Hey stee man, same, hope shits going decently.
Hadn't been posting recently that much, partly due to the computer screen currently forced to use being far enough even without the accident to give me some thumping great unclefuckers of eyestrain-induced headaches, and its hard-mounted, built in to the very fabric of the room, and isn't of a mind to spill out its guts easily. but the distance from 'good' eye the distance to the screen leaves gives me rotten eyestrain, and the eyeball itself still stings like fuck.
Although thankfully my GP gave me some extra oxy for the pain, which is helping at least some, and I don't have to be saturating my fucking eyeball with tons of different drops, just using hyluronate sodium 0.2% now along with steroid drops, which have been switched to a less potent one, less frequently (from dex 6xdaily to pred BD and using either oxybuprocaine (the best if the three opthalmic local preparations bought on the five finger discount card), proxymetacaine in just behind that or tetracaine, which stings a fair bit for a while after application and seems to be the least effective of the three. Did have some benzocaine and lidocaine but those were a nuisance, needing reconstitution in sterile saline, perfect adjustment of PH and running the synth from scratch. Trivial enough, especially benzocaine but benzocaine is both weak shite and very short lasting. Was glad of having some around when I actually hurt my eyes though as it allowed me to properly irrigate the damn fucking cunt, whilst I was waiting for the ambulance, and it proved enough to let me locate my keys to the house and let them in.
That aside its just taking high dose vitamin C, and keeping out of any bright lights, as well as a pair of welding goggles and covering up the affected eye totally anywhere other than in complete darkness. Even going out at night at first I was wearing the welding goggles, with a piece of foil over the lens on the affected side. Just as well I'm pretty much nocturnal anyway, I've always been very much the night owl type. Can't help but laugh at whatever anyone seeing me must have been thinking though at the sight of someone using yet further darkened welding goggles as shades at 5 in the morning haha.
And how does one juggle otters on a skateboard? I'd have thought their little legs too short to wrap around the bottom of the board so they can keep hold when the juggling goes through the inverted portion of the trajectory of the otters/skateboards.
And yes, stee not a bad combination, although I'd sooner have had some prope rather than plain morphine, but I figured I couldn't get away with anything too sedating on top of the opiates already used, nitrazepam and the chlormethiazole, since I needed to make sure I stayed alert and awake. Ever seen what happens when a fair sized current gets passed through a blob of molten sodium-calcium alloy floating about on molten caustic/CaCl eutectic electrolyte and shorts between the electrodes? it can be rather loud, and would not, IMO, be the ideal moment for one to nod off. But shaking hands would have been as bad or worse, and sure as hell wasn't going to try it without opioids in my system, or it would have been shorting way more than once in a while. And try doing it one handed using the other to aim a flow of argon at the forming beads of molten metal, and using other hand to manage both the other electrode (decided to make the vessel itself conductive and use the container for the NaOH/CaCl2 eutectic as one of the electrodes)
At a few hundred 'C, even moderated (one assumes it did anyhow) by the presence of calcium metal, molten Na is an awful lot nippier than it is at room temperature (althoigh subjected to a heavy stream of inert gas flow, whatever I2 did get passed was usually enough to get it to take up hang-gliding for a hobby.
I think though that I might build a proper dedicated Castner or Downs' type cell, electrically heated and temp-controlled via thermocouple and a mix of peltier stacks for rapid cooling and asbestos cloth-wrapped michrome wire for heating control to within 5 degrees 'C or so. Seeing as how cheaply Na, K, Ca and Mg salts come and how especially the alkali metals are always some of the elements most popular and sought out by hobbyist chemists a dedicated setup capable of flow, rather than batch processing would I reckon prove a great investment as well as a fun engineering project.
Just been pondering the materials to use for construction at the moment and testing various conductors for coating such cells, because when going to be run longer than a single run and for making larger quantities than, to borrow a phrase more common for far different kinds of substance here, 'personal use' quantities so as to have some to trade for reagents and equipment and more goodies for building yet more neat bits and pieces, make a bit of xmas £££ etc. then the materials used in construction are going to need to be of professional quality and endurance; for whilst aqueous caustic soda isn't terribly nasty, caustic potash is worse by quite a lot, and when fused into the molten anhydrous state requisite for electrolysis when seeking to dig the metals lurking within out of their salty burrows, at the temperatures needed to keep the stuff molten, then they are altogether different beasts, and one goes up from needing a trained ferret to dig 'em out of their holes to needing a pack of rough and nasty biker-gangbanger ratel armed with machetes and autocannon wearing stab vests and from hiding rabbit down hole to miniaturized pit-bulls where the corrosive and aggressive nature of the molten electrolytes are concerned. a bit of aq. NaOH on the skin, as long as its not in the eyes or some other such tender areas is one thing and not the end of the world if washed off promptly, but molten caustic potash at 360 'C (beginning of melting point) would inflict some damned NASTY injuries on contact.
But confining the melt is the easy bit, its selecting materials that will resist the corrosive nature of such electrolytes for prolonged periods and high temperatures that needs the TLC (for once, that abbreviation isn't referring to chromatography in the field of chemistry

...see what I did there), iron and at least some steels are attacked although somewhat slowly by molten NaOH/CaCl2 mixture, they left the container tested pretty badly brutalized after a two-night-long session going at it with the proverbial (and literal) hammer and tongs.