Subject: New Age U.S. MACRO Shift Report, March 20-31, 2000
Stephane.Coutu@lngs.infn.it
Date: Fri Mar 31 2000 - 11:12:14 EST
New Age US MACRO Shift Report, March 20 - 31, 2000
* Present physically: S. Coutu**, R. Giuliani, I. Katsavounidis,
S. Kyriazopoulou, M. Orsini, N. Zaccheo
* Present astrally: The *Spirit* of MACRO
* Materializing suddenly: E. Katsavounidis
** Shifty character
SYNOPSIS
The instrument appears to have been essentially successfully exorcized of
all evil spirits, thanks to the constant and dedicated TLC administered
by a brave team of local psychic investigators.
DATA COLLECTION
Data collection crashed exactly *once* (run 19288) these past two weeks,
on March 24. Of course, Murphy being the guy he is, he made sure the
crash occurred at 8:04 am (since Erik's crash-check-and-auto-restart
routine runs until 8:00 am). So the run wasn't restarted until about 9:34 am,
after a bit of laying on of the hands and therapeutic touch treatment.
This was one of these not-very-well-understood crashes (target buffer busy),
usually attributed to mischief by Loki (also Pisces was in the 7th house of
Pluto, with Venus on the ascent, which didn't help).
There were a few instances of hundreds (run 19267), if not thousands
(runs 19268, 19283) of Refusals to Respond to the Q within a given run. This
did not appear to significantly affect the trigger rates, or run duration, but
increased the dead time for uVAX 1 from 2% to 3-4%. The originator of the
error was the Master of Wraith-Form Stops for SM 2. The problem seemed to fix
itself during the resets at the end of a given troubled run, but reoccurred
randomly in later runs. The runs affected also had a large number of events
with wraith-form zero suppression not working properly. After consultation
with a Greek Oracle, the problem was probably solved on Wednesday, March 29
(see below).
One PMT in 6T11-0 began channeling bad vibes with a vengeance in run 19289,
showing abnormally high TOHM rates. The tank was turned off on March 24 until
the following maintenance day (March 29, see below). It was off for
runs 19280 to 19312.
CALIBRATIONS AND MAINTENANCE
- Standard calibrations were performed on SM 5,6 (Mar 22) and SM 1,2 (Mar 29),
after the usual offerings and sacrifices to appease the goblins and demons
that dwell deep within the earth. Inspection of tank responses following
these revealed a few problems (gain mismatch between the ends) that were
investigated as promptly as possible:
5T05-11: a bad splitter box with flaky contact was replaced on Mar 22. This
tank had shown uneven end-to-end response possibly since at least last
November, but because of the flakiness, the problem was hard to see clearly.
Bad juju, that.
6T07-1: detailed studies with dowsing rods showed no obvious problems with
either PMTs; was left to its own devices (Mar 22).
6T02-0: could not be checked on Mar 22 because of an unresponsive West
passarella (even facilitated communication didn't work). The PMTs were
finally checked on Mar 29, and found to put out reasonable signals; they
were not molested any further (we don't want to induce any repressed
memories).
6T11-0: could not be checked either on Mar 22. But started acting up badly
on Mar 24, and was turned off. On Mar 29, PMT 6T11-00 was replaced, a
sizeable dose of homeopathic mineral oil was used to refill the end, and
the tank has been behaving since (turned on again in run 19313).
1T01-1, 1C15-1, 2C08-1 and 2C13-1 all show slight end-to-end asymmetries,
and were all checked on Mar 29, but all PMT signals looked reasonable,
and none were trifled with; they simply will have to be monitored.
Candles have been lit for them at the Collemaggio, and favors prayed
for to the local saints.
- Tanks 6B01-6B08 had been dead for PHRASE between runs 19267 and 19275,
and tanks 6B03, 6B05 and 6B07 for LIP. A native shaman was brought in,
sang an incantation, did a medicine dance, shook his rattle filled with
dry rabbit bones, and finally fiddled with the cabling to the Pisa mixer
module, which made the problem go away. So beginning with run 19276,
the PHRASE and LIP systems are basking in holistic oneness, and these
tanks are now undead.
- There had been occasional (but annoying) instances of obstinate refusal
to respond to the Q from the SM5 Master of Wraith-Form Stops (this is
different from the SM2 problem, see below). This was solved on Mar 22
by the famous psychic sleuth Madam Misteria, who used advanced crystal
energy channeling and healing techniques, and also repaired a broken
lemo cable (flaky ground brading) and reseated the CAMAC module. Once
again, she is vindicated! Skeptics beware!
