FINALLY ! Strain Gauges Arrive

I ordered these strain gauges over TWO months ago, well in advance of my stint on the shaking table, 40 of the little cretins arrived a month ago [3m cords]...I was a bit confused because I'd ordered 120 of the buggers, and to receive a small box of only 40 left me a bit bemused. Apparently, the rest would arrive 'later'...errr...how much later? 'a few weeks, I suppose'.

A few weeks MY ARSE!

I specifically ordered 'OFF-THE-SHELF' models, on the account that they would be quicker. A month MAX... and that was meant to be for the bespoke gauges, with the fancy coatings, full water-proofing, invisible force fields and all that jazz. 'OFF-THE-SHELF', 'Off-The-SHELF', 'Off the SHELF'. How hard can it possibly be to find something off a shelf, solder on lead wires (of standard length) and then post the bastards to me?!?! 2 months of pure and unadulterated Japanese inefficiency...fucking A! Well done.

The last 80 (with the more sensible and practical, 5m lead wires) arrived this very afternoon, into my grubby little paws. After, might I add, I'd just finished setting all my existing instrumentation into place in my last...yes last experiment of the current run. The next run starts after I return from Malaysia. In which time, I need to have pasted all 80 gauges on to their respective pipes, calibrated them, setup the logging files, analysed my data from the tests which I have just performed, written a short conference paper for the JGS... and all before HRH gets here.

On the bright-side, I'm busy. Which, I'm loving. I'm getting physical exercise from moving all the sand into and out of my box. I'm getting data. This is all fantabulous.

Right. I need to go to bed. stuff to do.