Apparently I broke this when I added op540m to the webstatus page.  It's fixed now.

in the rack next to the printer.  It sounds like a fan is hitting something.

Ever since July 22, the backup script that runs on fb40m has failed to ssh to ldas-cit.ligo.caltech.edu to back up our trend frames and /cvs/cds.

This was a new failure mode which the scripts didn't catch, so I only noticed it when fb40m was rebooted a couple of days ago.

Alex fixed the problem (RAID array was configured with the wrong IP address, conflicting with the outside world), and I modified the script ( /cvs/cds/caltech/scripts/backup/rsync.backup ) to handle the new directory structure Alex made.

Now the backup is current and the automated script should keep it so, at least until the next time fb40m is rebooted...

Steve, Rana, Ben, Jenne, Alberto, Rob

UPS in the vacuum rack failed this afternoon, cutting off power to the vacuum control system.  After plugging all the stuff that had been plugged into the UPS into the wall, everything came back up.  It appears that V1 closed appropriately, TP1 spun down gracefully on its own battery, and the pressure did not rise much above 3e-6 torr. 

The UPS fizzed and smelled burnt.  Rana will order a new, bigger, better, faster one.

We've had a devil of a time getting V1 to open, due to the Interlock code. 

The short story is that if C1:Vac-PTP1_pressure > 1.0, the interlock code won't let you push the button to open V1 (but it won't close V1). 

PTP1 is broken, so the interlock was frustrating us.   It's been broken for a while, but this hasn't bitten us till now.

We tried swapping out the controller for PTP1 with one of Bob's from the Bake lab, but it didn't work. 

It said "NO COMM" in the C1:Vac-PTP1_status, so I figured it wouldn't update if we just used tdswrite to change C1:Vac-PTP1_pressure to 0.0.  This actually worked, and V1 is now open.  This is a temporary fix.

There were no injuries...Now we need to get some new chairs.

This morning I found that all the front end computers down. A failure of the RFM network drove all the computers down.

I was about to restart them all, but it wasn't necessary. After I power cycled and restarted C1SOSVME all the other computers and RFM network came back to their green status on the MEDM screen. After that I just had to reset and then restart C1SUSVME1/2.

I (think I) restarted DMF.  It's on Mafalda, running in matlab (not the complied version which Rana was having trouble with back in the day).  To start Matlab, I did "nohup matlab", ran mdv_config, then started seisBLRMS.m running.  Since I used nohup, I then closed the terminal window, and am crossing my fingers in hopes that it continues to work.  I would have used Screen, but that doesn't seem to work on Mafalda.

 Just kidding. That plan didn't work.  The new plan: I started a terminal window on Op540, which is ssh-ed into Mafalda, and started up matlab to run seisBLRMS.  That window is still open. 

Because Unix was being finicky, I had to open an xterm window (xterm -bg green -fg black), and then ssh to mafalda and run matlab there.  The symptoms which led to this were that even though in a regular terminal window on Op540, ssh-ed to mafalda, I could access tconvert, I could not make gps.m work in matlab.  When Rana ssh-ed from Allegra to Op540 to Mafalda and ran matlab, he could get gps.m to work.  So it seems like it was  a Unix terminal crazy thing. Anyhow, starting an xterm window on Op540m and ssh-ing to mafalda from there seemed to work.

Hopefully this having a terminal window open and running DMF will be a temporary solution, and we can get the compiled version to work again soon.

rob, koji, steve

We noticed some water (about a cup) on the floor under the NESLAB chiller today.  We put the chiller up on blocks and took off the side panel for a cursory inspection, but found no obvious leaks.  We'll keep an eye on it.

 The culprit has been found:  One of the bottles of chiller water had a tiny leak in it, and apparently the floor is sloped just right to make it look like the water had been coming from under the chiller.  All is well again in the world of chilled water.

Jenne, Koji

Tonight we found that the wireless for Martian network was down.
We inspected the router and found the power was down. The power of the weather station was also down.

By touching the power outlet which they are connected, the power changes on and off.
This problematic power outlet has a label "L#17" just below the photograph of the mk I (1989).
The plug was connected to the left one.

As it was scary, we moved the power plug to the next one (L#19).
The wireless router and the weather station were powered now,
though the weather station is showing a wrong time in its clock.

