not the GPS's directions, and I finally got to the dealership. It turns out they had moved six blocks and not updated all their documentation.

I parked my Prius and bid it a sad farewell. I wondered if I'd regret trading that car. Inside I did all the usual baloney and finally was ready to take the Outback. The salesman came outside with me to show me a few of the cars features. It was an impressive list. I'm still discovering things, but here are a few: satellite radio; a 10 way power driver seat; heated seats; heated side mirrors; inside and outside thermometer; a digital compass in the rearview mirror; separate temperature setpoints for the driver's and passenger's sides; automatic headlights; a warning light for low tire pressure; a warning light for low windshield washer fluid; a “find car” button on the key fob, in case you lose your car in a parking lot; an electronic parking brake; a feature that keeps you from rolling backwards on hills; a readout of the number of miles before you run out of gas, which is based on your current miles per gallon.

Finally I was ready to leave. I put the Navigatrix on the windshield. I was starting to feel hypoglycemic again, and I wanted to get home as quickly as possible. I started the car.

As you all know, there are some things you have to get used to in an unfamiliar vehicle. One of those is the accelerator pedal. In the Prius the accelerator is electric, as are all the controls. The pedal in the Outback is standard. I pressed it a little and nothing happened. Quickly figuring things out, I pressed harder on the pedal. That's how it happened that the first few feet I drove in that car were a wheelie in front of the dealership, with several salesmen watching idly from inside. I smiled at them to show I had control, and headed down a dead-end driveway. It was nice to finally pull out of there. I saw my Prius as I was leaving. I thumbed my nose at it and said, "PFFFFFFFT!"

After a while the Navigatrix told me to get off on some ramp, which I did. But apparently I had headed south instead of north, a minor error. No problem, I waited for the GPS to recalculate. It said it was recalculating, but nothing happened. By the time it finished recalculating I'd made several turns, and it had to recalculate all over again. That kept happening. Finally I saw a sign that led me to freeway going straight to the Tappan Zee bridge. Perfect!

I was going down the highway with the Navigatrix told me to get off. Then I was on another freeway going who knows where, when the Navigatrix started recalculating again. What a mess, and the hypoglycemia was getting worse. That's when I figured out the GPS was trying to avoid tolls, so it had a lot of calculations to make. After a couple of freeway on/off cycles, I made it back to the correct freeway without the help of the GPS. I paid the toll for the bridge, and managed to get off at the right exit. I didn't remember where would take me and I was getting a lot weaker. Fortunately, I was very close to the apartment. It took three tries, but I finally backed into our garage. I went upstairs and got something to eat. I didn't go outside again for the rest of the day.

Naturally, I was kind of looking forward to driving to work. The thing I'm having the most trouble getting used to now is the analog speedometer, but that will pass. I parked outside the lab and pulled the door handle–nothing happened. That was a big surprise. The door was unlocked, but I couldn't open it. I tried the passenger door and it was the same. I thought about climbing over the seat to try one of the rear doors, but then realized that they would probably be locked if the front ones were locked. I started the car again and pressed the button that releases all the locks. It didn't help. I lowered the window and pulled the outside door handle, but that didn't do anything, either. Unfortunately, the owners manual was in the apartment. This was not a good problem to be having at 3:45 AM. I knew it wouldn't look good if I was still locked inside my car when other people started arriving at the lab.

I thought about crawling out the window, but there were three reasons I didn't want to do that. 1–I was worried about scratching the car. 2–I would've had to leave the window open, which I certainly didn't want to do. 3–The idea of crawling out the window was inglorious, to say the least. Finally I pushed the unlock button on the key fob, and that worked.

I'm going to read the owner's manual from cover to cover next week.

An Outback outing.

I'm about to leave for New Jersey to get my Outback and say goodbye to my beloved Prius. Hopefully no disasters will occur.

Vacuum doesn't suck, Part 1.

