The place where lost socks go...

At the Event Horizon now, waiting for the first guest to arrive for today's party. They should be here any minute... but let's see if I can't sneak in a quick post before then!

When last we left our intrepid hero, it was Wednesday night... and he had just finished spending a delightful day at Hurricane Harbor with the enchanting tawneypup. Our hero fell asleep early that night, exhausted from the cumulative lack of sleep as well as spending the whole of the day out in the bright sun.

Our story continues...

Thursday, I woke up early (8am), showered, and went to work at Fermilab. At this point, gentle readers, I can hear a collective "Huh?" emanating from your lips. "But aren't you on vacation? Didn't you stop working for the lab well over two years ago?" All true. Interestingly enough, I went to the place of my last job (Fermilab) to meet with people who I will be working with at my next job (Imperial College London)... which will, coincidentally, involve an experiment (Super-Kamiokande) that I worked on two jobs ago (Stony Brook)[*]. Basically, Thursday morning involved every professional job I have had except for my current one (Oxford). Go figure!

Anyway, I met some remaining members of the Imperial group, who have been stationed at at Fermilab. I participated in a video conference. And then I got a tour of the SciBooNE experiment, which my new group at Imperial is heavily involved with. I stayed at Fermilab until shortly after 2pm -- effectively working a half day on my vacation for a job that I have not started yet -- and then came home.

Thursday afternoon was spent running various and sundry errands. While productive, they are not particularly interesting... so I will say no more about them. Thursday evening was much more fun. I went to Sidekicks for a special Poly Karaoke night that I had called. The usual monthly get-togethers are on the first Thursday of each month; given that I will be gone by then, I pulled together my own outing. Several nifty people -- including unclevlad and the lovely wyldekyttin -- showed up, and I got to see a couple of old acquaintances that I rare spend time with now. The overall crowd at the bar was small -- and the number of people singing even smaller -- so I got to go on stage more often than ever before. I think I sang nine times during the evening. Good fun!

And on that note, the first guests are here... so I will have to wait until later to write about Friday and my lovely date with iamthesphinx...

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[*] Now that I think of it, I have not written very much about what project the new job will entail. I should rectify this at some point.

In yesterday's quick entry, I promised more to come later. So here is the more...

Yesterday afternoon, I made my fourth skydive. Yes, once again, at an altitude of 13,500 feet, I decided to part ways with a perfectly good airplane. As usual, it was phenomenal! I can't really describe the thrill of skydiving in mere words, so perhaps it is best if I do not even try... lest I do the experience a disservice.

With regards to skydiving, though, I have reached the point where it is time to take the proverbial piss or to get off of the proverbial pot. In other words, I have done as much as I can do without getting serious about acquiring my USPA "A" license. There are certain skills that they teach during a tandem jump; by now I can do them all perfectly. Indeed, after my previous jump -- in March 2006 -- my instructor told me that I was ready to begin the Advanced Freefall Program (AFP) and pursue my license. This needs to be done in a relatively short time, however, so this jump was at the same level as my last one... given the years that elapsed in-between. Unless I get serious about being licensed, I will always be stuck doing the same tandem jump that I just did... and I think I have had enough of that. So I do not think that I will be jumping again... until such time that I am ready to invest $2600 and one week of my time in earning my "A" license. My instructor was quite clear that he thought I had what it took to continue in that direction.

After returning from the jump, I cleaned myself up and headed over to meet unclevlad, wyldekyttin, crim_ferret, datahawk, and emrldgrrl for dinner. It was the first time that I got to see their house, which is most fantastic! A real fine find! We went out for Chinese food for dinner -- the first that I have had since my triumphant return to the States two weeks ago. Then we sat around and chatted for a bit until I had to return to the Event Horizon to meet the lovely tawneypup.

My return was perfectly timed -- I pulled onto our street just as tawneypup had arrived and was pulling our her phone to call me! It was very sweet of her to drive out from Michigan to spent her day off with me, and it was great to see her again so soon after Starwood! We got to know each other a bit better... and today she joined me on my annual outing to Hurricane Harbor! Twas indeed a most excellent day! The weather was perfect, the water park was exactly what the water elemental in me needed, and the company was superb! We spent the day in an ongoing ramble of conversation that covered so many topics -- I really love those!

