So my time at Los Alamos has come to an end, and I'm back in Carlsbad. John and I drove down last night.

Today's most interesting feature was the freakish wind. Sustained 53mph winds gusting to [hurricane-force] 71mph. It was blowing the wooden planks off of John's boathouse steps and creating whitecapped waves running down the river. I took some photos of it, coming soon.

I spent most of the day working, transcribing Dimitri's notes into the King's English. Fortran is so damn obtuse with its 8-character maximum variable names and implicit typing. Makes me want to pull my hair out. Add to this that I just don't understand some of the algorithms yet and my matrix math is pretty dodgy, and I'm having a hard time.

Anyway, I took the evening off and brought out John's telescope. It's a 6" Newtonian reflector with a somewhat crappy mount. The wind was making it shake a lot but I still got very clear, bright images of the moon and Saturn. I don't think I've ever been able to see Saturn's rings before. It was a moving experience. But there they were. Beautiful.

Tomorrow: Trinity site.