Man, I've had a blog for how many months and haven't included a song in a title in some way?  These first two weeks have been my introduction to the life of a working physicist -- specifically a government-employed physicist.  Even more specifically, as I found out today, most of whose co-workers are computer scientists.

The lessons I learned today are two-fold: Never go to a set of 5-minute talks.  You will not remember anyone who spoke (ok, maybe one or two) and 5 minutes of talking means nobody gets to explain anything.  Also, they will go over 5 minutes trying, but still not really manage to talk about much, and you won't want to listen because of all of the other talks lined up after them.  Those were some of the dullest 4 hours I have lived through, my friends.  Wow.

On the brighter side, I am doing work now!  It's a lot nicer than sitting in a cubicle all day doing nothing.  Now I read books and articles, and try and make octave do math.  I'm even getting plausible numbers!  Today, I also experienced my first research group meeting, which was new and neat.  Getting a bunch of people together who are working on a common project and hearing ideas, suggestions, etc, was rather exciting, and certainly made me feel more a part of something.  I think a lot of people come in and out of the group, so people don't really go hugely out of their way to welcome newcomers, which makes sense, but didn't make me feel very at home very quickly.

That said, everyone's very friendly and accessible, and it's fun learning new personalities and seeing how they interact.  Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be writing much about my day to day research, as sharing what I'm doing is discouraged, but I'm already looking for the next thing to do and I'll make sure there are no problems sharing it.  That's what science is about, after all.