update from bloomington (the indiana one)

i have worked 3 full days at iucf, and so far i love it. at the moment my tasks include writing a program in labview, learning and working in RSI IDL (a development environment for Matlab (i think)), and verifying the calculations for the testbed (the copper/aluminum device).

this is a lot to take on, but i’m glad my supervisors have shown faith in me. in general, at iucf, trust and reliability are non-issues. i have been given access to anywhere in the lab 24/7, all the servers online, and i have administrator privileges to install any software on the computers (i never had administrator privileges at fermilab, and was never given a good reason as to why not). there is virtually no quota on my personal server; the labwide quota is 1.8 TB, and only a third of it is being used. i especially like the kitchenette where hot water is available for tea which is paid for on an honor system. each tea bag costs 15 cents.

working full-time again has been a shock to my system (i only took a month off, geeze!). my sleeping schedule is erratic so i have been really tired at work. i’m in no shape to ride my bike to work until i get used to this again. i tried biking to work on wednesday and felt terrible!

meanwhile, i have made some changes to my blog. i really like the dark blue scheme, and the picture at the top is one i took in switzerland last march (from Delphine’s patio). i have also updated the links (definitely check out Democracy Now!, the other ones are purely for entertainment). i also made an awesome exciting flickr account, to which more pictures are coming soon. i send my love to you all.