Yesterday was a long day, but not nearly as long as other days I’ve had in recent history. The semester is starting to wind down, for better or for worse.
I started out by taking the buses and trains and then my truck to Magdalena for tutoring. We had a boy’s basketball game and an assembly in the middle of the day, and I attended both of those. Magdalena won, like 96 to 11, so it wasn’t even close. They played well.
After Magdalena, I commuted back to Socorro, and then went with a group of students to the Boys and Girls Ranches for tutoring and an end-of-the-year party. We’ll start up the tutoring program again in January.
We returned to campus, and I went to the last Bible Study group of the year as well. We will resume that again in January as well.
Finally, I went to my lab and cast metal with some freshmen, as well as my two loyal metal casting seniors. We are forming a casting group, and our tag line is “Pain in the Cast” and we have a sketched “face” that appeared in the aluminum one day, that we call “Angry Al” who will be our unofficial mascot.
At first, we started the furnace with a bang. As it turns out, leaving the lid on the furnace will cause it to bang loudly when the propane ignites. After that, we let the furnace run for a while, only to run out of propane when the aluminum was around 460 C. We ran out and got another tank of propane, and finished the casting. Kachina poured perfectly, and we’ll bust open the mold today with the freshmen to see if the mold actually worked. I will post pictures and perhaps video another time.
I went to my brother’s house for the evening, but fell asleep on their couch soon after dinner.
Thank you for reading my post.
An Engineer in the World 