Several of you already know and understand the things I'm going to say, and others might be bored by it, but I think it's way cool. As I mentioned, when I first entered the semiconductor industry, I was lucky to be assigned to high vacuum equipment. Along the way I worked on many other types of fab equipment, but mostly it was vacuum, and that was the most interesting by far. I even became a member of the American Vacuum Society, which is impressive in some circles. Not that I really deserved it. To join you have to take some classes and then be nominated by three AVS members. Taking the classes was easy, but then what? I didn't even know any AVS members. I solved that problem by going with a fat dead guy from Timex to an AVS conference in Denver. I learned that if you go around and ask strangers to nominate you, eventually you'll get the signatures, especially if you wind around to the same person three or four times.

What is vacuum, anyway? Well, that's a good question. Maybe the best answer is that vacuum is nothing, and it doesn't suck. That's probably a good thing to remember when you're vacuuming your carpets.

We are at the bottom of an ocean - the atmosphere. It's a lot like more familiar oceans, except that there are birds instead of fish. And it weighs a lot - 14.7 pounds per square inch. Fortunately, our internal pressure matches that, so we don't get squished. The downside is that if we got thrown into a vacuum like space, our blood would boil and we'd blow up. But that probably isn't worth worrying about, unless Obama loses in 2012.

Vacuum is someplace air isn't, a hole in the atmosphere. We're all painfully familiar with vacuum cleaners, a simple vacuum pump. Basically they're a fan that blows air from the hose out through some filters. If you put your hand against the end of the hose, it will feel like it's being sucked in, but it isn't. Vacuum doesn't suck. What's happening is that the atmosphere is pushing on your hand more than the hose is. Your hand is being pressed against the hose, not being sucked into it.

That might be handy to remember when you're vacuuming. Dirt isn't being sucked into the vacuum cleaner, it's being blown in by air rushing into the hose. That's why it's a good idea to use the rotating brush - it kicks dirt particles up where they are most likely to be caught in the air stream.

It's easy to create low vacuum with a fan or other simple device. But semiconductor processing and other processes require high vacuum, where a fan is ineffective. Gases have to be removed on a molecular level, and how that's done is (I hope) interesting.

TBC...

A typical misadventure.

When Twila was still here, she was out and about a lot, which made for good blogging. I don't go out much, but I did today, so I'll tell you about it.

A few weeks ago I ordered updated voice recognition software online. The package included a bluetooth headset. When the software arrived, the voice recognition part worked fairly well, but the headset did not work as it was supposed to. Apparently the bluetooth on my iMac - which I have to leave on because of a bluetooth thingy - interfered with the bluetooth adapter that Plantronics said would improve recognition. I didn't like the headset much, anyway, so I ordered a powered, wired headset. The second headset arrived and worked great, so I decided to return the software/headset package to Costco and repurchase the software alone, saving about $100.

I may have dawdled, but I resolved that today I would return the package to our local Costco, which is about 35 minutes from here. I repackaged everything, printed out the receipt, got things together, and headed out. I was on a freeway and well underway when I realized that I'd forgotten the software. ACK! So back to the apartment I went.

The software and headset were sitting near the door, so I grabbed them and started back to Costco. It was a somewhat frustrating trip due to stalled trucks, but finally I arrived. I stood in line, then placed the package and receipt on the counter. The clerk looked at the receipt and frowned. I was thinking, "Okay, I bought it online and I'm returning it here. What's the big deal?"

She was still staring at the receipt, so I looked to see what the problem possibly could be. Oops. The receipt said, Amazon.com. I grinned, picked up my things, and left.

I really shouldn't be allowed out without supervision.

Bug brothers.

I must confess - I didn't actually squish that bug. I almost killed him, accidentally. I rolled my chair over him. I wasn't in the chair at the time, fortunately, but I thought he was a goner. He was lying on his side, motionless, so close to death that I'm sure he saw the light. I was hovering over him like, "OH MY FROG!" But then he stood up and resumed pacing back and forth.

The last couple of days there have been numerous bugs in the lab, most of them of the squished (but not by me) persuasion. They even climb up on my table. Maybe it's just a buggy season around here, but what are they doing flying around when the temperature is below 20?

We have a buggy season in Loveland - Miller Moths. They migrate over us in the spring in one direction, then fewer of them in the other direction in the fall. Many of them stop in our house to rest in our vacuum cleaner. Even though Twila goes into Panic Mode when she sees one, they're harmless. They don't eat polyester, so my wardrobe is safe.

