So far

To build new CSC and RPC chambers for the upgrade, we need a place to build them, and CERN will remodel 904 to handle the two factories. The plan is accused of being gold-plated, though perhaps this is merely the result of a longer-term view that wants the facility to be robust for future use. The remodeling project has had a full boxology for several weeks, and a target completion date said (but not written) to be the end of summer 2010—but no schedule. Fair is fair, I suppose—DOE hasn’t committed to the upgrade, so we have little budget, and there’s a long lead time on getting parts from commercial vendors—so we don’t know when we’ll be building.

The alignment talk did not describe the hardware system use as precisely as I would have wished—left some things out. I’m not sure if this is because I was unclear in my explanation beforehand or if this was his evaluation of the prospects of the system. We missed one deadline already, so maybe, if it was an evaluation, it has some support.

There are 4 event displays: fireworks (new), Iguana (in progress from 98), iSpy, and FROG. The latter has no support, was created by one person and used by a second, and sounds familiar. Foster’s DF display for CDF was originally a one-man project, used simple methods and avoided carrying around a lot of event information. Iguana and iSpy are integrated into the CMS framework, and there are calls to integrate Fireworks too. I tried Iguana, though it was probably not a fair test since I was running it on another system to display on my workstation—it was a dog, with response time in the dirt.

The magnetic field is not simple (not as bad as Atlas’, though), and it would be nice to be able to pick a particle track and follow it. What did the particle see as it moved? This wouldn’t help analysis much, but it would be a good thing to show students. Maybe we could fiddle with Fireworks to do it.

Ah, the things you discover at the plenary meeting. We hit the beampipe, and shoved it up by 60mm! Nothing broke, but the checking that followed messed up the Link alignment disk. There were also some large movements in the last few amps of the magnet ramp—the HF jumped. Also a vacuum pump broke apart at some point, luckily not breaking the vacuum—possibly a fringe magnetic field is making the turbo-pumps fail. I am, of course, asleep on my feet, and haven’t had lunch yet. So is it better to snore with your head on a pillow or fallen forward in a plate?