I'll spare you the details of the frustrating days I've had trying to get programs working correctly on my desktop and just skip to this afternoon. HEASOFT and CALDB are installed properly on Everin and are working, and I was able to analyze the two GRBs that were detected on Saturday.

One of them just barely fit my timing study criterion of over 20 counts per second in the windowed timing mode (it peaked at around 35 counts per second), and the initial observation only lasted 150 seconds (2 and a half minutes), so my first thought was not to even look at its power spectra. However, I decided to take a look, and found that there was a significant peak at around 90 Hertz (corresponding to a period of 11 milliseconds). I was initially excited at the possibility that I might have found something, but upon closer study, the peak disappeared at different rebinnings, and didn't show anything significant when I ran efsearch and efold, which indicated to me that I had not really found anything.

I am reminded of initial statistics studies I did last year where I realized that every once in a while I should come across a significant frequency peak purely by chance. I've been working on this timing study for about a year now, and so far I've had two possible false cases, but I can recognize them for what they are. I am learning to be more careful with my work.

I had a conversation with Rob today about some of the physics of GRBs, specifically the problems with synchrotron radiation production in turbulent environments where the magnetic field isn't homogeneous. Lately, I've been reading about the current top GRB models and trying to get an understanding of what the GRB community thinks is going on, but I realize I need to always keep in the back of my mind the assumptions and simplifications that are the foundation of these models. Far from being solved, as a paper I read recently stated about the prompt emission, it's all a lot more complicated than we generally discuss.