Life of a Lab Rat

I went down to Stores just now. On the way back I was accosted by Brunhilde, who asked if she could borrow my muscles to open a particularly recalcitrant liquid nitrogen tap. Having obliged, I trotted back up stairs via the pigeon holes and Beta Gal's office, to bump into Brunhilde with her dewar of very cold stuff.

"That did it!" she said, "Ask a pig-hunter!" I came into my office, feeling all butch and manly, to read an email that began

Dear Colleagues

The Sydney University Network for Women, Research Peer Mentoring Group
and the Equity and Diversity Unit, University of Technology, Sydney take
great pleasure in inviting you to the inaugural Joint Women's Research
Network event.

Oh, OK, I thought, I must write about all that at some point, and saw that the email closed with the line (emphasis mine),

We encourage you to attend and meet other women researchers, and we look forward to welcoming you to the event.

Ha ha, I thought, what muppets they are writing that to the entire Cage mailing list.

Then I checked the To: field.

female-staff@usyd.edu.au

Now while I scored 50% on this little test, and I may be in touch with my feminine side (or be an incurable romantic, whatever), this is a bit much. So here's a picture of me to help me feel better. Grr.

To someone, somewhere, this means something

On the 600, the experiments with the ambient TXI confirmed a problem with the 13C slice of the ambient preamplifier. A replacement has been ordered and should be here in a couple of days. The TCI is almost cold again and a few further checks will be run tomorrow ahead of the arrival of the preamplifier slice.

With the 400, whereas the chloroform lineshape on the TXI is good, the
water lineshape is terrible and resists attempts to improve it. It is
likely that the next step is to check the probe on the 400 at Bruker but
that won't be confirmed until tomorrow.

Now that three noticeboard have been installed near the lifts on every floor in our building, we will be populating them soon with informative materials.

Such as, presumably, Don't use the lifts unless you're happy to be stuck in them for a while.

Anyway,

1. The notice board with perspex cover on the right will have OH&S info together with Emergency procedures and contacts

2. The notice board in the middle with perspex cover will have a floor plan
with room numbers and a directory of those whi occupy these rooms

3. The notice board on the left without the perspex cover will carry
temporary notices for general use that will be removed on a regular basis.

These will be the perspex covers of which two (at least) were screwed on so tight that this morning, before any notices went in them, they were already broken.

I like the implication that the notices that are actually useful or interesting will be removed on a regular basis, and are not protected by (broken) perspex. Given the state of our lifts and air-conditioning, we're not really surprised.

My comments on sexism have obviously been taken to heart. There have been witterings from certain male students about 'roosters' and 'hen pens'. One of the female students has hit back, with a commentary on a Far Side cartoon that went up on the whiteboard:

And while I have your attention. . .

FSP has an interesting piece on "Sexism-driven science",
and this email (about indoor football soccer made me laugh (emphasis mine):

We need more girls so everyone is welcome.

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.

Yesterday we found a white-tailed spider on level 6 and a female red-back spider on level 2. It is possible these spiders are seeking refuge from the redevelopment outside. Both these spiders can give nasty bites, especially the red-back which is potentially lethal (and, in my experience, where there are females, there are usually egg-sacks).

While we were able to catch the one on level 6, the one on level 2 escaped,
so be aware. (Probably as good a reason as any to be wearing closed
shoes.)

I'll just let all you arachnophobes run away screaming, now.

From our workshop:

On Monday the air conditioning for the building will be turned off from 8.00am for 2-3hrs. This is to allow the cleaning of the cooling towers.

In some sections of the building you might feel the temperature decrease during this time.
Please try not to get used to this.

The University library is undergoing some sort of review, which I gather is business-speak for we're throwing stuff out. Basically,

Low demand material will be transferred to Storage and will be available on request. We will retain unique titles in the University Library collection and rare materials will be transferred to the Rare Books collection in Fisher Library.

. . . never to be seen again, probably.

One of my spies wrote to the Cage's 'Academics' mailing list, informing us of this development:

At the moment, it's a popularity contest... the sexy, colourful books get to live in up the new palace, but the unfashionable are left on the shelf with only the company of the other unloved and spiders.

As you can see, my spies are wasted in this job. Anyway,

The librarians have their irons in the fire to prepare for branding books as being for either a) inclusion in the new, sparkly rooms where they will be eagerly, yet gently, caressed by adoring student hands or b) relegation to the dungeons of the Fisher stack where their hearts will be slowly devoured by silverfish.

To which a Certain Academic responded,

I would have thought there was plenty of eager yet gentle caressing by student hands that takes place in Fisher stack too, from what you hear...

which is an insight into Sydney Life that frankly, you're probably better off not having. Especially when you read things like Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card!. It's a jungle out there, it really is.

