ATLAS Shifts

I've just come back from my first and last set of ATLAS trigger shifts for the year. I had signed up for two sets more next month, but they got cancelled.

So what do I do as the trigger shifter? Well, according to the screen capture of the ATLAS webcam below, I amuse myself by trying to wave at the correct time.



No seriously, my job is to monitor the data rates between the different trigger hardware levels and the event recording. This involves watching graphs. Lots of them. There are over 200 of them that I got look at if I really wanted to.

I'm going to say that I don't think I was a very good shifter. I didn't know very much, so couldn't really answer people's questions and also had to spend most of my time preparing a presentation that I'm giving tomorrow. It was an interesting experience though, and one that I'll probably be repeating in the future...