I have been spending most of my days hidden away from the horrible Louisiana heat in our drill room working on a new project. I am working on a replication study within a core on a Montastraea colony. I have lovingly named it "The Monster" due to strange ability to sequester my milled powder or to randomly pinch out thecal walls. Working with our drill, Dante, I have gotten five years milled along two paths. Strangely enough Dante has been rather pleasant this project. He earned his name several projects ago when he would randomly lose his location or reset his origins. He drilled out his own level in the bowels of the underworld.
For this project Kristine and I created a new holder for the coral core. We were not able to slab the coral as is typical in our lab, so we just stuck the whole darn thing up there! Be it, the prototype was the best looking one but it broke. Its harder to work a jigsaw than you think, and to keep your lines somewhat straight or following the semicircle. I also figured out how to rig up our digital microscope to the drill so that I could see the walls in detail to adjust the path. I though it was quite clever. I just need to create something a little more permanent.
Autocat has become somewhat of a mascot. I created it when I was learning how to plot using the SuperCamp software. That was when Dante was acting up and instead of plotting lines I just gave up and created that little guy. I still have yet to name the gremlins in the computer.
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