Email to the Cage, this morning:

I found a specimen jar [...] in front of the -80 freezers with a label of "frontal cortex" dated from 2006.

Its still there if it is yours.

Obviously then, the frontal cortex is not necessary for email, as has long been suspected:
[T]he damage to Gage’s frontal cortex had resulted in a complete loss of social inhibitions.

From a circulatory email this morning:

Last night we had a significant weather event across Camperdown/Darlington campuses. As a result we suffered lightening[sic] strikes and some water damage across the campuses due to the torrential downpour.

[. . .]

We believe that we got to most damage but anticipate that today will bring some additional issues that we will need to address.

If you have any issues please advise Campus Infrastructure Services [. . .]

Translation:

Last night it pissed down. We got flooded and hit by lightning.
We tried to fix things but if your office/lab/classroom is wet, or something is buggered, please give us a call.

There's a certain company that makes certain site-licensed software. A couple of days ago I was encouraged to set up my university with a full *two month* unlimited site license trial. Interesting how 'two months' becomes 'unlimited' in these halcyon days, but I'm more concerned that these nice people have sent the invitation to the wrong sucker target customer.

I don't actually know where the 'University of Sidney' is, although they might be talking about somewhere in Cambridge, I guess.

I am proud to tell you that CLC bio (www.clcbio.com) and JPR Technologies (www.jprtechnologies.com.au) have teamed up to service you better in Australia!

I, um, can't wait to be serviced.

Ahem.

The Black Knight's iron heart is warmed by the emails he receives. Sometimes however his seemingly limitless capacity for helping poor and needy is exhausted.

So maybe someone else would like to assist this honest-sounding gentleman?

Dear Respected,

With deep appreciation of your esteem contact I got from your company through web directory , I wish to introduce myself; I am Mr. Ahmed N. Al-Karbooli. Actually I will like to invest in your company. I will like to know the procedures of non-citizen investors. In investments, you have to look for a good company that the safety environmental condition of the foreign investor is guaranteed, actually after reading through your web-site, I decided to contact you.

I will be very much more delighted if you can give me details about your company, I am also looking forward to read your reply soon so as to detail you my background of my investment programme and how much fund that I am intending to invest and also the area that I would like to invest it after good negotiation.

Thanks very much for taking time to go through to my e-mail, I shall be glad to reserve this respect and opportunity for you, if you so desire, but do urge you to give the matter your immediate attention it deserves. Respond to my private email: alkarbooli_iq@yahoo.com.my

Regards

Mr. Ahmed N. Al-Karbooli.

Dear $SEQUENCING_SERVICE customers,

We are pleased to inform you that the sequencing price for the reaction,
clean up and analysis will drop from AUD$15 to AUD$13.5. This will be
effective on 1 September 2007. Meanwhile, we can assure you that we will
maintain our current service quality.

Damn. That was our last, best hope.

The University's main campus telephone system is currently experiencing a large number of faults. This is due a fault in a major cable that feeds many telephone services to buildings across the Camperdown / Darlington Campus.

If your telephone service is faulty please contact the telephone fault
line on ext. 42053 or 9750-1080

Priceless.

The major difference between myself, and normal people such as Dr Chou, is that when an email comes round bearing a request for a piece of equipment, say a "magnetic particle separator (or a similar machine)", he will actually puzzle over the request for a couple of minutes wondering if he has missed something obvious; whereas I will witheringly declaim "It's called a magnet" and hit 'delete' without further ado.

The Black Knight has been hard at party this last week, which accounts for his silence. We had outlaws over from foreign climes, dontcherknow, and far too much fun.

But it's pleasing to see that the Cage carries on in its inimitable way, with the usual angry students and requests for obscure reagents. Gratifyingly, however, at least one Rat's whiskers are twitchy enough to realize that I live for this stuff, and in his email to one of the Cage's lists attempts to forestall me by saying

P.S.: To the black knight: This is not a plan to take over the building / world

As it happens, I'm not so much concerned with Mr Kidd's missing post, as with the MYSTERIOUS MUG THIEF.

Back in May, this email did the rounds:

ok I want you to all stop what you are doing, we have an emergency, we have a missing mug, this is not just any mug this one belongs to a VIP and they would like it returned asap. I will include a detailed description so if you could all check the area of the building where you are it would be appreciated. (A general search of the building may have to follow if this email fails to deliver results).

A VIP? Ooh. The email continued,

The mug is large (very large) red in colour and has the Nescafe logo on it, it was last seen in the tea room from where it went missing, if you find this mug please return it to the tea room and no questions will be asked.

Serious stuff. I did switch off a little bit when I saw the 'N' word, and honestly thought no more of it for two weeks, until this appeared in our mailboxes:

I'm missing my mug! It disappeared after the amoeba trade display last week. It's a conical shape, white, with letters and words in a light brown color on the outside.

