So the second carport house finch nest of the year is getting close to hatching time (predictably; as I am leaving town for a week starting tomorrow morning). There are a remarkable 5 eggs in the nest!

So let's see... I need a laptop for work, so I specced out one that I liked and gave the specifications to our procurement guy. He forwarded my specs on to the vendor who produced a quote. The quote got turned into a purchase request by the lab's procurement office and the PR went back to the vendor. They also sent me a copy of the PR.

On the PR was clear and explicit evidence that no one had ever read my specifications. Numerous accessories I asked for were not present, nor was the laptop configured with the options I requested. It went so far as to include built-in wireless, which would mean I couldn't bring the laptop into my building. Not helpful. I had to search for a long time to find a Thinkpad that didn't come with wireless on-board, and I went through a lot of trouble creating the specifications so that some procurement person wouldn't have to. But they apparently just ignored that.

I talked with the vendor directly for awhile and got him on the same page in terms of what I really needed and what I couldn't have. He's now coming up with a new quote. It will not surprise me if he comes back with exactly what I specced out in the first place.

I think what just happened was I wasted a bunch of my time. Not sure on that though.

I moved all of my "backyard animals" photos into the standard taxonomy collection. I have not yet moved all my plants photos, so the Kingdom Plantae section is more or less worthless. But have a wander through the Animals; they're cute.

For starters, here is a crop of the first "real" image I took with my new lens. This has not been processed in any way except to crop out about 95% of the image.

The new lens really works wonders. The level of detail and sharpness in that image is extraordinary (full image here). And as if on cue, today a whole bunch of rare (for around here) birds made themselves seen in my backyard. There were hairy woodpeckers, evening grosbeaks, mourning doves, and a new species I had not seen before: Red Crossbills. As a bonus, I found a butterfly that was so focused on eating from my lilac bushes that it would let me get my macro lens to within 10 cm. I think I took about 100 pictures of that thing.

Nina found an astoundingly low airfare between Albuquerque and Providence, RI for this weekend. I'm going to fly out there on Saturday, stay for the entire long weekend, and tack a few days of vacation on to the end of it. We're going to spend the first couple days driving around in Vermont, climbing some stuff, and chilling out at a fancy off-season ski resort. Should be awesome. :)

I didn't really take any vacation between defending my thesis and starting my postdoc. I'm thinking a good big break is in order.

I'm going to be at a conference in Phoenix from July 10th to July 14th. When I return, I'm thinking I'll take a couple weeks off, get a rental car, and do a big road trip. What follows is an entirely tentative schedule. If you have advice or comments on scheduling, or would like to appear on the schedule, comment here.

July 15th: Leave Los Alamos, camp in CO somewhere; possibly RMNP.
July 16th: NE state highpoint, drive east. Dinner with Aaron in Lincoln?
July 17th: IA state highpoint, drive to MSP. Stay with parents.
July 18th: Rest day; dork around MSP, lunch/dinner with Brooke, Brent, etc?
July 19th: Drive to Cedar Rapids, visit Doc and Mario at Coe, dinner with Chris.
July 20th: Illinois state highpoint, drive to Chicago. Stay with Jen?
July 21th: Indiana state highpoint, Ohio state highpoint, drive east.
July 22st: (Friday) Collect Nina from Middletown, CT. Drive to Maine.
July 23rd: Summit Mt Katahdin.
July 24th: Drive up Mt. Washington?

Spend the following week futzing around CT++. Fly back to NM on the 31st (Sunday).

This trip is largely a result of Nina's advisor not letting her escape to Los Alamos this summer. The abundance of state highpoints is purely a coincidence. They're practically on the way. Except the New England ones, which are respectable climbs (disregard that I'll be driving up Mt. Washington).

Now: Comment!

I'll give George Lucas this: he tells a great story. Whether or not his themes are stolen from the likes of Hidden Fortress, etc. aside, his epic-scale storytelling is first rate.

What he cannot do, is write dialogue.

Particularly dialogue concerning romance. I think the problem may be that George Lucas has never had a girlfriend or, in fact, a conversation with a real human in his entire life.

