Archive for the 'CERN Travelogue' Category

Dec 12 2009

I remember now; I remember how it started.

Published by steve under CERN Travelogue

It’s being tired, because you’ve been cramming information about jets, electrons, muons, photons, and all manner of other things yet unidentified in your head. It’s the swelling in your eyes because you’ve been staring at code, a sheriff and an outlaw locking eyes on a dusty main street, each knowing that only one of you [...]

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Dec 10 2009

6:00 on a Winter Morning

Published by steve under CERN Travelogue

The Blackberry goes off at 6, playing a jolly little electric piano tune. In the dark of a room in Hostel 41 – a room I have affectionately taken to calling the “Monolith Apartment” (see Stanley Kubrick’s “2001″) – I dismiss the alarm and swing myself out of bed. Thus begins the second of two [...]

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Dec 07 2009

We’re taking data like it’s 1999

Published by steve under CERN Travelogue, Faculty Life

This has been a whirlwind week for me. Ever since I arrived in Geneva last week, I’ve been keeping myself as busy as a grad student so that I can be a more effective professor. I truly need to understand something of ATLAS before I can lead a group of people in ATLAS. In the [...]

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Dec 02 2009

Lagged but legit

Published by steve under CERN Travelogue

Day two: jet lag. Despite five hours of sleep on the plane from Dulles to Geneva, my body insists that it is, in fact, midnight when we land. It is unhappy, it is tired, and it is angry at my brain for keeping it up. Despite the overwhelming exhaustion, the eyelids heavy like pig iron, [...]

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Dec 01 2009

A walk in the airport

Published by steve under CERN Travelogue

I am on my first trip to CERN as a real collaborator in the ATLAS experiment. I have not earned the right to call myself a “member” yet – at least, in the sense that I can sign papers. I am a newbie (n00b, if you will), a greenhorn, and I am going to CERN [...]

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