Life Science Tools of the Trade

I’ve had a bad week.

My bike died, the frame is slightly bent, and being alloy I’m a bit leery about it being straightened. I hope the insurance assessor will agree with me. Then my external HW drive that I use for backups and iTunes at home made a *clunk* noise and won’t spin up. Nearly everything on there is backed up, except for 100 photos of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and a dozen or so taken at the Loved One’s graduation. Oh, and the latest draft of a novel I’m working on. Gah. It would cost anything up to a grand to recover the data, which is worth it to me – if I could afford it. Bugger.

On the upside it’s a bright sunny day for my mum’s birthday today, but the bad news it’s already 31C (88F) in the lab and it’s not 9 o’clock yet. Aircon? What a great concept. Bah. I think I’ll move the computer to the cold room.

Anyway, beloved reader, you didn’t come here to hear me whine. We do have a products & suppliers piece of news this week. I think I’ve mentioned before that we have a rather good Stores in this building, who stock pretty much all of the day-to-day stuff we need. But in a somewhat radical move (at least for this institute) we – that is, our lab and a couple of other groups on this floor – are getting together with Invitrogen (the 500 lb gorilla, etc.) to implement a mini-stockroom in the cold room I just mentioned. The idea is that we’ll have a ready supply of gels and markers even when the rest of the building is scrabbling around because someone central hasn’t placed an order or paid an invoice (and both have happened, I assure you).
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Since we have a new member who is extremely lucid and incomprehensible at the same time, I post this is his honor:

Let me say that preformative exclusion of microbial macrobes should be studied. The subsonic-type of bacterial nucleus runs to the sound of her siren like voice where they will be degradededed into nanu-type negative charged debris by the super-trioxide activated scavengable cell type helio-matrix of the sub-type X membrane. Upon this sub-holy hyperacceleration of the immune response memory magnetic cells we shall reach a state of subconscious cleansing which clears are minds of all impure urges (not only homo, but also hetero and asexual). Skeptics claim that cleanising the asexual of their non-sexual urges will invoke the spirit of fornication. This is untrue as can be seen in my unpublished mansucript. The thoughts can literally and figuratively precipitate and be extruded on a molecular level by the routine technique of ion exchange therapy into the liver or kidney.With this state of mind-stasis equilibrium no disease can be spread. Prove it is not a non-null hyperthesis!

Time to tighten up the membership requirements.

Another thought……………….. and yes, I’m getting old…………I don’t really want to look at the ass crack, belly or nipples of every female (or male for that matter) student who comes into the lab. I could tell stories of the sights I’ve seen as they bend over at the restriction enzyme freezer. Hell, we even have a code for it…………A.M. Use of the code lets your lab mates know that there is a serious danger of ass meat viewing.