QC 174.5 --- My Happy Lunchtime Place

 

This is the original edition of Mandl & Shaw published by Wiley in 1984. Wiley is a great publisher. In physics you can often judge books based on the publisher. There are thirteen chapters in this edition. A fourteenth was added in the 1993 revised edition, "The Standard Electro-Weak Theory", which I found at only after this one, so I had to go back and add that chapter into my notebook listing.

Very quiet in the lab today, on the day after the Empower Conference, that we were all supposed to attend. My boss is not here.  I was the first one in today and propped upon the door. The two other guys that are here---I could have asked them if they went, when they came in, but I let the opportunity slip.

They are both seated near me, and the times I have gotten up I look over to them to make eye contact but they do not look up. When someone is focussed, you are certainly allowed to interrupt them, but making someone stop in the middle of, say, coding, is like flagging down a car in motion to ask a question of the driver. There is an implied etiquette that doing that should be worth it, making them stop their train of thought. Writing computer code often feels like doing a giant crossword puzzle where you have to keep the last twenty answers in your head without writing them down yet, but keep solving the rest of the puzzle based on what's in your head. At least it feel that way to me. Also that is my personal etiquette only. Other people have same one, no douht, but not everyone does. It's not like it's a known thing that people talk about, that one should interrupt only with good reason.

If someone looks up and makes eye contact, then it's ok to ask frivolous questions like, "so did you go to Empower yesterday." But that has not happened. When it does, I'll pounce.

I brought my conference badge in with me today and I'm going to leave it on my desk, my proud trophy. Tomorrow is another thing I have to attend, not only campus in Tempe but across the river at some fabulous new facility in Scottsdale with a snazzy name, where all the soft stuff happens for the project, like project management and graphic design. The room where I work at the moment is about as primitive as it gets, as far as labs. It's like being in the boiler room of a ship instead of up on the main deck. But this is where I am. I guess I needed to come back to a place like this, to reconnect to it.

Over lunch I went over to Noble (the Noble Science and Engineering Library, that is) to take notes from the table of contents of a famous quantum field theory book that I do not want to purchase at the moment, as I've maxed out by budget for that. I took with me my notebook in which I write down the table of contents of physics books, using a standard way I do it, plus impromptu variations whenever I feel like it. I got half way to Noble and realized I did not know the Library of Congress number. I've learned they do not have terminals anymore and you need your own device so I went back to the lab to look it up on the ASU library website using my laptop. I was ashamed that I don't even know the general LoC section for books on quantum field theory. I ought to know that. It's QC, specifically the QC 174.5 section.  Once I was in the library I ran up the brick stairs, trying not to make too much noise. Running up stairs is a great exercise, especially as you get older, ,as you want to preserve your ability to spring out on your legs. I found my book and took it to a table by the window that looked out over some glorious tall pines. I copied out the table of contents into my notebook in decent penmanship, and also made sure to write down the LoC number of the book.