I missed posting last week – I am already slipping.
Last week was CMS week, so it was quite hectic. We were also trying to run some tests on our hardware underground. The tests didn’t always go as planned. We had several outages – power to something or water cooling to something else. On Friday we couldn’t even get started. It was a frustrating period. Most of the reasons were understood, eventually. Monday’s was due to a fouine (beech marten) in a transformer. Poor little thing, what a way to go. Wednesday – Friday’s were due to a diesel generator replacement. We knew about that – but we thought the impact would be minimal.
Then yesterday afternoon (or evening, it was about 6:45 or so when it happened), I was going underground to drop of some items and fetch my husband, who was working hard on his portion of the experiment, and I stepped into the elevator, pressed the button for the floor I wanted and then waited. The doors closed and clunk! The elevator stopped. The display was blank, pressing buttons was doing nothing, I was stuck. I had a working CERN cell phone with a little charge and called my husband who made a few calls to the technical services (“we’re working on it”) and eventually to the fire department, who, since they come from the main CERN site, about 20-25 minutes away, arrived about 45 minutes later. I was glad to be out. I’m not particularly claustrophobic, but I’d rather not spend my evening in there. I am now wary of that elevator…I’m glad we have two. I’m not sure this was at all related to the outages, but it just felt like the icing on the cake.
I was also writing a proceedings to the conference I just attended. I hope to have it done by friday – Monday I’m off to Modena, Italy for a few days to hang out and see some sights with my in-laws, who are around for about two weeks. It should be a good time – I always have enjoyed Italy, the food, the history, and, lest I forget, the wine.
A la prochain…
