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30 September 2006
Lake Tahoe is over 6000 feet above sea level. Sunnyvale, where we live, is approximately at sea level. This made breathing a little rough, especially since I skipped training for two weeks around the start of the month to let my knee heal after pulling the muscles in it. My finish time of 30:28 was still rather poor despite these mitigating factors. Bob, who was once a serious distance runner, has been a fount of advice though, and he and Dell came along to cheer me on this morning. It's turned out to be a hot one, so after lunch we're heading down to the lake.
Tonight we are in Tahoe after a six hour drive (thanx Sacramento traffic!) for the X-Terra race tomorrow. The LST installation is in full swing so I've been spending many an evening at IR-2; soldering, crimping, testing. This leaves little time for anything else, so it's nice to get away. Dell had a spagetti dinner awaiting us when we finally arrived, and new toys for the kiddoes to play with when visiting Auntie Dell's. Now it is sleepy time . . .
Okay, so this doesn't really relate to our family (yet), but check out Anousheh Ansari's Space Blog. She funded the X-Prize and now she's paid the Russians $20 million or whatever the price is these days to go up to the International Space Station (ISS). People like her keep my dream of retiring to the moon alive.
Maxwell is a pocket maniac. He would rather wear no pants at all than pants without any pockets. Maxwell's pockets never go unused either. Usually there is a pacy stashed in one and implements of whatever game he is currently playing in the other. Usually this means rocks or toy cars or chalk or something of that ilk for playing in the courtyard. However, last night at Kate & Howie's Maxwell discovered the change bowl on their counter. This was something exciting to fill his pockets with indeed! Of course, if you fill up your own pockets, then there are always dad's pockets to put money in too. Emptying out these pockets left me with a rather large handful of change to present to Kate upon our departure.
Today I'm up at Berkeley for a conference at their physics lab (LBNL) festivizing the 50th anniversary of the PDG, and I have to say that the view up here is incredible. You can literally see the whole of the north bay, and San Francisco is crystal clear in the morning air. I can see why the lab lost out on a bid to get a big accelerator back in the 1960's though, being located on such a steep hillside. I'm sure Lawrence didn't consider this seven decades ago when he contructed the first particle accelerators which he could hold in the palm of his hand. The view also probably didn't hurt in attracting a long string of Nobel laureates to Berkeley.
Cara and the kids dropped me off this morning and headed back down into the valley to spend the day with Kate & Howie. They're going to go to Point Reyes and then pick me up for dinner. I'm not sure who's having more fun!
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21 September 2006
When I was 17 and at the height of my youthful interest in chemistry I tried my hand at the fermentation reaction. Simple enough right; sugar to ethanol. Cranberry juice has plenty of sugar, so a half-full bottle of with a pinch of yeast in it should do the trick. Naturally, a plastic bottle was in order, for I had learned back in elementary school by putting a glass coke bottle full of water in the freezer that plastic is safer to work with. I put this concoction in the back room of the basement because that was the part of the house which seemed most like all those wineries in Napa Valley I was dragged through as a kid. There I left it to ferment. Experiments, however, should be checked upon regularly. I had neglected to account for the appropriate amount of gas production, that is, half a bottle to fill was not enough. At some point before I checked on it several weeks later the lid shot off under the pressure spraying sticky, partially fermented juice all over the concrete. There are always setbacks in science. |
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In a rare stroke of brilliance I concluded that a cork must let air in and out and that was why wine was in corked bottles. Apparently I had missed all those barrels on the vineyard tours of my youth. A moist cork expands for an airtight seal protecting the wine from oxidation to vinegar after it has fermented in a barrel. (This is why corked wine ought to be stored on its side.) Unfortunately at 17 I was not privy to such useful information. So attempting to mimic how I thought wine was made I put cranberry juice in a glass bottle with some yeast and corked it. There was no need to leave space in the bottle because the cork would breath so I filled it up to the top. It's quite amazing how many pieces glass can break into. The mess was no less spectacular than the one I made in the freezer with the Coke bottle, and neither was my mother's anger.
Almost a decade later in California I have taken up the challenge of the fermentation reaction again. Following the simple instructions of a kit I will hopefully get it right this time. Nevertheless, I am keeping the mixture on my desk throughout its fermentation to ensure daily monitoring. This will hopefully allow me to head off any explosions before they happen. Who knows, if I'm lucky the end result might even be drinkable! |
 le premier cru |
'Ope ye 'ad good one swabies!
Today I finally got around to walking around the PEP tunnel during lunch. Quite a fulfilling sight indeed.
Zara is definitely my daughter. Tonight she came up to me wielding a light saber and doing her best to make the accompanying noise, "fuu fuu, fuu fuu". She shrieked an evil giggle when I feinted pain as she stabbed me. Again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. And again. Until I got somewhat tired of the game and redirected her toward a duel with her brother.
For a long time BaBar has been dogged by the competing Japanese experiment, Belle, which has recorded quite a bit more data than BaBar. In physics quality is more important than quantity though, and a good way to measure the quality of a dataset is in the number of publications resulting from it. Here we have reason to crow...
