Life of a Lab Rat

It might not look much to you, but that rather messy blot up there helped to tell me three things this afternoon:

1. The original antibody is crap and does not reliably and uniquely detect my protein. I suspected this already
2. The detection reagents give a better signal to noise ratio when you leave them for over an hour before exposing to film (data not shown. Hopefully I'll get a nicer picture of that tomorrow)
3. The knockouts are working again.

It worked. It bloody well worked!

My young apprentice (who, according to the Black Queen, is spending too much time in my presence and picking up "bad habits". Pah, I say, it's all part of the training), Beta Gal, sent me a file of primer sequences yesterday. Obviously she needs more training, because the file was created in Microsoft Word. Oh well, she's still young.

Now the thing is, I've been using iWork for the last year or so. One of the many gorgeous things about the word processing and page layout component is how it handles Word documents. With the latest version (to which I treated myself last month) Pages will track changes and handle comments seamlessly between itself and Word. It consistently handles Word documents better than Microsoft Word (a pattern develops: $BOSS sent me a PowerPoint file that Microsoft PowerPoint screwed up - lost the images, formatting, completely buggered. Keynote, with the exception of ls possibly the most beautiful program I've ever used, didn't even blink).

So Beta Gal sends me a .docx file. The version of Office (2004) I'm running on this machine doesn't recognize it.

It's a sodding Word document for pity's sake. What kind of crack-brained pot-smoking monkeys are doing this to a simple text-processing file format? Even my trusty code-wrench BBEdit throws up its character sets in dispair. The only text it shows me that isn't binary gobbledegook says

[Content_Types].xml

Pages, of course, smiles sweetly and shows me what my young Padawan has been up to.

Breathe, BK; think sunny thoughts, find your happy place.

Told you it was in a box of old papers and memorabilia:

And November, not summer. But I remember it well.

So I know that Fu Manchu has designs on my rather spiffy 'Howie Report' labcoat, but as I strode along the corridor this morning Nurse Donovan stepped out of the offices, stopped, and said

"Wow!"

I mean, OK, so I look good for my age, but "Wow!"?

Wow.

One lab's very like another/ When your head's down over your data, brother

Gosh. Cobwebs.

This weblog is primarily about life as a scientist, and not very much about the science itself (except if I think it might be useful or interesting). For the last couple of weeks I have been getting seriously to grips with an incomplete microarray data set, to see if it can inform some paper revisions.

And the thing, the crucial thing about analysing data, is that you don't much get to interact with outher people. So that whole 'life as a scientist' thing? It's not really been happening. Well, it has, obviously, but not in a way that's immediately bloggable (and you've all had enough of Perl code, yes?).

Which might explain, but doesn't excuse the relative silence here. Sorry chaps.

Tomorrow I will emerge blinking into the light and prep some RNA, thaw some cells, set up an RT-PCR and start a Western. Then it'll be back into the Pit with me to co-write a book chapter. But I shall be on the prowl for japes and jollities — so look out.

As someone else once said, better than I could: "I'll be back".

Me navy mate, in climes foreign, received an email:

Good Morning Postdocs:

This is to inform you of a mandatory meeting with Dr. Ange E. O'Tensin (Off-Campus Guest on Site today) in Room 78 Phys Building from 1:45 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.

Mouth-Breather,
Senior Administrative Services Assistant

Now, that sounds a little odd, especially when you realize that the email was sent at 9:35 that morning. What's that? Drop everything, post-doc, and meet this guy. Never mind your experiments or your lunch date: One of our oh-so-important professors has decided not to meet our visiting speaker, and we have 45 embarrassing minutes to fill.

I wonder what thundering moron came up with this idea, and whether they've found all the body parts yet.

Steve Matheson links to an extraordinary video.

Go see it.

Laugh.

Because sometimes, that's all you can do.

In one of the waking moments between my microarray nightmares I saw that Alethea had taken one of these silly personality tests. Rather than get up and go and remind myself what the sky looks like I succumbed to temptation.

Guess what?

ABOUT TIGGER: Tigger is the newest addition to the Hundred Acre Wood, and he lives with Kanga and Roo, because Roo's strengthening medicine turned out to be the thing that Tiggers like best. Tigger is bouncy and confident -some of his friends think he is a little TOO bouncy and confident, but attempts to unbounce him tend to be fruitless.

WHAT THIS SAYS ABOUT YOU: You are a positive and confident person. You feel capable of dealing with anything and everything, and funnily enough, you usually ARE. You don't worry about much, and you love to go out and find new adventures.

Your friends and family might sometimes be a little exasperated by your boundless enthusiasm. You don't like to admit your mistakes, and when you find yourself in over you head, you tend to bluff your way out of things. You would be surprised, however, at how happy the people around you would be if you would actually admit to a mistake. It would make you seem more human, somehow.

The Black Knight checks the corridor, and sees it is empty of Germans.

Quickly, he pastes the link:

When food goes bad.

Greetings Everybody:

FYI, both lifts are out of order and stuck on level two.

Cheers

It's obviously a plot. My colleagues are all too fat and someone has finally decided to do something about it. I'll take photos of everyone wheezing up to my ivory tower.

Thanks everyone, especially Nurse Donovan for the PyMOL file . . .

I know, I'm a geek.

Senior (female) member of the department, outside my office just now:

None of your namby-pamby molbiol; this is man's biochemistry.

A rather cockle-warming email:

Hi bk, could i have the cDNA today, I booked the PCR for tonight- v. keen

Beta Gal

It's so sweet, these fleeting years before they become bitter and cynical. Bless.

The Black Queen, as she decanted some SOC this morning, was excited. She demonstrated that she can still unscrew bottles with one hand and keep a decent air gap between cap and both bottles (well, maybe not 'excited' as such, but we have to make our own entertainment in the lab).

Sterile technique, she has it.

And then I thought, wouldn't it be great if we could use the power of our minds to do cell culture?

Never mind the million bucks offered by the Randi Foundation; imagine the money we could make selling Telekinetic Culture Hoods to clumsy cell biologists.

From a 'Human Resources' email:

From 31 March 2008, all new staff files and new documents for existing staff files will be filed and managed electronically using the University’s Records Online Management system (TRIM). A project is also underway to convert the 9000 active staff files from paper based to electronic format.

What could possibly go wrong?

Actin motility and force generation. Cast of thousands.

I have arranged to meet a colleague for coffee and cell biology tomorrow morning. She works in Zoology.
She says the "zoology (biology) building, A08, is in Science Road".

So I go along to the University's map page, and click on 'Z' for Zoology. Nothing found. OK then, 'B' for Biology. Something there, but not what I want. Search for the building code, and find that I actually want the Heydon-Laurence Building.

Well that was bloody obvious, wasn't it?

For those of you who might have been put off by the thought of all the noxious native flora and fauna in Ozstrayla, worry not!

The wildlife is too busy eating each other.