![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danalwynToday I worked shift. This is not a good thing. It does not make me happy. Probably because I'm the useless guy, and nothing I do is very essential or very interesting. Things break, I write email, and nobody cares. If I have to check the monitors one more time...
I did see a praying mantis today. I don't see them very often so I stopped to watch as it stood there. It was, very obviously, trying to hide, and I was all like "Dude, you're a brown bug. This is a blue staircase. You sort of stand out" but it wouldn't move. So I nudged it with my foot, and it still didn't move. So I left, and when I came back later it was standing patiently somewhere else. Hence my conclusion: bugs are stupid.
I am now going to avenge my boredom by inflicting it upon you. Beware, there are pictures behind this (hopefully).
I will now bore you with insanely detailed descriptions of my workplace.
CDF, the Collider Detector at Fermilab, is located on the Tevatron main ring a Fermilab. As far as I can tell, the ring is divided into sectors, A, B, C and so forth. Our main competitor, D0, is located, as far as I know, at position D0. CDF is located at B0. Since you can talk about B0 (which is the main assembly hall) interchangeable with the term CDF, this can cause no end of confusion in conversation. Which is probably why CDF and D0 don't talk to each other much, it would be too confusing.
B0 is a largish industrial building created by the same team that brought us Half-Life and Quake. I came to that revelation when I paced by the control room windows for the nth time today. It has at least five different levels, even though it appears to be a three story building, all of which interchange, have small forts built into them, and are generally the sort of thing you would have in a first person shooter. The main feature of B0 is the pit where we put together CDF itself. CDF is the actual detector, which we roll in and out of the Collision Hall for severe maintenance issues.
Here's an image of the Tevatron and the Main Injector Ring, the Main Injector being the closer ring and the Tevatron being farther away. If straight ahead is twelve o'clock, than B0 is the orange building on the Tevatron ring at about 10:00.
Just to give you an idea of scale, Wilson Hall is in that aerial photo. Wilson Hall is fourteen stories tall. It's a rather large building. Can you find it?
Here's CDF in the Assembly Hall, being rolled out. Note that the blue gantry overhead is actually below ground level:
Yes, those are real people.
CDF itself in that picture is in a recessed area of the floor that leads to the Collision Hall. There is another entrance to the Collision Hall that I know of that goes out of the ground in the back (the Collision Hall is actually where physics happens) making it the ideal place to start a team in a capture the flag game. In the walls of the pit there are also several platforms that appear to be very awkwardly placed now for storage, and appear to be some of those strange, inaccessible, single purpose platforms that you always find snipers sitting on.
The Pit is recessed in the middle of a warehouse-like structure which is filled with toolboxes, cabinets, and various toxic or other highly dangerous chemicals, as well as delicate computer equipment. There's also another raised floor for equipment storage off on one side, above the flammable gas place. You can see a bit more of the Pit and the background in this image:
Notice, one of those platforms I mentioned is behind CDF in that shot, with the white railing. It looks useful then, but with CDF in the beamline, it looks sort of strange.
That picture was shot from the second story of the building along the south wall, where the control room is located. The control room is where I spend my eight hour shift, which is sort of neat. It's packed with huge banks of computers and is manned twenty-four hours by highly trained professionals, and eight hours a day by me. The banks of computers make awesome things to hide behind, and they really add to the scenery (as do all the changeable cameras that we have mounted to there).
Here's a picture of what the control room used to look like (they've added some monitors, and switched to flat screen):
And here's how the control room appeared in 2003, (much how it appears today):
Another shot of the control room:
I could go on, about the level of cubicles above ours, and the several emergency stairwells that provide covert access to all levels, but have convenient cut-off points. Or about the multiple doors to the building, and the storage of explosive materials. And the halon fire extinguishers, the multimedia rooms and the industrial computer rooms that provide cover for the entrances. But I think I'll stop for tonight, since I have an 8am shift.
I'm not suggesting anything, but if someone could make a B0 FPS, it would totally rock.