The red and black bugs in our lab now look a little like Love Bugs, who make a buggy season in Florida. You should try to experience them, if you can. They're called Love Bugs because they do give a flying... well, they mate in the air. There are all these coupled bugs everywhere, and you actually have to use your windshield wipers if you're driving. It's gross, I confess. But Florida stations people at highway rest areas who clean your windshields while you squirt. How cool is that?

One other buggy season I remember is Water Beetles in Las Vegas. They're big, black things that look exactly like beetles, which isn't so strange, I suppose. During the season they're everywhere. They cover the sidewalks, they get in your luggage, you can't escape them. The weird thing is that they just drop out of the air. Like if you're playing blackjack, they'll drop on your table, and the dealer just flicks them off. Maybe it's Frog's punishment for Vegas being Vegas.

Respect life.

A Colorado license plate series says "Respect Life" at the bottom. The first time I saw it, I thought, "Oh. Is that one of those anti-choice people?" I wondered if it was someone who thinks a blob of cells smaller than the period at the end of this sentence is an actual human being Then I decided to be more optimistic and more generous. Colorado is beautiful and open and is wild in many places. Maybe the driver of the car was one of those outdoorsy types who populate our great state. Like a hunter. With a guilty conscience.

Anyway, I was in the cocoon of the optics lab this morning, mindlessly loading strongbacks, when from the corner of my eye I saw a speck. A bug was crawling across the floor. It was a black and red bug, probably some kind of beetle. It was really ugly. Well, to be fair, to its peers it might very well have been a prince. Or a princess. I couldn't tell which gender it was - there was no way I could get my eye that close to the floor.

I don't like to kill anything, so I said hi to the bug and resumed my work. The bug was something I needed to respect, because it had life. I really didn't know anything about that bug. Maybe it was searching for food for its family. Maybe it had a really hard life. Why would I ever want to kill it?

As I worked my mind wandered and eventually came back to the bug, who was still walking back and forth on the floor. It occurred to me that the bug probably had no brain to speak of. It didn't have to go to work. It didn't have to worry about putting its kids through school. It probably didn't lie awake at night fretting about being eaten by a bird. Really, it most likely had a very easy life.

The bug didn't seem to want to leave the area, and it was becoming distracting, so I got up and squished it.

Easy, but short.

Guest Post 2: A Question of Balance.

There have been some recent articles in Slate concerning women writers, including how often their works are reviewed by the NY Times (there, that was the NY connection), and how many articles by women appear in magazines:
http://www.slate.com/id/2265910/
http://www.slate.com/id/2283605/

The upshot of these articles is that it's still a male-dominated world, with the dominance falling somewhere between 60% and 90% depending on what and how you measure. I haven't tallied the comments on this blog, but my impression is that if you did categorize them, you'd find a similar level of male dominance. The male dominance in guest blogs is (as of this writing) absolute. However, in the main blog, it's clear that before her return to Col-o-rah-dah, Twila was slightly dominant.

Is it possible, at least in part, that Twila has chosen, in general, to cease creating new entries because she has sensed the unbalance in this blog compared to the rest of the literary world and is seeking to correct it?

-cad

The infamous Gillette incident.

Before I launch into this story, I'd like to mention that one of the readers of this blog is my old friend, Ed. Wait, I should rephrase that. I meant that Ed is a person who has been my friend for a long time, more than 30 years. Our careers aligned coincidentally, and we often worked at the same companies doing essentially the same jobs. Ed is now at Lam Research, where he's worked for 25 years (I got out after 17), but he has a family to support. Anyway, Ed, feel free to jump in and offer corrections and/or additions.

In the mid-'70s, I (and Ed) worked at Timex. No, I never met John Cameron Swayze. The facility was in Cupertino, CA, right across the street from Apple, and was dedicated to research and the development of liquid crystal displays. To say that the atmosphere there was relaxed would be an understatement. Our manager was an engineer promoted (I question that word in this context) far beyond his abilities who was more interested in rearranging his office and flirting with a cute tech than actually doing any R&D. We, the workers, had a lot of latitude, especially in the morning before the engineers and managers arrived.