I spent part of the afternoon cleaning up the area next to the Mode Cleaner where we keep all of our RF stuff:  Attenuators, BNC/SMA/LEMO adapters, Mini-Circuits items, and all sorts of other things which are useful while looking at our electronics/RF stuff.

We got another set of "Lyon" drawers, which aided in the organization process....Bob ordered 2, so we now have a 'spare' drawer set if anyone can think of something else to organize (unless this was premeditated for optics or something else?).

As you can see in the picture, (1) it's no longer a total disaster over there, and (2) some of the drawers have sub-divisions to make it faster and easier to find what you're looking for.  Please help out by putting things away in their proper place, and adding more labels or dividers to the drawers if there's something else which needs a 'spot'.

Awesome.

I propose that anyone who tries to do this kind of thoroughgoing cleaning should make an e-mail to call everyone available to join just for some hours
because every member has a responsibility to keep the lab organized.

And we have the list of things to do: Electronics (now it is halfway) / Cables / Optics / Screws / Tools ...

The PSL enclosure HEPAs turned on at 30%

I laid down the floor a BNC cable from the Y End table to the BNC Chamber. The cable runs next to the east wall.

I'm leaving the cable because it can turn useful in the future.

I'm tying the end of the cable to a big threaded steel rod on the side of the BS chamber.

I've also labeled as TRY

We have thousands of miles of BNC cables in the lab but we still don't find one when we need it. I decided to solve the problem.

This morning I tried to tidy up the several cable rack the we have in the lab.

i tried to dedicate each rack to a speecific type of cables: special cables, hand made cables, BNCs, LEMOs, etc.

In particular I tryed to concentrate BNC cable of several lengths on the rack near by the ITMX chamber.

People are invited to preserve the organization.

This would be a good trial once you put the label "BNC only" on the wall.

Done! Check it out.

The 40m produces a large amount of paper and cardboard waste. It would be worth it if we disposed those kind of garbages for recycling.

I set up two new garbage bins in the lab: one in the control rooms that adds up to the can/bottle recycling bin, and one other one in the office area, next to the printer for general paper disposal.

People in the lab are strongly invited to make use of the two new garbage bins and recycle their paper and cardboard waste.

Boxes can be larger than the garbage bin, so I'd recommend people to crash them before throwing them into the bin.

I made a short stop at the 40m on Sunday night and found that hundreds ants are in the coffee maker.
I removed ants around the sink and washed the coffee maker.

It looked the ants were everywhere in the lab tonight. They seemed to prefer warm places like in the coffee maker and below the coffee mill.
So, I recommend that Steve should confirm there is no ants in the coffee maker again before the first coffee of the week is made.
Othewise they will add some more acidity to your cup.

 We still had some ants visiting the sink area this morning. These ants seem to be addicted to our our Peet's coffe

Spectracide: Bug Stop insect killer was sprayed. Please wash your eating dishes well ! and keep area clean.

We have been waiting for this for 20 some years. Arrowhead water with cooler. AWESOME

THANKS Alan

 Happy holidays, everyone!

FYI: I stored the Universal PDH boxes in the RF cabiner in the Y arm.

we hung two new WALL cable racks. One is on the pillar next to the Sp table, the other is next to the PSL computer rack.

To do that we had to drill holes in the wall since the simple screws weren't strong enough to keep them up.

One of the racks, the yellow, is dedicated to 4-pin lemos and other thick cables.

 awesome - I have ordered 5 blue racks so that we can hang power cables. The fat BLUE ones are for fat cables and the orange ones for the coax cables.

In the lab there are lots of old posters with outdated autocad drawings, or printouts with schematics of old electronics hanging on the walls.

Can we get rid of those and start giving the lab a fresh and modern look?

This morning I found that there was no light on the SPOB PD. I went looking at the photodetector and I found that the shutter in front of it was closed.

I switched the shutter driver from n.c. to n.o. which had the effect of opening it.

I guess we inadvertently closed the shutter with Rana when last week we were tinkering with the ITMY  camera.

Rana noticed that recently the temperature inside the lab has been a little bit too high. That might be causing some 'unease' to the computers with the result of making them crash more often.

For the next hours I'll be paying attention to the temperature inside the lab to make sure that it doesn't go out of control and that the environment gets too cold.

 Today the lab is perceptibly cooler.

