life, science, and fun in general are on hold

First of all, I've been laid off after only four months (the company reorganized) and my personal financial situation is now very grim indeed. So don't expect to see any new posts here for a while.

Second, I just realized that all the pictures from a bunch of old posts are missing again, after I fixed them once a few months ago. I can only assume there is some undocumented retention policy at Blogspot which I'm running afoul of.

I am supposed to be finding a job right now, so frankly, I don't feel terribly motivated to go back and fix them again, especially if there's a good chance they'll just disappear again.

And, since I'm very thoroughly broke again, and once again in danger of losing the house, there are no more funds available to support the hobby / science work.

As for status, well, the triggered switch is still mounted on one of the big caps as shown in a previous post. It is now waiting for various things:

• a test load - most likely a water resistor, which I'll need to design and make;

• a trigger source - don't ask me, my only trigger source is a relatively slow transformer- based EG&G TM-12, but I may give it a try anyway. I could try putting a little peaking gap in series with it? Meh.

Perhaps I'll start on the fast micro-Marx next (which, given that it's my first, is unlikely to be fast enough), or perhaps I'll try to fix the Pulsar control panel (which has a fast VIG trigger generator in it but needs an extraordinary amount of TLC and some new parts) or perhaps I'll troubleshoot one of the two Pacific-Atlantic trigger pulsers I've got, both of which are almost certainly defunct on a permanent basis, but one might be salvageable;

• the rest of the gas handling equipment, the main things still lacking here are a 1, silica gel cartridge - which I can make cheaply when ever I have money for parts - and 2, a low pressure manometer with good resolution and accuracy, probably a capacitance Baratron device or similar (expensive), also a readout for same (slightly less expensive);

None of that stuff is happening until I have income again. In fact, if I don't actually retain possession of my lab and shop, this will all be moot, so Job #1 is ah, a Job.

Hey, if you came here from LinkedIn, please hire me - they tell me I'm smart. Just don't bore me, undervalue me, or disrespect me. :P