Siliceous and Delicious

It’s almost 3 pm, and I’m celebrating—because I’ve finished writing the next EPS 8 lab and can finally start on my own work for the day. The lab turned out pretty well, I think; at least I’m proud of it and it’s certainly no small fry, weighing in at a glorious seventeen pages of LaTeX glory.

Next steps, next steps. I’ve booked some FIB time for early tomorrow morning, but I believe I’ve got plenty of sample material to work from in the four stubs I prepared using copper tape in place of the carbon tape with which I was having all the problems. If I recall correctly and ogle back at my earlier posts, the last time I worked on this project (which was a long time ago—five weeks back!) I worked on stub 27#F. I had a rough time at it because (a) the frustules appeared to be sinking into the glue atop the copper tape, and (b) the beam seemed to give a cut surface anything other than clean, perhaps in part because the copper is so much harder to cut away than the carbon. Which may mean I have to switch back to carbon tape after all, but somehow keeping the sample from falling to the bottom of the “scree slope”.

And, cancel all that from the last paragraph—just got a phone call from Nicholas at the CNS informing me that the tool is down, and my time has been cancelled. The next available time is Saturday morning. Good-bye, weekend… Spent the rest of the afternoon answering emails and re-jigging my machine time to reflect these changes. Rats. What a big old pile of turds.