I read through the Drift Chamber Online Monitoring document, and
I have a few comments. No doubt you are very busy with the startup of
the run right now, but I wanted to put my 2 cents in now before I forget.
Mainly I believe we need, in addition to what you wrote, a pair
of true checklists: one for each run and one for the shift. What you
have so far is a (very useful) instruction list, but not checklists.
The checklists should list specific items, followed by blanks or boxes
into which the shift person must either indicate that the item has been
checked, or write number that is being asked for. It should contain
things like the average multiplicity per track, the oxygen concentration
in the gas, the current draw in each region, the beam current, the
target conditions, etc, etc. Similarly, several quantities should be
computed by the shift person on the checklist, such as chamber current
per beam current, multiplicity per beam current, average number of
tracks reconstructed per event, and others. The checklist should have
the name of the person completing the task, as well as the time and
data.
Why do we need this? Mainly because without a 'real' checklist
shifters will tend to slack off and not check every item, relying
instead on the various software run-histories and 'strip tools'. To
some extent I think we should distrust the efficacy of these tools, and
to some extent we should be taking steps to make people actively check
things (by writing them down personally) rather than passively watching
a bunch of screens with multitudes of plots.
The other point is that I believe we should have these
checklists for the whole of CLAS, not just for the drift chambers. That
is, the drift chambers will comprise an important subset of the overall
checklists. Most of the things you listed in your write-up should have
room on those checklists, but I'm not sure how much stuff the other
detector components will require to be checked. Overall I picture these
checklists as being less than or equal to 2 pages in length. In my
opinion, we had better distill the most important things to watch from
run to run and shift to shift into a one or two page checklist, since I
think that is about all people have the patience and attention span to
cover.
Hope this helps.
Have fun, wish I were there this week.
Regards, Reinhard