This morning Joe looked at my code and made me notice that for some reason the query to the Spectrum Analyzer made by netSock.recv(1024) contained two answers. It was like the buffer contained the answer two different queries.

After some experiment I found that basically the GPIB interface wasn't switching from the "auto 1" to the "auto 0" mode as it should. I rewrote part of the code and that seemed have solved the problem.

Still don't understand why it used to work in the past and then it stopped.

I was told that, as of last weekend, we now have the capability to save full data for a month, whereas before it was something like 3 days. However, my attempts to get the data from the accidentally-shorted EW2 channel in the Guralp box have all been epic failures. My other data is okay, despite my not saving it for several days after it was recorded. So, my question is, how long can the data actually be saved, and when did the saving capability change?

Alberto, Steve,

While I was moving a cart near by the PSL table I pushed the red emergency button that turns off the PSL laser. We had to unlock the button and then power cycle the laser driver to turn the laser back on.

I relocked MZ, FSS, PMC and I'm now waiting for the power to finish ramping up back to the previous value.

Yesterday Rana and I needed some room on the white board in the Control Room. We had to erase some of the stuff present on the board despite the bif warning "Do Not Erase".

This is how it looked like before erasing.

This afternoon I inadvertently disconnected one of the power cables coming from the power supply on the floor next to the OMC cabinet and going to the DCPD Interface Box.

Rob reconnected the cable as it was before.

This morning, after Steve pointed out that the readout RFAMPD_DC was zero, I thought of realigning the beam on the photodiode. Maybe I touched the lens or the beam splitter that send the beam on the diode when I installed an other beam splitter to make the measurement of the calibration between two ThorLabs PDA255 photodiodes.

After aligning the beam on the RFAMPD, the voltage of the DC readout was lower than it used to be (C1:IOO-RFAMPD_DC ~ 0.4 now vs. 4 as it was on November 4th).

I maximized the DC readout but the problem seems to be that the beam spot is not a round TEM00. In particular the spot looks like that of a TEM10 mode.

Since we're looking at the MC transmitted beam, is it possible that the MC is locked on the wrong mode?

Check out the attached picture.

 Instead of doing RCG stuff, I went to Millikan to work on data analysis as I couldn't stand the fumes from the construction.  (this morning, 8am) 

 Diesel fumes are pumped away from control room AC intakes  with the help of newly installed  reflector boxes on the CES wall  fans.........see # 2272

A poor lonely SR785 was found this morning roaming around in the lab in evident violation of the fundamental rule which requires all the equipment on carts to be brought back inside the lab right after use.

The people and the professors related to the case should take immediate action to repair for their misdeed.

We're going to have to reinstate the policy of No food / organic trash *anywhere* in the 40m.  Everyone has been pretty good, keeping the food trash to the one can right next to the sink, but that is no longer sufficient, since we've been invaded by an army of ants:

We are going back to the old policy of Take your trash out to the dumpsters outside.  I'm sure there are some old wives tales about how exercise after eating helps your digestion, or something like that, so no more laziness allowed!

 One day I'll get to be part of the krew

This totally creeped me out when I found it wandering around on the floor not so far from my desk:

I found this very interesting German maker of cool cable cutting tools. It's called Jokari.

We should keep it as a reference for the future if we want to buy something like that, ie RF coax cable cutting knives.

http://www.jokari.de/en.htm

Yeah, this looks nice.

And I also like to have something I have attached. This is "HOZAN P-90", but we should investigate American ones
so that we can cut the wires classified by AWG.

SVN down

mafalda down

I am guessing that the NFS file system hangup may have caused some machines to get into an awkward state. We may be best off doing a controlled power cycle of everything...

svn is back after starting apache on nodus.

http://lhocds.ligo-wa.caltech.edu:8000/40m/ApacheOnNodus

mafalda is up now.

I found that the cable for mafalda (the sole red cable) had a broken latch.
The cable was about falling off from the switch. As a first-aid, I used this technique to put a new latch, and put it into the switch.

Now I can logged in it. I did not rebooted it.

Prof Alan Weistein guided the 24 student through the 40m. His performance was rated as  an enthusiastic 9.5

DTT stopped working for recent data. An 'ls' in the frames/full/ directory reveals:

drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls 258048 Feb  3 12:26 9807
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls 258048 Feb  4 16:13 9808
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls 262144 Feb  5 19:59 9809
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls 258048 Feb  6 23:46 9810
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls 258048 Feb  8 03:33 9811
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls 262144 Feb  9 07:19 9812
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls 253952 Feb 10 11:06 9813
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls 266240 Feb 11 14:53 9814
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls 266240 Feb 12 18:39 9815
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls 266240 Feb 13 22:26 9816
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls 262144 Feb 15 02:13 9817
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls 253952 Feb 16 05:59 9818
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls 241664 Feb 17 09:46 9819
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls  28672 Feb 17 12:22 9820
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls  32768 Feb 17 15:06 6663
drwxr-xr-x 2 controls controls  73728 Feb 17 23:39 6664
controls@fb /frames/full $ date
Thu Feb 17 23:39:27 PST 2011

