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oedipa maas
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what did you do today? (a corollary to the thread "What do you physicists do?")
I thought it might be interesting to take a sociological approach to the question raised by Pivoxa in this thread -
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=186911
So what do physicists actually do on a daily basis? Let's ask the physicists out there to report in on their activities for Thursday, September 27th, 2007. Oh yeah, tell us how many cups of coffee you had...
Let's see...
What I Did Today, by Oedipa Maas
8:00: Woke up and fell asleep again because I stayed up too late after a colloquium last night.
8:40: Got out of bed and checked personal e-mail while eating a bowl of yoghurt and muesli.
9:00: Tried to determine why my bicycle light didn't work last night.
9:15: Bicycled to work
9:35: Got to work and said "hi" to my labmate.
- reset the transducer coil in the probe that I'm working with and discussed with my labmate whether one of my cables was shorting out and causing my data collection script to die.
- played around with my data collection script.
-determined that error code -200279 was associated with the DAQ writing data into a location in a buffer which already had a piece of data that the CPU just hadn't yet got around to reading and storing.
- changed my code to increase the size of the buffer as the data collection rate increased.
12:30: went to the cafeteria with the folks in my research group
13:00: went back to the lab, talked for a bit with my labmate about the class he's TAing.
- did a couple test runs with really high data collection rates to see if the buffer was still filling up faster than the CPU was reading it. While the data collection was running I researched a book that I wanted to buy. I also reread a paragraph of a paper I've been reading and took a derivative of a probability in hopes that I might get some clues about the model described in the paper.
14:??: now satisfied that my script was running.
- took my apparatus partially apart and started to rebuild a higher mount for the probe.
- found out that part of the existing mount needed to stay bolted to the table
- listened to a couple CDs while working
16:00: visited the other people in my group in the neighbouring lab and looked up buying a kayak.
17:40: finished rebuilding the probe mount. plugged everything in and started another test run. chatted with labmate.
18:10: biked to grocery store and looked for red thai curry paste
18:50: made some delicious dinner and played guitar while the food simmered
19:??: hung out with some neighbours who were having a party
20:??: wasting bandwidth
?? do the dishes, have a bath and read a book for a bit...
Cups of coffee: ZERO
I thought it might be interesting to take a sociological approach to the question raised by Pivoxa in this thread -
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=186911
So what do physicists actually do on a daily basis? Let's ask the physicists out there to report in on their activities for Thursday, September 27th, 2007. Oh yeah, tell us how many cups of coffee you had...
Let's see...
What I Did Today, by Oedipa Maas
8:00: Woke up and fell asleep again because I stayed up too late after a colloquium last night.
8:40: Got out of bed and checked personal e-mail while eating a bowl of yoghurt and muesli.
9:00: Tried to determine why my bicycle light didn't work last night.
9:15: Bicycled to work
9:35: Got to work and said "hi" to my labmate.
- reset the transducer coil in the probe that I'm working with and discussed with my labmate whether one of my cables was shorting out and causing my data collection script to die.
- played around with my data collection script.
-determined that error code -200279 was associated with the DAQ writing data into a location in a buffer which already had a piece of data that the CPU just hadn't yet got around to reading and storing.
- changed my code to increase the size of the buffer as the data collection rate increased.
12:30: went to the cafeteria with the folks in my research group
13:00: went back to the lab, talked for a bit with my labmate about the class he's TAing.
- did a couple test runs with really high data collection rates to see if the buffer was still filling up faster than the CPU was reading it. While the data collection was running I researched a book that I wanted to buy. I also reread a paragraph of a paper I've been reading and took a derivative of a probability in hopes that I might get some clues about the model described in the paper.
14:??: now satisfied that my script was running.
- took my apparatus partially apart and started to rebuild a higher mount for the probe.
- found out that part of the existing mount needed to stay bolted to the table
- listened to a couple CDs while working
16:00: visited the other people in my group in the neighbouring lab and looked up buying a kayak.
17:40: finished rebuilding the probe mount. plugged everything in and started another test run. chatted with labmate.
18:10: biked to grocery store and looked for red thai curry paste
18:50: made some delicious dinner and played guitar while the food simmered
19:??: hung out with some neighbours who were having a party
20:??: wasting bandwidth
?? do the dishes, have a bath and read a book for a bit...
Cups of coffee: ZERO
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