Anyway, go watch Star Wars: The Jedi Have a Bad Day. Watch it in a theater for the top-shelf effects. But bring a walkman or something and just tune out whenever anyone is saying anything romantic.

This is not a spoiler, but a HUGE incentive to enjoy this film:

Jar Jar doesn't say a word. His screen time is whiddled down to almost nothing. I think that's one of the principle reasons that this film totally owns the last two. I enjoyed the movie as a whole and the lack of Jar Jar. Balance finally has done been brunk.

A friend picked up tickets for opening night (second showing) of "Star Wars: All the Good Guys Die (Except Yoda and Obi-wan, who are each banished to some [swamp|desert] shithole): A Lucas Musical." And that's tonight. The show starts at 7. How early should I go? In NYC or something, I'd have to go several hours early to have any chance of a decent seat. Here in Los Alamos... I'm not sure. Mikki suggested 6:30; Christina suggested 5:30. I said 6:00. We'll see.

My parents bought me a new lens for my camera as a graduation gift. It's the Canon EF 300mm f/4L IS USM and it rules. It's my first pro-grade lens, and I am already loving it. At 300mm, it matches the highest focal length I had at my disposal (a 100-300mm f/4.5-5.6) so I did some quick comparison tests. Bear in mind that these are not scientific in any way and, as lens quality tests go, they are mostly crap. But you'll get the basic idea. First, the reference frame:

New lens, f/4, 0.3s. Distance of ~25'.

I chose this scene because there was a lot of small detail and it was across the longest room in the house. I suppose I could have gone through the trouble of moving the lamp... but... bite me. And no comments about my taste in movies, though if you can identify all of them from this image you win a prize [Nina, Robin, and Mikki not eligible].

So the first thing to look at was how the lenses compare optically. I took the same image (same settings) with both lenses and now I compare a small portion of each (shown at full resolution):

Top: old lens, f/4.5, 0.2s Bottom: new lens, f/4.5, 0.2s

Note that this is a very low-light shot so the autofocus might not be spot-on, but clearly the new lens is considerably sharper. This really isn't a composition where the superior quality of the new lens will make itself maximally apparent; the DVD rack is not normal to the axis of the lens and I made no attempt to ensure that the focus points were the same (and this sub-frame likely does not contain the most in-focus region). Despite this, the new lens frame is much sharper. I'll try to set up a more controlled test shot sometime, and hopefully one that will stress the glass a bit more.

Next on the hit parade, image stabalization. This is my first lens with IS. Here's a comparison of similar hand-held shots with the same settings, but with the new lens' IS enabled:

Top: old lens, f/4.5, 0.2s, hand-held Bottom: new lens, f/4.5, 0.2s, hand-held w/ IS

Now 1/5 of a second is pushing the limits of what I can hold steady. I was really bracing my arm against my side as steadily as I could. Still, shake from my heartbeat was moving the lenses. I'm impressed. A full-sized look at the stabalized shot does show some motion, but not very much. It's clear enough that you can read the finest print on the DVD spines.

In conclusion... the new lens rocks, I can't wait to shoot birds and stars with it. Thanks Mom & Dad!

So when I was leaving to go mountaineering on Friday, the three new finches were standing up and flexing their wings but still staying in the nest. By Saturday night they were gone. I went out to clean the nest off the ledge today and noticed that there was now a new nest nearly complete at the other end of the carport. They're efficient, those finches. Anyway, I've repositioned the NestCam to look at the new nest. Nothing in it yet. :)

When I pulled down the old nest, I fould the first egg--the one that seemed to disappear in two consecutive inspection images (1) (2). Apparently they just buried it and went about their business. It's sorta greyish now and much smaller. Should I crack it open?

My friend John Laurino from Atalaya Search & Rescue joined me for an attempt at Handies Peak (14,048') yesterday. Originally we had planned on climbing Redcloud and Sunshine together, but neither of us felt sufficiently conditioned for that climb and it turned out that the road up to American Basin was in great shape. Click the picture below for a photogallery.