Alas, on our return from the park, tawneypup needed to depart to return to Michigan -- after all, she does have to work tomorrow! That was just a short time ago... and the rest of the evening promises to be fairly mellow. Can't stay up too late! Even though I am on vacation, I have a meeting to attend at Fermilab tomorrow morning!

Actually, it is not a hotel at all but, rather, a very nice dorm suite at Stanford University. In any case, here is a quick update on the trip to SLAC:

Left the Event Horizon yesterday morning without sufficient time to make it to the airport. That made life interesting. It took a couple of minor miracles for me to make it onto my flight. Also, it didn't hurt that I am pretty darn clever... especially where travel matters are concerned. Fighting the Midway Airport bustle at 6am on a Monday morning made me really miss being at Starwood!

Things improved vastly when I got to Stanford. Almost immediately after arriving, I ran into two German colleagues -- one that I worked with in 2001 and one that I work with now. Each was surprised that the other knew me. It's quite fair, though, as I was surprised that they knew each other. Overall, I've seen about eight people here that I know from elsewhere. Indeed, it is an interesting juxtaposition of my past and present experiments, with people here that I know from Super-Kamiokande, the Pierre Auger Observatory, and the CRESST dark matter search. Not to mention some random people from Fermilab and from the last time I attended the Summer Institute here, back in 2000.

The lectures themselves have also been pretty good. Despite being exhausted yesterday, I was able to follow most of what was presented and, during the afternoon discussion session, I managed to ask some questions that were not -- to the best of my sleep-deprived knowledge -- particularly dumb. It is really nice to spend time focusing on the actual physics of dark matter, cosmology, and supersymmetry for awhile, rather than being entirely enmeshed in hardware, R&D, and calibration work. The amusing thought crossed my mind yesterday that I was sitting onsite at a national laboratory listening to prominent physicists lecture about cosmology and whatnot less then thirty-six hours after I was dancing around a six story bonfire on the other side of this country. Ye gads, I do like the diversity that is my life![*]

Outside of the formal structure, the Summer Institute is also about professional networking. I have met quite a number of new people, mostly graduate students and other postdocs. One group that I met is all from the University of Sheffield, in England. Spending time with them has been good... but it also has caused me to slip back into the use of UK English, just when I was finally feeling natural using US English again. Ah well -- there are worse fates.

The programme for the Summer Institute is quite full, starting and 9am and lasting until about 8pm each evening. However, I am plotting to get together with yavin7 later in the week and, since the weekend is entirely open, I am hoping to see kat1031 for the first time in about fifteen years. Hopefully the Scheduling Gods will smile down on these plans and bless them for me.

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[*] That said, and even though I am having fun here, I certainly would not have minded another week at Brushwood before having to leave. I do miss the magickal space that is Starwood... and I miss frogcastle.

After winning the GO game yesterday afternoon, I drove downstate to the Bloomington-Normal area to visit The Kiddo[*]. He completed his Masters degree in May and, thus, will be leaving Normal next month to begin working for Google. Therefore, yesterday's trip was most likely my last visit to that area.

When I arrived, we went to get lunch in town. Then we picked up The Kiddo's girlfriend and went to play miniature golf. I won, with the low score of 54 points. He came in second with 59, then his girlfriend came in last -- despite a very strong start -- with 63. This is revenge for the game we played last summer, when The Kiddo won handedly. The agreement was that the loser had to buy ice cream for the winner, so I enjoyed the spoils of mini-golf as the sun went down. Then it was off to the bowling alley. We played three games; my scores were 145, 196, and 139. I was particularly impressed with my second game, as I marked in every frame -- twice in the tenth. Not sure if I have ever done that before; if so, it has certainly been a long time. I did, however, slip once and through my first gutter ball in years. Although I made the spare to close the frame, it still cost me the chance to break 200 for the first time in a very long time.

