An update.

So, I realize that it has been an entire month since my last tid-bits. And so an update may be appropriate. Mind you, most of the immediate fam has seen me in the last couple of weeks, as I had a factory shut-down break from work.

Alas, as we all continue our semi/psuedo busy schedules, it behooves us to write. And so I do.

Firstly, work: I've been dipping in and out with stranger hours as I realize what tasks need to be done. I don't like it when I have nothing to do - so I try to create and plan ahead. Today, for example, I finished defining a test matrix that we will run in about a week. It will confirm some of the correlations that I've been working on in the past two months. Bungee stretches and bar bends. Also, I designed something out of 1018 alloy steel (heat-treated and cooled to Rockwell 50 hardness) which I tenderly call a "hook release". Our bungee sled had been released with a ball-bearing a groove (like an air-hose), but that would slip on occasion, and scare the daylights out of us. We have blocks in place for such an occasion, but we wanted to re-design the release - in a way that we could view the fatigue of the steel. Anyway, that became my errand, and it's getting priced and fabbed this week. I'm guessing it'll run them $2000-$3000, but I could be off. Other than that, I've just been doing some analysis of the data we get, and a few cosmetics of it so we can present it to the big wigs.

This is called an MDB (Movable Deformable Barrier) impact. This picture is actually for a curtain airbag - but you get the idea.

Secondly, school: I'm still debating whether to plan for an escape this December with my bachelor's (technically it'll be a bachelor's of Mechanical Engineering with a Computational Emphasis and a minor in Mathematics) or to continue on to a master's. I think it will most likely be a decision I make this upcoming semester. Which means, I better study and take the darn GRE. I've nearly completed my FAFSA, and I'm wondering how much school I can afford, since I've spent more this summer not living at home.

Big Blue the Aggie.

Thirdly, spending: I just bought a digital keyboard (not for a computer, but a digial piano keyboard) so I can keep up my fun. I know there was talk of snagging one for my birthday - but since I already have one coming, scratch that. I wouldn't mind a cheap printer, however. So there's a tip.

This is the one I have coming. I think it'll work alright for me.
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product?sku=706117V

Fourthly, wife: I was recently hounded by my bishop - who also happens to be the institute director, about dating girls just so they know that there are good guys out there. I think nearly every card has been played to try to motivate me into a marriage. I'm not dating anyone at the moment, mind you I'll be taking a damsel to listen to Elder Hales this weekend. The funny thing is, one of my buddies called me up the other day, just to catch up - and he gave the typical casual nonsense topics, which at the college level include the topic of dating/marriage, and he seemed to think that I sounded like it won't be long for me. Weird. Mamma Sweet says this is the year of the ring for me as well. We'll see.

I'd have to die my hair.

That being said, I figure you know enough of what's going on with me.

The Haps

So since I haven't put anything up here lately, I figured I was due. It's the least I could do after all the duffer-Lake-Powell pics.

Here's what I've been doing in the big O:

1 - Hiking up Waterfall Canyon with the ward.

2 - Rigging a pinewood derby car:

3 - Bowling:

4 - Visiting the Punjabbers:

More Pictures...

So I snagged some pictures of Noah while I swung through.

He found the sprinkler outside. Crazy duffer. Wouldn't come in from the cold.

These are my new quarters. Room's dinky, but the house is big.

Every good nerd leaves his computer to pack last. That way you can crank your tunes or whatnot. Notice the camera, day planner, and DS left for the end...

Operation: Autoliv

So here's the low-down on Autoliv...

They do airbags mostly. Some other restraining stuff for car safety, but mostly airbags. There's a few of us who're interning there. I drew the long straw. I'm in the dynamic lab module. For laymen, I'm working on a sled that gets pulled with some 77' bungee cords (we use 14 of them), and smashed into random objects - poles, deformable barriers and the like. We use two high-speed cameras to record the action, and about 12-15 accelerometers. I take the data and integrate it to something useful to figure out our braking system. Which consists of a huge metal battering-ram (called the "thorn") that smashes through a whole bunch of steel bars. The bars end up getting shaped like "U"s (or omegas- for the greek). The sled weighs a little shy of 4000 lbs when it's fully loaded with the dummy.

Here's the thing I though was funny - we had to have another dummy shipped from Detroit. It came in yesterday, and it was all sorts of packaged up with bubble-wrap, plastic coating, protective foam... I stood there and thought "Were they afraid the truck hauling this thing was going to wreck? It's a crash-test-dummy for crying out loud!" Anyway, those things can cost anywhere from 80-200 grand depending on the instrumentation - so I guess it's a good thing to protect, eh?

So far, they've been having me work on the bungee acceleration (so we can hit target speeds of 20mph, 25mph, 35mph depending on the test) and the brake bars. The bungee acceleration should be a simple force balance F = m*a = k*x. The nonsense they teach us in school - the "k" is called the "spring constant". Problem is, from our data, it's not really a constant. No biggie, we're just going to have to make a chart and correlate it, right? Cinch. The brake bars on the other hand, would mess with the minds of many a professor. They're not too bad when they're supported with only two points and the thorn hitting the center, but they're not. They're wedged between four points - which takes the "simply supported beam" theory (the only stuff they teach in school) and screws it all up with some crazy physics. So I decided I'd forget theory and just use our data to get some correlation. I'm currently hunting down the relationship between bar thickness (when stacked or staged) and average bar energy absorption rate. Sounds fancy, but all it means is that the bigger bars bend less and slow down the same.

So there's a tid-bit of the nonsense I do. I've also made a few boomerangs in strange shapes. One is shaped like the Aggie "A". It works. I'm that good.

I've been running. Slow and short.

Haven't married yet.

Operation: Ogden

So the new plan is to survive the Ogden-ites. I'll be moving my stuff out of Logan this Monday. I'm going to live in a place ran by a guy named Ron Perry. It's right by Weber State Uni. I'll room with 5 people, one of which is another good nerd who'll work at Autoliv with me as an intern. His name is Jeff White. He's from West Valley.

This Saturday I'm going to the Red Head and Brittany's wedding reception. I'll swap Adam vehicles and pack up a little uhaul or the like for Monday's move. I'll start at Autoliv Monday the 12th. I'll be working on airbags and seat belts mostly, I think.

So that's the update. There's a good place to eat in Ogden called Jim's Burgers, and I've found a park near the university that is big enough for some dangerous boomerang experiments.