Up and Running with a Vengence!

We finally finished the assembly of the robot arm, and have it running thanks to the hard work of Mark and Dave. Your guys are teh r0x0r5! We had a problem with the Data Acquisition System here at the 1KT, but thanks to Issei Kato, a K2K expert who just started his postdoc at TRIUMF, the DAQ is fixed. Another big thanks! So now we are running. It appears I will be doing shifts early in the morning (6-7 am to whenever) for now. Now I just have to get the code working to analyse all this data. Well at least I got the printer here working with my laptop.

WTF is that supposed to mean?

Sexy Soda

Finally I found the ultimate soda can for those lonely nights at sea. But a picture speaks 1,000 words, enjoy!

WoW K2K Style!

So I saw this large unused monitor in the control room of the near detector system. I just could not resist. So after diving through wires trying to get the data acquisition system up and running (unsuccessfully may I add) I hooked my laptop up to this kick ass monitor, larger then your average TV.

I think it's intended for event display when we are actually taking neutrino data. Since that is not going to happen anytime soon, may as well enjoy the comfort of a 40 inch monitor.

Flamingo Food

Once again I am behind schedule with the food posts, but we recently dined in Mexico ... well a restaurant called Mexico in Japan. You may think they would sell Mexican food there, but it turns out it's a fancy seafood place in disguise. I had some crap pasta, which was quite tasty:



Our table was placed right next to a huge glass cage full of Flamingos. Apparently there was a flamingo entree on the menu, but with my limited Japanese skills I could not find it, hence the flamingos just provided entertainment while I was fighting with my crab.



Jum Flamingo. Tastes like chicken!

Somebody get Mr Clean!

With SNO in the neighbourhood I had a very high expectation of the standards pertaining to cleanliness in and around neutrino detectors. After all the water has to be really clean to make it possible to infer anything about neutrinos that interact in the detector. Anyway this may have sounded like gibberish to you, but the point is that I expected to see a detector that would have made Mr. Clean look like a dirty old man. I was quite disappointed when I finally entered the detector system to install the manipulator and saw this:

Those wires were all red at some point, just that they now have some gangrene. The entire thing looks like a herd of chimpanzees was set lose in there.
The up side to all this: after we spend so much time keeping the arm clean and we dropped it in the tank (I will have some pictures of that process up sometime soon) the water got cleaner. So if nothing else we cleaned the place up for everyone.

Motto supaisu kudasai.

Yesterday I had this dinner with the following these two bits of Kanji in the description:
-- extreme
-- spice.
After having my first bite I was able to get the jest of the translation. I needed a few beers to cool the fires on that one. A good dinner after all is said and done.

First Dinner Post

I am behind with my dinner postings, mainly because I did not get any pictures until now. So here is the crew I seem to be spending all my time with now:


From left to right: me, Keith, Mark, Rich, and Dave


Don't have any good pictures from my dinner that day, but there was eyes and raw egg involved. jum!

Frankenstein

While assembling the Manipulator (what we like to call our lovely robot arm) we found the shiniest bolts ever, which of course led to this picture:

Feed Me!

The Enterprise!

So we got the robot arm and started assembling it in the neutrino hall. The thing that looks like a huge pop-can is the detector that we will throw the arm into eventually. So while we are working away on the Robot arm I need to go for a pee. At the local facilities I found what looks like what would happen in a transporter mailfunction beaming the captain's chair from the enterprise onto a common toilet:


"We can't push 'er any 'arder or she'll blow capt'n!"

I don't have a picture of dinner, but dinner was a Japanese style gollum fish. Jucy sweet, but hard to eat with chop sticks. I was tempted to squat on the floor and eat there singing how much i liked my fish. After seeing the stares Dave got for blowing his nose in a resturant, I determined that I should not push the Gaijin-license too far. and had some b33r instead.

Culture Shock

First of all: A ginourmous "Arigatoo gozaimasu!" to Hidemi, Kaori, Tomo, Tarra, and Jeff who prepared me for this trip with their Japanese Classes at SJC. Thanks to you I am not completely lost here.

Yesterday (well maybe two days ago I am not sure thanks to the date line across the Pacific) I left St John's after a nice last breakfast. After that I had just enough time to put up some auctions on World Of Warcraft while waiting for my Cab to the airport.

The first person I met at the Airport was not one of my colleagues travelling to Japan, but rather the principle of SJC, Dr Tim Brook, who was under way to a conference in Ireland. After having a short chat with him I found myself by the Air Canada check-in, where I also found two of my partners in crime: David Morris, a technician and electronics designer at TRIUMF, and Keith Hoyle, and beam line techie helping us with our Robot arm. The project supervisor Rich Helmer made it down a bit later. The last member of our troop: Mark Lenckowski, the mechanical designer who had already flown in from Victoria. We hardly had any time to admire the large construction vehicles ripping up the runway in front of us before the plane started boarding. Best of it all, David and I had the center row of seats to ourselves, so plenty of room.

After a comfortable 10 hour ride on the plane we made it to Narita Airport. Amazingly we made it through customs without getting probed, prodded or otherwise abused. With the quick trip though customs we could hop on the early bus to Tsukuba. Here is could use my first chance to use Japanese, which just came out as "Tsukuba Centa" in the hurry and confusion. The express bus to Tsukuba took a comfortable 2.5 hrs driving us the last 40 km of our 8-someodd thousand km journey. At the end of which I had the second chance to use instructing the Mark, Keith and my cab driver: "Ko Enerigi Kenkuyo", also known as KEK. This actually got us to the lab! Check out the star on this nice mapquest map to see exactly where the hell I am right now:

Once we arrived at KEK we had a quick bit to eat. After said intake of food, I barely made it to my room but still hand the energy to out find that all my cloth auctions in World of Warcraft had sold. Then I promptly collapsed and slept soundly until 4am. Man jet lag is a bitch.

Up and running!

Finally the blog is up. It's purpose is to let you know everything you want to know about my stay in Japan ... well nearly everything.

Up and running!

Finally the blog is up. It's purpose is to let you know everything you want to know about my stay in Japan ... well nearly everything.