ProgressReport 9 May 2025

I have really been working on process this fortnight. After considering leaving Emacs, I decided instead to go all-in. I'm working toward getting an AI agent (maybe Aider) set up. But first, I decided to move from Obsidian to org-mode. This has led me down a rabbit hole of Emacs improvements. This was not mission critical, but it will be a big net gain overall. I should have used org-mode from the beginning.

Habits have all been strong. Reading and work have suffered somewhat from the big upswing in Emacs, but this should turn around soon.

The academic year is over. Wes has successfully graduated, and I will hood him later today. My first PhD student! I have finished with classes, final grades are in, and I'm starting to put it out of my mind.

On the 4b side, I've completed the cut-flow comparison. I now see better than 1% agreement with Marina. The improvement was due to correcting some minor discrepancies and performing a reskim with the updated calibration. I have created one seed and will launch the others once I hear back from her.

Sindhu seems to be slowly making some progress, but I still can't really see the narrative. I have told her repeatedly to put the argument in slides… it's still not there yet. We have the pre-approval scheduled for the end of the month, jointly with the Run3 team.

There are many personnel changes in HGC. Ornella is leaving; she has found another job in biology. Jim is starting, and he will be a strong addition. The new class of Lab Techs has accepted. I need to make sure they are onboarded smoothly. We will also post a job for another, more "senior" tech to replace Ornella.