Oh, What Joy!

I am so happy right now. Words cannot describe how happy I am. The seemingly impossible became possible today. What could possibly make me this happy right now? It's very simple. I turned on a gas compressor.

That doesn't sound too exciting, does it? Trust me, this is a pretty big moment for me, and here's why.

Last summer I was told that we needed to do some safety upgrading on the facilities used for my research. At the time it wasn't too big of a deal...install some extra outlets, clean up some wires, etc. Well, not long after that, we got the news that we needed to move our gas supply from the basement of our building to a spot outside before we could run anymore tests. Well, this has been a major inconvenience. Our gas system consists of a natural gas compressor that fills up 4 natural gas cylinders to 1500 psi, and we didn't want to move it. We were able to get an exception for a couple of months as long as we only filled the tanks to 500 psi, but we eventually had to take the steps to move everything outside. After all the planning for that, we were told it would take 1 to 2 weeks. It's been 4 months now, and we haven't been able to do any testing this whole time. Inconvenient? Yes. Frustrating? Yes. Anyway, we finally got everything moved and hooked up how it's supposed to be, with proper safety measures and such. I went to turn on the compressor today to start filling the tanks, and it wouldn't turn on. I couldn't figure out for the life of me what was wrong. Anyway, after a day full of running around, annoying people, and jerry rigging a temporary solution, the compressor finally turned on. The tanks are filling as we speak (or as I type). The end of this 4 month frustration is finally coming to an end!

If you don't believe me that I was as excited as I stated at the beginning, well, I'll just say that I started laughing and dancing around by the compressor when it turned on. If you know me, you'll know I don't just randomly burst out into dance all that often.

Welcome!

***Note: A portion of this post discusses the name of my blog, which has actually changed since this original post***


Hey, everybody!

As some of you may know, I started a blog a few months back called 100 Things. If you haven't been there, you should check it out. Anyway, I had a specific goal on that blog and I reached that goal about a week ago. However, I wanted to keep blogging, so I decided to leave that blog as it is and start up a new one. And, voila. Uncle Bob's Bloggish Life.

I get the feeling that I should explain the name of this blog. First, the Uncle Bob part. Yes, I am an uncle, but my nieces and nephews don't call me Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob is a nickname that a couple of people in my ward here at BYU started using last summer. Like I said, there were only a couple people who ever really used it, and there's only one who uses it at all anymore, but for some reason it came to mind when I was thinking of a title. So, there you go. And even if they don't call me Uncle Bob, the uncle part does make me think of my nieces and nephews, who I absolutely love. So, I like that about it too.

Now the Bloggish Life part. Am I saying that my life resembles a blog? No. I'm not really all that sure what it means to have a life resembling a blog. Am I saying that everything about my life is something that somebody wants to read about on a blog? No. Trust me, there is a lot of stuff that you don't even want to hear about ("I sat at my desk today. Then I checked facebook. Then I was sleepy. The end.") Nope, my Bloggish Life refers to those moments of my life that I deem appropriate to appear on here. So, a good translation of the title could be "The relatively interesting moments from the life of Robert (who is occasionally referred to as Uncle Bob)."

Well, hopefully you were able to get through that little bit of nonsensical rambling and have decided to keep following my updates and whatnot on here. Enjoy!