The short version of the trip report goes like this: We didn't make it. The long version is here. The medium version goes like this: We had issues with missing crampons, broken snowshoes, and missing sunscreen that left us in a position of rapidly deteriorating snow. In the bowl below the key saddle, one of us didn't have crampons and thus couldn't go straight up the steep slope. The other didn't have snowshoes and thus couldn't afford to wait for the snow to soften. We got to the 13,500' saddle which offered some great views and a really tempting view of the summit, but agreed to turn around in the name of safety.

Regardless, it was a lot of fun. It was great to get out into the mountains again after so long. I'm really paying the price for not having remembered sunscreen, though. My entire face is bright red with the exception of bright white areas where my glacier goggles were.

OK, so last weekend I bailed on mountaineering on account of a faulty weather report. This week the weather report is better and it is currently gorgeous, so I'm going. John from search & rescue is coming to pick me up and we're going to attempt to climb either Redcloud Peak (14,034'), Sunshine Peak (14,001' - the lowest 14er in North America!), or both.

There may be some issues with getting to the trailhead on account of the snow, etc. But we'll see what we can do. It's also probably more of a climb than I'm in shape for, so getting both seems unlikely. But if the weather isn't crap and the road is open to the trailhead, I should be able to summit one of them. I've got the ice axe, snow shoes, crampons, poles, beacon, αSV jacket and bibs, etc. All the fun stuff that I haven't gotten to use in a long time. Very looking forward to this trip, even if I wimp out and can't make it to the summit.

In honor of the upcoming rocket launch on Sunday, which will be my first in a long long time, here is an image from the issue of Sport Rocketry that showed up today:

Now the guy that runs the launches I go to is also the editor for the magazine... should I tell him? "Hey, Tom... LobotomyBoy there... he's uh... well..." I don't think I could bring myself to explain it.

I am hereby submitting a formal request to change Soleil Fou's name to "Catmandude." That is all.

So the weather this weekend turned out to be excellent, and would have made a perfect mountaineering weekend. Alas, I stayed here in Los Alamos. However, the fact that it was absolutely gorgeous outside did allow me to climb to the top of one of the larger mountains behind town, Cerro Quemazon. It's shorter than both Pajarito and Caballo, but at 9,960' it is the tallest of the peaks that is immediately behind town. Rather than climb directly up from town (~2,500' of gain in ~2 miles), I chose to approach from Camp May. In this way, there is only 700' of net gain but a series of annoyance climbs makes the gross gain about 1,500'. The hike is also considerably longer, coming in at about 10 miles round trip. This qualified it for the 10^th longest hike I've taken since I started keeping track. I saw what I think might be a blue grouse near the summit, and had an excellent view of town and the lab with my binoculars.

A fun trip, and it demonstrated just how out of shape I am. But I think I can attack larger mountains next weekend. Sunday I was very sore and chose to not do much, so I weeded the front yard and took pictures of birds.

Having recovered by this afternoon, I went back and played ultimate which I found very taxing. Hopefully if I keep exercising regularly this will become easier. Of course Wednesday I have SAR which conflicts with ultimate, but seeing as I am an officer in the team and haven't been to a SAR meeting in months due to thesisation, I'm going to miss out on the exercise. I'll have to go for a bike ride or something on Thursday.

Note: more images in this log by request.

Took this while on the summit of Pack Monadnock Mountain in New Hampshire. I find the juxtaposition humorous.

This is the first weekend since finishing my thesis and getting back from defending it. I have taken a few weekends off in the last six months but not too many. This is the first weekend that I have time to do whatever I want and won't feel bad that I'm not at work. I'm really itching to get out and do some mountaineering. Lacking a plan, I would likely end up doing a solo trip this weekend. But, checking the NOAA's weather site, I find this:

Yeah. Solo mountaineering in that sort of weather is not my idea of smart¹. Pretty much all of the mountains in Colorado and New Mexico are forecasted to have snow starting tonight and going into Sunday afternoon.

So I'm going to have to change my plans. Highpointing and mountaineering are definitely out. Caving is pretty much out of the question as I have no time to arrange for permits. I may go do some geocaches up in the mountains right behind Los Alamos, I can handle bad weather there--and it might give me a chance to really try out my Arc'teryx bibs and jacket that haven't seen significant weather since I bought them last summer.

