22/02 - I got in today about 11, which I felt was justified as I have to stay until 11 as well. I write this sitting in the ATLAS control room, 5 hours into my first shadow shift. This involves sitting with the normal shifter and watching what he does, occasionally doing it myself. It mainly consists of checklists which tell you what to look for and what to do if it looks a bit wrong. The problem is, 'a bit wrong' is quite a vague criterion on which to judge various complex histograms. There is a webcam, which I think is public, which one can view here which is only available to CERN members. It's not very exciting anyway, but you can see where I sit - in the closest set of desks, at the furthest one away. I think we are doing OK, I have done some checklists and been a bit bewildered by how involved the guys next to me are in their shift (a different desk, I might add). I popped over to the office earlier and went via the fire escape on the side of the building (not really via as such, as the control room is on the ground floor). I wanted to get some better views of the mountains, it was particularly clear today and they looked amazing, however the problem with CERN is that wherever you are there are always power lines in the way, somewhat marring all the nice scenery that surrounds you.
Well, 6 hours in and not much has changed. I had the rest of that penne siciliana from Friday for breakfast, the one which I was very ill soon after eating the first time. Call it an experiment. I ate my beef, parmesan & rocket focaccia, supposedly my dinner, at about 4pm and I am now trying to put off eating my bagel for as long as possible, but I don't think I can hold out much longer. In fact, writing about the other foods has made me far hungrier, so I'm giving in now. Delicious. Snacking, blogging and househunting are the main activities at my desk at the moment, not much physics afoot.
7 hours down, I have devoured everything I brought with me and I am all out of stuff to do. I have helped my sister fix her sink, given sympathy to a poorly Kelly, downloaded games for my iPod, figured out how much I am spending out here (less than in London and decreasing week by week, amazingly - even with £100 shopping and skiing trips - goes to show how much I spend on going out back home, I suppose) and taken a few pictures. Short of actually doing some work, I am all out of ideas.
Well, nothing much else happened for the last hour. I packed up and ran for the 2310 bus, made it, and then proceeded to miss various connections and got home at about half past midnight. I called Kelly (who was still very ill), made come slightly unpleasant spicy noodles and went to bed.
23/02 - Well today just feels like it's been a bit of a waste. This morning some alarms went off, some alarms were ignored, and by the time I was up and about it was so late I decided I might as well have lunch en route to CERN to avoid wasting any more time. I headed down to Planpalais (about a 15 minute walk from my flat), figuring that I would drop off the IKEA money at Zack's house, grab a sandwich and hop on the number 14 tram, thereby saving myself the hassle of getting the bus then changing. This didn't quite work out - I did drop off the money, but as all the sandwiches I saw looked really unappetising I went to Mike Wong's for lunch - it's an Asian fast food restaurant right next to McDonalds. See the logo below for the reason why this proximity is important.
Anyway, the food was pretty good. They had beef panang, probably my favourite Thai dish, which I wolfed down pretty quickly. My journey to CERN didn't quite work out as quickly and efficiently as I had planned, as I ended up taking two trams and having to run through the pouring rain in between them. It is ATLAS week at CERN, which means there are lots of meetings going on in the rather grand main auditorium. I met someone to discuss what I should do in the masterclass I am moderating tomorrow, before realising I am actually doing it with Dan, not her, after we had already discussed a strategy. What a waste of time. I attended a couple of talks I didn't follow, pressed the wrong button on the coffee machine which meant that it tried to fit a big coffee into an espresso cup, minced around in the afternoon trying to sort out my shifts and some dull admin stuff, before meeting some people in R1 for a drink. I was persuaded to go and play pool with them, but for some reason just before we were about to leave I suddenly felt like it was a terrible idea and I fled to the bus, making it home in 45 minutes exactly, the fastest so far. Tonight my plan is to build some shelves and wash my hair. I am well rock 'n' roll.
No comments:
Post a Comment