So! Even though I haven’t posted in a few weeks I’m still using this damned thing. Please, hold your applause.
First my laptop’s AC adapter went kaput (specifically, the little dongle part that plugs into the computer) and I couldn’t get the guranteed replacement from the store I bought it at due to mandarin warranty requirements (I have to send the part back to you exactly as it came to me? Wha?) Anyway, if you need replacement parts for your laptop don’t buy from SIB Auctions.
And after that, I spent the next few days getting stuff in order to finally make the move down here to beautiful Knoxville to be with my beautiful girlfriend. I’ve been in the city for a few days now all settled in, but since we haven’t seen each other for about nine weeks I figured it was more important for us to spend some quality time together before I jumped back into work. I’ll let you figure out how we spent that time.
Speaking of work, I’m now having to finally look for a new job so I can continue financing my writing career. Hopefully something at the local UT Knoxville campus, so I can at least take night courses. Regular schooling is going to be postponed for a while.
And now, onto real news!
One week ago today the CERN (European Council for Nuclear Physics) launched it’s first test run of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), which is the world’s largest particle accelerator. The collider complex is designed to search and provide evidence for long sought-after physics treasures like the Higgs-boson, and to hopefully reveal more information about blank spots in physical knowledge such as the nature of dark matter and the possiblity of extra dimensions of space-time.
This wasn’t one of the actual experiments. They run a few particles in a beam along the length of the LHC circuit, just a test drive to see if all the different parts and doodads (technical term) were calibrated and synched up properly.
The first real experiment using the LHC begins on September 10th.
