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| Your personal background. | |
| I guess the best way to describe me in a nutshell is that I'm a geek wannabe. I'm not an "official" geek by profession, but I still exhibit strong geek-like qualities. I'm a career budget analyst working for the Department of Energy. Although I have a college degree and think I'm fairly smart, my formal education didn't have anything to do with IT, science or advanced mathematics (I have an accounting degree). But I've always had a keen interest in anything science-related. When I'm on the Internet or watching TV, I will spend most of my leisure time watching the science-type shows or reading about the latest news on computers, astronomy, medicine, and so on. I feel fortunate to be working for DOE and being tangentially exposed to all the high-end research. Most people don't realize that DOE is the "main" agency for the US government's pure science research, and is responsible for the largest national labs. In fact, I worked for DOE at the Hanford site in Washington State for about 17 years before moving to the Midwest a couple years ago. DOE has nothing to do with LIGO, except that it's on the Rhode-Island-sized Hanford site, which is DOE owns. Even though I work on the Environmental Management (nuclear cleanup) mission of DOE, I still hear from time to time about the goings-on within DOE's Office of Science and at the Labs, which is cool perk for someone like me. Back in 2000 or so, I had the opportunity to take a tour of LIGO with my stepson during take-your-kid-to-work-day for DOE and its contractors. It was fantastic. Even though LIGO isn't related to DOE's activity at Hanford (surprisingly many don't even know it's even there), the take-your-kid-to-work organizers arranged for a tour of LIGO as part of the festivities. Visually speaking, it wasn't overly exciting except perhaps the long concrete arms (I thought I was going to see a big-ass Death Star laser shooting out 2 miles down a tunnel). But I found the presentation explaining the concept of GWs and what LIGO was trying to do absolutely riveting. The head LIGO dude gave the fabulous presentation and tour (can't remember his name, sorry). His passion for the project was contagious and he very effectively "dumbed it down" so we could understand everything. So I feel like have a "cosmic connection" to the project. After the tour, I couldn't resist taking my cane and whacking the hell out of one the concrete arms. (not really, but I did wonder about it, though) I've known about the distributed computing concept for years, but never joined one for some reason. A couple of years ago, I almost joined the folding@home (protein folding) but never got around to doing it. I recently learned about the E@H project on the MSNBC website and just had to join in the fray. | |
| Your opinions about Einstein@Home | |
| I'm a fan of LIGO. Roll waves!! See personal background. | |
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