Thursday

We couldn't finish the tensile tests today like I had hoped because the Instron machine was booked. We tried to run some of the snowboard samples on the Nano-indenter but had some technical difficulties with the equipment, which Frank jokingly attributed to my "American-ness". In reality, the machine just needs some maintenance because it has been running poorly for a few weeks now. I took some time to read excerpts from a textbook today on Rheology and Viscometers in hopes of gaining some insight on how to set up an experiment on the machine in the lab for the Primacor adhesive samples. After reviewing the lab manual and talking with Frank we plan to get a test going early next week.

I met with some of the technicians (Frank, Andy, Jeff, and Paul) at the Staff House after work and tried to learn the finer points of cricket. Cricket is extremely strange: The game lasts for 5 days (and can still result in a draw), they take breaks for lunch, afternoon lunch, and afternoon tea haha, and the score can easily run up into 600 or so runs per game. Not quite baseball but still has some similarities.

I went into town to pick up some supplies for tomorrow, i.e. enough food to live. I'm getting up at 5am to head to the airport and catch a flight to Dublin, Ireland at 7:55. I am then going to hopefully make friends and get a ride to Punchestown, Republic of Ireland....or more likely just take a bus. I have a tent and sleeping bag waiting there for me at the 2009 OXEGEN Festival. There are so many bands that I really want to see, so I am pretty pumped to go. But I should be getting to bed since I have to get up in 6 hours....and more importantly I just downloaded S. Darko and Pulp Fiction to watch so I better get to it.

I most likely won't have Internet for the weekend, because I am packing as light as possible: backpack, book, ipod, clementines, "tea biscuits", granola bars, and clothes. So wish me luck and I'll update as soon as I'm back.

Frank showed me this video today: check it out