þiuda meina 2006 - sunna skáin fadrein jah barnam

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What language is that?, a poem, and the physics glossary.

31 August 2006 BaBar has been down for a little over a week now, and today I got my first play at the detector. At right is a view above the SOB, where the Cherenkov cone from the DIRC expands before being recorded by the PMTs. Today, however, I worked mostly on cabling for the LSTs. If you ever build a high energy particle detector, do it right the first time so you don't have to replace anything. The LSTs are being put in to replace the malfunctioning RPCs for the last few years of datataking, but retrofitting a detector into BaBar is really quite a pain.

The LST high voltage cables are red in the picture above, and we had to remove several of the electrical ducts here to make room for them today. I also got to work quite a bit today with a toothless old technician named Malcolm. Malcolm has been there since SLAC was built, so while he may not know a whole lot about the physics being studied, his knowledge of the accelerator machinery is quite detailed. We had to go over to the klystron gallery under I-280 where they store the spare cable trays and he shared some history with me. At left are some of the oldest electronics at SLAC, which still run the accelerator. Notice the ginormous capacitors (bigger than a quarter) and resistors.

Three Peas in a Pod
Shreelakah, Maxwell, & Suhas

"Hey uncle!" comes the call from from down in the courtyard as I step out onto our patio, "Is Maxwell sleeping?" Naptime is one of the few times during the day when Suhas and Maxwell aren't playing together. If Suhas isn't hollaring up to us, Maxwell is down knocking on Suhas's door "Can Suhas come out to play?" Our courtyard is closed off from the outside and the pool by gates and doors no one under 4 feet can open which means we leave the windows open and let the kids have the run of the place. The two boys are also often joined by Shreelakah, who lives on the other side of the pool gate. Together they play mostly imaginary games, but sometimes they get out the squirtguns too! Shreelakah and Suhas are both a year older than Maxwell, but I don't think any of them notices. It's hard to imagine a more perfect environment for Maxwell to develop in!

Today some mishap befell our basil plant so tonight for dinner I had a Jarlsburg cheeseburger with fresh basil leaves and cabernet marinara sauce. Very tasty, but everyone else balked at putting swiss cheese of all things on one's burger. C'est la vive. I don't know who the culprit was either, but when I questioned Maxwell he claimed Boodle did it as he attached bungie cords to the nearby chairs. He is usually truthful, but I have seen him remorselessly tell a stone-faced lie when it suits him. Considering this string of bad luck I am also going to abandon our garden diary since the three girls have informed me that the activity is dreadfully boring. Boredom is in no short supply now that school has started up again, hence my acquiescion.

27 August 2006 Last month when we took Maxwell to the Monterey Bay Aquarium it cost about the same for the six of us to get in as to buy an annual family pass, so naturally we did the latter. Thus it was free when we returned there today and we were much more savvy in our trip, arriving a little after 9AM to get a good cheap parking spot rather than wasting twenty dollars to walk four blocks like we did last time. This also meant we were the first people into the aquarium when it opened so we enjoyed some rather uncrowded browsing before the place started to fill up. We left shortly after noon when it was really getting jam packed with people.

Brittan and Don Maxwell de Pacio leisurely examine the Kelp Forest.

Cara feeds a squirrel.

Driving along the coast in nearby Pacific Grove we decided to get out and climb the rocks. Cara was astonished at the squirrels which live among them. When I was around the same age as Alora & Brittan I wasted many rolls of film with my Fisher-Price camera trying to get the perfect shot of these squirrels among the rocks which camoflage them. Two decades later as we fed them peanuts with some locals I think I may have finally succeeded! Alora and I also had a good bit of fun grappling along the short cliffs, but it was too close to high tide to see much even in the crystal clear water of Monterey Bay.

We didn't dally long feeding squirrels though, as our mission for the afternoon was to visit the Beach in Carmel. Alas our plan failed but we did see a mission instead - one of the original 21 the Franciscan Friars planted in California, Mission San Carlos Borromeo del Rio Carmelo. It was steeped with history but still run by Catholics, i.e. very creepy. All I can think of is the Spanish Inquisition and there were all these pilgrims speaking French, Spanish and German very somberly stopping to pray to the various dolls of saints and such. I have to say I am very glad the Spanish king isn't still the sovereign of California. Nevertheless the girls, I think, got quite a bit out of the experience.

The Carmel Mission.

The Wogsland women after walking to the 1st day at Cherry Chase

To celebrate we went for a nice morning drive around to some local places we'd never been to before. At Seacliff State Park we discovered this cool old sunken ship:

Attempting to fight off the melancholia which always waxes this time of year, today I decided to run down the LINAC and back. 2 miles each way, it's a pretty good run, but not one that is exactly allowed by the SLAC bureaucracy. Nevertheless I completed my run with only minimal harassment and discovered that there is a SLAC RV club who's members park hundreds of them along the LINAC. _________ The past few weeks Cara & I have been stressing no small amount about the girls' school situation. Cara contacted just about every bureaucrat in the Sunnyvale school district hierarchy and I researched more than a few private schools. Unfortunately, the decent ones run ~$10,000 per pupil. This option not being realistic we had moved on to studying homeschooling law in California, which is actually one of the least restrictive states in the country, and preparing a curriculum for the girls. Today, however, everything changed. Cara finally spoke with the principal at Cherry Chase, and it seems there is actually no trouble fitting Alora and Brittan into the 3rd grade there. Both of their classes only have 19 students! Brittan's teacher is Mr. Nelson and Alora's is Mrs. Smith, who was newly transfered from another school in Sunnyvale. Perhaps this addition of a new teacher was due to our prodding, perhaps not. Either way it seems everything has worked out in the end - tomorrow the girls will have their first day of school in California.

