Gravel roads, NSF, dumpster diving, IGERT students.




A few photos from today's work.

Little River Research & Design is on a roll.  Like the kind I remember
on gravel roads in Arkansas way back, mostly great fun but with seriously unpleasant jolts.

Bumps like a rejection from NSF last week. And very cool stuff (the
wind in your hair and pine trees whipping by) like nearing the end of a six-month project to completely redesign the Emriver Em2.

Orders for the new models, from the coolest organizations, are piling up.

Today I gave a talk to SIUC's IGERT grad students.
After a week of working with three collaborators on electronics and software for a new Em2 pump controller, I was mentally fried.

I apologized to the students for this, started my talk, and then a chair leg broke and I landed on the floor.  Lily laughed hard.

A couple of days ago she contributed a bump in the gravel road by leaving a valve open and flooding the lab.

Good thing she laughed, the students didn't know what to do. 

The chair leg failure was oddly like our NSF rejection,  a superficially embarrassing event having little to do with our accomplishments and capabilities.

Not a bit embarrased.  Get up, be patient and keep doing good things.

My wife Kate and Lily insisted on a reenactment of the fall, so here you go.  The chair is a beautiful 1960's laminated wood thing I dumpster dived and repaired.  My favorite chair ever.

Fixable with patience and skill.

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