i am never graduating.

the laser has been down for the last two weeks and is due to be down for the next week at least. and MM's protocol for making GaAs samples has spontaneously stopped working.

the visiting scientist from nottingham was using the picosecond laser, which spontaneously stopped working. they took that board and put it into the femtosecond (mine) to see if it was the problem. it was. well, the femtosecond wasn't going to be used for a while, seeing as i wasn't getting any new samples within the week, so why not switch the blown one with the good one and keep using the picosecond until replacement parts could be ordered in?

wouldn't you know it: the femtosecond's board, put into the picosecond laser, also blew.

no functional laser, two blown boards, and a picosecond system that obviously has something more seriously wrong with it.

time is running out, and i'm getting no research results for three weeks. fah!

otherwise, though, this past week has been pretty good. tuesday, i got a confirmation letter for my $6000 from SFU. thursday, i got an admittance letter from the MPub program which told me i didn't need to complete any outstanding prereqs and included some additional information about the program's dates and deadlines. it starts 8 september, and those two pieces of mail got me really excited about it again.

yesterday, i saw DA, who was in town for a wedding, and we watched Human Nature, a film released in 2001 written by charlie kaufman. DA was constantly badgering me to see it, and we finally did. quite entertaining, but mostly, it was awesome to catch up with D. wish AP had come too, but i'll take what i can git.

also, my sweetie told me that he spoke to the graduate chair of our department, who told him that apparently, i could still TA for UBC even while studying for the MPub at a different institution. huh. so if i really need income and can work it into my schedule, that might be something i'll end up doing. i don't really want to, but at least that option's available.

tonight, J&K came over for supper (salmon...mmm...) and we all went out to see super size me. it was far beyond some freak show of a dude gorging on disgusting food and was well worth the ticket price. makes me grateful i haven't eaten mcpoo's in about two years, except for the ice cream HT bought me that one time...HT: i cut you!

well, i guess i'm gonna work on my thesis outline some more this week. not much else i can do.