All posts by Dona

LHC

Humor, Technology

The only things I really know about the Large Hadron Collider are what I read in Angles and Demons. Or was that The Da Vinci Code? Or maybe it is a different supercollider altogether. I know it’s not Fermilab. I’ve been there, and besides, my dad’s ship is helping to save the world from its radiation, but that’s another story.

Whatever — the Internet’s abuzz today with LHC references which are mainly jokes.

I didn’t understand this one from xkcd.com until I did a search on LHC and saw what was going on today in Europe.

Luckily we have a way of knowing if the world has been destroyed:

Has the Large Hadron Collider Destroyed the World Yet?

If you know how to view the source code*, do it on that page — it’s worth it.

*on windows, right click and choose view source or view page source. If you are on a Mac — you’re on your own.

What I did during the hurricane

Weather

So while Tina was blogging drunkly from a pig roast, I was bored out of my head. Hanna the hurricane caused our electricity fail in the morning (right in the middle of my shower — I had to finish showering in complete darkness since we have no windows in our downstairs bathroom). Reports from PEPCO were that we may get power by 10 am on Sunday, but because the lights only affected 6 houses on our block, I didn’t have high hopes that we’d actually get electricity that soon.

Dean and the kids played Sorry. I don’t like Sorry. I wanted to play Catch Phrase, so I sulked in the living room and read the Washington Post.

Then I took a nap.

After the nap Clare and I went to Borders so she could pick out a book to read for a research project for her English literature class. We systematically removed 40 books from the shelves and Clare read the book descriptions and first few paragraphs to get an idea of what the book was about. She narrowed down her choice to 7 books which we bought (along with 5 that I decided I couldn’t live without having on my shelves but probably never read).

By then it was 5:30. We went home and Dean cooked dinner (our stove top works without electricity and he’s the one who makes the fried fish).

After dinner, terrified with the prospect of more board games, I suggested we go see a movie. Dean Clare and I ended up seeing Vicky Cristina Barcelona (which I’d heard was great, but I don’t really like Woody Allen movies so was not really all that impressed except with Penélope Cruz) while Andrew stayed home and played with fire went to bed early, leaving the candles burning in the window.

At midnight PEPCO came by and very loudly restored our electricity — wow 10 hours early…

The end.