2008 October « It brings a lark to your hand

Ullr

October 29, 2008 at 7:46 pm | In Life, Skiing | Leave a Comment

I can’t decide whether to play scientist, superstitionist, or religious devotee. All of them find succor in the last line of the long term forecast:

RIGHT NOW IT APPEARS THE STORM TRACK WILL BE SMACK INTO WA
THROUGH MUCH OF NEXT WEEK WITH SNOW LEVELS DOWN TO THE PASSES.

The photo that catalyzed my acquisition of Dynafits was taken in November. One storm to build a base, the next to snorkel through. A little warmth and sun to stabilize things, and then a possibly enchanting trip into the alpine?

A guy can dream.

Right now, a guy can sit down and finish off his talk.

Earthquake

October 28, 2008 at 2:38 pm | In Gravity, Physics | Leave a Comment

Our instrument’s almost matched its previous record for sensitivity, which, among many things, means that we see earthquakes despite our best efforts to avoid them. Here’s our trace from a wee bit ago:

I can’t display the vertical axes at the moment, but the horizontal ticks are thousand second intervals. The quake in question was this one. The sinusoidal modulation can be easily fit away, but it makes me happy, so I’m leaving it in.

Jumble

October 27, 2008 at 11:23 pm | In Life, Mountains, Skiing | Leave a Comment

The internet has infinite room for a few thoughts, so here they ramble: It’ll kick off as an ode to Rainier.

Sunrise is a wonderful thing. Cramped lenses that vignette are kind of a bummer, until you realize that they’re waterproof. That’s one lucky cow in the lower left.

There are at least five skied routes in this photo. At least three are skiable by normal mortals when they’re in condition.

All that flat gravelly looking stuff? Glacier. Keeps going for about another mile too.

Got skis?

The aforementioned cow had wandered off to the south. It’s still lucky. Tahoma’s pretty from this vantage. Some Seattleites are unaware of the triple summit. The Mowich Face is steep (and shady, this late in the year).

It wouldn’t be fall in Seattle without carved pumpkins.

Rambling isn’t complete without a little prose as well:

The Muir snowfield was a shining beacon of sweet fall corn skiing on Sunday. So shiny, in fact, that it attracted perhaps forty people with precisely the right tools to reap the harvest. I spent the walk back from Pebble Creek and the drive home mulling over the perpetual problem that faces backcountry sports: Do we popularize and advertise it and generate advocates for the future or do we stay silent and preserve our solitude for the present? More than a little of what drives me to ski where I do is the ready ability to dance isolated above the clouds, alone or with friends, on huge mountains. Here in Washington, there are only five of them. It’s a dream world, but it feels like it’s shrinking. Education’s still the right mission, methinks, but it’s harder to feel that way when you’re slaloming around uphill skiers to make it through the chokes…

There’s always the choice to head deeper, farther, longer into the backcountry, but you can’t always do so. Besides, I hear tell that the more isolated route I’d have chosen had visitors that day as well (glad they got it!).

Enough whining.

Huzzah for socialized pumpkin carving!

It’s possible for a shared view or experience to be more than the sum of its parts. That seems increasingly true in my little life, and I like it. My heartfelt thanks to the visionaries, pioneers, financiers, scientists, laborers, and engineers who’ve made our modern communications network possible. It’s fabulous.

It’s good to feel this lucky.

Edit: Some middle schoolers are burly.

Stacked

October 25, 2008 at 8:57 pm | In Life, Physics | Leave a Comment

CHANGES ARE ON THE WAY AT LEAST BY THURSDAY AS THE GFS AND NOW EURO
SHOW A DEVELOPING STACKED SYSTEM OFFSHORE TREADING TOWARD THE STATE.
AS A RESULT...

It’s been a while since that word’s appeared in a forecast. Mmm.

In other news, it’s perpetually unfortunate that ego sometimes works its way into physics. Sometimes it’s necessary for progress, but other times it just doesn’t belong.

Adage

October 22, 2008 at 11:40 am | In Gravity, Life, Physics | Leave a Comment

From the mouth of a sage in a meeting on Monday:

“Months in the lab can save you literally hours in the library.”

It’s true.

Optimism?

October 16, 2008 at 6:25 pm | In Life, Physics | Leave a Comment

It’s a scary thing for an experimentalist, at least in my line of work. One must be optimistic on the longest timescales, but perpetually skeptical and pessimistic at all others. Failure, disasters, and setbacks tend to appear at every turn except the last one. That said, we finally closed the jar on our experiment today for the first time in weeks. We’ve made lots of improvements, and I hope we don’t have to make any more. It’s getting on toward time for this apparatus to do what it was designed to do, and I’m far more impatient about it than I want to be.

Six days ago, we suffered a run-of-the-mill setback. A key part of our experiment had failed in a time-consuming but repairable way. I was astounded at how much it affected me, not because it affected me terribly deeply, but that it affected me at all. It was a part I’d not really expected to fail, and we were so close to running again. Normally I take that sort of thing without breaking stride.

Today, my friendly grad student companion happily remarked to me as I headed for the apparatus with a tool to put the final touches on the replacement part, “You’re not going to need that [tool] any more.” I felt like I’d been gut-shot with a pellet rifle. Turns out, the part hadn’t failed again, they’d simply managed the finishing touches without the tool. The event stopped me in my tracks almost as badly as the day I’d thought a group at another school had scooped our measurement.

We’re running now; the vacuum system’s pulling the last wisps of atmosphere out of the vacuum chamber, and the bake of the system is beginning. Tomorrow, we’ll start to see how well we’ve done with our more than minor overhaul. I’m more invested than I want to be in this particular run’s success. We’ve possibly got a chance now, and I’m too greedy for it.

Going down down down….

I’m heading home to grab some dinner, and it’s still working….

Dreams

October 15, 2008 at 11:02 pm | In Life, Mountains, Skiing | Leave a Comment

A haunting spirit

A morning’s benevolence

Golden warmth amidst snow-graced green

Progress

October 15, 2008 at 10:43 pm | In Drivel, Life, Physics | Leave a Comment

Today was a day of limited progress in the lab. We’re oh-so-close to the “really fun part”, and yet I find that I have trouble making the last wee bit of work happen. I can’t figure out why.

There’s no feature creep left to implement. There’s nothing, for the time being, left to figure out. It’s four hours of solid work, and then we might be able to ask our balance deep questions about nature. Why can’t I make it stick? We’ll make it go tomorrow. We can’t not.

I’m pretty sure I told myself that yesterday.