Another mug, mysteriously spirited away in the middle of the night, to who-knows-where for who-knows-what, and the intriguing possibility that we had a serial mugnapper in the Cage. (And yeah, saying what the 'letters and words' actually were might have helped).

I think the entire department must have gone to Safe Base Delta, because for over a month there were no further reports of mugs going missing, mysteriously or otherwise. We thought, if indeed we thought about the matter at all, that the mugs must have been returned to their owners (or at least the VIP's; there were no repercussions, and China, for example, was not invaded to secure future consistency of drinking utensil supply).

But it turns out that the mug thief, or thieves, had merely been biding their time and waiting for the heightened security alert to relax. Yesterday:

if you happen to see any of the tea room mugs/cups on your way around the building could you please drop them off in the kitchen, as we seem to be missing rather a lot

What is this? A ring of hardened international criminals, scouring the Cage for lonesome mugs? A Scientologist recruitment drive? What is going on? Will we ever find out?

Tune in next week for the next exciting episode of "Life of a Lab Rat" and find out! Or not.

M'learned colleague (let's call him Blofeld) upstairs says

IF the Black Knight doesn't make a quip about this, it'll be a sad day!

I, of course, WOULD be the one to do it, but I'd like to keep my job

But why do these people keep insist on producing such good material .... can you imagine how frustrating it is to be given so many 'set ups' and 'cues' and NOT be able to deliver the punchline!!

He is referring to this email:

These two emails appeared in my inbox earlier. Disappointingly, they were not related to each other.

(you'll have to click on this thumbnail to see it. Sorry about that)

The store will be closed from 3pm Friday 8 June.

That's all very well, but when the message is not sent out until 3:15 and I went down to get something at 3:05, it's a bit bloody late.

Grumph.

In compliance with the Explosives Act 2003 and Explosives Regulation 2005, we need to declare if and how much of ammonium nitrate and other chemicals that are explosive or have the potential to be explosive are kept in this building.

I am conducting a survey of these items in order to compile a list for the school. Could you please go through the list and indicate the amount of each chemical/item kept in your laboratory. Please indicate zero amount if you do not carry any one of these chemicals.

Please email me or submit a hard copy and do not forget to indicate the name of your laboratory, name of the person checking and amount in grams. I need to have this data by Wednesday 16 May and your cooperation will be highly appreciated.

They are actually going to list them? With room numbers and quantities?

Hot damn! I can't wait!

When a colleague sends an email that begins

Sadly, you need to use Internet Explorer for this

and then goes on to say

technical problems should be reported to me.... and, on that note, just be aware that when looking at a list of courses or people, the list is restricted to showing FIVE items at a time. We've already had some "Mac" issues .... deep joy....

I hope that they realize that the 'issues' are not with the Mac, but with coders who think that "Internet Explorer" and "adequate web browser" are intersecting sets.

I still maintain an email account at my previous workplace. An email from the systems administrator came round yesterday (or today - it's difficult living in two timezones) and made me giggle:

Will whoever it is who prints out the online copy of Le Monde,
please instead either read it online, or buy one.

I wonder if we should refer the culprit to Steve's email of 2001?

There was nearly a riot in the tea room last week when we ran out of real milk and only virtually water was left. A debate on the preference for fat milk versus thin milk ensued.

Being a fat milk person myself, I found this quite intriguing as semi-skimmed tends to be favoured in the UK. Here, the majority was definitely in favour of the the whole cow. But then this is a country where allegedly two thirds of men are overweight or obese.

That is something I really do not get, to be honest. That should mean two in three of the blokes in our building are porkers. And they patently are not. So if my sample is skewed, that means there are some real fat so-and-sos in statistical clumps around the place^[0].

This email captured my attention:

Science Faculty is requesting content for their November Issue of Science Alliance, their schools outreach newsletter (more info on Science Alliance at: http://www.science.usyd.edu.au/school/index.shtml). If you have anything suitable, please let me know.

I resisted the urge to laugh maniacally (schools? Young, malleable minds! Mwah hah hah hah!!), and instead peered over my steepled fingers at the screen,

"Ex-cellent."

You know, if I was the mischievous sort (be quiet, Paula), then I could have great fun in the next couple of days:

Hi all, Just as a reminder to look after the guys who are currently checking the safety of all our electrical equipment. As they are not scientists they don’t realise that they should be wearing gloves to handle certain equipment in places like an ethidium bromide room. So keep an eye out that they don’t handle any contaminated equipment (chemical, radioactive etc) without suitable precautions.

I am out for revenge after my screen and keyboard were covered in paint dust:
"Oooh, no, you can't go in there. That's where we breed the radioactive gorillas. And that's where we keep the failed cloning experiments. It's probably safe but I just need you to sign this indemnity form". . .