In a previous blog I described using an evaporator for coating. My favorite deposition equipment at Timex was a sputter machine. It looked like a very large tuna fish can with a porthole. Items to be coated are placed on a rotating metal plate, similar to the doodad that goes around on the bottom of a microwave oven. On the underside of the top of the can is fastened a target, which is the deposition source. The target can be a number of materials, from silver to quartz.

To sputter, the sputterer is pumped to vacuum, and then a gas or a mixture of gases is introduced and voltage is applied to the platen and target. That causes the gases to ionize and bombard the target with molecules, which then knock atoms from the target that are drawn to the platen and coat the substrate. That's the end of the complicated part.

I thought the sputterer was really cool, and I often played with it in the mornings. Different gases result in different colors when they're ionized. A nitrogen plasma is particularly nice, IMO, a deep crimson. So I tried different gases to see what colors they'd be. I even did a hydrogen-oxygen mixture once, which might not have been the brightest idea. I think the plasma was pale blue, but I don't really remember.

The '70s are notable mostly for following the '60s, and life was still more relaxed than it is today. So I wasn't really surprised when one of my friends (not Ed) asked me for a favor. To do it, I installed a 99.9999% pure gold target in the sputterer. Around the outer edge of the platen I placed a pack of safety razor blades. I lit it up a couple of times and… TAH DAH!… gold-plated razor blades. But I was a bit horrified to see that the images of the razor blades remained on the now gold-coated platen. It was too late to do anything about it but hope for the best.

The deposition engineer was a guy named Dave. He was a really good guy and a good engineer, but completely oblivious to the underlying dramas of the lab. On the razor blade morning, Dave came in and opened the sputterer, looked at the platen, looked at me, and said, "Please install the quartz target. I'll be back after I have my coffee."

And that was that.

Coatings.

NuSTAR glass atop cylindrical quartz mandrels being placed into an oven at Goddard Space Flight Center.

The NuSTAR team has developed a novel approach to building these optics, focusing on a light-weight design. The mirror substrates are thin sheets of flexible glass, akin to laptop and cellular phone displays, which start out as flat sheets. At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the glass is heated in an oven and slumped over precision polished cylindrical quartz mandrels to achieve the right curvature. The slumped mirror segments are then deposited with a multilayer coating at the DTU-Space at the Danish Technical University in Copenhagen.

The optics are built from the inside out, shell upon shell, spaced apart by graphite spacers and held together by nothing but epoxy. This precision assemblage is done at Columbia University's Nevis Laboratory outside New York City and provides very light and flexible optics.

*********************
That's all from the NuSTAR webpage. The most interesting part to me is the coating. How do you suppose they deposit multilayer coatings on the glass? Funny you should ask, because when I was demoted from pinball repairman to semiconductor line maintenance technician, I was luckily assigned to high vacuum equipment. It proved to be fascinating in many ways.

The first machine I worked on was an RDI evaporator that was probably close to obsolete even then. That machine evaporated aluminum onto wafers. How did that work? Good question! The RDI was a cylinder with a clamshell top. The top contained a rotating planetary to which wafers were attached.

The fun part was getting the metal onto the wafers. I put aluminum pellets into a water-cooled copper crucible. Attached to the crucible was a source that contained a filament, similar to those you see in incandescent lightbulbs, but much larger. After all of the components were prepared, the clamshell was closed.

Needless to say, air would muck up a lot of things. For one, the filament would burn out in a second. So the chamber was pumped to high vacuum, which I might say something about later. When the air was removed, voltage was applied to the filament, creating an electron beam. Using both permanent and variable magnets, the electron beam left the source and was bent 270 degrees and directed upon the aluminum, which, TAH DAH, evaporated!

Line dollies loaded and unloaded the RDI, and I operated and maintained it.

I thought that was way cool!

Anniversary.

When I was a freshman in high school, I ran away from my mother to go live with my father. I was shoveling the driveway and I just left. That was 50 years ago today. Two and a half years later my dad married and moved to Arizona, and I went back to live with my mom during my senior year. That was a great year, both at home and otherwise.

The Simca.

The Simca was my first car. I bought it in the summer between my junior and senior years in high school. It cost $250.

(That isn't the actual car.)

