Life at the lab

So it has been just over a year since I made my journey from the little corner of Texas where the Neighborhood was founded and made my way to Fermilab to finish up my PhD.

I've loved my life and time up here so far and hope that I can share some of the unique experiences I am having right now living at the world's highest energy particle accelerator

I realize, of course, that the Tevatron won't be the world's best for that much longer. With the looming turn-on of the LHC at CERN coming ever closer I am witness to a unique time to be at this lab.

Funny enough when I originally moved up here it was to work on the LHC experiment through a collaboration known as CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid), however with the delay it didn't make any sense to wait around for data while our group had a strong presence on a working experiment right here at Fermilab!

So I made the transition and started working on the BEST EXPERIMENT EVER (I'm paid to say that...but seriously I do love this experiment) So ever since December'ish 2008 I've been working on the Collider Detector @ Fermilab or lovingly called CDF.

This has really been a great transition and I am working on exciting searches on a well run machine with tons of experts and scientists who know how to squeeze every bit of information out of the detector we have.

Since joining I have many great stories and physics things to share and will slowly give all these up during this blog. Most recently I've been on what is known as "Ace Shifts" where you learn how to manage and control the detector for data acquisition quality. In short, I'm the pilot of this amazing experiment. Now it goes without saying that I'm only a link in the chain of many people and many years of work...so I don't want to paint myself as THE expert...just becoming AN expert.

Interestingly, I've gotten to be the Ace during a time where I was able to go down and stand in front of and climb around on this 3 ton 3 story monster of a machine and it was amazing! But that story is probably for another time