A Visit From Father

Hello all!

Had a lovely time this weekend. My father managed to maneuver his way into being sent to Rome, Barcelona and Madrid for business with the main purpose of visiting me at CERN. He finished up business in Rome, which from what I could tell required walking all over the city sampling the best restaurants, and flew to Geneva where I met him. We took pictures, but I wasn't able to get them from him. Hopefully he will be kind enough to email them to me and I can post them.

He had booked a hotel that Yiota recommended to us a little ways up into the Jura mountains but still a very easy drive to Saint Genis (and Geneva). She described it as a nice mountain hotel in Crozet, near the ski resort. She described it as having a Swiss Alpine theme. She did not mention that it appears to be run by ghosts.

When Dad and I arrived, we parked in the completely empty parking lot and got out to head into the hotel. All of the outside lights were on and none of those inside. The reception was through a smallish door (rather than the main entrance one would expect of a hotel) and, though it wasn't yet 8 pm, there was no sign of any people at all. We looked around for someone, even walking all the way around the hotel itself to see if there was some other entrance, but there was no one about. It was all rather eerie. There were no instructions on how to check in, no cards with out name on it telling us where to go, and both phone numbers given in case of problems not only had no answer, they did not connect!

There were two keys left out on a board with pegs so, not knowing what else to do, we took both of them and went to explore the rooms. One of them had a set of bags already in it, but the other one did not. We had booked a room with two beds, but these both had only one bed. We decided to go get dinner to see if there was anyone present when we got back. Dinner was delicious and I'll get to it in a moment. We even stopped at Yiota's to ask what exactly we were supposed to do in the hotel. When we returned there was still the nice closed reception box with two keys hanging on pegs. Regardless or whether or not it WAS ours, we decided that if we took the apparently empty room and the owners returned or the police showed up to kick us out then someone could tell us which room is ours.

We spent a rather uncomfortable night (for me at least, my father is an expert at taking up all the space in a bed) but managed to make it until morning without being interrupted by the room's occupants or their deceased reanimated remains so we assumed this must have been the room meant for us.

Upon going downstairs, we discovered the parking lot to be full of cars, people everywhere, and breakfast well underway. We gave up trying to make sense of it all, and went down to eat.

Now, I mentioned dinner. Actually the main planning I had done for my father's visit to CERN involved what we would be eating. The night he arrived we went to a restaurant right at the Crozet ski area, attached to another hotel that specializes in duck, approximately a 5 minute walk from our hotel. Both Dad and I love duck. It did not disappoint. We kicked our french-meal-athon off to a good start with amazing duck in an incredible sauce accompanied by what may now be my favorite white wine (a pinot blanc from Alsace).

We loved it so much (I had been there once previously with Bjorn and Yiota) that we returned the next night to have another dinner option involving roast duck leg that was even better than the duck in the sauce. Both of our favorite part of thanksgiving is turkey skin, we looove it no matter how bad it is for us. Duck skin is one of the few things that must have accidentally made its way from heaven to descend into the pallet of mortals. Especially when prepared by the French.

In addition to the delicious duck, I had planned two other meals: Mont d'Or cheese and raclette. Saturday morning we went to the market in Ferney Voltaire that I have bragged about often enough in this blog and bought some of that delectable wrinkled moldy cheese that I gave detailed instructions for preparing. This was a great batch and we had it with Yiota and Katerina for lunch. The raclette we had the following evening (Sunday) with my friend Laurel at her apartment. We borrowed Yiota's raclette set and enjoyed it immensely. Dad had never had it before, and I think he approved as much as I did having it for the fifth time since coming here. It is delicious. For those who do not know, raclette involves taking cheese, melting it (often with thin sliced meat), and pouring it on potatoes. Often small, tangy pickles and bread are involved. It is delectable.

Our only other meal, aside from breakfast in the on again off again hotel, involved some wonderful swiss sausage and hash browns (I didn't know the swiss made hash browns, but these were great) with nice spicy mustard in the German style at a cafe in the old town of Geneva. With beer.