It is hard to describe the pleasure that car gave me. Inside, it smelled like an old car, even better than a girl smells. ... ... ... Well, no, but you get the idea.

NY is kind of picky about driving... or was. Every driver needed a license, and every car needed both plates and insurance. They became really annoyed when those things didn't happen. I had the car and I had a learner's permit, but I had no insurance and no plates. Insurance was the big sticking point, and I was saving almost everything from my summer job.

Every day I went out and drove the Simca forward and backward in the driveway. It was euphoric. I probably put 100 miles on it, going back and forth. One day I just couldn't stand it anymore, and I decided to drive the Simca around the block. It went uneventfully until I approached the last turn before getting back to the safety of my driveway. There was a stop sign at that intersection, and a police car with a policeman inside was parked right there. My body went cold, but there was nothing I could do. It was a short block, and he would surely notice if I made a U-turn. So I pulled up to the stop sign, knowing that my car without plates was as noticeable as Howdy Doody in the nude, and tried to play it a lot cooler than I felt. Somehow, he didn't notice me. Needless to say, perhaps, I didn't try that trick again.

School had started when I finally had enough money for insurance. I registered the car, got my plates, started driving to school. I was ecstatic. A BMOC. Not to mention that I didn't have to ride buses, which I hated, anymore. It was just so great.

Every plus has a minus, it seems. And my minus was having to drive Richard D. to and from school. He was in my class and he lived right behind me, so I had little choice. He was a fat kid whom I didn't like, but I was stuck.

The second week of using the Simca to commute to school, I was driving home with Richard next to me. I was on James Street in Syracuse, a 4-lane street with a 35 MPH speed limit. I was driving properly, when a car full of other kids from our class started driving to my left. They were laughing and giving me high fives. BMOC. I was gesturing back at them, when the guy in their passenger seat looked forward. His face immediately took on a terrified look, so I looked where I was going. A Niagara Mohawk power truck was stopped at a light right in front of me. I slammed on the brakes.

After the collision, the silence was profound. I could smell metal and exhaust. When I realized that I was okay, except for a broken nose, I looked at Richard. He had hit the windshield and it had split his forehead from one side to the other. I could see 3/4 of an inch of fat under his skin. But he was conscious.

Needless to say, perhaps, that was the end of the Simca. It was totaled. A policeman said if I'd been going 5 MPH faster, we both would have been decapitated.

It was a learning experience.

WIWMWILNY, Part 3.

The weather.

My overarching opinion when I left NY 40 years ago was that East Coast weather... well, sucks. I have not changed that opinion. I do, however, like the winters. Winter here is weather, not day-after-day sameness. There are challenges, and they appeal to me. I like snow, even though I don't like driving on it. I prefer cold weather to hot. And that's where the problem lies. NY summers are HOT and MUGGY. You can dress up and wander comfortably outside even when it's very cold, but there is nothing you can wear to protect you from the heat.

Blizzard of the century.

Overrated, IMO. The ice storm I already described apparently is the extent of it. We're now heading into mild weather.

I'm not complaining.

WIWMWILNY, Part 2.

My Prius.

First, my Prii (Twila now has the 2002 Prius and I have the 2004) are maybe the best cars I have ever owned. Their only competition are my rotary Mazdas, maybe my VW bugs, my Simca (more to come about that), my '54 Ford. My GTO and my Corvair weren't good cars, but they have emotional value. Anyway, the 2002 Prius is great fun to drive, and the 2004 has a lot of good features. So, it isn't technically correct to say that I won't mind leaving my Prius behind.

The problem with my Prius is that it is horrible, disgusting, foul, loathsome, abominable - take any word that you'd use to describe the Bush administration or Republicans in Congress and you have the idea - at driving on snow or ice. Maybe it's because the engine is small and doesn't put as much weight on the drive wheels. Whatever the reason, it sucks. So I decided to order a Subaru Outback, which has all-wheel drive. I ordered it from the factory, because that saves dealer accessory installation charges, which are a lot. It seems like the Outback is taking a long time to arrive from Japan, which is frustrating when I'm making multiple attempts to get up a minor hill in my Prius. But I'm in Zen mode.