¹ - It's a shame I didn't have a camera with me today... there was a delegation of people from all over the world visiting our facilities and watching demonstrations on some of our detector technologies. One of the guys (from Iraq, if you can believe that) had pants with a small label on the rear pocket that read, "Smart Man." They seemed like pretty run-of-the-mill khakis. The guy did look pretty nerdy, though. I can't find any mention of the Smart Man label on the web; maybe it's a startup in Iraq somewhere. But if they do exist, I want some.

This is depressing, both for its content and the document naming scheme. The first comment, however, is brilliant.

One of the benefits of my new job over my previous one is that I can talk about what I do in considerable detail. Today I actually got to do some real work, which was so great. I didn't have a lot of time due to all of the training, so the work was really just a brainstorming meeting. But it was still great.

During my thesis work I never really worked with anyone, and that was basically the last seven years. Suck. Even though I find the information barrier project that I was working on today to be silly, talking about electronics and industrial design for something that we are actually going to build in the next few months was awesome.

The idea behind the project goes something like this:

Russia and the US agreed to let each other inspect certain aspects of their nuclear stockpiles as part of an arms control agreement that came about after the collapse of the cold war. However, the foreign inspectors are not just allowed to examine classified stuff willy-nilly. Instead, the intersection of what each country considers unclassified was determined, and then a system was devised for analyzing "objects" based only on information that both parties agreed was "sharable."

To this end, a list of attributes for the unknown contents of a container was generated which would allow an inspector to determine if the container contained what the host country said it did, without revealing any classified information. These attributes are things like "Contains over 0.5kg of plutonium," "Has a plutonium enrichment above a certain percentage," "Contains plutonium that is older than a certain age," etc.

The evaluation of these attributes is trivial given modern radiation detectors and data analysis. However, the raw output of the detectors is classified (at least as far as the Russians are concerned; they classify the gamma spectrum of Plutonium, for example [buh??]). So our team has been tasked with building a device that includes standard neutron and gamma detectors, but also additional layers of hardware and software that turn the complicated detector data into simple yes/no answers for the attributes agreed upon by the diplomats.

Even this is a simple task. What makes it challenging is the levels of absolute paranoia that went into speccing out this policy. The entire assembley basically has to be idiot proof to use, tamper-proof, and have no chance for any leakage of information beyond the yes/no attribute measurements. The access panels on the enclosure have tamper switches that automatically kill power to the computers and detectors, for instance (btw this is a terrible thing to do to a cryogenic HPGe detector). The LEDs that indicate the attribute yes/no results are not allowed to blink lest they blink out morse code about actual spectra or something. The signal to the LEDs is opto-coupled via fiber optics to the information barrier electronics and the power to them is low-pass filtered to hell just in case someone were to sneak in a circuit to modulate a signal into the LED power. This sort of thing.

At the heart, the entire thing is silly.

But the requirements laid down by the admittedly goofy policy make for a non-standard hardware and software development cycle and this is challenging. Thinking outside of the box is a must, as no sensible box would ever include any of this stuff.

Right now the signal path goes through the following functional blocks:
* radiation impinges on a detector and causes the analog signal on the output to change
* data acquisition electronics transform the analog detector signal into digital pulse data
* a data processing computer examines the pulse data and determines characteristics of the radiation, outputting certain key pieces of information like the effective Pu mass or isotopic ratios
* a small microprocessor takes the various data and compares them to threshold values which determine whether the desired attributes are met or not.
* The attribute yes/no signal passes through an information barrier which is basically a low-pass filter, fancy data latch, and opto-coupler
* The signal powers an LED.

My piece of this pie is the design of the microprocessor that makes the attribute determination and the signal specifications for the connections between all the various blocks. They are very concerned about EMF leakage at all points in this device, so it's way more of a pain that it needs to be.

Anyway, that's the sort of stuff I was thinking about at work today.