- The other Q refusal problem (from the SM2 Master of Wraith-Form Stops)
was investigated by a team of parapsychologists on Mar 22, and various
excoriations, excommunications, excogitations, excruciations and
exorcisions were attempted, but to no avail, and the problem persisted.
Some of the symptoms were a sickly aura and problems with the cross-stop
between SM 1 and 2. Finally on Mar 29, after consulting with the entrails
of a sacrificed sheep, and with the concurrence of the Greek Oracle, some
a blood letting treatment was applied, a flaky cable was repaired and
other cable connections were carefully resnapped in place. The problem has
not reappeared since. Still, to be on the safe side, we are looking for
a fair maiden to sacrifice to the angry volcano gods.
- The GC-PINGS monitor for gravitational collapse networking has been
inoperative for a couple of weeks, apparently due to NFS disk mounting
problems between AVALON and AXPGS5. The Grand Poobahs of the Ancient
Fraternal Order of the Gran Sasso Network Illuminati have been contacted,
who have set their minions upon this foul bane to attempt a slaying of the
Beast. No report of success from that glorious quest, yet.
- It was reported that a few (2-3) times per run, large LED-like light
flashes appear to be spontaneously generated in tank 2B01 (specifically
side 0; however, side 1 sees at most a train of single p.e. pulses).
Since it seems physically impossible for the LEDs to have
actually fired, given what we know of the laws of physics, one must
conclude that these were attempts at communication with us from the
otherworld, or underworld, or else maybe space aliens. Or maybe survivors
from an ancient Atlantean civilization. Ask the government, and I'm
sure they'll deny this, which is sure proof they're hiding something.
This is apparently an old problem, with no known solution.
ASSORTED TIDBITS
- An interesting aside: it was discovered that the guards' Motorola
radios are sources of ethereal vibes and cosmic energy (and also
electromagnetic waves), and that these are detectible as increased
bursts of at least TOHM triggers with no good data. The Maharishi
had repeatedly tried warning us telepathically about this, but we
apparently ignored His great wisdom. The current plan is to meditate
on the subject and to attempt to telekinetically switch off the guards'
radios.
- Data reprocessing is proceeding at a lightning pace. About 50% of all
MACRO data has been reprocessed in about 50 days. Unfortunately, about
50% of the 8mm tapes have read errors of some sort (straight copies
of the data), and about 10% of the VMS backup 8mm data tapes also have
unrecoverable errors, so that there is a small percentage (about 5%) of
the tapes that have some irretrievable losses. The tapes would have been
much more profitably used for shooting footage of the famed Abruzzo Bigfoot
that is known to roam these mountains, or "Campy", the world-famous
Lago di Campotosto monster. Also the nice crop circle patterns left in
local vineyards by landing extraterrestrial crafts.
EDITORIAL COMMENT
But seriously now, data collection has proceeded incredibly smoothly. I have
never seen the instrument in such beautiful shape. It would seem a shame to
terminate this wonderful experiment. If it's good enough for D0, or CDF,
or CLEO, or any number of other worthwhile projects, why don't we simply
upgrade MACRO and run for another 5 years?
What could be done to improve this magnificent apparatus? If I may make a
modest suggestion, I propose that we remove all that nasty scintillator and
refill all the tanks with Centerba instead. This would have a number of
advantages, and one or two inconvenients:
1) Advantages:
- Nobody would mind a few leaks here and there...
- No more oil slicks with thousands of drowned fruit flies (for some reason,
fruit flies seem to dislike Centerba, which shows there's no accounting
for taste!).
- We could finally put these little dripper cups to good use!
- We could corner the worldwide production of Centerba for a couple of
years, with a guaranteed contract with the producers, which would
drive skywards the value of the substance, and which we could therefore
sell to all these Centerba addicts to finance operation of the detector...
2) Inconvenients:
- Nobody has measured the scintillation properties of Centerba, but I'm
sure there will be no lack of volunteers to do this. Anyway, the stuff
has just *got* to scintillate. Almost anything carcinogenic does.
- We would have to conduct a systematic study of the various brands to
identify that with the longest attenuation length. Then we could fill the
ends with Grappa for optical coupling.
Then, the awful PMT-killer helium-based streamer tube gas will just
have to go. A gas mixture based on Nitrous Oxide would be much preferable.
Here again, nobody would mind a leak here and there.
Finally, the cute little CR-39 packs should all be replaced by Lindt
chocolate bars, with just the aluminum foil wrapping. Externally, nobody
could tell the difference, and the use of taste buds to search for
monopole damage in chocolate would certainly be a novel technique worthy
of a NIM paper or two.
Anyway, that was just a thought. Heck, I'll miss the old dusty tunnel.
Your humble shifworker,
Stephane
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