The LIGO detectors have started search for astrophysical gravitational wave signals and have now collected one month of data. In order to bring the detectors to their quantum limits, a menagerie of terrestrial noise sources must be overcome. In studying these interactions, two things have become clear: (1) science is hard, (2) there are ways to search for dark matter with the LIGO detectors, and (3) there are clever ways to evade the so-called 'quantum limits' for high precision force sensors: for measurements of gravitational waves, tests of nonlinear quantum mechanics, emergent gravity, etc.