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International folk dancing Thursday evenings at Kuhn Barn

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One minute with Bonnie King, system administrator

Bonnie King is a Linux administrator in the Scientific Computing Division. Photo: Reidar Hahn

How long have you been at Fermilab?
Almost four years.

What do you do here?
I'm a Linux administrator and the assistant group leader of Scientific Linux and Architecture Management — that's in the Scientific Computing Division. We support Scientific Linux computers used for data acquisition for the experiments, and also scientific workstations in the control rooms and elsewhere. We respond to tickets and requests to support online computing. We also build Scientific Linux, which is the Linux distribution built here at Fermilab. My team and I are bringing solid best practices to detector computing. It takes discipline.

How'd you get into that?
I've been into Linux since my first year of college. I went to art school, where I also took some electronics classes. My experience with Linux turned into a job at the computer lab. At that time I was supporting Mac OSX computers. Then I became a data center technician at Google and have been working in technology every since.

What's the most exciting part of your job?
I really like visiting the experiment halls and working close to the detectors. It's not the commodity stuff you see in industry. The detector installations are intricate and high-tech, but also have a beautiful, handmade quality.

I'm very lucky to be contributing to scientific discovery. I don't have a physics background, but at the detector-electronics level I can get an idea of how the experiments work, and it's fascinating.

What kind of art do you make?
I had a traditional-art education to start, but then I went to a more modern school, so I have experience in both traditional and modern art. My degree is in drawing and painting. I do oil painting, mostly landscapes and buildings, and have a studio in Batavia.

Are there parallels between your art and the work you do now?
There are definitely parallels. I think coding and a lot of different aspects of technology are more connected to creativity than people realize. I believe there is a relationship between hacking and making art.

One thing I learned in art school was how to respond to critique. That's helped me in my career.

What is something people might not know about you?
I went to French Immersion in public school and was once fluent, but I'm a little rusty. I'm always looking for French speakers to practice with.

—Chris Patrick

Viceroy of the glen

A viceroy butterfly settles on flowers in the meadow. Photo: Aaron Sauers, IARC

Ambitious dark energy project probes mysterious cosmic expansion

From Scientific American, October 2015

Nearly 100 years ago Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding: almost all galaxies are speeding away from our own Milky Way, and faraway galaxies are receding faster. That discovery was profound, but it was followed, in 1998, by an even more startling realization: the expansion is accelerating. For most of the 20th century, scientists had expected that over time gravity would pull galaxies toward one another, slowing the expansion. Instead two teams of astronomers studying supernovae — exploding stars that serve as markers for measuring cosmic distances — found that the growth of the universe is actually speeding up. This remarkable discovery, since confirmed by other observations, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2011. But why is the universe accelerating? This enigma is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in all of science.

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Open enrollment for Fermilab employees ends Friday

Open enrollment for benefits will end on Friday, Oct. 30, at 5 p.m.

Open enrollment is your opportunity to make changes to your benefits coverage for the coming year. Changes made during open enrollment will be effective Jan. 1, 2016.

For more information, refer to the all-hands email that was sent on Oct. 15. If you have questions, please email benefitsoffice@fnal.gov or call x3395. You may also contact your division or section's assigned HR partner.

FSPA Halloween party - Oct. 30 in Kuhn Barn

The FSPA Halloween party at Kuhn Barn starts at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 30.

Everyone in the Fermilab community is invited to this year's Halloween party, which starts at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 30, at Kuhn Barn.

The party, sponsored by the Fermilab Student and Postdoc Association, will be family- and kid-friendly. There will be face painting, lots of music, room to dance, a pumpkin-carving competition and a costume competition. Winners will earn prizes!

If you have questions, please contact FSPA.

November fitness classes and complimentary wellness

Complimentary Wellness

Fitness Classes

DOE announces new accelerator stewardship funding opportunities

From The Cryogenics Society of America, Oct. 13, 2015

The US Department of Energy (DOE) made available an estimated $4 million in grants on October 13 with a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for research opportunities associated with its Accelerator R&D Stewardship Program. Submitted proposals must either cover one of three topical areas identified by the Office of Science High Energy Physics (OHEP) or address long-term generic accelerator R&D.

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