Return of the Super Lucas

Dear Diary,

Dr. Lucas came back today!  Just like he said he would!

I gave him a quick review of what I've managed to do over the past few days (graphs, numbers, etc.).  Afterwards, he went onto his computer, fixed the inversions, DMRG, and our local computing cluster during my lunch break with surgical precision.  The project is now way ahead!

About that computer running slowly:  There was some hullabaloo about how slowly the main computing cluster was running this morning. Detective Lucas, Ph. D. did some grade A sleuthing and found the culprit was a Matlab program not running in the queue (always queue!). We identified the original suspect since his digital fingerprints were all over the file (exposed by the 'top' command).  This guy was a former summer member of the group, but his alibi was airtight! As it turns out, it was John the whole time! Yay, Lucas!

Lucas then went over to Ms. Jenny Du with all the souvenir receipts from his trip. One thing to keep in mind if we travel, Diary, is that you can get reimbursed for the miles you drive.  So I'll have to keep a log of that (with receipts!).

Lucas lucked into a neato trick to access a file.  He had a bunch of folders in a directory with only one that had "redo" at the end of it.  He typed cd *redo and it worked!  If the folder isn't unique, then it goes to the first one on the list...Ok, so maybe that's not that interesting.  The way I originally understood the problem and solution was completely thrilling, but I didn't have it right until Lucas helped me out!

Meeting people is easy

Dear Diary,

John ran the meeting today while Professor Burke was out (or is it the other way around?!).

We started by introducing everyone to the new summer interns.  Jessica is going to be a senior in high school but doesn't think she has anything interesting to say; however, she does have an identical twin sister (so maybe her identical twin sister has nothing interesting to say?!).  Isabel is a junior in college and was raised in Shanghai.  Tarik is a senior in high school and captain of the improv Comedy Sports team.

For the record, my position on improv comedy favors Improv Olympic over Upright Citizens Brigade, but maybe we'll be treated to a pan left/pan right, a game of superheros, or a long form before the summer is finished!

Li also gave a stellar presentation, and I got to talk about you, diary!

I can't wait to get to know everyone and pump out some high quality physics.  It was great to meet everyone!

Meet the new guys

Dear Diary,

Professor Burke is taking on summer interns for reasons unclear.  In principle, they'll get some work experience.  In practice, they might try to take my job.  I've decided that everyday I will come in early and leave later than everyone to make sure that no one takes my desk or my wall calendar.

This will also allow me time to work on some things on my project.

Lucas was really nice in explaining some things from his notes today.  I learned what a Wigner crystal is!  It's a solid where background positive charges localize electrons.  Lucas used it to derive a low density limit expression for what everything should look like.  I can't wait to tell the boys back in the astronomy office that I got to work with a theoretical Wigner crystal.