After the bowling alley closed, we dropped his girlfriend off and The Kiddo and I went back to his apartment for a few hours. Somehow in that time, we ended up reminiscing about an obscure cartoon that we used to watch, over twenty years ago, called Kidd Video. This cartoon was so unknown that, some time ago, we began to wonder if we had imagined it. Although I have the whole second season on video tape [somewhere], we found some episodes on-line and watched a couple of them.

At about 3am, I left to drive home. This was probably a mistake. Within twenty minutes, the skies opened up and I was in the middle of a severe thunderstorm. Eventually, I pulled into a rest area to nap while the storm raged. The net effect of this was that I did not get back to the Event Horizon until 7:30am. I promptly collapsed into bed and did not rise until noon.

This afternoon, I paid a visit to my old place of employment, Fermilab. It was my first time there since October, and it was good to see people again. I had several nice chats, especially with JHY -- who I have known since 2000, when we were graduate students together on Super-Kamiokande. I also got a tour of an interesting experiment that an old colleague is now running. Besides enjoying these visits, there is also professional networking value in returning to the lab.

In the evening, I joined crim_ferret and unclevlad and datahawk and wyldekyttin[**] for dinner in Naperville. The food -- a pick-your-own stir fry -- was very good and very different from my usual fare in England. Even better, though, was the conversation. During the meal, another storm broke loose. This merited several breaks from the dinner table to stand outside and admire its fury more closely. When dinner was over, we returned to their house to continue enjoying the good company.

Now I am home once again, and about to collapse into bed once more. resourceress will be flying here in the morning, and I am ever so excited to be seeing here again for the first time since January! Not that the vacation has been substandard thus far, but I think that the rest of this week shall be much fun!

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[*] For those who do not know, The Kiddo has been my nickname for my brother since long before LiveJournal existed.

[**] And one other member of their tribe whose LJ name I do not remember.

Commute to work by foot: 18 (and a half) minutes
Commute to work by bicycle: 9 (and a quarter) minutes

Today, I went to work by bicycle for the first time. As you can see, this cut the time of the commute in half. I measure my time comprehensively, from the moment that I step out of the door of Skullcrusher Mountain to the moment that I walk into my office. So, actually, the speed of most of the trip was improved my more than a factor of two -- not surprisingly! -- but there are bits at each end (e.g., walking through my building) that remain unchanged and even bits of added time (e.g., locking and unlocking the cycle).

Why the change? I bought a new bicycle yesterday -- a Falcon Adventurer. Although I have had a bicycle on semi-permanent loan from my former landlady for over a year now, it is not well suited to me and so I really do not ride it. Since it is no use having a cycle that one does not ride, I bought myself a new cycle yesterday at the Oxford Cycle Workshop, through the Cyclescheme that I described in the entry linked above. Basically, the cost of the cycle (£180), the lock (£40)[*], and an hour of safety instruction (£20)[**] are covered by the University, then deducted from my gross income over a period of many months. This amounts to a substantial savings -- as I do not have to pay tax on income used for the cycle purchase -- and it spreads the cost out over a long period, sans interest.

So now I have a new main means of local transportation! And I am very excited about it! When I first moved to Oxford, I got around mainly by bus -- and the local bus service is excellent -- for the first few months. Once we moved into Skullcrusher Mountain, which is only a mile away from where I work, I let my bus pass lapse and took to walking most places, relying only on the bus when either heavy luggage, great distances, or a need for speed were involved. This is the next big transition as, from here on, I expect to use my [as-yet unnamed] bicycle to go most places, reserving walking and bus riding only for when necessary.

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[*] One of the cool things about Oxford is that 20 - 30% of the population uses a bicycle to commute to work. However, such wide cycle use also naturally leads to a very high rate of cycle theft.

[**] Recall that I only learned to ride a bike three years ago, at the age of twenty-nine. As such, my experience riding has mainly been in Glen Ellyn and at Fermilab, where the traffic is minimal. Riding in a heavily trafficked area such as Oxford still makes me nervous!

As a follow-up on this recent entry, I wanted to say a little bit more about what it means to be an experimental particle physicist. To be fair, what I am about to write is probably easily generalised to anybody doing basic scientific research in an academic environment.

