Happy New Year!

[pheloniusfriar]

I have had quite the year... On a personal level, 2017 was rough, but not as terrible as 2016; but from a world events perspective, 2017 was a emotionally crippling dumpster fire of horribleness. It has been very busy the past few weeks (so much so, that I forgot I had updated about my recent trip to Asia until I scanned my recent posts... ugh). I am going to finally get to go to CERN at the end of January (a DAQ workshop for the sTGC detector, which is part of the New Small Wheel muon detection/triggering upgrade for ATLAS experiment due to be installed in the next while), and maybe again mid-February for the ATLAS ITk upgrade project work I'm doing (for installation in 2025 or some such). I had initially hoped to visit my friend in Germany between the two, but I am starting to take courses towards my master's degree in physics this semester and being away for three weeks would probably be fatal from an academic perspective. I am taking the class "à la carte" as a special student at Carleton University, but I can take two classes and have them applied to my master's programme when I enter it officially. Since it's the course work that flattens me like a filbert on a highway, the fewer courses I have to take when I'm in the program, the more successful I will be. Fyi, the course is an introduction to particle physics, which is a subject I'm relatively comfortable with (no pun intended), having grown up reading about it as the Standard Model came of age, and is being taught by one of the best lecturers in the department (I am so looking forward to it).

Many of my posts are going to be about technical issues this year because I need to keep a log that exists outside of my office so I can use it wherever I am. It is also in hope that it can be of use to others. I will tag those entries appropriately for anyone wishing to avoid them :).