Activity wise, we pretty much went strait to dinner from the air port on Friday so we had the enjoyment of figuring out the hotel (and duck) for that evening. The next day was the market which I had been wanting to show to someone who reads this blog for a while now. It did not disappoint. We also swung by Voltaire's Chateau which is right next to the market (Ferney is not a huge town). It is only open later in the year, but it looks nice from the outside.

Following the Mont d'Or lunch, I showed him around CERN. Dad was very reminded of numerous research places that he has worked in: they all are big warehouses with random tools left lying around large expensive looking equipment. Sadly we weren't able to go down into the ALICE pit since the beam was on and we would have died a horrible melting death had we tried. Or more likely been kicked off the premises. However, the control room at ALICE as well as numerous detector expert stations and the like made for what I hope was a good tour. I even took him to the touristy bit where it explains a bit about quark gluon plasma and some of the various detectors at ALICE.

We then walked to the main site in Meryin and I showed him around there, introducing him to Dhevan and Matt in my office who were in on Saturday because postdocs and PhD students have no free time. Sadly I don't know as much about the CERN main site as Bjorn does so I wasn't able to give as insightful a tour as he, but we still got plenty of exercise and may have wound up one or two places we shouldn't have been, but purely by accident I assure you. We had fun. After that we didn't do much beyond vegetate since we had walked rather a long way that day.

Sunday we spent most of the day in Geneva, enjoying the warm spring weather and bright sunshine. I got sunburned of course... I had tried to buy a hat at the Ferney-Voltaire market but they had none my size that weren't bonnet shaped or things that even Audrey Hepburn wouldn't be caught in. Oh well. We had a good time, visiting several places that those of you who followed Andy and I in our Europe trip may have heard written of in our Geneva post. Dad and I wandered through many of the same areas of the old town, including past the giant chess set in the park. We also wound up at the Rolex corporate headquarters which looked wealthy enough to be the Rolex corporate headquarters. Some great landscaping going on there.

Monday the only thing we had time for was checking out and informing the hotel that no we had not stayed for seven nights nor did we leave charge several large dinners at the restaurant to our room. We got payment straightened out and Dad dropped me at CERN on the way to the airport. It was quite good to see him and I REALLY don't feel like working today so I'm posting in this blog instead. Then I'm going to go do some work. Sigh.

Ciao!

I'm still here!

Hello everyone, terribly sorry about the delay between last post and this one. I've been extremely busy over the past two weeks, but we'll see if I can't tell you a bit about it.

Let's see... Thesis work, thesis work, annnnnnd more thesis work! Oh, I occasionally got to do some programming! Honestly the past couple weeks have been a bit of a blur, but there have been some good highlights that are worth pointing out.

One of the high points of the past two/three weeks was the return of Bjorn to CERN for yet another round of struggle with the electromagnetic calorimeter. This was a good point because it meant I got a fair amount of help on some things to do with my data analysis that had been bugging me (pun intended).

Actually I only got to see him for about half the time that he was here since he arrived around the time my night shifts started. Once those were over, he was working at point 2 (where ALICE itself is situated) while I was in the office at the CERN main site most of the time. However we did manage to have SOME time to work on things that needed work. This included some work for the UPC group here at CERN (UPC = Ultra-Peripheral Collisions for those of you who care at all about any of the physics I talk about).

My thesis work has progressed as well via lots of work and occasional meetings with Dr. Cherney who throws red ink on my thesis at random and tells me why everything I think I know is wrong. Actually he doesn't do that and is in fact providing some very constructive criticism, but I've had to re-write my first two chapters twice already with a third re-write on the way. It currently reads like evening news factoids which is almost dry enough to be considered a rough draft for a Physics related paper. Still need to run it through the drier a few more times, however.

One of the neat things I've somewhat vaguely gotten involved with is a start up company called AerosonX which a friend of mine and her father have started. It is doing some neat work that I can't talk about because of the non disclosure agreement, but in spare moments I've been trying to translate some physics into English for them. They are aware of the unfortunately small amount of time that I can spend on anything for them (and it is volunteer work anyway) due to my thesis taking over my life. Still, I am quite flattered that they asked me.

