Andy’s Los Alamos Blog

It’s been a pretty interesting couple of days. On Wednesday, I (finally) took Rad(iation) Worker training, and Thursday morning took the practical exam, for which I actually had to dress up in a low-level radiation suit. It was actually pretty fun, even at 7:15 am. After the practical, I went to the annual Student-Mentor picnic. [...]

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With the arrival of a bunch of stuff I ordered, I can finally get to work on some real labby stuff. Here (at last!) is what I’ve got cooking right now:
1. Resistor Mayhem
So, it turns out it’s really hard to find high-power resistors that work when it’s really cold out (like, 17 K above absolute [...]

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Let me tell you about the Chicago Basin.
It’s in southwest Colorado, near Silverton. The only access to it is via a steam train, a tourist attraction running between Durango and Silverton, that happens to stop in the middle of nowhere. There are no roads. There are no cell towers. Nothing but trees and mountains and [...]

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So, I’ll be out of the office for a few days. I’m going up to Colorado’s Chicago Basin this weekend and half of next week hiking, backpacking, and climbing 14,000 ft. mountains. I’ll be back on Thursday, and promise exciting tales and lots of pictures.
Hopefully by the time I get back to work some of [...]

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Hello. Sorry about the lack of updates. You probably noticed that Edublogs was running very slowly over the past week and a half or so; it also (as I learned the hard way) lost and deleted attempts to post updates. Everything looks to be operational now, and hopefully will stay that way.
I’ve been up to [...]

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Sorry about the downtime, and thanks for your patience. Edublogs.org is still in the process of changing servers, but everything looks functional (though slow) at this point.
I’ve had a pretty exciting week since my last post, full of good times in and out of the lab. I’ve taken a ton of pictures for you, which [...]

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Well, not a whole lot to report… My first weekend in Los Alamos was very nice. The town held its annual music festival, ChamberFest, featuring live local music and delicious local funnel cakes. Saturday night, I taught some of my friends to swing dance, Sunday I rode my bike to the lab (downhill on the [...]

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Sorry I’m a bit late posting; things have been pretty crazy between training and getting involved in research. Training is a big deal around here. I had general employee training on Tuesday, computer and drug abuse training on Wednesday morning, electricity training today, and I still have RF (radio frequency), chemical, cryogen, pressure, gas, lead, [...]

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Los Alamos at last! 
I arrived in town on Saturday afternoon, following an interesting shuttle trip (it involved fording water), and have since been getting settled and getting to know my fellow researchers.
I’ve also learned that I will indeed be working on the dark matter project, as I’d hoped. It seems that Los Alamos scientists have invented [...]

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When planning my trip to Los Alamos, I opted to hang out in Albuquerque for a day, to do a little exploring and get a sense of the southwest. Yesterday morning, I arrived at the Albuquerque International Sunport, checked into my hotel, and set off to see the city. A few people had recommended that [...]

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