I’m currently in San Diego to attend my cousin’s wedding. (It’s going to be held at the Wild Animal Park, so yeah, she’s pretty cool.)
On the plane ride here I was scribbling down some ideas on how to explain Higgs physics (more on that later) when the guy next to me asks, “Are you from Fermi?” Unfortunately, I didn’t get his name, but he was a software engineer who wrote some of the user interface for the Tevatron control center. Specifically, I think he wrote the GUI for the anti-proton injector, but since I’m a theorist and they don’t let us near that stuff, I’m not entirely clear which part that is.
Anyway, after some talk about the LHC, and the consternation about the recent magnet failure and helium leak, he told me some entertaining stories about troubles at the Tevatron.
Peculiar Velocity 