Forget the Olympics - today CERN Labs in Switzerland will fire up the Large Hadron Collider for the first time, and shoot the very first protons through one of the eight sectors of the world's largest particle accelerator. Although this is just a test run (the facility won't be fully up and running until September 10th), the whitecoats at CERN are interested in eventual experiments that could reveal what, exactly, dark matter is, prove the existence of extra dimensions, lead to entirely new theories or physical laws, and show us what the universe looked like after the big bang.

Pretty awesome, right?

Also, it just might produce black holes and destroy the universe. Nobody really knows for sure.

No, seriously.

The purpose of this test? "It's, 'Let's see what happens,'" says Judy Jackson, head of the Office of Communications at Fermilab. "It's a very complex machine. This is a step towards getting ready."

Anyway, on the off-chance that we will all still be around to do this, instead of shortly disappearing into the black hole where Switzerland used to be:



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It is amazing the things you'll do to avoid doing that one thing you need to do. So far today, I have gotten no writing done, but! I have:

- tackled the nest of cables under my bed that was getting seriously out of hand, via methods including (but not limited to):
     - constructing a DIY hanging shelf for all my external media
     - labelling power cords with white marker
     - attaching several plug strips to the side of my bed

- fixed busted string of Kaylee-Style^TM fairy lights over bed

- attacked my Start Menu/Desktop/etc. with the Twin Machetes of Organisation

- used the Sacred Sword of RAM to judiciously trim start-up processes

- even done a bit of non-geeky tidying as well.

And now everything is very streamlined and sexy (and sparkly), and... I still have no writing done.