#DataJail Break

So, I was celebrating my 4.5/8 months of data entry done, and catching up on the internet when I stumbled across this at TheBloggess.com 

http://nekofont.upat.jp/index.html

And so, I give you....

This is what will be on my future office door :-D

How to Figure out your Fatty Acids

Or "How to drive yourself insane". If you're at all interested in ever doing fatty acids (FA) here's the cliff-notes proceedure:

1. Obtain the chromatograph of your factory prepared standard. Notice that they used an entirely different reaction column from you and hang head in despair.
2. Look at your high-standard chromatograph, notice that it's pretty close.
3. Start identifying peaks based on pure numbers. Higher concentrations in the std (compounds are given a concentration by the manufacturer) should have higher peak areas.
4. See if your peak ID by numbers matches up with the chromatogram. Some will, some won't.
5. Repeat until you've matched as many peaks as you can.

So this is what I'll be doing for the next week. Once I get this first thing figured out, it's just entering numbers from here. Just light a candle for my poor tendinitis wrist.

Impending Summer Craziness

It is a (seeming) fact of life in academic science that we spend all the school year only doing what absolutely needs to be done and putting off anything that can wait until that magical time where there are no obligations: Summer "Break"! These are the few months between May finals and the start of school in September, when there are no teaching responsibilities, fewer undergrads to be bothered by, and nice long days (great for field work and also for enjoying some recreational activity after a long day of work).

However, the problem comes when we actually get to summer and realize that there's no way in hell everything is going to get done! Which means that anything that can, will get pushed off to the fall, usually because there is some false assumption that only taking/teaching one class will not be that much of a time vacuum (yeah, right...).

So, I spent my school year writing grants ($6,000 awarded!!), churning through lab analyses, teaching microbio lab, attempted to write a manuscript, working with collaborators, and writing some presentations, with the occasional family emergency thrown in to make sure I didn't get bored. Here's what got pushed off to the summer:

• Finish the manuscript
• Process collaborator's samples
• Data presentation for Farmers (where my study sites are)
• Defend proposal
• Continue sampling
• Count algae in spare time

See what I mean about the fallacy of the "Summer Break"? We all do it, so I know we're all in the same boat. It's just funny and sad to me how this happens to all of us every year, like we don't know it's coming. I guarantee that at some point in October, a big pile of work will come across your desk or inbox, and it'll be important but not immediate and you'll say, "this can wait until the summer". And then you'll do that at least once more in November, December, January, February, March, April, and maybe by May you'll have realized that the pile of summer work is as big as the academic year pile.

So yeah, yay summer break...

Conferences = Book Bonanzas

So, I don't know about the conferences that everyone else goes to...but the two that I frequent are great places to pick up professional books! The one I'm at this weekend offers graduate students the chance to apply for a book award, where if there a particular book you need/want for your research (provided it deals with algae) you just write a little paragraph about why you need it and provided you haven't been given a book lately, you can then "win" said book. I've received two books in this way. And then there are the auctions! Both societies that I attend have both silent and live auctions. These are great places to pick up both older classic books and new books, often donated by book vendors. I have picked up a lot of great books this way, often for as little as $5! So tonight I received a $125 book via the book award, and picked up a classic text (recommended by my PI) for $25; when your boss says he'd buy a particular book, you buy it!

However this brings me to a dilemma...Often, by the time I get home for the day, and I'm done with my lab work and/or teaching, all I want to do is veg on the couch with the husband. I know there is a lot of reading I should be doing, both of all these books I just acquired as well as keeping up on the literature. I often don't do any recreational reading because I feel guilty for not doing any work related reading. The end result it's that I don't do any work reading until I have to for a new paper our project, and I don't do any reading for fun either. Either way I end up feeling uneducated.

So what is everyone's feelings on this? Where do you go to build your professional library? How much do you keep up on work reading and/or balance that with pleasure reading? What are some of the factors you consider?

Tales From The Field

So my assistant de jour is a very sweet girl from the Dominican Republic. And today we had the following exchange:

"Do you hike?"

"Well, not around here, but yes. We go hiking pretty often."

"What is the meaning of hiking?"

"Um...."

"Like, what is the purpose of it?"

"For the enjoyment of being outdoors, I guess."

"So what is the definition of it?"

"Um, to vigorously walk outdoors in rugged terrain with the occasional bit of mild climbing for exercise?"

"Huh, I never knew that. There's no Spanish word for hiking, so I have nothing to compare it to."

No Spanish analog for hiking? Really? I find it very hard to believe that there's no hispanic Spanish word for hiking.

File this one under culture-shock.