Back to the world

[x_maker]

Well, after two weeks in a car with three rather attractive women (side note: there were bikinis involved. God bless the surreptitious digital camera.) and a few days' brainventing in the lab - I believe I'm back to what constitutes "normal" for the time being.

Quick - someone fill me in on what I'm supposed to *DO* with a summer without classes. I haven't had one since I was twelve.

EDIT: And if someone can find me the title and artist of that song Jubilee's been humming off-key for the past week? I will be indebted forever, seeing as it'll likely play a major part in my justifiable homicide defense since she's managed to get it stuck in my head.

Comments

[x-forge.livejournal.com]

1) I will say that one of the advantages to having two lawyers for parents is that I do not ever really have to worry about petty cash. Although I just got the paperwork in the mail this morning - and I was honestly going to make a big announcement, but somehow the Humility Fairy hit me first - yours truly now has his first official patent.

2) It'd take more time and budget than you know, believe me. Even if we HAD photon-splitting apparatus here (which I assume we don't, not living on top of a thirty-mile-long particle accelerator), the current research done on active temporal manipulation is woefully inadequate for any kind of prototype.

3) I'm an inventor, not a biologist.

[x-kitten.livejournal.com]

Congratulations. What's the patent on?

[x-forge.livejournal.com]

A single-circuit clutch for coaxial transmission linkages. It's what I designed for the Jeep - reactive graduated gear linkages, mostly. Instead of the standard 1st-2nd-3rd-4th gear system, it works more on a sliding scale, adjusting torque and distributing power on the fly.

TECHNICALLY the patent's held in trust for another thirteen and a half months. Which just means I can't license any rights to it until I'm eighteen.

[x-kitten.livejournal.com]

Ah, very cool. If it's held in trust, can the trust license it? I know patents only last twenty years, which is actually quite a while, but it seems a lot less long at the end of it, I'm sure, and especially if you can't exercise it for more than a year after you get it.

[x-forge.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's held in my dad's name until I turn 18, meaning that I'm on as owner of the patent, but I can't make any legal decisions about it until the age of majority. It's a way to get around the whole mutant restriction, and it's all legal. A bit of a workaround, but until the system gets changed, it'll do for now.

[x-kitten.livejournal.com]

I don't know from the leagalistics. What's the mutant restriction?

[x-forge.livejournal.com]

Basically, it falls under the Equal Opportunity laws. Say you've got someone like Jamie, who can literally do the work of ten men for the pay of one. Or if Mr. Marko were to go out and completely replace a construction crew all by himself. Because my mutant ability gives me an "unfair advantage" over regular humans, as the law currently stands, I can't apply for a patent on my inventions by myself. But if my father applies in trust for me, then it can go through.

[x-kitten.livejournal.com]

... That's nuts.

I don't mean the law, which is stupid in it's own special way, but the fact that people can just work their way around stupid laws is crazy. Either it should be a law and people should follow it (or accept the consequences if they get caught breaking them) or it shouldn't be a law. Having there be legal ways around laws is nuts.

And this is why I'm going to do science for the rest of my life and never, ever get involved with politics or law or any of that.

[x-forge.livejournal.com]

You'll be surprised as you progress in science that to get anything new or groundbreaking done, you'll eventually have to work in business, law, and politics. That's what they keep hammering into my head (and trust me, if anyone knows, it'd be Drs. McCoy and MacTaggart) and why I'm taking business classes at the college next year.

[x-kitten.livejournal.com]

Bah, I say. Bah.

[x-crowdofone.livejournal.com]

Isn't that my job? :)

[x-cypher.livejournal.com]

1. Yeah, my parents manage to keep me in petty cash pretty well as well. Though with college tuition coming up...well, I've got a few projects this summer. And hey, congrats on the patent, man.

2. I was mostly kidding with that one. Though if anyone could do it, my money's on you.

3. Nothing wrong with branching out. ;-)