Life of a Lab Rat

Someone in one of the labs across the corridor had a real "If you're a muppet and you know it do something really dumb" moment yesterday.

There is a large lab on the other side, shared by two groups. Offices flank the lab at opposite ends, and my office is at the proximal end, buffered from the lab space of Group 'G' by a student cube farm. Then there is Group 'K' lab space, and Group 'K' offices. Even though C and myself are in Group 'M', we have office space in 'G', so we get to see all sorts of interesting stuff. And they have a really cool duplex colour laser printer, which is nice.

Anyway, most of Group 'G' is away at a conference, and a first year grad student was all that was to man the barricades yesterday afternoon. So it was not that surprising that he should ask me if I knew anything about the power being off in his lab.

I wondered what the beeping was. All the UPSes and freezers were alarmed, although the ceiling lights and some of the other freezers were still on. I suggested he get hold of the workshop, and they would send someone up to reset the circuit breaker. But the circuit breaker was fine, and for the next two hours our workshop guys, assisted by 4 or 5 blokes from the University Estates office scoured the lab ('G', if you remember) looking for the problem.

Finally they realized that someone, in the 'K' space, had leaned on the 'emergency power off' button that is used to isolate some, but not all, circuits in the 'G'/'K' domain, and not told anyone.

Thanks mate, really. I am sure that 'G' are going to be really pleased about this when they get back.

(And no; I also have no idea why there is an emergency power off button that only powers off some circuits. That's probably why I'm a scientist and not an architect.)