Gordon Watts

You'd look good in a skirt!

I flew back to Seattle yesterday evening on a UA 767 -- a nice big plane. It is very rare for me to talk to the person sitting next to me in a plane. It isn't that I'm not friendly (I hope), but rather that I tend to sit near the front of the plane and I'm usually surrounded by bussiness travelers. Most of these folks just want to get home and rarely talk.

I knew it was going to be different when the woman sitting next to me said "You'd look good in a skirt..." How could I not have a conversation after that opening line!?? She turned out to be a coach for a Tacoma Synchronized Swimming club heading back from the nationals in Buffalo NY -- with a bunch of 14-15 year old kids. She had some great stories. For example -- you might guess that the hair has to look perfect (and not get in their eyes). Do you know how they keep it that way? It is wet all the time, so isn't going to look very good -- to solve this problem they use Knox gelatan (jello!!) to freeze their hair in place. The best was when one of her kids ran out of the plain unflavored type and her mom only had orange jello left... I almost fell out of my seat laughing.

You're probably wondering how she managed to come up with that starting line. We were sitting right behind the first-class blukhead and the door on it snapped open as we were taxiing out to the ruway. I closed it with my legs -- which made a loud bang that all the flight attendants noticed. Afterwards one came by and thanked me and offered to make me an honorary flight attendent. My seat-mate then piled on.

Henry, another prof here at UW, was also on that flight, sitting in first class. He was quite kind and sent back a glass of wine. Which prompted the flight attendant to ask "how do you know that guy?" Her comment, after learning we worked together, was "I never would have guessed!" And when she learned that we were professors of physics she said to Henry, "But you're so normal!" -- that comment was specifically not addressed to me, apparently. Henry claims that is the first time he was ever called normal and wonders if he might travel with me more often.

On a more geek note, the captain gave a 15 minutes presentation on the channel 9 audio about the plane, its engines, how the takeoff works, weight calculations, etc. I'd never heard that before; that was great.

Short, To the point, and therefore sweet

For the past 5 years I've always taught at 9:30am. I know this doesn't seem early to most people, but for someone who likes to work late at night this forces my schedule to shift. So, during the summer I tend to wake up late and work late. Anything else seems like work.

Unforutnately, this isn't possible when collaborating with folks at CERN and ATLAS. Yesterday and today I had meetings early -- one at 9am and this mornings at 7am. Thank goodness I'm in Chicago right now, otherwise those would have been two hours earlier (5am!!! Yuck!).

The 7am meeting this morning was the kick-off for a two week long review. The meeting lasted barely 25 minutes. And it still covered what it needed to. I'm going to have to learn that skill for the meetings I run.

Kidnapped!

Laura is out at Fermilab now. She was an undergraduate at UW, and, indeed, won several awards. She also did several independent studies courses with our group back at UW. She starts graduate school at Wisconson this fall and they put her to work for the summer: doing shifts (ha!!). But you gotta understand: she is working for the enemy: CDF! So Aran, Matt, and I drove over to CDF and grabbed her and transported her from the CDF control room (left) to the DZERO one (right):

I think she looks happier on the DZERO control room, don't you? We showed her around DZERO and she showed us around CDF a bit too (I was a graduate student on CDF a long-long time ago).

While in the CDF control room we ran into Markus who showed off the L3 DAQ system they are installing. And I got asked about DZERO's solinoid (it is stable, but at 95%). The irony is that the two experiments are only ~1/2 mile apart and we still wait for chance meetings like this to exchange information!

We then tried to convince Laura to help us out stringing some cables for four new racks of Level 3 trigger nodes that are about to arrive. She was too smart, however, and fled back to CDF. Bah!

Nothing says High Energy Experimentalist like stringing cables under a raised floor. Nothing. If you look carefully at the drop-floor in the second picture you can see what about 10-15 years of cables looks like -- they are everywhere, strung and sometimes hung. If something bad happend in there I'm not sure we'd be able to figure out what goes where! And I'm willing to bet a good 20% (at least!) of those cables could be cut and the experiment would never notice. <evil grin>.

The Man With No Time Zone

My wife calls me that -- the man with no time zone. Mostly because I travel a lot so my body never really knows where I am. But it is really because my body naturally -- no matter the timezone -- gravitates towards going to bed at around 4-6am and waking up in the afternoon. Thus, given the least excuse, my internal clock quickly rotates to this schedule. But, I get to see certian things that most normal, sane, people don't (well, the half that like to sleep in the mornings, at least!). The heat wave, lack of real rain, and a very short shower yesterday combined to make a layer of fog. It is 6am already, and look where the sun is. Wow. This was taken outside the farm house on the grounds at Fermilab.

2 BBQs, 2 Worlds

After the TeV Connections conference and getting some work done, I went to two BBQ parties yesterday (Saturday). I've been doing my best to get out and visit everyone here because it isn't likely I'll make it back to Chicago until the end of the Summer. :( Both parties were both a lot of fun, but both were different; different planets almost.