My thesis is quite simple: Being an experimental particle physicist is not a job. It is not even a career. It is a calling, a way of life.

To do what we do, we must spend a ridiculous number of years in school beyond the undergraduate level. I believe that five to seven is the norm in the United States. During this time, we assemble the diverse array of skills that I talked about in my recent entry. After graduating, we compete for an ever-scarcer number of jobs as post-docs and, later, faculty. These jobs pay roughly half of what our credentials could earn us if we chose to leave academia and work in private industry. These jobs pay roughly one third of what we could earn if we left research physics and entered the financial sector... because, yes, Wall Street and their ilk love to hire Ph.Ds in maths and physics and other intensively quantitative subjects to do financial analysis. Assuming that we successfully procure a job in academia -- with the lower salary that it offers -- we then proceed to work all sorts of ridiculously long hours, including weekends and holidays. The labour unionist in me sometimes cringes at the things that the physicist in me does!

So why do we do it? Because it is more than a job or a career. We do this because of a fundamental need to know -- and be a part of the process of uncovering -- the fundamentals of how the Universe works.

Wednesday night is a good example of this. I left Italy, after working ten days straight -- including a four day holiday weekend -- and returned to Skullcrusher Mountain. When I got off the bus near the flat, I started running inside. cheshcat had warmed up some food for me, but the first thing I did when I got home was to pull open the laptop. Why? Was it some perverse need to read LiveJournal after a twelve hour hiatus? No, of course not! The Mini-BooNE experiment had -- at long last -- presented their first results while I had been in transit... and I desperately needed to know what those results were. Mini-BooNE is a neutrino oscillation experiment at Fermilab and, since I had been a neutrino oscillation guy during my days on Super-Kamiokande, I was particularly interested to know what they had uncovered. It was possible that they could have discovered evidence for the existence of a fourth type of neutrino (known as a "sterile" neutrino)... and that would have rocked my Universe! As it turns out, their paper seems to find against the existence of a sterile neutrino -- as was much more likely and far less interesting -- though, sadly, not conclusively so.

The moral of this story? After ten consecutive days of work, you don't come home at 10:30pm and immediately go to check on the latest news in your field -- with nobody pressuring you to do so -- unless you consider what you are doing as having a greater end than simply a paycheck or a way to advance your career.

In a way, experimental particle physicists have a lot in common with monks, I think. But perhaps that is best left as the subject for some future musings...

Just a bunch or random thoughts from inside my head:

• Just after sunset tonight, look to the Western sky[*]. The two day old sliver of a crescent moon is hovering nearby Venus. Very pretty![**] Trust me, you'll like it! Clouds permitting, of course...
  
  
• Yet another culinary advantage to living in the United Kingdom is Galaxy Minstrels. Picture M&Ms done right. Damn, but these things are good! Real Cadbury chocolate is another advantage on the chocolate front, and this is the time of year when their creme eggs are plentiful. Okay, ever since New Years is the time of year when their creme eggs are plentiful... but you get the idea. We have real cheese over here in Europe, too[***].
  
  
• Latest reading material -- besides the stack of comic books that cheshcat brought back from the States! -- is The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy Sayers. It is a murder mystery with a large theme of campanology[****] permeating the story. I am glad that I waited to read this, as my increased knowledge of bell ringing gives me a greater appreciation for what is going on in the book. Still don't understand all the terms being used, but I get most of them. Next up on the reading list is a return to Shakespeare, with King Richard II kicking off the War of the Roses saga.
  
  
• I get paid once per month, on the pen-ultimate working day of each month. When I received my February paycheck, I was surprised to see that it was slightly higher than I had expected. Apparently, I got a 1% raise, effective February 1^st. Not sure why -- annual raises are given in October and I'd imagine a cost-of-living adjustment would be more likely to happen with the start of the fiscal year on April 1^st, rather than in February. Still, with the ridiculously high cost of living in Oxford, I will take it. With that raise, the total increase in my salary during my first ten months on this job is 10²/₃%. Not too shabby. If one converts to dollars, thus factoring in the rise in value of the pound sterling versus the dollar, that raise jumps to 14.3% over what I was earning one year ago at Fermilab; however, that is mainly just a calculation for the sake of amusement. Whereas extra pounds in my pocket can actually help us get by...
  
