decided to not get to lab until ten today. cellphone alarm woke me up at 7 but subconsciousness talked me into going back to sleep. hence one morning with no breakfast.
talked to dan this morning about the stuff i figured out last night, and apparently i wasn't supposed to go there, YET. but most of the things i figured out was correct, so that was worth the many hours spent in this one corner of tate hall.
will be working with an incoming grad named tom for the next few days. he knows root and i have a one night experience of loon, so we should make a good team. note the sarcasm. guess i will have to try figure some more stuff out tonight so i don't come out looking like an idiot tomorrow when i start working with him.
went to a seminar by prof. yuichi kubota today. funny old man. spent quite some time talking about "who should go to physics grad school," and end up concluding that if you possess the following traits, then you should definitely go to a physics grad school:
1. enjoys tinkering with stuff.
2. gets bored of doing monotonous stuff.
3. doesn't mind spending countless hours to solve a problem.
first trait is definitely a no for me, since i'm a firm believer of "if it's not broken, don't fix it." but i think that applies only to the dilligent experimentalist. lazy physicist like me will eventually be a theorist and let the non-lazy bastards do all the dirty work for us. second trait is a yes, and i experience this first-hand. the dissecting-fishies-and-weighing-them job i had winter of sophomore year is a good example of how i hate monotonous jobs. grab the fishie, dissect, dissect, collect eggs, weigh, write down weight, toss away the eggs and fish, grab the next fish, and the cycle repeats. seven hours straight of doing that every tuesday is a good enough evidence that i made the right decision not to follow my mother's path to becoming a biologist. third trait is also a yes, but only for physics. it's got to tell you something if a lazy bastard like me would start quantum homework on saturday, and it's not even due until wednesday.
we had sandwiches for lunch today, and apparently there was an extra one. maureen asked if anyone wants it because otherwise it'll just get tossed away, but no one responded and left the room. i figured the sandwich makes a good midnight snack, so i went to claim it. maureen's comment: woah, we have a graduate student in making.
apparently the rumor that graduate students always go for the free food is true not only in california, but also here in minnesota.
dan just stopped by and assigned tom and i a task. it seems that what i've done so far (nothing) is considered a slacking off and it's about time that i'm being focused. he wants a plot of energy difference (total minus initial neutrino energy) vs initial neutrino energy. this should give the resolution of the detector, and the expected behavior is that resolution goes bad with smaller neutrino energy.
the big question is now: how the hell do i plot things?
actually there's a bigger question: how the hell do i even get the energies?
those mosquitos better not come back tonight, or i will have to declare war with them. i need as much time in here as possible, because i'm uber slow at figuring stuff out.
speaking of mosquitos, i managed to kill three today, and all three of them are white mosquitos. what the hell? even with the gazillion mosquitos in indonesia, none of the ones i've killed was white. well, not exactly white, but more yellowish white. or whitish yellow.
google images brings this up:
apparently there are people stupid enough to consider using these mosquitos as a symbol for the state. who in their sane mind would want to be associated with funky-ass mosquitos? wow, minnesota, the mosquito state.
nedi just called to notify me that he is currently eating roast duck. well, good for him. i'm going for scallops and mussels tonight. i'll call him up and inform him how tasty it is, just to return the favor.
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