I did see a praying mantis today. I don't see them very often so I stopped to watch as it stood there. It was, very obviously, trying to hide, and I was all like "Dude, you're a brown bug. This is a blue staircase. You sort of stand out" but it wouldn't move. So I nudged it with my foot, and it still didn't move. So I left, and when I came back later it was standing patiently somewhere else. Hence my conclusion: bugs are stupid.
I am now going to avenge my boredom by inflicting it upon you. Beware, there are pictures behind this (hopefully).
I will now bore you with insanely detailed descriptions of my workplace.
CDF, the Collider Detector at Fermilab, is located on the Tevatron main ring a Fermilab. As far as I can tell, the ring is divided into sectors, A, B, C and so forth. Our main competitor, D0, is located, as far as I know, at position D0. CDF is located at B0. Since you can talk about B0 (which is the main assembly hall) interchangeable with the term CDF, this can cause no end of confusion in conversation. Which is probably why CDF and D0 don't talk to each other much, it would be too confusing.
B0 is a largish industrial building created by the same team that brought us Half-Life and Quake. I came to that revelation when I paced by the control room windows for the nth time today. It has at least five different levels, even though it appears to be a three story building, all of which interchange, have small forts built into them, and are generally the sort of thing you would have in a first person shooter. The main feature of B0 is the pit where we put together CDF itself. CDF is the actual detector, which we roll in and out of the Collision Hall for severe maintenance issues.
Here's an image of the Tevatron and the Main Injector Ring, the Main Injector being the closer ring and the Tevatron being farther away. If straight ahead is twelve o'clock, than B0 is the orange building on the Tevatron ring at about 10:00.
Just to give you an idea of scale, Wilson Hall is in that aerial photo. Wilson Hall is fourteen stories tall. It's a rather large building. Can you find it?
Here's CDF in the Assembly Hall, being rolled out. Note that the blue gantry overhead is actually below ground level:
Yes, those are real people.
CDF itself in that picture is in a recessed area of the floor that leads to the Collision Hall. There is another entrance to the Collision Hall that I know of that goes out of the ground in the back (the Collision Hall is actually where physics happens) making it the ideal place to start a team in a capture the flag game. In the walls of the pit there are also several platforms that appear to be very awkwardly placed now for storage, and appear to be some of those strange, inaccessible, single purpose platforms that you always find snipers sitting on.
The Pit is recessed in the middle of a warehouse-like structure which is filled with toolboxes, cabinets, and various toxic or other highly dangerous chemicals, as well as delicate computer equipment. There's also another raised floor for equipment storage off on one side, above the flammable gas place. You can see a bit more of the Pit and the background in this image:
Notice, one of those platforms I mentioned is behind CDF in that shot, with the white railing. It looks useful then, but with CDF in the beamline, it looks sort of strange.
That picture was shot from the second story of the building along the south wall, where the control room is located. The control room is where I spend my eight hour shift, which is sort of neat. It's packed with huge banks of computers and is manned twenty-four hours by highly trained professionals, and eight hours a day by me. The banks of computers make awesome things to hide behind, and they really add to the scenery (as do all the changeable cameras that we have mounted to there).
Here's a picture of what the control room used to look like (they've added some monitors, and switched to flat screen):
And here's how the control room appeared in 2003, (much how it appears today):
Another shot of the control room:
I could go on, about the level of cubicles above ours, and the several emergency stairwells that provide covert access to all levels, but have convenient cut-off points. Or about the multiple doors to the building, and the storage of explosive materials. And the halon fire extinguishers, the multimedia rooms and the industrial computer rooms that provide cover for the entrances. But I think I'll stop for tonight, since I have an 8am shift.
I'm not suggesting anything, but if someone could make a B0 FPS, it would totally rock.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-11 02:35 am (UTC)It does look like an interesting place to watch, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-11 03:04 am (UTC)We keep the zombies in the basement where they fight the mutated rats that get out of the beamline.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-11 03:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-11 12:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-12 08:38 pm (UTC)Seriously.
Do tell us about the covert access though. I must know these things if I ever visit.