Talking about driving on snow and ice reminds me of something. When I was a lad in Syracuse, NY, I frequently went to a nearby parking lot when it had snowed and the roads were slippery. I'd get up speed and then put my car into spins and slides and practice getting out of them. That taught me a lot about oversteer and understeer and how to control a car. It was fun, too, of course. I'd be all over that parking lot, spinning and sliding and yelling "YAHOO" out the window. A lot of times people who were trying to park to go shopping got annoyed with me, but they were unwise, because my increased driving skills made it much more likely that I wouldn't plow into them someday.

Guest Post 1: I was that guy.

Durf wrote about some of the things he wouldn't miss about being in New York. One was New York drivers, about which I have a confession to make.

In the last millennium, my wife worked on a project to build part of the telescope for a joint US/European X-ray astronomy satellite called XMM. One of the scientists on the project, Jean, was a woman who once dated Steve Young of 49'ers QB fame. I met her and her fiancé, Greg, in South America. (That's another story.) Their wedding was about a year later, but we weren't invited because they're Mormon, we're not, and we wouldn't be allowed in the tabernacle. We were invited to the reception, which was to take place two weeks after the wedding in Manhattan. The reception only included dessert. So, we told people we were spending the weekend in New York City in the winter for dessert. (The dessert was gelato flown in from France. It didn't seem exceptional to me, but I only had a small taste, and my palate is untrained.)

Which finally brings me to the point of the story. On our way back out of the city, I decided that I should pretend to be a New Yorker for a few minutes, so I blasted my horn several times for no good reason at 11:30pm. It wasn't all that fun. Now I regret that I'm on Durf's 90% list.

-cad

Dissendat.

Ice storm! When I woke up at 02:30 it sounded like it was raining. Since an ice storm was forecast, I knew that wasn't good. Fortunately, the ice was still granular, so I was able to get out of my driveway in two tries. When I got out of work, though, the real ice storm had begun, and everything was covered with ice. I breathed a sigh of relief after getting up a steep, short hill outside the lab, then a plow backed in front of me when I was 20' from a longer, winding hill. I had to stop, and then I couldn't move an inch. I backed all the way down, got a start, and made it up. I got home okay, but everything is ice. Walking up the driveway was a challenge, as was getting up the stairs to the apartment. Ice storms aren't fun.

FM1 lost another day today. I'm guessing from what I saw on FM2 is that there are epoxy problems - it's too viscous.

Anonymous commented that the email address for submitting blogs is wrong. I think they were joking, but I'll try to make it easier. I didn't make the address clickable because I was worried about spiders trolling for email addresses to put on spam lists. I can trick them, though. CLICK HERE

WIWMWILNY, Part 1.

That means "What I won't miss when I leave New York".

Part 1 = drivers.

A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on CNN that said 90% of drivers think they're good drivers. That says something about people, IMO. I think 10% of drivers are good drivers. I base my claim on having driven over 2 million miles and having paid a lot of attention to drivers and driving, plus some other crap that I'll spare you.

NY drivers aren't bad, comparatively. I'd rather drive in NY than in CA, everything considered. CO drivers are more respectful of other drivers than in either of those states, however. Here is the scoop.

In NY, speeding is endemic. And not just a couple of MPH over the limit, but 20 MPH or more. Even then, I rarely see cars pulled over. Maybe it's the budget crisis.

NY drivers are aggressive, in the NY way. That is, they usually won't cut you off and flip you the bird. But when you're in NY, you don't exist as an individual. You're just another dot on the road. It's like in a store. A New Yorker thinks nothing of pushing his cart into the middle of an aisle, blocking everyone, and ignoring anyone trying to get by. It's the same on the road.

Another part of the aggression is that they want to get in front of you at all costs. They'll pass in a lane on the right, they'll cross a double line to pass you. It doesn't seem like they're in a hurry, but it's important to them to be in front of you.

As I mentioned in one of my first posts, if a NY driver thinks you're going too slow, he will zoom up to within 1 inch of your rear bumper and stay there awhile. I've learned that all you have to do is look in the rear view mirror to let them know you're aware of them, and then usually they'll back off. That's NY in a nutshell: you're anonymous until you make some kind of contact, and then they're really nice to you.

I'll probably add to this post a couple of times in the next month.