  
• Hilary Term ended two weeks ago, so my weeknights are much more open now. No OUSCR practices and maybe no board game club right now. I should review my long "to-do" list, as well as the list of goals for 2007. I should be able to find something productive to do with that extra evening time. Of course, my upcoming trip to Italy will eat up a couple of the out-of-term weeks, but I should still be able to scratch a few items off my lists before Trinity Term begins in late April.

And that's all the randomness we have time for tonight...

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[*] No, you won't find me there. Sorry.
[**] Not quite as pretty as the one day old moon was last night, but I didn't post about it then. Sue me.
[***] Though, in the interest of fairness, I should say that I have not had good Chinese food -- or any Mexican food -- since leaving the States.
[****] That's fancy talk for English church bell ringing.

About an hour ago, my boss came into the office and informed me that I should look into flights to Paris for tomorrow night or Thursday morning. Apparently, there is an inter-experiment meeting about European dark matter searches on Thursday & Friday that I might want to attend.

My goodness -- isn't this is a far different way of doing things than when I was at Fermilab? There, all international travel needed to be initiated two months in advance. I like this way much better... which I suppose is not surprising -- after all, OK Cupid has determined that I am "Random", not "Deliberate". Of course, if this trip happens, it will mean missing my Thursday evening bell ringing lesson... but it will also mean a free[*] Saturday in Paris before I come home.

And here I was just starting to get antsy about not having gone anywhere (except Stratford-upon-Avon) for the past four weeks. Ah, sometimes I love my life. Now then, time to see if there are affordable plane tickets and accommodations available to make this trip possible...

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[*] "Free" meaning both "free time" (as the meetings will be over and I can do what I like) and "at no monetary expense" (as both airfare and hotel cost will be covered).

Doing about the same as yesterday, which is not bad. However, rather than delve into the depths of my psyche yet again -- especially with nothing really new happening there -- I shall, instead, throw a grab bag of trivialities into the public domain:

• For those following the seat-gripping saga of the Kelvinox, I should say that we are now attempting yet another cooldown. The cryostat is now at liquid nitrogen temperatures (77K), and we shall put liquid helium in tomorrow. I don't expect this attempt to achieve base temperature, but I do hope that it will gather useful diagnostic data for the good folks at Oxford Instruments.
  
  
• I took my first quiz on OK Cupid: Which DC Superhero are you? It turns out, according to OK Cupid, that I am the Question. THE QUESTION?!? I mean, don't get me wrong -- I like the guy and all -- but why not Batman or Flash (Wally, not Bart!) or Green Lantern (Kyle or Hal would do)?!? Heck, I'd even settle for being Superman. But... the Question? Hmmm... maybe the fact that I am like a guy without a face holds some deep inner truth.
  
  
• Being the penultimate day of the month, I received my October paycheck today. Since the annual raises go into effect on October 1st, I was expecting a higher check. To my surprise, though, I jumped an extra step on the payscale from what I had been expected. This is a nice surprise! When I started my job at the university, half a year ago, I was taking an 8% pay cut to come here. Since then, however, the value of the pound versus the dollar has gone up by about 9%... meaning that even my original salary is now worth slightly more than I was earning at Fermilab. And I have received two raises, for a total of about 9.5%, putting my salary definitively higher than it has ever been. Not that I am terribly materialistic -- as anyone who knows me worth a darn can attest -- and I could make two or three times my current salary in private industry, if money was my primary concern. But, nonetheless, it is nice to have a little bit more cash in the bank... especially when everything in this country costs so gosh-darn much!
  
