power outages

Last week tuesday, wednesday and thursday (31st March, 1st April and 2nd April), I got to the office in the morning, like any other day, and within about an hour or so the power was out..... with no warning. It came back on and then off again and then on again and then off again. So, we had to turn QCLOPS off. The intermittent power outages continued the next two days as well. We have now decided to get a UPS that can run for a longer number of hours. We considered the option of getting a generator but decided against it due to a number of logistical reasons.

Hopefully this would solve our power problems.

~Ekua

"yum yum yum"

"yum, yum, yum" is what my good friend's little 1year old would say when he is hungry or wants to eat what he sees someone else eating.

Last week, I was told by Joanna, the laser center secretary, that I had a parcel. The parcel looked more like a book. Well, I checked where it was from and it read "Austria". Hmmm, who could this be from? ;-) On removing the outer cardboard, I found a nicely shaped/designed wooden square box. What could be in it? At this point, it looked more like food than a book. Well, when I opened the wooden box, I found quite the surprise. It was a chocolate cake that had been shipped from Austria ... I believe. Of course I knew right away who sent it in. Thanks Prof. Gmachl!!!!

I brought some of it to work and shared it with the folks at the laser center. We ate it with a "bucket" of vanilla icecream. See pictures. It was indeed a very yum yum cake and event!



~Ekua

Finally out of reach!

The new holder that was being constructed for the retro-reflector was finally done last week Thursday, by evening time. We got some guys to come in on the friday to drill holes in the wall for us before the rail was mounted. In the beginning, I was a little ....actually not a little....I was very very nervous about how stable this thing would be since we were going to put the retro-reflector up there. I think I was beginning to sound annoying at some point with my stability questions. What if the retro falls? The guys who fixed the rails on the wall convinced me that it was very stable and that I did not have to worry about anything. They said even a ceiling fan could hang on the rail and be ok. Oh well! Sounds convincing, right?

We then spent the weekend aligning the system. This proved to be a little nerve wrecking since everything was way up high now. We had to use ladders to reach the retro to adjust it. As for the main part of the QCLOPS, we mounted it on a table, thick ply wood and stacks of packaging foam to get it to the height of the retro. See the pictures to get what I mean. Charles and Peter (Charles colleague) had to do most of the lifting and aligning beyond this point. I just sat there and gave instructions. I really don't do well with height and also with my current state (some of you know what I mean here), it's just waay too dangerous to be climbing tables and ladders :-) The system is now running! At this height, the hope is that no one is more than 7ft tall at UCC!

While typing this, I'm simultaneously trying to load some pictures. I might have to give that up for now and continue tomorrow. The internet is slow and so it's taking forever to load up.

Oh by the way, we got a special parcel yesterday (tuesday).I'll talk about that hopefully tomorrow.



~Ekua