Hah! Mom’s on the job!. This may have more implications than one might think. Mom is not only the most energetic person I know (having 8 kids might require that) but she has never been shy about speaking her mind. When I was growing up she was for some time the president of the Wisconsin chapter of Common Cause, a lobbying group for the common man focused on progressive issues in the spirit of “Fighting Bob” Lafollette and Bill Proxmire and his famous Golden Fleece awards, including a study on “How to buy Worcestershire sauce” and money to fund “The Great Wall of Bedford, Indiana”. Anyway, she’s probably got Russ Feingold on her speed-dial. Go get ’em Mom. Any readers (related or not) are also encouraged to contact their congressmen. It’s easy.
In other news, we’ve had blogger-blogger interactions! I spotted Monica in the cafeteria yesterday, and discussed via email with Pam the nuances of the new video conferencing machines out at the experiment. Not sure if Peter is around, but four-blogger scattering is not so improbable.
Being back after a while is good – things are just starting to take off in terms of connecting the tracker, after which we’ll start to test everything out. It isn’t exactly “plug and play”, but after some iteration to get all the saftey, cooling, power and readout systems cooperating, we’ll get there. This stage is always hard because problems pop up all the time which require immediate firefighting, so the immediate plan is always changing. Imagine trying to plan a 10 hour drive when the routes along the way randomly open and close on a ten minute time scale. Not sure exactly how long it will take to get there, but eventually we will. It just takes hard work and considerable patience.