Another highlight of the past week was another truly amazing dinner, courtesy of France being a hop, skip, and a jump from CERN. There is a restaurant near a ski resort called Crozet which is about a 15 minute drive from my house in Saint Genis, if that. The resort is closed since we've had amazing spring weather here (immediately followed this week by amazing spring rain). However, the restaurant is open and while I have had better duck, I had to get peking duck IN Peking (well Beijing as it's called these days) to do it. It was delicious and had, of course, amazing wine to go with it. Bjorn, Yiota and I all went. It was a thank you from Yiota for the good job I've done in removing wallpaper (more on that later).

My father was planning on visiting this weekend, but due to a combination of expenses and company scheduling issues he wasn't able to come, which is unfortunate. However, I'll survive since he is coming next weekend instead and staying for a longer time than he would have this weekend. I plan on taking him to said duck place. And feeding him Raclette with my various friends here. And cooking Mont d'Or for him fresh from the Ferney-Voltaire market. Basically we're going to need to go for a run or two to work it all off. I'm excited that he is coming. I wish Mom could come too, but between money and time she can't. Oh well.

I have found time to hang out with people on occasion. Polly dragged me to Geneva to go shopping because she needed a new pair of shoes. Well she didn't drag me really... I secretly enjoyed myself because it wasn't the office. Also she's a good friend and amusing to hang out with. We went to a mall sort of like a miniature Bellevue Square (for those of you from Washington to have an analogie) a few miles down the road from CERN. A fairly nice place and not as expensive as it could have been, considering we were in Geneva. I got socks. She went to get shoes and wound up with two new dresses and a tank top. And no shoes. Oh well! It wasn't for lack of looking. I was designated bag holder (actually I just picked up the bags in spite of her insisting I didn't have to repeatedly) so I at least had a function. I actually had a lot of fun... Hehe.

Just today Bjorn and I managed to get out and about for a nice if soggy drive around the lake
trip to Nyon (not Lyon, a point which confused me considerably). Nyon is a small town about 30 to 45 minutes north of Geneva. It, like most of Switzerland near Lake Geneva, has a magnificent view of the lake, even in spite of the rain. We had lunch in one of the many cafes near the water front and walked around for a while. It was well worth the trip (and the drip) to get out of the office. We went to a castle right in the middle of town that was first built in the 1290's. It's always fun to think about how old things can be in Europe compared to the US.

I mentioned my progress on wallpaper removal. For those who do not know I've been reworking the walls of the room where I've been staying in as part of a rent reduction deal with Yiota. Her daughter, Katerina, will move in there once I'm out. I'll have to endure lavender walls for a few weeks, but oh well. It is over half way done and will probably be at most three or four more days of work since I have maybe a day's work of wallpaper left plus one or two days painting, not to mention moving everything back into place. Then I can live there again! I've been in Yiota's room while she's moved into Katerina's (there are bunked beds in there). I'm eager to be done since it has been an absolute pain in the butt. Never ever ever ever volunteer to remove wallpaper. Ever. It isn't worth it.

Beyond that I've been job hunting, though recently I've been focusing more on my thesis. I've figured out a deal with God as to what my future will be like. If I do get a job, I go with that. Or the one that most interests me of ones I'm offered. If I do not hear anything before, say, the end of May, then I'm seriously considering joining the Air Force. It would be good for me, provide connections, and is the service most likely to get me researching in Aerospace. Given my druthers, I'd take a nice research posting at Edward's in California. We'll see. Even if I wind up as a supply officer it will probably still be a good experience (though I hope to God I don't end up as a supply officer).


That's the majority of things I've done recently beyond work on my thesis. I have a return trip booked now: I arrive back in Omaha on April 17th. Here is my schedule for the following week and a half:

Wed 18th: presentation due for my Statistical Mechanics course. I'm presenting on some real world thing that can be modeled as a statistical system. I'm thinking the stock market.

Friday 20th: The Nebraska Academy of Science talks. I'm giving a presentation aimed at college biologists and chemists about my work at ALICE. I don't expect anyone to show up other than the few people from Creighton who are going to the talk with me. Yay!

