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Start here => M.O.-Introductions => Topic started by: Dexter Morgan on January 05, 2018, 08:05:29 PM

Title: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Dexter Morgan on January 05, 2018, 08:05:29 PM
 :oranna:
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Jack on January 05, 2018, 08:11:55 PM
Welcome back. Jack has been absurdly overworked, so much so, to prompt submitting an application for another department, which is really sad because I truly love my work. Though as far as problems in general go, that doesn't seem so bad, so Jack has been doing good. :laugh:
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Gopher Gary on January 05, 2018, 09:34:58 PM
OMG DEXTER MORGAN IS BACK!! :GA:


I've been doing important gopher stuff ->translates to a bunch of nothing.  :eyelash:
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: renaeden on January 05, 2018, 09:49:02 PM
Hello again, Dexter!

I'm doing an online software testing course which I'm finding difficult but I'll get there in the end.

How are you? What have you been up to?
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Dexter Morgan on January 06, 2018, 01:35:45 AM
Hello again, Dexter!

I'm doing an online software testing course which I'm finding difficult but I'll get there in the end.

How are you? What have you been up to?
I am still in DC and am about to leave one job for another.  I don't know how much longer I'll stay in this area.  All my friends here are leaving and I could never afford a house here.
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: renaeden on January 06, 2018, 02:14:51 AM
What will the new job be?
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: odeon on January 06, 2018, 04:28:51 AM
Welcome back!

I might be switching jobs myself. It happens. :)
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Yuri Bezmenov on January 06, 2018, 06:17:06 AM
Are you going to entertain us somehow?
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Dexter Morgan on January 06, 2018, 04:56:41 PM
What will the new job be?
Data Scientist.  I will be going back to being a contractor, but will be paid 20% more.
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Queen Victoria on January 06, 2018, 06:58:59 PM
What will the new job be?
Data Scientist.  I will be going back to being a contractor, but will be paid 20% more.


Darn speed reading.  I read that as Date a scientist
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: odeon on January 07, 2018, 02:47:24 AM
That's a different kind of job.
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: "couldbecousin" on January 13, 2018, 04:18:03 AM
  I've been working and sleeping.  This winter in particular, it always feels like the middle of the night!
   Gained a few pounds over the holidays, losing them now.  Down to 144.  Becoming a salad eater!  :2thumbsup:
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: odeon on January 13, 2018, 05:09:37 AM
Sleeping? What's that?
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Fun With Matches on January 13, 2018, 05:23:46 AM
Sleeping? What's that?

Don’t worry about that. Have a coffee. :tea:
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Walkie on January 13, 2018, 06:44:35 AM
Hey Dexter. I've been around for aaages but I don't think we ever crossed paths on this board?
Anyway, gotta  love your Aspie Elite title! ( Great song, too).
Welcome back!
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Al Swearegen on January 13, 2018, 09:14:07 AM
2017 was pretty brutal, I have real hopes for 2018 though
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Gopher Gary on January 13, 2018, 07:47:30 PM
Did you leave already, Dexter Morgan? :bigcry:
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: odeon on January 14, 2018, 03:27:16 AM
Maybe he doesn't talk to gophers.
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Gopher Gary on January 14, 2018, 03:50:41 PM
:bigcry:
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: odeon on January 15, 2018, 03:01:45 AM
Let's face it. Talking to gophers sounds ever so slightly... mad.
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Icequeen on January 15, 2018, 04:50:25 PM
Let's face it. Talking to gophers sounds ever so slightly... mad.

Come on...
Embrace your inner madness. ;)


Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Gopher Gary on January 15, 2018, 09:09:30 PM
Let's face it. Talking to gophers sounds ever so slightly... mad.

Says the man talking to the gopher.  :zoinks:

Let's face it. Talking to gophers sounds ever so slightly... mad.

Come on...
Embrace your inner madness. ;)


 :plus:
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: odeon on January 16, 2018, 01:03:41 AM
Let's face it. Talking to gophers sounds ever so slightly... mad.

Says the man talking to the gopher.  :zoinks:

Oh, I know I am but I figured the OP had a shred of sanity left. :zoinks:
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Lestat on January 16, 2018, 10:17:39 AM
How long has he been here then? can't be very long if he has.

Give it another month and he'll end up the mental equivalent of a baked potato with dog muck on top instead of cheese and be seen rocking back and forth in a corner, flapping his hands and making odd noises...oohhhhh...wait....oops....:autism:

That was me.
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Jack on January 16, 2018, 05:53:14 PM
How long has he been here then? can't be very long if he has.
He's been a member here since early 2007.
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Dexter Morgan on February 24, 2018, 12:51:22 AM
Did you leave already, Dexter Morgan? :bigcry:
I only post when I'm bored.
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Lestat on February 26, 2018, 11:06:32 AM
I have been...stuffing my face with doughnuts for the past four days. Bought several 'do your own' 12-count boxes of krispy kngeme ones, and mostly got those ball doughnut with the whitish filling and white and regular chocolate on top. Plus some nutella filled ones, and a few of the ring ones
with the white chocolate filling and crunchy bits on top.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Dexter Morgan on April 15, 2018, 01:02:09 AM
I have been...stuffing my face with doughnuts for the past four days. Bought several 'do your own' 12-count boxes of krispy kngeme ones, and mostly got those ball doughnut with the whitish filling and white and regular chocolate on top. Plus some nutella filled ones, and a few of the ring ones
with the white chocolate filling and crunchy bits on top.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
I live right next to one of those boutique doughnut shops, so I go every time I get up early to reward myself.
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: El on April 26, 2018, 05:54:41 AM
  I've been working and sleeping.  This winter in particular, it always feels like the middle of the night!
   Gained a few pounds over the holidays, losing them now.  Down to 144.  Becoming a salad eater!  :2thumbsup:

I hear romaine lettuce helps with achieving your weight loss goals amazingly quickly.   :orly:
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Genesis on April 28, 2018, 12:14:27 AM
I was stranded at walmart for about 75 minutes... Also I might of been leaving voicemails to my mother in the guise of my Troll Persona.

