I think LLNL is up to something sneaky. This story on CNN says they are developing the laser to do hyrdogen fusion. I think they are just getting tired of the drop squirrel problem and have gone “Redneck” in their approach to killing the little suckers. Talk about using a shotgun to get a mouse….

I hope to have photos to help illustrate some of these things, but in the meantime I will just try to describe them. So…what am I talking about you ask ? This is going to be a list of the Twilight Zone items here at ORNL.

• Innocent signs for things like ‘High Flux Isotope Reactor’ and ‘Spalation Neutron Source’. I get that creepy feeling like when I think about standing buck-nekkid with my ‘special parts’ in front of the microwave. Are my kids now going to have 14 fingers and 3 heads ? Just think of the troubles clothing those little mutants. I guess I better find a wife with some serious knitting skills, otherwise I’m gonna have to do it (I can, thank you Mom for that bit of manly instruction when I was a kid).
• Girls. They are about as scarce on the lab as a virgin in a biker bar. I can honestly say that I don’t think I have seen a single girl at the lab that I would risk asking out. Besides they are all smarter than me.
  • This is SO not the case in Knoxville. My neck was sore after Sundown in the City.
• Y-12. This is the first Uranium separation plant. Ever. I drive past it twice a day to the lab. I keep thinking there is a Homer Simpson somewhere in there.
• People fish in “Mecury Creek“. As they say here: that ‘splains’ a few things.
• Cell phones. They almost work here, some buildings are great, others absolutely no signal. I have a hunch that someone is listening too, which gets dangerous when your friends are criminals like mine. “I was never convicted of that…”
• There will be no pictures of this, but for a week there was a helicoptor flying around with some sort of torpedo looking thing hanging from a cable. Oddness.

I think that is all for now, more later as I explore the place.

So, I’ve been sold to ORNL for the summer. Yup, I am officially a ‘tech whore’ now. This is much more fun than my years as a ‘bio slut’ in college – they haven’t even stuck any needes in me…yet! I am here to help provide that ever so poplular happy finish with getting Lustre configured and running on their 5000 node Cray XT3. With this assignment comes a 3 week initial stay in Oak Ridge, followed up with one week per month return visits to boost morale and compile expense reports.

So far the stay has been pretty good, and as usual I will leave it to my skill with bullet lists to explain.

• hotel is not bad. I have a king bed and A/C. TV channel selection sucks.
• There is nothing to do in Oak Ridge besides eat at chain restuarants, and bad ones at that.
• Knoxville is close enough (and I rated a rental car for this trip).
  • I recommend getting down to the Old City and to the strip.
  • If only one – do the Old City, but if during “college season”, do the strip. UT girls.
• I was lucky enough to make some friends right off the bat, so I’ve had great tour guides for bars and restuarants here.
  • Putting together cute girls and this southern accent is very nice. Very nice.
• Work has not been too bad, the first week went quite smoothly, second week has been waiting around for massive hardware problems. Waiting sucks.

I’m not feeling that creative at the moment, so I will expand on this more later….

First up — a shout to one of my co-workers (who will remain anonymous until I know they’ve told people) – you know who you are. I’m quite pissed to see you go, I think the choice made to “downsize” was a shitty one and I am gonna miss having you around. I raise my glass to you, sir! I now know how those guys in the Civil (US) War felt when they saw their buddy next to them take a cannonball through the head.

Now — what a week at work. It has been insane, you can call me Release-o-matic Man. We’ve needed to get code releases ready for two customers this week, not to mention two public releases for the rest of the customers. I will spare the details, but it was a crazy week. 60+hours crazy. 3am crazy.

So, in honor of this week, here are some “Work this week was like…”

• Last summer…
• Putting your pecker in a blender…
• Trying to eat a sandwich with two broken arms…
• Making love to a wolverine…
  • …on PCP and Tequilla…
• Shaving during the Baja 1000…
• Running a marathon. Naked. In Boston. During an ice storm. Twice….
• Eating Paris Hilton’s cooking…
• Mowing the yard. With a pocket knife…
• Receiving brain surgery in a Calcutta back alley…
  • … during a soccer riot…
• Configuring Lustre failover and upcalls…
• Going potty while elk hunting (#2 of course)…
  • After a night of eating Dots and drinking Jager
• Trying to have diarrhea in a public restroom…
  • …quietly…
• My senior year of Engineering at Penn
• Anyone who has to work two minimum wage jobs just to feed their kids…
• Trying to think up humorous analogies for how this week has been.