The temperature around the corner is 73 F.

It has rained continuously for the last 24 hours. Bob walked through the lab looking for possible water infiltrations. The floor looked dry: no puddles or leaks anywhere so far.

This morning the pencil soldering iron of our Weller WD2000M Soldering Station suddenly stopped working and got cold after I turned the station on. The unit's display is showing a message that says "TIP". i checked out the manual, but it doesn't say anything about that. I don't know what it means. Perhaps burned tip?

Before asking Steve to buy a new one, I emailed Weller about the problem.

 There should be a supply of extra tips in the Blue Spinny Cabiney (I can never remember it's French name....)  The drawer is something like the top row of one of the bottom sets of drawers.  You can pick the shape of tip you want, and stick it in.

Albeto and Koji

We took the tip replacement from the blue tower.

I am looking at http://www.cooperhandtools.com/brands/weller/ for ordering the tips.

The burnt one seems to be "0054460699: RT6 Round Sloped Tip Cartridge for WMRP Pencil" We will buy one.

The replaced one is "0054460299: RT2 Fine Point Cartridge for WMRP Pencil" We will buy two.

I like to try this: "0054460999: RT9 Chisel Tip Cartridge for WMRP Pencil" We will buy one.

I can't find the DELL laptop anywhere in the lab. Does anyone know where it is?

Also one of the two netbooks is missing.

One dell is in the clean room for the suspension work.

Koji and I wanted to turn off the IFO-room AC so the wind would not blow on MC1-3. We could not. The switches were probably bypassed when the power transformer was replaced at the last scheduled power outage.

 There is one three position manual/off/auto switch next to the filter for each unit at CES. They have to be in AUTO position when we want to turn AC on/off from the lab.

Today we met and we finally come up with a lot of cool, clever, brilliant, outstanding ideas to organize the lab.

You can find them on the Wiki page created for the occasion.

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

Enjoy!

Where are we going to put the tiki bar? The ice cream machine? I am disappointed in the details that appear to have been glossed over..

... not just because we haven't locked the interferometer for quite some time. I mean, it literally stinks. The chiller's chiller is molding. Its' dripping water and there's mold all under it (Jo just confirmed: "yeah, it's mold").

Someone from Caltech maintenance just crossed the door. Hopefully he'll help us fix it.

I'll keep you updated. Stay tuned.

The measurement setup for the Capacitor Bridge Test is still sitting on one of the work benches.

Unless the experiment is supposed to continue today, the equipment shouldn't have been left on the bench. It should have been  taken back to the lab.

Also the cart with HP network analyzer used for the test was left in the desk area. That shouldn't have left floating around in the desk area anyway.

The people responsible for that, are kindly invited to clean up after themselves.

The 40m corner station crane is out of order, and it's stuck in a way that prohibits entry to the 40m LVEA / IFO room for safety.  The crane has been locked out / tagged out. 

Until further notice, absolutely no one may enter the 40m LVEA.  Work is permitted in the desk / control room areas.

Signs have been posted on all doors into the LVEA.  Please consider those doors locked out / tagged out.

After the crane training, Bob attached speakers to the ceiling right next to the projector, for use with presentations.

 I have taken the charger for the dark gray dell laptop from its station, and have labelled the information there too.

Will keep it back tonight.

I think op540m has finally bitten the dust.  I noticed that both of its screens were black, so I assumed that it had crashed due to known graphics card issues or something.  But upon closer inspection, it is way more dead than that.  I checked that it does have power (at least the power cable is securely plugged in at both ends, and the power strip its on is successfully powering several other computers), but I can't make any lights or anything come on by pressing the power button on the front of the computer tower.

Immediate consequences of op540 not being operational are the lack of DMT, and the lack of Alarms. 

Joe is doing an autopsy right now to see if its really dead, or only 'mostly dead'.

EDIT: Joe says maybe it's the power supply for the computer.  But he can't turn it on either.

I changed the setpoint for the HVAC control (next to Steve) from 73F to 72F. This is to handle the temperature increase in the control room with the AC unit there turned off.

We know that the control setpoint is not linear, but I hope that it settles down after several hours. Lets wait until Tuesday evening before making another change.

Both Rolf and Alex (at least his elbow) together visited the 40m to talk with Joe for the CDS.

40m is the true front line of the CDS development!!!