experiment not running, after all

Today's progress report: I was ready. It didn't happen. Sigh. The piston cylinder machine in which we run my experiments has had a slight crack on the piston for a while now, and we have been crossing our fingers and running experiments at only moderate pressures, hoping it wouldn't get worse. However, having done the moderate pressure runs we now want to do a higher pressure run, and decided today to give it a try. Watching the pressure graph as we started to close in on the target pressure my boss was not happy with the way it looked, and backed off, and then tried it a second time--same symptoms of a problem. Deciding that it is probably not a good idea to risk it, we dropped the pressure back down, and he will try later to remove the assembly containing my experiment and see if he can run it on the brand-new machine instead. Alas, I won't be able to help with that, as I'll be in Norway by the time that happens. So I *might* have an experiment running while I'm gone. Or I might not. And there is nothing I can do one way or the other to make it happen. Not the best position for someone with some control-freak tendencies to be in, but not tragic, either, since it isn't my fault (it would be much worse if I were the cause of the delay).

The meeting which is the official reason for the Norway trip doesn't actually start till Tuesday morning, in Trondheim. But it was much cheaper to fly on Thursday morning than on the weekend. And I haven't been to Oslo since the summer of 1990, so it was about darn time. In five and a half more hours (3am) we depart for the walk to the train station, from where we will catch the bus for the hour ride to the airport, where we will try to nap after we get through security. Then, because we are flying a cheap airline, once we get to "Oslo" there will be a 1.5 hour bus ride to get from the airline to the city, by which time we should be good and sleepy, and ready to do sightseeing...

I am so looking forward to a week and a half in the north--Milan hasn't yet achieved the brutal temps we had at the end of last summer, and it is still cooling down to reasonable at night, but it has been getting hotter than I like it.

experiment not running, after all

Today's progress report: I was ready. It didn't happen. Sigh. The piston cylinder machine in which we run my experiments has had a slight crack on the piston for a while now, and we have been crossing our fingers and running experiments at only moderate pressures, hoping it wouldn't get worse. However, having done the moderate pressure runs we now want to do a higher pressure run, and decided today to give it a try. Watching the pressure graph as we started to close in on the target pressure my boss was not happy with the way it looked, and backed off, and then tried it a second time--same symptoms of a problem. Deciding that it is probably not a good idea to risk it, we dropped the pressure back down, and he will try later to remove the assembly containing my experiment and see if he can run it on the brand-new machine instead. Alas, I won't be able to help with that, as I'll be in Norway by the time that happens. So I *might* have an experiment running while I'm gone. Or I might not. And there is nothing I can do one way or the other to make it happen. Not the best position for someone with some control-freak tendencies to be in, but not tragic, either, since it isn't my fault (it would be much worse if I were the cause of the delay).

The meeting which is the official reason for the Norway trip doesn't actually start till Tuesday morning, in Trondheim. But it was much cheaper to fly on Thursday morning than on the weekend. And I haven't been to Oslo since the summer of 1990, so it was about darn time. In five and a half more hours (3am) we depart for the walk to the train station, from where we will catch the bus for the hour ride to the airport, where we will try to nap after we get through security. Then, because we are flying a cheap airline, once we get to "Oslo" there will be a 1.5 hour bus ride to get from the airline to the city, by which time we should be good and sleepy, and ready to do sightseeing...

I am so looking forward to a week and a half in the north--Milan hasn't yet achieved the brutal temps we had at the end of last summer, and it is still cooling down to reasonable at night, but it has been getting hotter than I like it.