So… in my post the other day I think I left out a lot of thoughts that need to be detailed. I’m gonna chalk that up to extreme exahustion – it is a good as excuse as any.

So, I came to realize a few things at the end of the team launch process that really made me happy:

• We have REAL manager, who is dedicated (time wise, which is the most important) to just the people in our team. He was with us for 3 days and gave the presentation on our team plan better than anyone I could think of. It is very exciting to have some one that talented working to make our lives better. I think having a qualified person at the helm with allow the rest of us to really do our jobs well.
• Ability to learn. This team has a very unique experience for me — I can choose what I want to learn. I would very much like to dive deeper into debugging Lustre problems, as I have always found myself a very good debugger, as well as learning how to properly manage a software team. Already I am starting to see that our esteemed Team Lead is a different sort from what we are used to here at CFS. Perhaps I will even learn what I am not good at for real, rather than tie that into just not being able to do a certain job at a certain time.
• Structure. Yes I used the “s-word”. The individual details are too many to list out, but I continually see things in the job of a ‘Director of Engingeering’ that have a fixed input and output. I literally would have killed for this a year ago — perhaps I would be in a different place becuase of it. I think there are two very large things that TSP gives a software company. The first is a real managment, reporting, work assignment and tracking, and progress tracking system. The spreadsheet that we use to combine each team members data and view team progress is worth its weight in electrons. Second, just the formal process of reviews and inspections is going to vastly increase the quality of Lustre.
• The face to face meetings were great. It is amazing how smart these people are. Perhaps the most interesting part is how different each person is. I don’t think there are two people on the team I would describe being like another.
• I got some good JSB downloads from the boc. He found that archive.org had a ton of live concerts recorded from (mostly) the sound board at the concert. These live recordings hold a TON of new tracks that have been tickling my ears ever since.
• New people! Weeeeeeee! We have more people to handle work. I am thrilled to welcome these guys to the team, and I look forward to their contributions.

I think that about concludes my thoughts on the team launch. All in all, I am very much looking forward to executing, what I think, is a sane plan. This is not to say that it is not agressive in its goals, but I think the whole team agrees that it is a workable plan. I shall report in soon (being the ever faithful Planning Mananger) on the progress and acuracy of our plan.

Apparently LLNL (Lawrence Livermore National Lab) has had a rash of blown transformers lately. It seems some mystery squirrels may be to blame:

[10:13am] neb: My understanding is that it won't be up until at least 12PM PST
[10:14am] nic__: ouch
[10:14am] neb: There were literally half a dozen facility type people working in the area when I headed back home.
[10:15am] nic__: wow. you know it is serious when >2 show up
[10:15am] neb: Last week we had the tranformer blow that took out thunder.
[10:15am] nic__: seems to be a pattern...
[10:15am] neb: And there was a joke going around about a "drop squirrel".
 [10:16am] nic__: LOL
[10:16am] nic__: that just smells bad...not that I would know or anthing
[10:16am] nic__: anything even
[10:16am] neb: The joke is, that any time something serious goes wrong the facilities people reach into their freezer and <br /> get a dead frozen squirrel and drop in at the site of the problem. That way they affix blame on someone other than themselves.
[10:17am] neb: "Oh shit this looks bad. Quick grab a drop squirrel"

It’s official — my first piece of squirrel humor. Oh wow…I should really put a story up from my Philadelphia apartment. Anna, you kill me for that one ?

And of course there was more later…

neb: westlund, how are things going there. Are you physically at the lab?
[3:57pm] acu-home: I haven't heard a peep in hours
[3:58pm] neb: That russian ICBM must have really done a number on stuff.
[3:59pm] acu-home: Wasn't an ICBM.  They say a squirrel got into the prototype matter converter.
[3:59pm] neb: I thought that was just the "cover story"
[4:00pm] neb: The one we were supposed to tell everyone so that they wouldn't know what <it>really happened</it>
[4:00pm] acu-home: The hidden story is that the squirrel is still in there 
[4:01pm] acu-home: looks out window and see 38 ton squirrel go by
[4:01pm] neb: You mean that the when the drop squirrel got hit with the radiation it developed super powers and is now on a rampage.
[4:02pm] acu-home: shhhh