Getting caught up on blogging today. A bit slow at the lab, waiting on some things to happen. By that, I mean, I am back in Utah again for two weeks.
Danny and Meghan are looking in on the cats while I am gone, as Kija has now moved to Albuquerque and started her new job at Charter Bank. So far, she seems to be liking it. We have decided as of when I got back from Chicago that we are going to split up and see what happens. She is planning on going back to school at some point, and I am working towards moving to Utah. So, strange being single again, but I plan to make the most of it to try to restructure things and see where life takes me.
When I get back to New Mexico in about a week and a half, my friend Mariel from the Chicago area is going to move in to my house and rent a room from me. She’s kind of in the same boat as me, due to job things outside of her control, she has been given the opportunity to start over again, and she had been itching to move out west and see what it was like. I’m looking forward to it, as I’ll then have someone at the house to take care of my cats while I am back in Utah. She also has a cat, so that will be interesting to have 3 cats in the same house. Right now, the plan is to do like 2 weeks up here, and then 2 weeks at home, back and forth, until it becomes a full time gig. But that will be a few months before that happens, so it will give me time to get the house in order and get it sold and for Mariel to get herself set up in Albuquerque or whatnot. Should work out well.
Yesterday Brian had to leave for an appointment, so he handed off a laser to me to align and calibrate. I did alright on my own for my first time, but I had a bit of a mirror bounce and the mode was off, but that was fairly easy to adjust. I’m looking forward to doing more with the laser service stuff. In order to align the laser, you first have to get a red alignment beam sent roughly down the center of the optics bench and out the datum. Once you get this, you then fire the main laser into a heat sensitive card and align it to fire at the same point the aiming laser is firing. Next, you put on the arm, which is a long series of mirrors in tubes that the doctor uses to get the laser emissions to the patient, and once again align the aiming laser, then the main laser. Lots of tiny movements to little set screws. My burn card looked like this when I was done:
The laser is the unit with the screen in the background. These guys are pretty big units, with a lot of subsystems. Note that the burn marks on this card are from 5 watts of laser energy. The laser can go above 50 watts (the tube itself can clear 100 watts!). You can literally melt through a brick with one of these units. Very insane.
Brian is working on his Mustang. He finally got the engine back in and running the other day, and is working now on the piping for the huge turbo he bought for it. He has it way up on blocks in the shop right now while he works on the tubing.
This time around, they are putting me up in one of those extended stay places. I have a little studio with a stove and a fridge, but I have not used them at all.
Been pretty good so far. Starting to figure out how to get around a bit better here. I brought my road bike with me, and I plan on going riding on it, but allergies have been kicking my ass and I have not been motivated to mess with it. Maybe tomorrow I will finally get on the bicycle.
Regardless, lots of changes in my life slowly unfolding. It is exciting. I think it is going in a good direction so far.
Anyway, enough of my ranting. I’m trying to take little photos here and there, we’ll see how that works out.
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