Home again

Odd bits from the travel: In O'Hare's "Halstead" restaurants one joint offers Uno's personal pizzas. I like Uno's and figured they couldn't wreck one. I was very very wrong.

When the women's rest rooms in Brussels are closed for cleaning, they have no qualms about using the men's. Neither did I.

At Friday's plenary meeting we heard a description of the quench's aftermath. All the lights were broken for a long section, the region was ODH thanks to the 2 tons of helium, and the alarm systems were also broken. (Did I mention that this is some distance underground?) Result: Until Friday they couldn't legally send in an inspection team. He didn't mention the fact that the hall is now legally, though not really, a radiation area. (They haven't injected enough beam yet to make anything significantly radioactive.) It also appears that someone deleted an online logbook entry about the quench, though it was restored later. This was admitted with profuse apologies: the accelerator division is committed to transparency, the deletion was an emotional reaction...

The Brussels Air flight from Geneva had about as much leg room as a "sept place," but I had exit seats the rest of the way, and all else (even Immigrations in Chicago!) went smoothly. Well, waiting in line in Brussels to get the new boarding passes was interesting. The people in the business class had priority, and so did the passengers trying to get on the New York flight, so those of us headed for Chicago stood in an unmoving line for 15 minutes. It figures, Chicago is the Second City again.

Oh, and the seat lights on a 767 don't click on/off like the driver lights in a car. I pushed mine, because I couldn't see the control button buried beside the cushion. I expect the blister will be gone in a day or so.

Once home I rehung the bathroom door and wound up with the screws on the inside, the hinge pins in the bottom, and the lock core unexpectedly loose. The latter shifted when I tested the door. As a result the door is a little splintered, the jamb is a lot splintered, and the latch is a little bent--but it works now. I'll redo the hinges when I'm less tired.

I'm not sure how useful the trip was. I was fuzzy with lack of sleep during the day, and too tired to sleep at night. I got the package I was working on to handle two simple tests, but instead of trying to get more test cases I started working out the output. That's fuzzy, and it showed when we tried out the package. I was able to give a little instruction on how to monitor the DAQ, but the online cluster went away for over a day while I was trying to show examples. Can't win them all...