The weekend is nigh and the lasers are charged!

Haha, so I ended up going out last night and didn't get to bed until like 3:30 or so. You know when you've had just the perfect amount to drink such that you end up waking up all chipper and bushy-tailed and bright eyed? Yeah, that was Chirag and I this morning ^_^ Anyway, the party itself was good times until the landlord called the police (in our defense, we weren't being crazy, just loud). 'Course it's impossible to end a good party in Buenos Aires, so we just apartment-hopped down the street. Oh and they had this ridiculously awesome wine that was basically alcoholic Pepsi Blue done right. Don't ask me why they called something so soda-tastic a wine, but they did lol (and the bottle was definitely one you'd expect wine to have come from).

Work was ok. I'm definitely all over the theoretical stuff, things are going excellently on that end. I'm still learning how to do stuff with the experimentals, though. Slowly getting my hands dirty there. Very slowly, but it looks like things are picking up for me now. I'm collecting 9 blocks of data today (by block I just mean doing the same experiment but with different parameters). But yeah, different parameters, which means I get to touch stuff!!! Just the time delays on some of the controls, but hey that's something, right? Besides, there's the potential for epically messing up (there are 2 channels I need to play with and 2 channels I NEED to avoid), so it's good to feel trusted enough in my abilities to do this =)

Ah, speaking of the experimental lab, I took photos! Behold!

Here's the back room where most of the controls are - hence the three monitors... the middle one is the main one we use, the one on the left is a connection between the main one and the equipment. Don't ask me why we can't just connect directly to the instruments. I think it was an issue in upgrading from the left one to the middle one. The one chilling out on the right lets us know if everything is hunky-dory in the molecular beam apparatus' chambers. If there isn't a sufficient vacuum going on (like, 10^-6 normal atmospheric pressure sufficient), then the 3 kilovolts per plate in the mass spec and deflectors can spark and the entire room becomes a miniature replica of the big bang. Those power controls are at the bottom right of this pic:


It always feels epic turning up the voltages a-la-Dr. Frankenstein. You'll also note just how steampunk-esque the whole thing looks, as I mentioned before. What else... ah, here's the table we use when we need to make something else:



And the whiteboard:


AND THE LASER!!!!!!:


Yeah well it hurts to look at lol. That's what those plastic plate thingies on the side are for, after all....


.........


K it was totally worth the lights in my eyes for the next ten minutes. I think lasers are pretty much the best note I can end with, so peace!