It’s kind of mind-bending how fast things are ramping up, but no-one knows when “it” will happen, and how “it” will go — “it” being the initial collisions and the data analysis to follow. You get the same sense from everyone you talk to about the LHC, and especially from the younger people i know (students and postdocs) whose, well, *lives* depend on things getting going soon. I remember this feeling well, just as RHIC was starting — although things felt smaller in those days, or at least my 50-person experiment did.
This week is a Physics and Performance Workshop concerned with how ATLAS will deal with early data. I have a particular interest in this from the standpoint of a guy interested in heavy ions since this is precisely the data we will use to compare with lead-lead collisions when they eventually arrive. And yet, the last few months finishing up our proposal (more on that later, i’m serious) have shielded me from the outrageous amount of work going into so many different aspects of the detector and analysis. I’m scrambling to catch up long-distance, from my office, reading slides, and keeping up with emails, and we even have a heavy ion videoconference tomorrow (for which I’m assembling a talk now…). But there’s a lot to keep up with, and then I still have to get ready for the big ATLAS week in July! (and let’s not mention we have a short Alpine vacation to plan as well…)
For all the non-blogging I’ve been doing, I can’t say that I haven’t been giving most of my life to the upcoming LHC run. The main distraction was a recent trip to an ATLAS workshop in Dubna, Russia, on the Volga River, next to a huge reservoir (which someone there called the “Moscow Sea”). While I’ve heard of 
The workshop (“Heavy Ion Physics with the ATLAS Detector”) was early last week, and took place in a conference center on Veksler Street, well outside the lab itself. It turns out that just as it’s getting harder and harder to get our non-US colleagues into our national labs, it’s getting equally as laborious to get us into foreign labs. So while I didn’t get to see their facilities, we did hear a nice talk about their planned new low energy heavy ion collider facility (
Finally, when the workshop was over we took a half day trip to 
Anyway so here we are, wrapping up two intense meetings (and getting ready for a couple of well-earned days in the Swiss Alps). Quark Matter was a nice time, even if I showed up 3 days late (only 2 of them by design, the third due to a fog bank in Delhi on Wednesday morning, and a little “mix-up” about my hotel reservation in Jaipur). Lots of interesting, if disparate, results and some excellent wandering around Jaipur and environs, and a fantastic banquet. For some record of this, have a look at my 