Mitt liv som Tobin

I don't know what to make of San Diego, but so far my estimation of it is on the up and up. The city is revealing itself to me patiently. As I write this I am reclined luxuriously on a cushion at Claire de Lune (2906 University Ave), in a district called North Park. The floor of the cafe is well populated by comfortable chairs, mostly plush and soft, in deep primary colors and browns. The room is airy and spatious, with high ceilings painted a deep blue; the walls are a bright yellow, interrupted by red curtains. The cafe itself is perched on a corner of Park Street, and outside I can watch the headlights of cars driving down the boulevard and look out upon the neon of -- is it a pizzeria? a name that starts with a G -- as if in a strange twist of that famous `Realist' painting "Night Owls."

It's a city for automobiles, but there are flavorful districts and unique morsels of urban life hidden among them. Driving into one of these districts you're likely to be greeted by its name in overhead neon: HILLCREST, NORTH PARK, NORMAL HEIGHTS, or the most fantastic of all, "The Boulevard" in gigantic pink script over an apparently important throughofare. I don't even know what decade this belongs to. It is out of my experience. In reconstituting my peripheral vision, my brain substitutes faded blue cadillacs with monstrous tailfins for the cars driving by, and suggests to me that maybe I'm actually within a David Lynch film. Normal Heights like a small ghostly town in the mist on a hill reminded of that town of Spectre, and I think I'm in love with Lestats.

Remember that movie Twister? No, not the get-to-know-each-other party game, but the movie where a bunch of crazy guys goes driving around chasing tornadoes? Well, our job here is kind of similar. However, instead of driving around the midwest chasing tornadoes, we sit on the beach and chase earthquakes.

Yesterday started out rather amusingly. I came into Todd's office to ask some questions.

Todd: "Let's walk and talk.. we have to go on a venture."

Tobin: "Okay. I want you to tell me about the Vee-Orb Router."

Todd: "It uses the BGP protocol, just like routing on the internet. Hey, did you bring climbing gear today?"

Tobin: "Nobody told me to bring climbing gear.. anyway, how much of VORB router is implemented?"

Meanwhile Todd unloaded a couple full-body climbing harnesses and a hard-hat from his trunk.

Tobin: "Where are we going?"

Todd: "On a venture!"

We walked down to the lower building of the Scripps institute and took the stairs down the basement. We visited Jose who was pumping down a vacuum in a bell jar to test a new, ultra-sensitive seismometer that essentially uses a michelson interferometer to measure tiny vibrations, and air resistance has an effect on the spring constant, you see.. so the air had to be pumped out.

Todd opened a hatchway in the floor, and here we found a gigantic hole. Supposedly there was at the bottom of this hole a large room with a vibration-isolated floor. One-by-one we climbed down the ladder into this hole.. it reminded me very much of the entry to that cave in the X-Files movie.. you know, down to where the "alien life presense" was lurking.

Todd entering the abyss:

Todd: "I've reached the bottom... I don't see any .. passageways."

It turned out that the room we were told of did not exist, or at least we didn't find any evidence of it. Nonetheless it was a rather thrilling and unexpected adventure. Here's the hole -- that speck is the lamp at the bottom:

* * *

Usually the earthquakes we're chasing are small or far away. But yesterday there was an actual earthquake right here, and all hell broke loose -- albeit in an incredibly organised fashion. We were outside on the beach, drinking coffee at the time. In fact, I was slurping a delicious iced double mocha latte at the time and happily hacking away at some crazed C code from another decade (on my laptop computer which happens to be named "hacktop", by the way), when all of the sudden F and various other persons jumped up and exclaimed, "Tiiiiime to get to work!" as they all ran back towards the lab.

Tobin: "Wha-Whaa..? I am working!"

F: "Didn't you feel it??"

Tobin: "Feel what?"

I guess I was in another world, one full of hacktops and delicious fresh pressed espresso and that delightful color of the ocean shimmering in the sun, a world in which I was completely oblivious to this alleged earthquake.

So rather than calmly looking at the "wiggles" (as we so lovingly refer to the seismic signals) from hacktop, I ran inside with everybody else. But I'll paste in some wiggles here for your enjoyment:

Already the phone was ringing incessantly with various press enquiries. Already a betting pool as to the magnitude was set up. The big flatpanel display showing automatic earthquake locations attracted a whole crowd of people.

P:(urgently) "Have you got a solution yet?"

F: "Not yet.. Okay, looks like it was off the coast here.."

P: "USGS is reporting Mojave desert.. "

G: "No, we have a location off Pt. Loma .. out to sea. "

...

A pretty exciting day at the earthquake lab, all around.

* * * *

P.S. here's to the novelty of having my (almost) own office: