Day 1: Getting to Know Newport Beach

I left Cookeville, Tennessee, with three of my friends at around 05:30 on Tuesday morning to drive to the airport.  It was a bit difficult to wake up that early, but I knew that it'd be worth it once I made it to California.

The flight from Nashville to Denver could have gone better (Really, who loves having little kids screaming and kicking your seat for three hours?), and the same could be said for the flight from Denver to Newport Beach (Two more hours of the same kind of torture?  What did I do to deserve this?).  However, upon landing at John Wayne Airport, I almost immediately forgot about all of that.

When we arrived at the hotel and got our backpacks and suitcases into our rooms, myself, four of my friends from Tennessee Tech University, and one student we met at the hotel went to go get dinner.  As it turns out, Amelia's, a restaurant on Balboa Island, is a fantastically good, if expensive, place to eat.

Since we decided that we shouldn't waste the somewhat-long walk, we walked around the perimeter of Balboa Island.  Along the way, we marveled at the expensive houses and boats while questioning the sanity of people who'd put out so many Halloween decorations.

After that excursion, we went to The Village Inn, a bar on the island, for drinks.  Maybe I'm just not used to the difference in the price of alcohol between Tennessee and California, but those drinks were really expensive.  That being said, it was nice to be able to sit down and relax after such a long walk.  When we finished there, we headed back to the hotel to get some well-deserved sleep.

Poster Presentations

California is nice. This is my first time outside of the east coast. I like it here. It is very different than what I expected. I find it nice to present my research. It's great to be in a community that is interested in the same thing as me. It is also encouraging to see that there is a lot going on in this field. I am definitely having fun and can't wait to attend more "talks!"

Pick a Pack of Parallel Presentations

Conferences are great for watching personality traits on full display.  Research has a strong social component by virtue of our modes for sharing results and new ideas.  If you are a people watcher, the DNP will be fun.  Physicists come in all flavor of crazy, smooth, maniacal, shy, funny, oblivious, painful-- the full spectrum.  (Why did I put crazy first?)  Our research skills aren't necessarily predictors of our public speaking skills, so it's a grab bag. 

We all have our own personal lists of people whom we rate highly for both their research and deft speaking or language skills.  The CEU students might appreciate a list of talks you'd highly recommend.  Who is a good speaker no matter the topic?

DNP 2012 starts tomorrow!

   I've always enjoyed the DNP. It's practically the one "must-go-to" conference within the Nuclear Physics community. I can catch up on advances and the latest efforts by colleagues that I don't talk with much on a regular basis. I can also set up impromptu meetings with friends from different institutions (often after the evening schedule has ended, and at some place that serves beer). This year I'm also interested in seeing how the Townhall meeting plays out and if any interesting opinions are voiced. Tonight, I'm still working on putting my talk together about our commissioning experiment with the Versatile Array on Neutron Detectors and Low Energy (VANDLE). I'm speaking in session HC on Friday morning. Better get back to it. As Tigger says "TTFN, ta ta for now".
-Bill Peters