LHC up&down

So, it's been quite a long time since we do not post into the Blog. This is not because we went away, not. We have been just a bit busy here in September (not only because of the LHC). Anyway, we are back to the blogsphere, and will keep reporting about the LHC activities at PIC regularly.
It is quite funny that the most silent month in our blog was probably the most visible one for the LHC all around the world. Well, we can always say "we did not talk about the LHC here since you could read it in any newspaper" :-)
So, the two big LHC things that happened in September, as all of you know, is that the LHC started circulating beams on Sep 10th and that it then had a major fault on the 19th. You can read the details of these both events anywhere in the web. I will just mention that those were quite special days in our community: the big excitement on the 10th, and then the "cold water bucket" few days later could be felt everywhere. Even the daily operation meeting was less crowded than usual since it was difficult those first days not to feel a bit "what to do now"?
I think now it is quite clear for everyone that life goes on. We at the LHC Computing Grid, continue operations exactly in the same way as we are doing since months. We are not receiving p-p collisions data, true, but the data flow did not stop. Both Cosmics data taking and MonteCarlo generation have not stopped.
We have said many times in the last years that the LHC is a extremely complex machine and that it might take a long time to put it in operations. Well, now we can see this complexity in front of us. There it is. Life goes on.