This week is the Fall BaBar collaboration meeting, which traditionally starts with the annual SLUO meeting. Everyone is starting to feel the crunch of the end of high energy physics in America, so there was alot of talk about the ILC which only has a few dozen people involved so far. Will they build it? The Europeans sure think so. One also hears all the standard hoopla about SUSY, WIMPs, Dark Energy and other lame substitutions for we just don't know. The safest theories are always the undisprovable ones, which start to evolve into miniature religions after not being observed through several generations of experiments. With nothing unexpected by the Standard Model discovered in the past two decades, the ILC's a hard sell and not many people want to invest their time in its risky prospects. Somewhat depressing, really.
Brittan & Alora have joined the Cherry Chase Band as saxophone players. Admittedly this choice was motivated by the fact that we already own a saxophone, which my dad & I both played in our respective high school bands. We got it out the other night to see if the girls liked it and Brittan was a natural, playing short tunes within ten minutes of wetting the reed.
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An afternoon in Chinatown, San Francisco.
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Since BaBar has been down for a little while now we've started working on installing the lovely LST modules. These past few weeks have been cabling, cabling, and more cabling. Those of you who have never pulled cable don't know what you're missing. Ergo I have put up a gallery of the LST installation on my physics site. It is somewhat dull but will hopefully give those who've never been to IR-2 a feel for the place, and I can one day look back wistfully and say "what the heck is that a picture of?"
We are lonely tonight because Alora & Brittan are attending Rebecca's sleepover party at the Embassy Suites. Maxwell and Zara just don't provide one with the same level of verbal sparring as the elder barns.  |
 Bradley the BaBarian |
Back in Sunnyvale today, Alora, Brittan and I were all playing catch-up for the day we missed. Tomorrow is our big presentation to the heads of SLAC Group B on the work with the focusing DIRC prototype. Less than two months in and I have to stand up next to a Stanford grad student named Jose who quite frankly puts my programming skills to shame (admittedly, it doesn't take much though). Cara and I also realized that Zara was rather quiet in a strange place this weekend as she started blabbering like a loon back familiar surroundings today. Right now she is walking around with a bucket from the Wild Animal Park and singing about something only she knows what.
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5 September 2006
Car repair shops, reputable ones at least, are not open on Labor Day. Ergo yesterday we bumbed around Jaime & Amir's rather than making three trips to ferry us all somewhere in the 4-Runner. Cara, Jaime & Mom went with Zara to the mall in the afternoon while Amir & I played sharks and minnow with the other three kids for like three hours in the pool. Maxwell rode on my back the whole time and kicked his feet which my muscles regretted alot later. Last night, because Jaime was starting to freak out a little about ten people staying in her two bedroom condo, the six of us moved over to Miramar Inn on base right next to where our car was waiting to be fixed. We hoped our Mercur would be back in service today... |
| We had to be out of the hotel by 1200 hours and the van wouldn't be ready until 1400, so we ferried our stuph to the van with the 4-Runner before Amir & Jaime had to take Mom & Dad to the airport. Quite a hectic morning! To pass the time before we could leave the base we strolled around, looked at old airplanes, and had lunch. Then it was off to pick up our car. Rather fittingly the back two wheels fell off of our stroller on the way. We did manage to get out of San Diego around 2 o'clock, and headed up the 5 to LA. We didn't make it out of LA until after 6, but we did stop to take a picture of the Hollywood sign. |
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4 September 2006
Saturday afternoon we went winetasting up in the Temecula valley north of San Diego. Surprisingly enough Amir and Jaime had never been winetasting before. Unfortunately many of the wineries in that area are event places that just happen to have vineyards for ambiance, i.e. wine is not what they are really serious about. Nevertheless, we tasted some good wine and managed to find some smaller places that catered to us oenophiles rather than weddings and corporate events. |
Winetasters Amir, Bradley & Jim.
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Guess what Dad's favorite exhibit was!
| For Sunday we got up early to go the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park were the zoo breeds it animals up in Escondido. Dell and Kristen met us there. There was alot of really great stuph to see with wide open spaces for the animals. Unfortunately wide open spaces for the animals means long walking distances for the people, which in the San Diego triple digit heat is rather tiring. Thus we departed around three to head to Jaime & Amir's pool while Dell & Kristen went back to their hotel. We met up again for dinner at the Yardhouse in downtown San Diego. |
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After dinner the car died ...
... right on the side of 163 just out of downtown. This meant taking us back to Jaime & Amir's in three carloads of the 4-Runner. Where we stopped on 163 was right under the flightpath of jets landing at the airport which Maxwell thought was spectacular fun to watch. |
 Maxwell & Nanny with the Mercur being towed in the background. |
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2 September 2006
Because we are insane, we drove down 101 last night to San Diego (I guess we were on the 5 too for the last part) to see Jaime & Amir. For some reason whenever we visit eachother we always arrive in the middle of the night. Mom & Dad's flight gets in around 10AM and Dell is driving down from Tahoe to drop Kristen off at school, so we didn't want miss the party. Jaime & Amir have a cute new townhouse they bought last month just north of the the Marine Corps base. |
Check out Cara's cool California blog to learn how you can support the girls' school this year.