Life as a Physicist

I’m sitting in the Top Quark meeting for CERN. A few things:

• They are studying more systematic errors on their MC than we have on our data.
• The room is packed. I think the number of people here is about equivalent to the combined total in the D0 physics groups.
• I can’t see a single Apple computer. This is very odd as just about everyone I know is switching to the Apple.
• I’m surrounded by students. And they are all switching between taking notes in Word (I kid you not) and using face book and using IM. All at once!
• It is kind-a cool to see ATLAS reference Tevatron results.
• The fraction of women over here is much higher than in the US.
• I’m seeing about half of the people I saw last week at Fermilab here.
• My email is full of emails from D0 people. It is odd looking around here and seeing some of them here.