autumnal
Today is the first day of Autumn and the September Equinox. While the days will continue to become shorter and shorter, the rate of change should peak today. (I hope I'm right about that last part... someone please tell me if I'm not.)
It's a long, downward trend until December 21st, so I feel the urge to capture what's left of my evenings. I want to continue our tradition of making sure we head outdoors on the solstices and equinoxes, if only to a park or the bike path. Nothing fancy, I just feel like it would be a nice tradition for our family to have.
So, here's to the autumnal equinox, the harvester of light that you are. May you bring a fall of cool, crisp, and still sunny days. 
this post brought to you by the word: kitchen
I'm posting this from our kitchen because we are now connectified in a place other than our basement.
I have, like many geeks, lots of extra computer hardware sitting around. So I put together a computer for the kitchen. It's sitting in the end-cabinet right next to Jasmine's food and water dishes. I was able to purchase a used LCD from work for $15 (score!) and tonight I picked up a desktop wifi card for $35. So, for $50 I was able to outfit our kitchen in the latest technology 2003 or 2004 had to offer.
Seriously though, this is pretty cool. And we're giving Ubuntu Linux a try instead of Windows. All we need is a browser and OpenOffice anyway. Though it would be nice to eventually get some small speakers in here and tap into our music share. Also, I'd like to have the OS run a screensaver of our photos from the photo share, but sadly this doesn't look very promising. I'll just have to keep a copy of the photos I want locally.
Yeah, a laptop would be nice but it would be far too expensive (even for a Asus EEE or Dell Mini) and a laptop would rarely leave the kitchen anyway.
So, yay for relatively inexpensive DIY kitchen computerin'.
2304 frames of potential
Though I forgot to include my remaining Polaroid peel-apart film, this photo represents all of my remaining film. A total of 2304 unused frames that sit in my mini-refrigerator in the basement next to the beer.
That's a lot of film.
It's all expired though it has been frozen or refrigerated all of its life. I'd say it's all perfectly usable for non-professional work. I'm just not sure I'm the one to use it. I mean, I'd like to, but the cost of processing all that film is rather frightening.
In no particular order: Kodak TMax 100, Kodak Tri-X 400, Kodak Ultra Color 400, Fuji Provia 400, Fuji Provia 100, Fuji Reala Superia 100, Kodak 160 VC, Kodak 400 VC, Ilford Delta 3200, Ilford Delta 400, Ilford XP2 400, Ilford HP5+ 400, Fuji NPL 160T, Kodak Ektachrome 160T, Kodak Ektachrome 64T, Fuji NPH 400, Kodak 160 NC
When the DMV says Express they mean it
On Monday I discovered that my drivers license had expired back in July. Ooops.
So, after work on Monday, I headed down to the Express DMV facility in Chicago's Loop. It's about 5 blocks east of where I work.
I was able to walk the 5 blocks there, take my eye test, fill out the renewal form, answer questions, pay my $10, have my photo taken, receive my new license, and walk the 7 blocks west to get to the train station, and board the train in, get this:
Twenty-five minutes.
In Celebration of the Large Hadron Collider
Today, September 10th, 2008 marks the beginning of the worlds, and histories, largest and most expensive scientific experiment ever.
Today, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in Switzerland, comes on-line.
One of the main detectors, and indeed a fundamental part LHC, is called CMS: Compact Muon Solenoid. At the end-caps of the detector are cathode-strip chambers (CSC) used to measure muon rates and positions.
photographer: unknown
The end-caps on CMS are very large and no one had ever built CSC's as large as they needed to be for the detector. So a group of scientists at Fermilab (FNAL) in Batavia, IL was set to working on the problem (as a part of the overall, and very large, involvement by the US).
And, as it so happened, my application for summer employment (following my sophomore year at Valparaiso University) at FNAL was approved and I was assigned to the group studying the cathode-strip chambers. It was easily the single most exciting job I have ever had and possibly ever will have. I was at Fermilab, one of the premier locations for particle physics, working with real scientists, taking real measurements, collaborating, exploring, and in the end, (in conjunction with an undergrad from Purdue) writing a technical paper on the subject for the CMS project.
The title of the paper is: Study of the T0 Cathode Strip Chamber Prototype at FNAL and, while all the technical papers used to be available at the USCMS site, they don't appear to be any longer. I don't know how the design changed after I left (I did not keep in touch with the group) nor do I even know if anyone else even read my report. To be honest, I don't really care (especially about the last part.) My roll was as minor as one could have, but I had a roll nonetheless. The experience of that summer put me most of a semester ahead of everyone entering Nuclear Physics Lab in the fall and afforded me a taste what being a scientist was all about. Not a month goes by that I don't, in some way, reflect on that lost dream.
I have a PDF of the paper saved somewhere, but cannot immediately find it. Fortunately for me, the web provided another location: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/. Thank you Pennsylvania State University.
Study of the T0 Cathode Strip Chamber Prototype at FNAL.
So here's to science and here's to scientific discovery. May the work of the thousands upon thousands of Large Hadron Collider scientists and engineers bear wondrous and extraordinary fruit.
Why is fall in such a hurry?
To go from our 90 deg days to highs of the upper 60's and low 70's, one might think that fall is in a rather big hurry to move in and start leaving her clothes sitting on the bathroom floor.
I'm not ready for such a commitment. I'd like a few more warm days please. This last winter was so very long, I'm not ready for jeans and long sleeve shirts yet. I feel like I'm just getting into a good groove of shorts and sandals. The fact that the sun is setting before 7:30 now is most distressing, please let me hang onto something of summer...
Exploration
We went to a wedding this evening and there was a nearby educational wetlands area. Small but perfect for a two year-old.
I spent a lot of time outside with Nate, which was fine by me, fine by him, and gave 
helloheather a chance to relax inside and chat with people. Win-win!
Edit/update:
This is not to say that we didn't have fun at the wedding. It was a blast and very relaxed. It was just nice to have a place to visit with Nate and not have to keep him inside where he could have become bored and disrupted things.