Category: MIT

Nice Setting.

It had been a while since my last visit to California and I had been looking forward to the OSG Conference to bring me back here at least for a few days to sample some of the amazing smells and the wonderful weather they have here even this time of the year.
The Stanford guest house is about 25 miles from SF airport and probably even less from San Jose airport.  Max picked me up and it took a bit more than 15 minutes to make it there. I got myself installed, watched some TV to clean mind from all useful thoughts and went to bed. I slept well took a shower and had breakfast with the crowd. Nothing out of the ordinary but it was good to show up and to make sure people would not forget. It is still all the same, somehow good to be back.
The talks went fine I usually have a bunch of questions and the discussion is fun. Somehow I am still surprised how little most people care about the bigger picture and duck into their laptops when there are important questions to be answered. Well, maybe I am the same way when I do not care about the particular.
Tonight we will go out with CMS computing management.  Let’s see how that goes. There are a bunch of new characters.
After the session I took a seat in the back of the guest house in the still strong sun of the late afternoon. I saw a beautiful hare and some prairie dogs at least this is what I thought it was. Wonderful peaceful place so close to the highway and right at the hotel.

It is going towards Thanksgiving and the semester lies in its last stretch. Students are dropping their least liked classes and professors are lookoing forward to the end of the term. At the same time temperatures are approaching real cold, the afternoons become very short and leaves are piling up in the yard. Rakink seems useless but it is not as this one year showed when I waited for the last leave to drop and was barely able to make it for the towns last pickup….. Ana had chipped in quite a bit which did not seem fair. Anyway I am on my way to Geneva to one of those meeting that seem useless when you do not go but turn out to be very useful once you go.
One of the invariably useful features of CERN trips are that there is nothing else but work to do and magically lots on the todo list gets done and the inbox clears up. Looking forward to be back tough.

Update…. it seems my luck is running out. I lost my flight in Charlotte and l am just barely making it back to Boston. Is that what you call poetic justice, as I left Ana home to deal with the new car purchase? Maybe it is just fate to make sure the, two of us are available to buy the new car 🙂   I think that must be it. So, bottom line: My luck is not running out but just continuing even in a bigger picture.
Let’s see how this plays out tomorrow…. at least there is never a dull moment in our lifes.

It turns out missing the flight was a blessing as we did buy the new used car in the morning of the next day — would not have happened with Ana by herself — I had a much better 1 stop flight to Geneva and I even had a good talk at the C&O week. I also did not miss the important dinner of this working week so to summarize, my luck has not run out on the contrary it is intensifying its streak it seems. Hang in there!