Alora being awarded her 3rd place medal

Today the girls ran in the Race thru the Redwoods up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was the girls' first trail run, so Cara and I thought they needed to do some training first. For the girls, however, the race itself is the only interesting part ... which means they've only been running a couple times since we moved out here to Sunnyvale. Nevertheless, Alora predicted she would win third place. As she is wont to make such declarations, I underestimated her drive. This morning she finished her mile in 9:31 and Brittan finished in 12:02 (see the list). As part of the post-race festivities, the girls enjoyed a pancake and sausage breakfast on an old covered bridge. Then it was back to the finish line for the awards ceremony. Cara wanted to leave, but Alora was convinced her preformance was good enough to place. (Looking at the times from last year's race I had estimated that she needed to finish in less than 10 minutes to place in the girls 8-9 division). Much to our surprise Alora won 3rd place just as she had predicted!

Tonight after work everybody met me at Arastradero Preserve for a nice evening hike. Maxwell felt that it had been too long since we had been on a hike. As we strolled up the trail to Arastradero "lake" most of the discussion focused on what the horses who had passed earlier left behind. Boodle is kind of a snot bot because of her recent cold, but she tramped along much of the way with the rest of us. It was quite relaxing after a hectic week.

In my continuing attempts to convert all of my journaling into a digital format I have started posting book reviews. The critical comments about the books that I read which were hitherto written in my journal will now be presented here. Doubtless some will be more useful than others . . .

16 August 2006 Bring your daughter to work day is a little wild here at SLAC ... Basically it's like a day long science camp where the kids get to chose a set of activities to do. The girls chose option C because it included building a catapult. We started the day off by going to breakfast and then heading up to SLAC. There are ~250 kids here today so it is really a zoo. After registration, we played frisbee on the lawn before they headed off to a lecture and I to a meeting.

Alora's already got her safety glasses on at registration.

Brittan waits for her dad to take a picture before he throws her the frisbee.

Alora, Dina, Brittan & Marcy

The girls, who were nervous in the morning, by lunchtime had made several friends. In the morning they had built trebuchets and dug for Cenezoic fossils. Alora was rather excited about the sharks tooth she and Dina had found, but later informed me that the bed where they were digging had been salted. Nevertheless, the morning went off spectacularly and it seems that all safety restrictions were to be ignored for the day. Their kid's day IDs yielded them the same access to the dangerous accelerator areas that my badge bought with hours of boring safety training did.

The LINAC extends for two miles behind the girls, and the klystron gallery to their right is one of the longest buildings in the world.

Back in dad's office demonstrating the trebuchet

After lunch the girls learned about pulleys and shot off rockets on the lawn. I met them for ice cream in the afternoon. They exchanged phone numbers with their new friends and we headed off for the accelerator tour the girls had been so looking forward to. We started at the LINAC, where the electrons and positrons are accelerated to speeds near that of light before being dumping into the PEP-II ring. Then it was off to the main control center (MCC), where the accelerated particles are steared toward various detectors, including BaBar. Brittan said it "looks like a space ship with all the computers". Next we went down to the pit to see the old SLD and MARK-IV detectors so the girls could get a better handle on the scale of particle detectors since BaBar in currently running and thus unaccessable. The girls were rather disappointed by this, but c'est la vive. In IR-2 we met some of my fellow BaBarians, but the girls were unimpressed by the control room after seeing MCC. One can only tour so much complex equipment in a single day...

Cara has embarked upon a career as a webmistress, her first site being FoundationForParanormalResearch.org. (This is Bev's ghost-hunting club.) You can request her services if you are in need of someone to maintain your website.

Mancer, Babdul, Brittan, Jamie Bell (under Brit), Alorabora, Dellbear, Zaraboodle

Lately I have been corresponding with Marwin Wrolstad. Our last common ancestor was Torbjørn Halvorson of Vraalstad (1682 - 1753), so we are fairly distant cousins. Nevertheless, the Wrolstads have done quite a bit researching our family in Norway and Marwin was able to give me a copy of Gerhard B. Naeseth's 1978 Wrolstad Family History. They also post updates to the newer generations on Wrolstad.com, which is their family's website. Naeseth's book has quite alot of information about the Vraalstad gaard in Norway, which was situated next to Vaagsland gaard in the Telemark district. Apparently there was a wooden chest in which the Vraalstad family kept their history on the farm since the days of Hallvard Graatop, but although the farmers still have the chest its contents have been kept in an archive in Oslo since the mid-20th century. The book also details our relationship to the infamous prohibitionist congressman Andrew J. Volstead. One of the reasons we know so much about Vraalstad history is that Naeseth was one of the pre-eminent genealogists of the twentieth century. His other work includes the momunmental cataloging of the history of all the Norwegians who immigrated to America. As he was wont to say, "there were only 800,000 of them". We younger genealogists are truly standing on the shoulders of giants!

