Constellation/Consternation

I finally made it up to Stone Hill on a reasonably clear evening to see stars. The actual goal of the trip was to catch a glimpse of the International Space Station and Space Shuttle passing overhead. My being there was a spur-of-the moment thing, induced by Will's hearing from his roommate of the event. We packed into a car and went over to the Clark, then headed up the hill, keeping our eyes demurely low (to avoid cow pies). At the top of Stone Hill, we found some people gathered around a bonfire toasting marshmallows. We gladly joined in the feasting. I wish I'd had my glasses, as the view from there is amazing, and also for the purposes of stargazing. We didn't stay until it was quite dark enough for a really good night sky, but it was pretty decent, if blurry to my sight. Somewhere around the appointed time, after some false alarms (just regular planes), there appeared a pair of bright dots tracing the same path from NW to SE - the shuttle is landing in Texas tomorrow, if all goes well. The space station was noticeably brighter. It was quite a unique experience, although there was certainly not much one could make out.

Prior to the trip, we'd had a power outage in Williamstown - some issues at the power station, it seems. Not a big deal for me personally, since I spent that time outside, and power was restored after perhaps an hour, but the computer I use in lab went off, and my simulations of in total 700,200,000 events of different kinds had the plug almost literally pulled on them. Heading in at 11pm to restart the things on my way home, I found out that the problem Zach had this morning, i.e. the password of my generic account seems to have changed inexplicably. In other words, I couldn't start the simulations and I'll have ot wait till morning to have the issue resolved, which means llittle work for me in the morning, as I'll have no data to analyse for a few hours. That may be troublesome. I'll have to try hard to occupy myself.

While going through the deserted Physics labs, I found that all the fire doors were closed. I'd never realised the cleverness of the electromagnetic machanisms that keep the doors in many of the college buildings closed. I knew the magnets were wired into the main grid somehow, but I thought there must be just some switches to allow or disallow keeping the doors open. It looks like when the power fails, the doors are released, and the closing mechanisms go to work - good precautions in case of a fire, which would at some point knock out power. I'd expect that the magnets are wired into the fire alarm system too. Clever people.