hunting and gathering

Basking in the glow
Of SCIENCE, mes amis, one
Can stand to learn much.


So the whole someone-else-will-get-an-apartment-for-me thing seems to have fallen through, and I'm neck-deep in French and English websites, trying to find a damn room for four months.  If you know of anyone who is looking for a temporary roommate, do let me know.  Interesting fact: roughly 80% of the people who live in Switzerland rent their homes/apartments because it is so damn expensive to buy them.

I am learning more and more about CERN during my time here (surprise!).  There's a lecture tomorrow morning about the LHC that I'm thinking I'll go to.  The LHC is definitely off right now; my team and I were talking about it at lunch, and I guess just that machine draws 20% of Genève's power, so it is off until springtime when human beings don't need energy for doing things like... heating their houses.  What else... oh, yesterday I got to see CERN's server farm, including the backbone of the Internet (for this region of Switzerland)!  That's pretty sweet.  It's a bunch of fibre-optic cables in a really obnoxious yellow case.  There are huge cooling units in the room with all those servers, and one of my friends who works there said that if the cooling units go down the temperature can rise 1 degree Celsius per minute.  That's hot!

One of my lovely coworkers, Jan, has offered to lend me one of his bikes for the time I'm here.  I got to ride to the grocery store!  It's super fast!

I also got my first letter from home today.  Hoooooooray.  Seriously, y'all, feel free to send things to my desk.  Or, if you want a postcard from lovely, mountainous Suisse, send me your address.  :)