  
• Speaking of living in England, it sure gets dark very early now that the clocks have been turned back! Oxford is at 52 degrees latitude -- by far the most northern location that I have ever lived in. For comparison, Amherst (MA) is at 42 degrees, Chicago (IL) is at 4.5 degrees, NYC (NY -- duh!) is at 40 degrees, Kamioka (Japan) is at 36 degrees, and Phoenix is at 33 degrees. It is still October, and yet sunset here happens before 5pm now. I can only imagine what it will be like in the coming months, as the solstice draws ever closer. Time in invest in some sunlight-frequency lamps!
  
  
• I now know all of the English monarchs from the present back to 975 (no -- I didn't forget a "1" *grin*), when Edward the Martyr, of the Anglo-Saxon house of Wessex, took the throne. Yes, my inner geek is shining brightly. What's more, I have a new camera and seven more postboxes in mind to use it on!

And that's all the news that is fit to print for today. Not important? Well, what did you expect from a post entitled "trivia"? Besides, I can't have ground breaking discoveries or life-changing leaps every day. What do you think my life is? A comic book? ;-)

It has been over a week since P**T*** ended and, other than the party and my trip to Bloomington-Normal, I have not really written much about all the many goings on of my vacation. Rather than attempt to catch up in full -- an exercise in futility -- I shall just write briefly about yesterday and today.

Yesterday, cheshcat and I went to the Morton Arboretum. I really love having a home that is only half a mile from an arboretum... and it was one of the reasons that I decided to buy the Event Horizon. We walked about one of the lakes, where a display of forty scarecrows had been set up. They were very cool and a lot of fun to look at. My favourite two were an owl scarecrow and a "Scary Potter." We also went to some of cheshcat's favourite spots at the arboretum, and we collected coloured leaves from the ground as we went. The plan is to use an iron and wax paper to preserve them, as we have in so many years past (usually with leaves collected at P**T***), and then bring these autumn leaves back to Oxford.

Yesterday evening, cheshcat and gyades and I finished catching up on the past half-year of Smallville episodes. We make a point to watch together, so we had fallen behind after I left the country. I am not a television person, and Smallville is the only show that I have followed since Star Trek: The Next Generation was cancelled in 1994. What can I say? Being a Superman fan, I gave the pilot an obligatory shot back in 2001... and was surprised that it was not the abominable mess that I had expected.

Finally, I ended the evening by having a very good phone conversation with resourceress.

Which takes us to today... Today, I woke up and exercised my OCD by re-assembling the contents of my desk (which had been taken apart shortly after I had moved to Oxford in March). I do consider myself a fairly organized person, and having a well ordered desk gives me a sort of "command centre" for dealing with my life. Even if I am not going to be at the Event Horizon for the next couple of months, having a well ordered desk means that I can call home and ask somebody to get or do something for me, if it becomes necessary. Yeah, I am a geek -- deal with it.

After the OCD got a proper work-out, cheshcat and I went hot tubbing in Downer's Grove. Ah -- a good soak in hot water was very welcome, indeed! Then I cleaned up and went to pay a visit to my former place of employment, Fermilab. I dropped in on gyades, at the D-Zero complex, to see his new office. Since he is now based right next to MW, I got to see another old friend, too! Then I swung by the high-rise to visit the Particle Astrophysics Center. I got to chat with an old Auger colleague, as well as two friends on the CDMS experiment (which is another dark matter detection experiment and a competitor to my current project, CRESST). One of those friends I have known since 2000, as we were grad students together on Super-Kamiokande. It is good to catch up with people... Finally, as the afternoon melted away into evening, I went to the recreation center to say hello to the woman who taught my muscle toning course back in the Spring. As with everyone else that I saw at the lab (except gyades), she was surprised and happy to see me. Nice to know that I can be gone but not forgotten.

When I was finished at the lab, I drove Lucretia into the city to join the MidWest Books to Prisoners packing party. Being an ex-patriate, I have not packed books for prisoners since March. It is good and rewarding work, and I was quite happy to get my hands dirty with it once again.

This vacation was designed to fill the gaps of the things that have been missing in my life while I am in Oxford. I am pleased to report that, by and large, it seems to be doing just that, and I expect to return to England with my psychic batteries well recharged. Yesterday was a good day... and today was even better. Looking forward to continuing the trend tomorrow, then.