Archive for June 5th, 2005

outrage completed

Sunday, June 5th, 2005

Sat. night…………..haven’t blogged in about a week and I hope this doesn’t seem too much like a “contractual obligation”.

Starting out with some picks:

Film: “The Lost Skeleton of Cadavera”, an ode to the cheesy black and white sci-fi films of the fifties.
Favorite quote from above film:
Ranger Brad: “Say, you don’t believe all of those stories about the Lost Skeleton of Cadavera, do you?”
Dr. Armstrong: “Ranger Brad, I’m a scientist! I don’t believe in anything!”
In the CD player: Johnny “Guitar” Watson
Sandwich: “Torta al Pastor” from Super Taqueria on Roxboro Rd. Durham, NC
Lawn sport: badminton with the kids

Science………..
BioRad precaset gels.Love them of hate them? Love them!
I’ve been running sucrose gradients and I know I would hate to pour 8 gels in one day to run out all the fractions I’ve collected. Walk to the cold room and there you go-ready to rip. Some scientists preach “waste of money, I pour my own…blah blah blah”. Okay if you come from some poorly funded lab and the head thinks you haven’t got anything better to do with your time than to pour an $8 gel (which is really pouriing two gels-main gel and stacker) be my guest. Me, I’m buying the gels, running all eight of them on Friday and spending Sat. with my kids.
Goofy product anti-plug: Seen these “rolly-polly” (or some other goofy name that some idiot with a marketing degree came up with) glass beads? It is a great way to spread bacteria, but you can buy the glass beads from Fisher, VWR, etc. Autoclave them (no you don’t need to wash them first) in a 100 ml bottle and you are ready to plate. Several companies sell them in various incarnations,tubes and bottles. I’m not sure who developed the spreading technique but it certainly wasn’t the guy who actually wrote up a Biotechniques paper about three years ago and tried to name it the ” Copacabana method”. That was a real career booster. I heard about it over 10 years ago from a yeast lab.

Oh, and the title……..not outage completed, but outrage completed.
Mood: mellow, red wine kind of mellow.

Posted on Sunday, June 5th, 2005 at 1:01 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.