Andrej Prša's homepage

I have to say that it was a great sabbatical! In a nutshell, 3 papers written, one of them accepted, two about to be submitted, both to Nature; met great new friends and colleagues, and learned a bit of asteroseismology. Got to visit Slovenia 3 times, the Netherlands and Malta, not to mention all the attractions UK has to offer! My favorites were the highlands of Scottland, the Lake District and, inevitably, London. A wine store in Clitheroe will also remain etched in my mind, and a fabulous Scottish accent.

I lost sleep over this event so I figured I'd put it in writing now that most of it is over...

Prologue.

We recently purchased two new 48-core nodes for our astronomy cluster here at Villanova. I decided to bite the bullet and designate one of the two new nodes to be the server for the whole cluster, and the other be just the regular node. I installed the basic system, hardened it, installed all the relevant software and then gone on to install... gulp... IDL.

This is a brief recount of last night's events that I decided to write up in the hope that I'll think twice before I decide to do something silly like this. ;)

Prologue. I have been struggling with this nasty cold for a few days now. It's not one of those debilitating colds, rather it's one of those persistent colds where every morning your throat feels like you've been chewing on razorblades.