Lately it also seems that our garden has become infested with aphids.

Today Kate & Howie came to visit . . .

Post-Bar Howie is much more chill.

Poolside Shreelakah and Maxwell enjoy watermelon while Kate gets loved to death.

This weekend I'm taking shifts again on BaBar, and interestingly enough the guy who is on shift before me everyday is the author of one of my physics textbooks last year, Glen Cowan. Physics is fun that way. As promised earlier I've also prepared a presentation on Cherenkov detectors so y'all can perhaps better understand my work with BaBar's DIRC and the prototype DIRC.

Maxwell is a savant. We do not know how he got the lightsaber of the top my bookshelf. He claims to have "jumped". Today he disassembled the doorknob childproofer on his bedroom door - Cara can't even do it with a screwdriver. This is the same manual dexterity that allows him to pull individual hairs off of his head. Maxwell has also taught Zara how to remove her diaper...

Zara has become obsessed with closing things - be they doors or drawers or cabinets. When you hear a muffled baby cry, that means it's time to free Zara from her room again. If she is in the kitchen it is difficult to get anything out of the fridge without first relocating her. Poor Maxwell gets shut outside on the patio since he has trouble opening the front door.

Searching the internet for an apartment - $0

Hours of apartment hunting in Silicon Valley - $0

Hundreds of phonecalls to find a place with 3 bedrooms - $50

Phonecall to the good elementary school to check if the apartment you chose is in the their district and your kids will go there - $0.24

Apartment in the good part of town - $1900

Negotiating a rent subsidy from your thesis advisor - $0

Being told when you take your kids in to register that the school is full and they're going to be bussed to the 90% hispanic school in the bad part of town - Priceless

Tonight Maxwell joined the ranks of the potty-users. It took more than a year of practice, but in the end the magic of a slurpee was enough to induce him to invest the time necessary for success. He sat on the potty tonight for almost twenty minutes before he succeeded. Now that's dedication!

5 August 2006 Today was very exciting, because we met Jewelie Randall and her family. Jewelie is my 10th cousin and discovered Wogsland.org last summer. This summer she and her family just happened to be vacationing in California not long after we moved out here, so we met for an afternoon at the Picchetti Ranch just 15 minutes west of us in Cupertino. We knew they'd be fun when we saw Jewelie's husband Andy and he was wearing a beard, Hawaiian shirt and Tevas. We drank alot of wine and had alot of fun - Athena hit it off right away with Alora & Brittan and they dammed up the creek and picked berries while Kaliska played with Zaraboodle and we tasted wine. You will note Maxwell is holding bologna in the picture to the right - he was stung on his wrist by a yellow jacket that wanted his bologna just afterward. He pulled through though, and now we at least know he's not allergic to bee stings. Maxwell also got nipped while the kids were feeding the peacock; I guess it just wasn't his day! Nevertheless, our cousins were alot of fun and we were sad to see them go. Hopefully we will have a chance to visit them in Portland before we move back east.

Athena, Brittan (back row), Alora (middle), Maxwell, Zara, Kaliska (front row)

Our last common ancestor was Ole Olson Wogsland!

Feeding the peacock.

La playa de San Gregorio

This is my last owl shift on the DIRC prototype test beam run, and I will be very glad to give up my nocturnality. Being up all night and sleeping all day makes one a little squirrelly. The barns have enjoyed me coming home from work rather than leaving for work when they get up though.

"People coming up here!" shouts Maxwell as Rebecca, the girl across the courtyard, comes over to play.

"Ba, ba, ba. Eee, eee, ha!" says Zara as she waddles full-diapered carrying her bucket across the room.

Alora, Brittan and Rebecca go off to their room to play and I go back to typing. It's nice to sit on the couch, put your feet up and relax ... or kick over the Coke you had sitting on table.

Cara runs over with a towel and Zara waddles over from the table, where she was begging Maxwell for some of his hotdog. Zara is rather indignant at not being allowed to touch the spilled Coke, and throws herself on the floor in a momentary display of anger which everyone ignores - so she goes back to begging for hotdog. Wherever Maxwell or Cara goes she is not far behind.

Brittan went to take a shower earlier this morning and Zara, hearing the water turn on, ran to the bathroom door crying and started to bang on it. Cara then said something to her and Zara, realizing it was not her mother who had abandoned her to seek cleanliness, went back to playing. She is the most vocal and mobile of our four children, and definitely a scrapper. She can handle being tackled by a boy twice her size and then get up and growl at him. She snarls, she coughs, she screams bloody murder in attempts to elicit the desired response from those around her.

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Last ∆ on 31 August 2006 by the old man, and copyright © 2006 by the same.