Saturday the 21st through Thursday the 26th: back to New York! If you thought I was done there, HAH! I'm now officially an author at STAR, which means my name will appear on published papers! This means I should probably show up one last time. I probably should also at least read papers my name shows up on as an author, but that comes in the future.

Friday 27th: Presentation for Creighton's physics seminar. Every student has to do one. This one will be a slightly more detailed version of my NAS talk. Should be easy to write and to give.

I will have my Thesis defense probably in early May unless some miracle happens that lets me give it in April. Regardless Dr. Cherney has offered to pay me through the end of May for tweaking if I don't have any other jobs lined up. This is optional and I'm considering it... but we'll see. I could use an extra month's pay since I'm planning on buying a car...

Well that is everything for now! So sorry for the delay between posts. Hope everyone is well!
Ciao!

Once upon a midnight dreary

While I drooled sleepless wearies...

So turns out that if you upset your sleep schedule without preparation or warning by, oh, say working a midnight to 8 am shift for six nights in a row, you get pretty darn tired pretty fast. So if this post sounds like it was written by a demented zombie, that's because it pretty much was. I've had a grand total of 11 hours of sleep over the past three days.

I am currently in the ALICE control room working a data acquisition shift. Thus far my jobs have been to 1: jiggle the mouse on occasion. 2: glance at the big screen at the front of the room to make sure that the run is still going. 3: write a few incoherent sentences in my thesis to make for amusing proofreading once I have my brain cells back in order.

The shift before mine actually had some interesting things happening what with a fire alarm in the central most detector of the experiment which is not only wrapped in many layers of other expensive equipment and sealed in a thick metal casing but is also rather deeply underground. Fortunately it seemed to just be some smoke, probably from some cluster overheating (I assume, though I really have no idea) and the ventilation system took care of it before the fire department had to go down and try to save an exceedingly expensive machine. There were also some software issues, but there are always software issues, so those are less exciting.

My shift is likely going to continue to involve prodding the mouse and making sure the run continues for the next seven hours.

Part of the reason I'm so sleep deprived is I had some things to do during the day at the CERN main site in Meyrin (which as far as I can tell is the section of Switzerland that CERN occupies. It may also be a suburb of Geneva but I don't know). So after eight hours of shift, I slept from 9 am to 11 am and got up to go back to work for five more hours. Polly did kindly meet me for lunch and spent a reasonable amount of time laughing at my zombie stare. After that I had a meeting with Yiota and another compatriot of ours named Francesca Bellini who works on the DQM system.

The reason for this meeting is over the past few days I've been involved in some small planning for what for some reason was called the ALICE master's class. Basically it was an outreach to some high schools, one in Frankfort and the other in Darmstadt. They gathered at local universities to learn a bit about how data analysis happens at ALICE. In particular about the different kinds of particles used for collisions at the LHC (proton-proton and lead-lead collisions).

The meeting was about the final event which was to talk with real CERN people! This was Francesca, myself, and one other amazingly named grad student: Magnus Mager. We went over the analysis that they had done and discussed what it showed. Basically we asked questions on topics that they had studied and move the presentations along. It was fun! Good to be in front of an audience for an hour, even if it was physics related, over a computer video connection, and in a minor role.

I think I did quite well in not falling asleep considering how alive I felt during the presentations. Not because they were boring. They weren't. I just hadn't much brain power at that particular juncture.
ciao!

On Shift at ALICE

Hello all! I have had numerous complements on the poem that I wrote for ALICE Matters (the fortnightly newsletter). Polly had me do another piece (she seems to know that I like the sound of my own writing), this one on what working in the control room is like. Granted this past week of shift was hardly typical of the circumstances, but it did make for an amusing article if I do say so myself.

This pretty much sums up my life the past week aside from working on thesis and skiing tomorrow. The temperature has been approaching the 70's here, and absolutely beautiful spring weather. I anticipate something like 40 degrees on the mountain. Never skied in a t-shirt before... One last round of skiing for the season! Then I'll have to switch over to dragging people hiking. Ah well. Enjoy the article! You can find it at http://alicematters.web.cern.ch/1stshift. Forgive any extra u's in words, Polly decided to translate it into English English from the American.