Both were in friend's backyards. The first we brought beer and food to BBQ -- as did everyone else there. There were about 20 people by the time I left. Most of the time we sat on the grass chatting and drinking and eating. It was a pretty alternative group and I was one of the older people there.

(excuse the blurryness; still learning how to focus in low light). John, on the left, I learned is going to be closing his tea shop at the end of July. Too bad. Rob, on the right, is another guy from Fermilab (post-doc at McGill). Ironically, there was a third person at this party from Fermilab. Weird. I spent a good part of my time talking to a graduate student at the chicago Art Institute. When talking to her friends she seemed pretty relaxed and not really too concerned about anything -- and then one of her friends asked her how her thesis was going. Snap! She was the most intense person at the party. She was getting a masters looking at the common themes in art on the east and west coasts of early America. And thinking about getting a Ph.D. so she could teach -- but was really turned off by all the "cut-throat politics associated" with academic institutions. She went on quite a jag. I don't think it ever came up that I was a prof at exactly one of those institutions she was pissed at. :-) I suspect she is going to be fine no matter what she ends up doing.

The house next door to this BBQ party was undergoing some serious renovations. The back porch had been torn down and was being replaced -- so there was tar paper everywhere on the building. At one point several people yelling and throwing beer bottles at the house. Most would bounce off, but every-now-and-then one would shatter and glass woudl rain down everywhere. Though down-town Chicago, this was in an area with lots of row-houses with well groomed back yards and children playing -- so it felt out of place to me (but raw emotions of that sort always feel out of place to me). No one at the party did more than look at the folks involved and then return to their conversations. The owner of that building, btw, was at the BBQ (and may have been throwing bottles at his own building).

The second BBQ wasn't really a BBQ party as much as a dinner party where BBQed food was served. I didn't realize this, so I showed up in a crappy tee-shirt and shorts and everyone else was in sun-dresses, nice jeans, and otherwise pretty cool outfits. Ops. Can you spot the phycisist at the party!?

A few nights before I'd paid for dinner for Susan, her boyfriend, and another friend of hers, Liz. Liz, who had this BBQ, is a partner in a photographer rep. company (that she and one other person started). I think what happens is if you are an advertising company and you need some pictures taken for an ad campaign, you'd call up Liz and she would connect you with some of her photographer clients. This house was amazing: I think she is doing well (and she has offices in NYork and San Fran as well as Chicago). The food was also amazing, and well cooked. And the two bottles of Port we finished...

The food was eaten outside, on a deck above the garage with a gazebo like structure around the side that somehow made the open deck quite intimate. Or perhaps it was the 30 or so candles. Or the blue-berry desert. The best part was the people. Especially nice (for me) was hearing stories of marriage from those who have been at it for 30 years. I wonder how many good stories I'll have after I've been married for 30 years?? Hearing about how Liz got to where she was was pretty cool too (as I'd only really met her about 48 hours ago) -- and pretty amazing. I'm just sorry Paula couldn't have been there. Though she never would have made it to 4:30am, I think she would have had a blast.

No bottles were thrown, though some glasses were knocked over. We were up talking until I was sober enough to drive home. The sun was up by the time I got back to Fermilab.

The First fb-1

Fermilab had a small party on Friday afternoon. They served bubbly to everyone at Fermilab! And we aren't talking little 1/4 full plastic cups -- full full plastic cups.

This plot is the luminosity -- or data -- delivered by the Fermilab Accelerator Division to the experiments as a function of time. As you can see, they have just crossed the "1000" mark -- 1000 fb-1. This is since March 1, 2001.

The more data we (CDF and DZERO) get, the more physics we can do. However, in the true "what have you done for me lately" and "never being satisfied with what we have" sense, all of Fermilab is hoping to celebrate 2 fb-1 of data next year -- not waiting another 4 years. It is a tall order, but the Accelerator folks are all for it.

Thanks! And congradulations!

BTW, those full plastic cups made watching the aftermoon talks in the TeV Connections conference a bit more fun.

Oh -- and I met a friend of mine I'd not seen since a party several months ago. She told me that she hadn't drunk a drop of liquer since those gin & OJ things I'd mixed for her that night. Ops....

Connections

Doing my work I sit in my office, or in a cubical at Fermilab. I interact with those around me -- at Fermilab that is almost 100% other experimentalists. Back at my office I sometimes make it up to the 4th floor to talk to theorists, but not all that often.

In order to make progress in this field theorists and experimentalists must work together closely. High Energy Physics is in a rather unique situation: we have lots of hints something odd is going on -- but nothing strong enough to call a smoking gun. Neither the theorists or the experimentalists can find that smoking gun alone.

A year or two ago a conference series was started here at Fermilab to try to increase the interaction between theorists and experimentalists. It is called TeV Connections. It is organized into section, and in each section there is a talk by a theorists, someone from the DZERO experiment, and someone from the CDF experiment. It has a second purpose -- it is always scheduled right before the really big Lepton/Photon conference (I'm not going, but check out the location!!), and the CDF and DZERO experiments are encouraged to release their results at Fermilab first, before traveling to Lepton/Photon.

