Life Change

Today I successfully defended my PhD dissertation defense.  Except for some administrative paperwork, I have matriculated here at Wichita State University.

Today is also the day my wife gave notice at work.

Both of these events have been driven by the fact that a few weeks ago, I accepted a full-time position at Pacific Northwest National Lab in Richland, Washington.  The work I expect to do there is very similar to what I've been doing at Wichita State: research on the power grid.  Beyond that it is hard to say what my daily work will look like.

Landing the job at PNNL has been a series of divine interventions.  My relationship with the lab began during a class I took several years ago in which I ended up using a simulator they had been developing.  I emailed a number of times seeking help on using the software and ended up arranging a face-to-face with the developers during a conference we both attended that summer.  When I began looking for a job late this last spring, I emailed the developers and they pointed me towards a position that would be opening soon.  I applied, did a phone interview, and in just a few weeks, was flying up for an on-site interview.  Less than two weeks after that, I was told I had the job.

Life since then has been very full.  With a full-time position secured, I was highly motivated to finish up my dissertation.  My wife and I began scheduling all the various tasks and trips that needed to be taken before my start date in late August: moving company survey, house repairs before putting our house on the market, a house-hunting trip in Washington, camping trips with both sides of the family, moving company packing all our goods.... Some of these have taken place already, some haven't and the logistics never seem to end.

But there's been enough break in the action for me to write these few paragraphs. I'm incredibly grateful and thankful for the job and am glad that I'll be able to put my degree to use. My wife is thankful to be done working at her current company and looking forward to a new, job-free life.  We're both looking forward to the change in climate and the proximity to much more interesting geography.

In those regards, the change is good. Even without all the stress of the move, though, leaving is hard.  We have good friends and a strong community here.  Neither of us are extroverts and making new friends will be difficult for us.  There's a new town to get used to, a new way of life to establish, a new home to settle into. The accumulation of these challenges is not trivial and can be overwhelming to contemplate. So we don't.  By the grace of God, we've made it this far and I expect He'll carry us through the remaining difficulties. Its clear something is going on and we'll just have to wait to find out how it all plays out.

Ain't No Amazon

We've needed to replace our stall shower door handle since we bought this house.  It has been broken and corroded; barely functional and not pretty. Katie found a replacement at HomeDepot.com and to get free shipping we ordered a few other items were planning on picking up from one of there brick and mortar locations.  The order was placed with an expected delivery date on the upcoming Friday.  Not Amazon Prime but plenty fast enough.

The first sign of trouble came when I noticed the credit card transactions related to this purchase: five charges, one for each item.

When a package showed up Thursday I was impressed.  That is until I lifted it off the porch and realized that it did not contain my order, at least not all of it.  Inside that toaster-oven-sized box was one of the five items I had ordered: five fuses.  These fuses could have been sent in a padded envelope but they were instead bubble wrapped to fill the much-too-large box and shipped out to me.

Friday three boxes arrived and today, Monday, the final box showed up.  Five items, five boxes, five shipping charges that I didn't have to pay.  There is no way they made money on this transaction unless they have incredibly favorable shipping arrangements. My guess is that until they get their logistics more stream-lined, they are going to be losing money for quite a while with their online transactions.

Upgrading the Power Supply

In my dabbling in hobby electronics, my primary power supply is the one that I built in my third semester of my undergraduate education.  Building this supply was the primary task in Electronics Lab I (required at the time for all engineering students of every stripe) and it took around half the semester to complete.  The power supply was purchased as a kit that had been designed in-house for this course, making it simple enough to understand while we assembled it.  We soldered and screwed the supply together and then tediously measured its performance by the metrics we had been learning in class.

The supply itself is nothing fancy.  Its a linear supply with three independent outputs, two of them variable and one fixed at five volts. I've had to replace the transformer in the past and the paint is chipping off in many places. It still works fine and I no intention of replacing it any time soon.

The biggest pain in using it, though, is that it contains no displays indicating the voltage of the variable outputs.  Historically, I've used a voltage meter to set them. In searching for a simple digital voltmeter for another project, I realized I could use the same item to add displays to my power supply. For just a few bucks, I found the part on eBay and was able to graft them onto the supply.

There are a few more things I'd like to do in the future: add a 3.3V fixed output and add the current draw from each supply. I don't know if I have front panel real-estate but there is still plenty of room inside for such improvements.  Adding it to the list of things I'll probably never get around to...