Mood:
celebratoryTopic: Chile
I looked in at the DV webcam and seems like it was just rain there and that they have a lot of the walkway on the pier in.
Today marked the beginning of the commissioning phase of ALMA. We had a good discussion on how to run the commissioning phase and do it best this am. At 2pm Richard had a huge white cake, a 'Tres Leches' (three milks) cake in addition to a yummy chocolate raspberry cake. Diabetes is a sure thing now. Anyway we cut the cake here in synchrony with cutting of another cake at the site with much fanfare. It was really
exciting to be able to take part in it. Real participation starts next week of course when I go to the site. I have night shift so we won't overlap a lot I guess. I don't know what to expect.
Kartik came back today so I'm going to walk down to his hotel and look for dinner with him. Ran into Stu, Lars-Ake and Eric at TGIF; Stu and Lars-Ake joined me at the bar in the Plaza to wait. Had a Kunstmann Pale Ale (pronounced pally ally) draft--very good. Kartik arrived and after a quick deconstruction of the day (Kartik had framed the earlier discussion before flying back down) we headed up Isodora to Tiramisu. There we ran into new ALMA colleague Daniel Fulla, there with his visiting Dad, Juan. They were on the list so we jumped the line and went to a table for pizza and drinks and yet more discussion on the instrument and the personalities that guide it. It was past midnite when I made it back to the apartment--not really tired owing to the interest of the talk but I soon drifted off.
Last night some truck's backup beep kept going off all night. I had left my noise cancelling earphones at work. I didn't need them tonite!!!