It just finished up yesterday; I managed to attend most of the talks. All the talks were good, but I really liked Tim Tait's talk on the state of top quark theory. I've already forwarded it to one of my students to look at. BUT -- darn it -- so much of what made that talk good was the extra information that Tim said. And there was no video recording (or streaming). Which was too bad.

Overall, however, I don't think the conference this year was as good as it was in the past. First, the attendance was rather low. This is in part DZERO's fault: we just had our big vancouver retreat and many people were on vacation up in Canada. But that doesn't fully explain the lack of people. The second problem was that, at least in DZERO, getting the results blessed is running late and as a result there were a number of results that weren't released in time for this, but should be for Lepton/Photon. You could hear some of the theorists' frustration at this. I'm not really in a position to appologize for the experiment, obviously, but I sympathize.

I really like the idea behind this conference. I hope it is done again next year and I hope the organizers and experiments are able to improve it for next year. :-)

MODELS!

Yesterday evening was great.

I had a choice. Because I'm doing this blogging and know Elizabeth Clements in the Fermilab PR office, I scored a pass to Wired's Nextfest. This is an expo that shows off what Wired and others think is cool futuristic technology that is coming. Very much a show for Geeks. And about 30 minutes before I set out downtown I got the following email from Susan, a friend who works at DDB Chicago.

There's a Ford model party on Thursday evening, June 23, if you'd like to come (I've been asked to share my invite with friends, but I have no details yet -- MODELS!).

I especially like how she put the word models in all capital letters. :-)

So... which one should I go to?? I figured that since it was a party it would go late, and Nextfest ends early, I could do both!

Nextfest is the sort of expo where you can see the Motorola phone that will be coming out 3-4 years from now. It isn't just consumer electronics. There was a GE locomotive simulator there. My favorite area of the show was the one run by GE. They had a number of scientists there who could speak in technical detail about the projects they were working on. That was great. GM has developed a chasis that is Fuel Cell powered -- this is one of the "tops" they have put on it. They had lots of imersive environments and games that detected who to shoot at by watching the motion of your hand with a video camera. NASA had a cool robot display -- a crab that walked under water to sweeps for mines. It is powered by mu-metal, which expands and contracts depending on its temperature. I asked why not use that on the Mars rover, but the problem is no one knows how to dissapate the heat in air. Underwater it works well. And it is controld by a circuit that emulates a lobster's nervous system (I kid you not -- animals were harmed in figuring out who it works). The fellow who was there was a neurobioligist. Hawaian shirt. Lot of fun to talk to.

The most frustrating display was, suprisingly, the MIT media lab. The great thing was it was full of graduate students. One thing they had was a pretty cool cube of lights with each light individually addresable. I couldn't figure out, off the top of my head, how they did this with so few wires -- so I asked. "Trade Secret" was the response. Annoying.

I was done by 9pm... and the model party was already done!!! What a lame party! I ended up meeting a bunch of people from that party out for dinner (no models). It was a great dinner.

Finally, after dinner broke up, I caught up with a totally different group of friends. Greg and Erin were having their wedding aniversery drink out with a group. Earlier that night, Greg, who works as the Lincoln Park Zoo's photographer, had put on a show covering almost 30 years of his work. A pretty good night for the two of them, if you ask me.

You know how you look at yourself differently from others? Erin was introducing me to some people I didn't know and she said "This is Gordon, who was always dating the most beutiful women." The way I remember it was that I was eternally single when I was hanging out with those guys. The time she refers to, by the way, was when I was a post-doc living in Chicago -- about 5-9 years ago.

The other weird thing I realized while writing this up is that I always associated Erin and Susan in my mind -- they were always at the same cool parties. I don't think I've seen them together in the last 5 years. Funny how things change over time...

Welcome to UW, Boris

Well, since he outted himself, I don't feel so uncomfortable welcoming him by name. Boris does atomic physics and quantum computing and is a welcome addition to our crew of table top experimenters. And I'm sure he will have no trouble fitting in.

I visited his lab last March, and I thought I wrote about it in this blog, but I can't find the entry. :( I had a great picture of hiim along with his equipment. Bummer. And now the photo is lost.

UPDATE: Found it. I'd left the entry as a "draft". I've fixed it and published it. Sorry about that.

I am defined by my actions...

I saw Batman Begins last night. Great movie. A good story and well told. By the scientist in me could help but cringe. At one point a microwave emitter is used to vaporize the water supply on a ship at sea. Several guys set of the futuristic device and were rewarded from all this water turning to steam. It was pretty cool.

No, it is only a minor stretch that you could do something like this. After all, your microwave oven does basically this.

The problem is for the poeple standing near the device. We are 70% water, and our skin most definately does not block microwaves. So all humans should have been vaporized as well. Hmmm.