I remember noticing the moment when the time and date could be written out as 1:23:45 6/7/89. No one else seemed to think it was all that cool. But what did they know. In honor of today's date, here's the block diagram for a 555 timer:

I spent most of today in training (much like yesterday). The result is that I am now officially a "Radiological Worker" and I know how to put on Level I anti-contamination personal protective equipment. I also know a thing or two about Chemical Hazard Communication.

The RadWorker class isn't really designed for people who's job is to work with radioactive material; it's just for people who have to work in areas that might contain radiation and/or contamination. The bulk of the folks in there were welders, demolition/abatement guys, and electrical workers (and one web designer [eh??]). I aced the practical evaluation, and the written exam of 50 multiple choice questions took me 13 minutes. I got one wrong (I knew I was already over the 80% passing threshold and I didn't feel like looking up DOE's policy wording for ALARA). The testing period is 3.5 hours and I'm told that there are people who both take the entire time working on their test AND fail it. Open book, btw.

Today, X-2 threw a going-away party for me (specifically, a banana split party). It was mostly fun, though someone decided that putting lots of balloons up would be a good idea... I got called a traitor a few times and one guy I don't know said, "thanks for leaving." But otherwise, it was good.

I've got a lot of training to do for N-1, and meetings, etc. And not a lot of time to actually move my stuff over. So after the party I packed up my stuff and got the X division van to move it all. Unfortunately, by this time it had started to rain. I covered everything in trash bags and went for it.

So let's see... there was thunder, which I could have done without. The wipers on the van didn't work... Trying to move monitors and stuff that are covered in bags that are covered in water is hard. I only had two carts at my disposal, so I moved everything except four boxes. And one of these just happened to contain the cables for the computers, so once I got the van-load over to my new office, I couldn't set up my computer anyway.

Because of the death-trap wipers, I elected not to do a second load. So now I have no working computer until I do another load. And I have training all day tomorrow and half of Thursday. Whooo...

I did manage to secure a property pass, though. This is a card that allows me to move LANL property around. Normally, I think the pass specifies what the equipment is and what sites it is moving between. Mine says "Permission is granted to move various equipment between LANL sites."

Sort of a catch-all. Good for three years. Sweet. And all I had to do was ask for it. heh Weird...

I was going to give Christina a hard time for convincing me to go with Delta for my frequent-flying needs... this was my first trip on Delta in some time and when I arrived in Albuquerque last night, neither of my suitcases was to be seen.

It wasn't their fault, though. Flying from Boston to Atlanta we had a 150 knot headwind to contend with and, though we left on time, we arrived about 40 minutes late. Atlanta is a Delta hub, which means that the Delta gates are spread out over several terminals which are not necessarily near each other. In my case, I had to take the little subway thing from terminal D to terminal B, and just made it to my plane (and got no food UGH). The bags weren't so speedy.

So when all of the bags had arrived in Albuquerque on the spinning carousel of baggage fun, there were about 15 people who were left empty-handed. Not coincidentally, everyone had either gotten all of their bags or none and almost all of us were on the Boston flight. This made me feel better, as it was more likely to be a timing problem than a "lost luggage" problem.

Anyway, here's where I become really impressed with the Albuquerque airport. They ask me where I'll be staying tonight, then tell me that they will drive the bags to me the same night. I explain that I'm going to be two hours away and they're OK with that. This is awesome, since it means that I don't have to wait around in the airport until 8:30pm when the next flight from Atlanta comes in (I arrived at 4:00pm).

I managed to leave my house key in my "lost" luggage, so I had to use the spare... but whatever! The guy called at midnight to say that they had located my luggage and were going to drive it up, and asked for some directions to my house. I guess he had a big truck of stuff to deliver due to all of the people who's bags didn't make it, so he didn't show up until just before 6am. But that's OK. The only real downsides for me were

* I didn't get to do my laundry tonight.
* I had to sleep on the couch so the doorbell would wake me up.

I'm very impressed with the courtesy of this system; it really wasn't anyone's fault that the baggage didn't make the flight--that was more or less a logistical impossibility. But the airport sucked up the cost to get me my bag as quickly as possible without my having to either wait around for 4-5 hours or drive back to ABQ (which would have meant 4 hours of bonus driving).