Macsys, LET data, Rick's eye
Has it been over a month since my last
update?
On 2/22/06, I got Rick C. downstairs with
me to work on Macsys, and he spent quite a bit of time using the Mac Classic as
a terminal to poke into Macsys and determine that it appeared to be working just
fine. Then he noticed that I was missing an "optical box" between jam
(Sparcstation) and Macsys. I had used a direct cable connection between the
DRV-11 card in jam and Macsys, but apparently I needed a separate box full of
opto-isolators and other electronics to go between them. (I'll have to write up
my notes on Macsys later, for future user reference.) After a day or so, Matvey
found the optical box for me, and I put it in and managed (finally!) to get
histograms in a couple of channels. I also had to round up a NIM bin along with
a pulser and TC-213 amplifier for
shaping.
-----
Since
mid-February (or possibly earlier -- I'll have to check my e-mail archive),
Hiromasa and I have been looking at thermal balance and thermal vacuum CPT and
normal run data for tests going on at APL for STEREO (LET in our case). I found
some STIM event glitches during ADC-mode to Normal-mode transitions and reported
them out to the collaboration, and Rick C. figured that those glitches weren't a
problem and could be explained by us apparently not allowing the DACs to settle
before proceeding after such
transitions.
Hiromasa has noticed no
problems with leakage currents until this past weekend, when he noticed that the
L3Bo (and L3Bi, to a lesser extent) leakage current started to rise to 10
microamps. He reported on this at the data meeting this
morning.
On a related note, Dick has
started assembling the LET instrument paper, and assignments have gone out to
various people to write sections. I've got some of the data formatting
sections, which I plan to condense from the LET Science Data Format document
I've already
written.
-----
Last
week, Rick L. finally went to see his eye doctors after noticing deteriorating
vision in his left eye -- the eye that had the detached retina during the trip
to the India ICRC. I drove him to his doctors, including his eye surgeon, and
the surgeon found that a keloid had formed after his earlier surgery, making the
retina detach again. The fix was surgery again, this time draining the eye,
probably removing the keloid tissue, and reattaching the retina with a laser. I
drove Rick to the hospital for his surgery last Thursday, and Mark W. handled
his transportation thereafter (as I was busy later in the
week).
Posted: Mon - March 13, 2006 at 01:12 PM