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Friday, May 21, 2004
Work Musings
My computer is so slow. It can't even handle some operations like exporting a figure from Graphpad Prism (a statistics program) into a TIF file. It runs out of memory. And the processes that it can do, it performs slower than trying to suck molasses through a straw. Opening Microsoft Word takes about 35 seconds (no joke.. even as a joke, that's not even funny).
Since NPR is always playing in the men's restroom, going to the bathroom has become an educational experience. Since it's the only free beverage, I tend to stick to drinking water only (the Calpico Plan would've worked better if I was rich and could afford to keep restocking the supply). That makes me piss a lot. It's in the range of cups. I totally feel like more is coming out than I actually put in.
Mice are vicious. When they get old, they tend to get really aggressive and can't be caged together because they'll attack one another (at least the males). They also get to smell pretty badly because we only change their cages twice a week (once if they are by themselves). I think my nose has been desensitized to it since I didn't really notice until my new co-worker brought it up.
Chemical reagents are expensive. We ordered some protease inhibitors that ended up costing $500 total for 4 small bottles (with only 25 milligrams of chemical in each of them). To put this in perspective, a tablet of extra strength Tylenol contains 500 mg of its active ingredient acetaminophen and costs about $0.12 per pill. We also work with radiolabeled chemicals like 125-iodine-labeled epibatidine. That stuff was $600 for 200 microliters (volume). To put that in perspective, the price of gasoline could rise to $3/gallon this summer. Although that's bordering on gouging, the equivalent price of 125I-epibatidine would be $11,363,636.36/gallon (millions!).
Our meetings are quite informal. Even the meetings with everyone from the Basic Research department in attendance. Case and point. My co-worker is working on a dyskinesia project with monkeys. A question arises about the project. He is sitting in the back of the conference room, but has his hand to his mouth. It looks like he wants to say something, so my boss asks him, "do you have something to add?" Startled, he says, "um.. no." She then comments that, "with your hand up like that, it looked like you had something to say." Reflecting on what he was doing with his hand, he replies, "oh, I was just sucking on my thumb." At that point, the whole room erupts in laughter. While I'm not laughing the hardest, no one is amused more than me.
5:13 PM Albert
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..a life in DUO