Today we tried the Schmitt trigger DFD, and while it works it does not improve the noise performance.  At least part of our problem is coming from the discrete nature of our DFD algorithm, so I would propose that an industrious day job person codes up a new DFD which avoids switching.  We can probably do this by mixing the input signal (after high-passing) with a time-delayed copy of itself... as we do now, but without the comparator.  This has the disadvantage of giving an amplitude dependent output, but since we are working in the digital land we can DIVIDE.  If we mix the signal with itself (without delay) to get a rectified version, and low-pass it a little, we can use this for normalization.  The net result should be something like:

output = LP2[ s(t) * s(t - dt) / LP1[ s(t) * s(t) ]],

where s(t) is the high-passed input and LP is a low-pass filter.  Remember not to divide by zero.

I modified the c1gfd.mdl simulink model.  I made a backup as c1gfd_20110325.mdl. 

The first change was to use a top_names block to put everything in.  The block is labeled ALS.  So all the channels will now be C1:ALS-GFD_SOMETHING.  This means medm channel names will need to be updated.  Also, the filter modules need to be updated in foton because of this.

I then proceeded to add the suggested changes made by Matt.  To avoid a divide by zero case, I added a saturation part which saturates at 1e-9 (note this is positive) and 1e9.

Suresh is captivating his audience with gravity waves on last Friday, March 25

.....Happy.... Birthday.... to.... Joseph... and... Jamie...Happy....Birthday..... to.... You............sing with us........Happy Birthday.....to you

The little red all terrain cargo wagon 40" x 18"  has just arrived on pneumatic wheels.

Model #29, 200 lbs max load at 26 PSI,  minimum age requirement 1.5 years

An error this evening on rossa: dataviewer not working due to some font errors:

controls@rossa:~ 0$ dataviewer
Connecting.... done
Warning: Not all children have same parent in XtManageChildren
Warning: Not all children have same parent in XtManageChildren
Warning: Not all children have same parent in XtManageChildren
Warning: Not all children have same parent in XtManageChildren
Warning: Not all children have same parent in XtManageChildren
Warning:
    Name: FilterText
    Class: XmTextField
    Character '\52' not supported in font.  Discarded.

Warning:
    Name: FilterText
    Class: XmTextField
    Character '\56' not supported in font.  Discarded.

Warning:
    Name: FilterText
    Class: XmTextField
    Character '\170' not supported in font.  Discarded.

Warning:

etc.............

If I catch anyone putting small booties into the large bootie bin, I will make said person eat small booties.

 I propose we work around this problem with giant flip-flops.  These are in the vein of the take-off-your-shoes-and-put-on-Crocs, without the taking off your shoes part.  They're a little annoying on the sticky mats, but otherwise great.  They are also super easy to put on and take off without hands, so there's no excuse for wearing them around the control room. 

I propose we buy many pairs of the smalls in green (since we already have one green small...they are big on me, so should be just right for most people), and a few mediums in, say, blue, and a few larges in black, and then maybe a few extra larges in green for people with extraordinarily large feet (they only have 3 colors).  Then we can keep a few pairs of each by each door to the lab, and have no more tracking dirty control room filth into the lab.

 I would like to suggest a trial run on these....Ergomates and the cleanboot!

REPLY by JCD:  Are these going to trap dirt and be impossible to clean though?  The nice thing about Crocs and the giant flip flops is that they are solid and if they get dirty you can do a quick wipedown, and they're good as new.

 The Cleanboot is washable and reusable!

We discovered that the analog whitening filter of the REFL55_I board is not switching when we operate the button on the user interface. We checked with the Stanford analyzer that the transfer function always correspond to the whitening on.

The digital one is actually switching. We decided to keep the digital de-whitening on to compensate for the analog one. Otherwise we get a very bad shape of the PDH signal. Sorry Rana...

 I forgot to say that the analog gain of the REFL55 channels has been reduced to 9db

This turned out to just be a loose connection of the ribbon cable from Contec board in the LSC IO chassis at the BIO break-out box.  The DSUB connector at the break-out box was not strain relieved!  I reseated the connector and strain relieved it and now everything is switching fine.

I wonder if we'll ever learn to strain relieve...

controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master 0$ ls
C1IOO_LKIN_OUT_MTRX.adl   C1IOO_MC_ASS_LOCKIN5.adl     C1IOO_WFS1_I.adl             C1IOO_WFS_LKIN.adl
C1IOO_LOCKMC.adl          C1IOO_MC_ASS_LOCKIN6.adl     C1IOO_WFS1_Q.adl             C1IOO_WFS_MASTER.adl
C1IOO_LOCKMC_BAK.adl      C1IOO_MC_ASS_PIT_LOCKIN.adl  C1IOO_WFS1_SETTINGS.adl      C1IOO_WFS_MASTER.adl~
C1IOO_MC_ALIGN.adl        C1IOO_MC_ASS_YAW_LOCKIN.adl  C1IOO_WFS1_SETTINGS.adl.old  C1IOO_WFS_MASTER_BAK.adl
C1IOO_MC_ALIGN.adl~       C1IOO_MC_LOCKINS.adl         C1IOO_WFS2_I.adl             C1IOO_WFS_OUTMATRIX.adl
C1IOO_MC_ALIGN_BAK.adl    C1IOO_MC_SERVO.adl           C1IOO_WFS2_Q.adl             C1IOO_WFS_QPD.adl
C1IOO_MC_ASS.adl          C1IOO_MC_TRANS_QPD.adl       C1IOO_WFS2_SETTINGS.adl      C1IOO_WFS_QPD.adl.old
C1IOO_MC_ASS_LOCKIN1.adl  C1IOO_Mech_Shutters.adl      C1IOO_WFS2_SETTINGS.adl.old  fmX
C1IOO_MC_ASS_LOCKIN2.adl  C1IOO_MODECLEANER.adl        C1IOO_WFS_HEADS.adl          junk
C1IOO_MC_ASS_LOCKIN3.adl  C1IOO_QPDS.adl               C1IOO_WFS_HEADS.adl.old      master
C1IOO_MC_ASS_LOCKIN4.adl  C1IOO_QPDS_BAK.adl           C1IOO_WFS_INMATRIX.adl       svn-commit.tmp~
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/caltech/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/isc/c1/medm/c1ioo 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/isc/c1/medm/c1ioo/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/isc/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/isc/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master 0$ cd master
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/isc/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master 0$ helppp
helppp: command not found
controls@rosalba:/opt/rtcds/userapps/trunk/isc/c1/medm/c1ioo/master/master/master/master 127$ help me
bash: help: no help topics match `me'.  Try `help help' or `man -k me' or `info me'.

its an acquired taste, but its a must since we're sending an interferometer to India

I noticed that the MC3 LL sensor was apparently dead according to its suspension screen. Since it was only the fast ADC channel and not the SLOW PDmon, I could tell that it was just in the ADC cabling. I pushed in a few of the MC3 sensor cables on the front and back of the PD whitening board and it came back OK. According to this trend of the past 40 days and 40 nights, it started slipping on this past Wednesday morning.

Was anyone walking near MC2 or the suspension electronics racks before noon on Wednesday (Oct. 2nd)?

 Is this your illegally installed HP bench power supply?

If so, or if not but you care about the signal that passes through these amplifiers, I suggest you remove this temporary power supply and wire the power from the rack power supplies through the fuse blocks and possibly use a voltage regulator.

In 24 hours, that power supply will be disconnected and the wires snipped if they are still there.

 Steve has promised to add another row of fuses to the LSC rack first thing in the morning.  Then, during Wednesday Chores, we can move the wires from the power supply to the fused power.

STEVE:  NEVER MIND about doing this in the morning.  Let's chat at the lunch meeting about what needs to be done to power things down, then back up again, in a nice order, and we can do it after lunch.  

So, please do not do anything to the LSC rack tomorrow!  Thank you.

 The north side of the LSC rack is full. I installed more DIN connectors with fuses on the south side of the rack 1Y2

The access to this may be a little bit awkward. You just remove the connector, wire it and put it back in.

 The ELOG was frozen, with this in the .log file:   

GET /40m/?id=1279&select=1&rsort=Type HTTP/1.1

Cache-Control: no-cache

Connection: Keep-Alive

Pragma: no-cache

Accept: */*

Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate

From: bingbot(at)microsoft.com

Host: nodus.ligo.caltech.edu

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; bingbot/2.0; +http://www.bing.com/bingbot.htm)

  (hopefully there's a way to hide from the Bing Bot like we did from the Google bot)

 The 40m experienced a building-wide power failure for ~30 seconds at ~7:38 pm today.

Thought that might be important...

Last week Rana and I struggled to figure out how to un-full-screen windows on the Ubuntu workstations that appeared to be stuck in some sort of full screen mode such that the "Titlebar" was not on the screen.  Nothing seemed to work.  We were in despair.

Well, there is now hope: it appears that this really is a "fullscreen" mode that can be activated by hitting F11.  It can therefore easily be undone by hitting F11 again.

Yesterday elog was excruciatingly slow, and bingbot was the culprit. It was slurping down elog entries and attachments so fast that it brought nodus to its knees. So I created a robots.txt file disallowing all bots, and placed it in the elog's scripts directory (which gets served at the top level). Today the log feels a little snappier -- there's now much less bot traffic to compete with when using it.

We might be able to let selected bots back in with a crawl rate limit, if anyone misses searching the elog on bing.

Oh, this is cool! Thanks!
I could not figure out how to place robot.txt as it was not so obvious how elogd handles the files in the "logfile" directory.

 Larry and Nicolas

Larry's transfer function measurements suddenly started returning 0dB 0degrees when before there was some fake filter in the C1:ALS-OFFSETTER2 filter bank.

We looked in the filter bank and his filter was gone. So I created a new filter called LARRYP in FM2. We also disabled the output so he could drive the filter bank and test his TF code.

 This is ridiculous.

How many RGs can I fit into one button???