(Written on July 18, 2009) After days of preparations for the move to Texas (weeks, really, including selling and eventually giving away furniture), we were finally on our way. We watched as the last of our belongings were loaded into a moving truck before we said goodbye to friends and […]
Yearly Archives: 2009
96 posts
In its report on proposed funding for high energy physics, the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittee targeted a removal of some of the LHC funding from the proposed budget. The exact language in the report was, “The Committee questions the increased investment in Large Hadron Collider [LHC] support when […]
Michael Pollan’s name keeps popping up. This past week, I listened to his excellent discussion on one of the local radio forum programs. As the author of several popular books on our relationship with food, including “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” [1] and “In Defense of Food”, he has become the de […]
This was a very fun 4th of July. I started the day with birthday wishes from my mother-in-law. I was happy she called, but I was also very tired and realized that I was up, and that making it through the day would be no fun until I got more […]
In a world where mobile internet is becoming as available as air and water, I think it’s time to enforce the same standards for internet as for air and water. When a place offers wifi for free, they ought to be required to provide a minimum of quality internet service […]
After some false starts trying to write this post yesterday, here we go. SLAC was treated to a visit by Secretary Chu, the U.S. Energy Secretary. Unlike previous people in his position, who showered the crowd with dumbed-down bureacro-babble and errant platitudes cobbled together from a patchwork misunderstanding of SLAC’s […]
I’ve spent the last three days of this week in an “undisclosed location”, and now that I’m returning home in preparation for my trip to Spain I’m happy to disclose my little vacation spot. I’ve been at Caltech with Jodi, who has been commuting here for a month now for […]
I took a break this afternoon, met up with Jodi and her colleagues, and went out for coffee. While sitting outside, sipping our drinks, one of the students pulled out his mobile phone and showed a picture to Jodi. He said that he was reminded to show the photo since […]
It occurred to me several months ago that my plans for a quiet summer, leading up to the move to Dallas, were in terrible danger. A number of things have been delayed or added to the pile. As a result, my vision of a whole week off (or even a […]
This summer was always going to be busy. Between executing my normal post-doctoral responsibilities, starting the ramp up on the ATLAS experiment, and getting ready to move to Dallas, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot of down time. This only reminds me that I should have taken a vacation when […]
This summer is going to be another one of those insane summers. Next week I’ll be at CERN for the ATLAS Physics Week. This will be my first (of many) trips to CERN in quite some time, and I am excited to see how the place has changed now that […]
In all my years as a post-doc, I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with a number of students. There have been a few to whom I have been more of a mentor than to others, and in the last year both of them have successfully defended their theses. They […]