9.11.2008

 

Celia, meet your technological match

When Celia was a small kitten, she dazzled me with her technological brilliance one day by sending an email I was typing to Katherine (although I didn't even know there was a keystroke to send from Eudora), then hitting Ctrl-O and trying to open a file called "ng1". Jack and I have joked ever since about what might be in ng1, and at the odd moments when Kent has gotten his hands on the keyboard, we've wondered whether he'll look for ng1 so he can have all the cat secrets.

This morning, he totally outdid Celia's episode. I had called Jack because Kent was doing some cute babbling and I wanted to share his early awakeness with someone, and then I put the phone on speaker as I've done several times on this trip. Kent grabbed the phone from me and started pushing buttons; he's done this a lot, and my worst fear has been only that he'll hang up on Jack.

Apparently I should have assessed things a little more.

The next thing I knew, the screen on my phone said "Message Sent." Uh, what message? And to whom? After Jack and I giggled for a minute, I decided I'd better hang up so that I could figure out what Kent had done. In fact, he sent some sort of video message to my friend Alice. Now, to accomplish this, he had to get to the camera, then switch it from camera to video, then record something, stop it, elect to send it as a message, select Alice from my address book (her name is first), and then send it.

*I* don't even know how to send a video message.

When I was able to figure out what had happened and then watched the video, it turned out to be about five seconds of blackness, probably because it was very dark in our bedroom. I think he was trying to record his feet.

Now I'm worried about this semi-secret Kent/Alice communication. He did just see her last night, so maybe he was following up on a conversation they had.

I wonder if Alice knows what's in ng1...

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Comments:

Perhaps now would be a good time to head for the hills...
 
Oh my gosh, that is HILARIOUS!! Maybe Celia, Katherine, Alice and Kent are all in cahoots together. LOL!
 
Oh, NG1. Is quite simple really. It's just your typical POLARIZED NEUTRON REFLECTOMETER. Yep, This cold neutron instrument is used to study materials of interest in surface and interfacial science, including magnetic multilayers, artificial biological membranes, and semiconductor surfaces. The instrument is most commonly configured for neutron reflectometry, a technique that is sensitive to the depth-dependent composition, and in-plane structure of thin films. The instrument's full polarization capabilities allow for polarized neutron reflectometry, which is sensitive to films' depth-dependent vector magnetization, and in-plane magnetic ordering. Depth distributions of net magnetizations as small as 20 emu/cc can be routinely measured. Refrigerators, furnaces, magnets, liquid cells, and lasers are available for control of sample environment. On-site x-ray reflectometry is available for additional sample characterization. If you're interested in performing an experiment, apply for beamtime, or contact one of the instrument scientists directly. Monetary assistance may be available for new facility users. At least according to the NIST Center for Neutron Research.
 
Ha! I love it! Reminds me of the time John called his Uncle Tommy at 6AM one morning from my cell phone--meaning he had to get the phone out of my purse, turn it on, open the address book, scroll all the way down to the "T"'s and then hit call. Very funny stuff. I bet he knows about the NG1 file as well. I'm a little worried about getting these two little ones together in the same place!
 
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