Today is my last day of Trigger Desk shifts this week. I have one more block of shifts next week. When I went to sign up for shifts 3 months ago, only these two blocks of Trigger shifts were left. In ATLAS, you take what you can get. I hope to have time to train for Run Control shifts while I am at CERN this summer, but the reality is that once I train for those shifts I will not be here for a few months, and by the time I return we may be nearing the official end of data taking for 2012. So . . . that seems like a waste of training, when I know I’ll just have to do it again the next time I am here and have enough time blocked out for shifts.
Whatever. I am enjoying being in the control room and being on shift. Today, however, is the quietest shift of the week. There has been some excitement while the LHC actually needed luminosity data from us during their machine development tests. But now, for the current tests, they don’t need us at all. So there is little left to do on this shift besides look for really bad anomalies in the system (unlikely) and otherwise fill the time with something productive. Like blogging!
Oh . . . right.
