excitement, family, and marvellous nerdiness

First up, hear my happy news: I'm going to be a bridesmaid! For my brand-new-(almost)-sister-in-law! My brother and his fiancee are having all their siblings in their wedding party. Meghan's other three bridesmaids are her roommates (she just has one brother). Apparently they're going dress shopping soon, and one of the roommates said something about how all of them could certainly find something to agree on, but what about Tobin's sister? Meghan told them not to worry about me, since I am cool. See? We're going to be great sisters. Too bad I live so far away...oh well. I get to wear blue, and I'll probably even get to sew the dress myself. Yahoo!

Today Aaron and I had our first Thanksgiving together, and it was nice. His parents are in Italy at the moment, and his grandparents are about to leave for Austria, so we had Thanksgiving with three friends of ours (2 sisters + 1 boyfriend who is also my coworker). When I got home I called my family, and I talked to all of them, and that is when I got the good news about the bridesmaid thing. I love my family and I miss them all very much.

Yesterday was also fun. Aaron and I went to see a microwave telescope! A friend of mine from Toronto is part of the team of Princeton graduate students who are working on it, and it's being constructed here in Port Coquitlam (a suburb of Vancouver). It was quite nifty. The main mirror surface itself is about 7 metres tall, and I'm estimating that would make the entire telescope structure to be about 15 metres tall. We got to climb up in and around it, but not while it was moving and doing its scanning motions.

One of the special things about this telescope is the reasonably fast rate at which it scans back and forth across one section of the sky. This motion ultimately helps filter out atmospheric interference, and creates a bigger picture to work with. Another nifty thing about the telescope is that the actual recording instruments are kept at a temperature of 0.3 Kelvin. That's right folks, only one third of a degree above absolute zero! This also helps eliminates interference from all those warm atoms jiggling around.

When the telescope is done, they're going to take it apart into 2-4 pieces (it's not quite decided yet), and then they'll drive it down the road on a big truck to the river, where it will be put on a barge, which will go to a major port, and then the telescope will be loaded on a bigger boat and go to Chile. In Chile, it will get loaded back on a truck and be driven up a mountain to a high altitude where there is even less atmospheric interference. Did you know that part of the project's budget is to improve the roads up the mountain in Chile so that the telescope can actually get there?

Now for a vote: which post of geekiness is more fascinating, this one or the one on A440?