On Shift at ALICE

Or Reminisces of One Who Does Not Speak Italian

Over the past week I finished up my training and started shifts at the Data Quality Management (DQM) station in the ALICE control room. Though the LHC run has not yet started, ALICE has started shifts both to make sure detectors are properly calibrated and to discover any bugs that may have cropped up during the last round of changes to the system.

I arrived in the control room to discover that I was the only person in the room who did not speak Italian. I suppose there are a fair number of Italians at ALICE, but the number is disproportionate in the control room, and I immediately had to become fluent in Italian or fail to relate to anyone there. Well, that is a lie, they all speak English (certainly better than I speak Italian), but I found it amusing that I literally was the ONLY person who wasn't fluent in the language.

Polly Bennett

James Ross on shift at the DQM station in the ALICE control room

For my first shift not much was going on, just a few technical and cosmic ray runs. This left only one or two things to check every ten minutes or so for my station, and even less to do for everyone else. However, Run Coordinator Gilda Scioli was in the room, so things could hardly be boring. Gilda is what most people would describe as a bundle of energy, but really "a force of nature" is more appropriate. She's got a fantastic sense of humour and a huge personality, so she sort of infuses energy into whatever she's doing. She played Vivaldi loudly on her computer and cracked jokes with all and sundry, mostly in Italian, at least I assume they were jokes because everyone laughed. This was of course interrupted whenever something needed doing; she is quite attentive to her job.

The man in charge for the run this month is Period Run Coordinator (PRC) and Electromagnetic Calorimeter expert Jiri Kral. He is in charge of making sure that the run goes smoothly and implements ALICE policy in the control room. Generally PRCs try to avoid ruling with an iron fist, but on occasion Jiri will threaten to shoot you. Well, actually he threatened to just shoot me, so it may be a personal thing. Aside from the occasional death threat, he is an easy going, sociable person with a good sense of humour. At least that seems to be my only hope for survival.

On top of everything else during the shifts, I seem to have stumbled my way into a job at the zoo, as one of the animals. Several times a day tour groups would come through the ALICE control room and tour guides would explain in numerous languages (mostly Italian) what all the stations are. I enjoyed it because, though I had to look busy for their benefit and click on random histograms, I did get some small measure of attention. Mostly these were high school trips visiting CERN, but we did get a group of VIPs from Thailand who had recently joined the collaboration. This is not typical of shifts during the year, but during the shutdown period tourism is big at the LHC.

So between physicists attempting to waltz to classical music, tour groups rampaging through, visits from VIPs from Thailand, dodging bullets from Jiri, and checking to make sure that I knew where everything was, I only had about five hours with which to try to find some way to stave off boredom. Later on shifts will require actually doing things regularly, but not yet. I spent the time between checking the histograms working on my thesis or applying for jobs.

On my shifts later in the week I had a trainee every day (being the first shifts of the run, this is normal) so I had a bit more to do. Between training them and DQM expert Francesca Bellini being in the control room, I came to know everything quite well, except for one particular little gremlin that had to reveal itself before I knew what on earth was going on... But I'm afraid I can't go into detail on that. I've been sworn to secrecy.

A typical DQM shift in the control room involves keeping an eye on a number of histograms to ensure that everything is going well with the data taking. If there are any major problems, the shift leader is informed and the relevant experts are notified so that steps can be taken to correct the problem. Usually, however, the DQM shifter can handle the minor issues that crop up, and there is an extensive instruction and troubleshooting section of the ALICE Twiki to help. Recently the DQM shift was merged with the offline data migration shift, adding a few more things to keep an eye on. However, there are not too many, so it is easily manageable.

All in all, my shifts went very smoothly. Experts are still in the midst of getting everything calibrated and there are constant changes happening, but it will come together by the time the LHC starts up the beam for the run. Until then, its sit back, relax, and let the cosmic rays frolic with the detectors.