Oh $#!t -_-
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Lestat on April 28, 2018, 06:09:53 PM
I'm doing fucking fantastic. Almost pain free, and its been a LONG long  time since I've been both pain free and awake to know about it.

Grabbed myself a good hearty breakfast too, 4 plain double cheeseburgers with extra bacon plus a large banana milkshake  and a large chocolate shake from macdonalds. Dumb gits served me non-plain ones full of that repulsive mustard and pickles and  all that chopped  up, dog-vomit-looking  stinking shite, took one bite after  I'd walked out of the door and spat it out in disgust. Took them straight back in and got some new ones made up. Which they did get right.

Walked off to the nearby  Boots store to get a box of paramol (paracetamol/dihydrocodeine tablets), for a special project of mine (I can separate the two ingredients with ease), after taking my first dose of methadone in the morning, waiting for it to kick in, and then finding myself with a case of the ravenous munchies. Got two more plain bacon double cheeseburgers in the fridge too, just waiting for me to get the munchies again. Which is somewhat beginning to happen. I bet after I've had my cherry wine, after a glass or two, I'm going to be craving something based on cheese, fat and dead cow. I don't drink much, often, but when I do, especially if I get at all drunk, I ALWAYS end up with my stomach begging to be stuffed full of meaty, beef-a-licious, cheese-slathered salty greasy-spoon chow.

*takes a hearty sip of his cherry wine, and feels it sliding down his throat, warming me up as it passes my oesophagus, and contemplates  an evening top-up of methadone*

Today....today is a good day. Today is a day that I feel like diving into the lab and  making with the experimenting. Not decided all of what I'll be doing yet, but I've a good idea about some of it. Can't say about the organic side, but on the inorganic side of things I wouldn't mind going back to my work refining silica to elemental silicon 'metal'.

(Already had some success, by using finely powdered magnesium dust, and after treating some concentrated potassium silicate solution with strong sulfuric  acid, which precipitates silica as an extremely fine particulate form, which when dried, is the finest of smoke-like dusts (gas mask needed to handle, as  it'd  be horrendous for the lungs, and it takes to the air very easily being so light and finely divided) and after washing out the potassium salts, drying the powder, then weighing and mixing it with the correct proportions of magnesium metal powder, packing it down into a crucible and popping in a little strip of magnesium ribbon as a fuse, then igniting the tip, waiting, with welding goggles on until it burns down to below the top of the carbon crucible its held in, then quickly popping on a piece of metal and a brick over the top to stop the silicon vaporizing and evaporating away)

The reaction is fast, almost violent, although not explosive, and it goes up, if the crucible isn't sealed, with a big blinding white glaring flash, hence the welding goggles, but when sealed and weighted closed there is a mixture of magnesium oxide slag, which can be  dissolved away with dilute acid, and here and there, little round, bumpy pitted lumps of very light-weight, silvery, brittle 'metal'.

Elemental silicon, ala Lestat Rett, with a side serving of blazing flames and sparks. Tasty :)

I've been toying with switching to an aluminothermic process, rather than magnesium, since  I can rule out any aluminium content in the metal nuggets by bathing it in strong caustic soda solution, which would dissolve aluminium, fizzing with the evolution of hydrogen gas. I've tested it, and  the result is indeed, immune to attack by caustic.

Just a couple of pics of the first elemental silicon 'metal' nuggets produced via the aluminium based silica thermite (I say 'metal', in quotes, as it isn't, strictly speaking a metal, its a metalloid, or semi-metal, akin to things like germanium, one of the allotropes of arsenic, selenium (one of the allotropes) and tellurium, not quite metallic, not non-metallic either, semimetals usually have a metal-like appearance, but a brittle consistency, and are often semiconductors.

Made these myself, in the back garden, these were the very first nuggets of elemental silicon I managed to prepare, the slag dissolved away with acid, and  then treated with a solution of sodium hydroxide [caustic soda] to remove any traces of aluminium that might have melted onto the surface. Only the merest hint of bubbling, even after a long immersion in strong caustic.

Not the best photography I've ever done, but the individual nuggets are difficult for the camera to get a photo of, and its impossible to do it with a flash, as it seems really reflective and always comes  out as nothing more than something resembling a miniature, rounded lightening bolt, color-wise.

(https://s7.postimg.cc/myovwd3vb/silicon1.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/image/myovwd3vb/)

(https://s7.postimg.cc/hail5h78n/silicon2.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/image/hail5h78n/)
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: DirtDawg on April 28, 2018, 09:16:48 PM
Rough ten days for me and mine.

I have beaten my body to a pulp traveling through DFW airport and such.

I am better now after some rest.
Title: Re: How has everybody been doing?
Post by: Genesis on April 29, 2018, 01:03:37 PM
I'm doing super... just need to go get some Coffee, and I'm ready to rant away .-.