Present at Gran Sasso:
Rich Baker (on shift),
Fabrizio Cei (Wait... maybe he's on shift),
James Gill (CAMAC Toast),
Paolo Giusti (cleaning oil),
Lauren Hopkins (Massive showers),
Erik Katsavounidis (Arrosticini al Grec),
Sophietta Kyriazopoulou (Infinite loops),
Nat Longley (Missing family),
Charlie Peck (Demagrido),
Paolo Saggese (Mr. Histogram),
Stefano Stalio (actually on vacation in Sardegna)
Data Acquisition:
The run continues smoothly except for the occasional blown power supply and
such. The Inter-ERP module, which had a blown ACTEL chip, has been repaired
to its original state as of 12614. 2W11, which was out of acquisition for
a week was returned to acquisition on August 5th before run 12604.
Oil drips and slop:
Paolo G. has returned to repeat his much acclaimed oil cleanup tour, and he
reports that there seems to be less oil leaking now than last year,
although he has found one new tank end that is apparently leaking.
Paolo S. created a new oil leak while trying to diagnose a suspected light
leak on 2W11. He loosened the insurance bar for a closer look, and two of
the triangles popped off, causing most of the oil in the tank end to spill
out. All fixed now, and the tank is back in acquisition as of run 12604.
Paolo also continues to work on his detector-monitoring-histogram
presenter.
Fabrizio Cei appeared as a special guest shift worker from Pisa.
Apparently, the schedules got a bit confused and the discrepancy was not
discovered until it was too late to reschedule the Pisa work, so we get a
nice bonus this week. It was suggested by Erik that there may be a problem
with the decoding in the supernova monitor because 5B10 does not appear in
the raw PHRASE data, but is not seen as dead by the monitor. Fabrizio
planned to check this.
Charlie Peck is in town these few weeks bearing goodies like a new ACTEL
chip for the inter-ERP module.
James Gill reports that he has completed building a dummy CAMAC test load
that can be used to test the power supplies. He plans to build a few more
CAMAC boards with big resistors so that they can be used to draw something
approximating maximum current from the crates. If all goes well, we'll be
able to use them as sandwich toasters.
Loren Hopkins has started looking at some events with "massive showers" to
see if there might be some way to intelligently look for monopoles in
events that light up the whole detector. (Hey, don't laugh, Nat suggested
this.)
Rich and Stefano conducted tests of the LEDs and found that approximately
20 LEDs were not firing during LED-TDC tests. Most of these were traced to
faulty switch box cards. As of now, all but 9 of the LED problems have
been fixed.
Rich also reported on some very strange ERP look-up tables which indicate
that the current procedure may be fatally flawed. Fortunately, most LUTs
are reasonably good because the current procedure was not applied to the
MOUN level triggers.
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OK, enough of that boring stuff....
Paganica has really been rocking this week with dancing, singing and food
in the Piazzas all week. Even opera. And to think some would call it a
sweltering stinkhole...
Erik and Alessandra hosted a barbeque at their spacious apartment and
balconissimo in Pettino. There was WAY too much food, and fortunately,
Alessandra hasn't yet learned all the ways of forcing her guests to eat
much more than they could have possibly imagined was possible.
This is the sagra season in Italy (Maybe that's why Charlie always seems to
show up this time of year?) and in addition to the week long Paganica-fest,
there have been sagras in S. Elia, Bazzano, Poggio Picenza, Tempera, etc.
Sign up for August shifts if you can.
Arrividerci. This is my last shift report as this is my last day of
employment with MACRO. I'm heading off to Cornell where I'm hoping to
get a postdoc with the CLEO collaboration (applications pending). I'll
still be in contact via e-mail if you want to complain about this shift
report or if you have life-and-death questions about the ERP system.
Rich Baker