proximate

The incubator nonsense continues. I also just re-read the last post, and maybe I should proofread things. I probably won't though.

We are performing a test-run with a CO2 tank hooked up to the incubator (instead of waiting for a line to be run to the room) and a handheld O2 sensor set in the room.

Well, we are doing that NOW, but earlier this week, we wanted to do that and couldn't because it turns out plastics designed to work at room temp or higher can get brittle and break when you want them to work in a cold room, which can make your CO2 leak out into the room instead of fill the incubator. So that needed a fix.

And today's shark-cell-incubator-mad-science-emergency is that the CO2 sensor on the incubator, which tells it when to shove more CO2 in or not, is carefully calibrated to be a really good sensor when operated at 37 and high humidity. It is complete shit when operating with basically no humidity at 18 degrees.

My boss is super optimistic that this will all get worked out. In fact, he's having some mad-science-shark-cells cent here on Friday, and they'll need that 18 degree CO2 controlled environment ready to go as soon as they get here. I think maybe part of his optimism is because he's out of town and doesn't have any idea that most of this epic has been happening. I may tell him shark week is over and he can handle this on his own from here on out.

In other news, I get to be assistant coach for Cain's soccer team, and our first practice is this evening!

I haven't commented on the word of the day because I am completely unimpressed. My mind is near-constantly sorting through proximate and less proximate and more ultimate causes for things, and I sometimes actually think about it in those terms, and the word is just played out. For example: Ethan could be screaming and crying downstairs, and through brief interrogatory investigation ("use your words, honey") it is discovered that the proximate cause of the screaming and crying state is that Raechel won't let him wear the BLUE necklace. But dig a little deeper, and Rae is withholding necklace rights because Ethan was kicking her in the elbow, which was because Ethan was .... and so on, until it is revealed that the ultimate cause of the problem is that its too damn hot outside for the kids to go out and run off excess energy, so they're stuck inside tormenting each other.

I just finished book three of Daniel Abraham's Dagger and Coin series, which is quite good. I really like having a bunch of anatomically divergent races of humanity as an alternative to having humans/dwarves/elves/hobbits/etc like a classical fantasy world. Then I started reading Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday, which is non-fiction, but (ironically?) comparing cultures of divergent races of humanity. Is that irony?

Vapor

Oh crap - it happened. Somebody noticed I was blogging again. Now I'm going to feel obligated to write them. Well, maybe a little.

I thought about maybe starting to write a story and seeing how that works out.

Also thought about writing about various experiences here at work, but there are always questions about what I can and can't share, information-wise ... plus then I'll start speaking lab language and no-one will be able to read it.

I did nto know that vapor can be a verb meaning to indulge in bragging, blustering, or idle talk
Read more at http://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/#BiSCuwzQbSLEod5s.99 

also didn't know that link would pop up with the copied text of the definition... 

now my font shrank!! Help me!!! I'm meltinnnnnggg!!

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

overcompensating. 

Ahhh. what was I saying? forget it. this is potentially better (and maybe potentially vaporing):

There is an epic to be told. And I use the word epic loosely. Bossman was away on a remote desert island laboratory (I think it was a mad scientist convention) and an old mentor (possibly his mad scientist idol) who is losing funding (not going to turn this into a rant about government not funding the NIH) and needs a place to grow cells for his research. Now, most EVERYONE in biomedical research grows cells. Skin cells, cancer cells, kidney cells, blood cells, blood cancer cells, Henrietta Lax's illegally obtained cancer cells, mouse cells, cat cells, monkey cells. Cells are great for when you want to try something in a living system that's not actually a living organism (get that distinction? alive but less likely to upset PETA). Mammalian cells, as a rule, grow at body temperature, which is fairly constant among mammals at about 37 celsius, or 98-100 farenheit. So you have incubators set to 37 degrees with humidification and controlled gas (5% carbon dioxide, because it works). We have a room full of incubators full of cells, and freezers full of frozen cells that we can thaw out and grow again later. Again, this is normal if you work in a lab. 

What is not normal are the cells that mad scientist mentor/idol needs us to grow. They aren't from a mammal, they are from a shark. I'm not even going to try and go into why bossman wants to grow his mad scientist mentor/idol's shark cells, because the reason involves ion channels, and I am totally over ion channels (actually I just thought that sentence sounded good). 

For the centigrade-impaired, room temperature is 23-25 celsius, freezing is 0, boiling is 100, and as mentioned above, mammalian body temp is 37. Shark cells want to grow at 18, which makes all sorts of sense when you consider their environment, but do you sense the major problem yet? We use incubators to keep cells warm, and shark cells are below room temperature. Suddenly we don't need an incubator with humidity and controlled CO2 levels, we need a refrigerator. I look into this problem and the friendly folks who want to sell me incubators for thousands of dollars have a solution - an incubator that can be cooled by a separate unit that is also ridiculously expensive. But this would contradict Mad Science Law #2: don't buy new equipment. Dr. Frankenstein didn't buy a monster, he MADE one. He didn't even pay an electric bill - he harnessed lightning instead. So how do you make a heating unit keep something cooler than room temp? Seriously, I'll wait - see if you can work it out. It's going to seem so obvious once I tell you. 

You put the incubator in a walk-in cooler. 

I know, right? 

The cooler is set to 4 degrees - its basically a refrigerated room. If we were a restaurant, we'd keep food there. We're a lab, so we keep - well, that's not important - the point is its at 4 degrees. The incubator is heating itself to 18, 14 degrees above ambient temp. In a normal room at 24, the incubator heats itself to 37, 13 degrees above ambient. The incubator shouldn't be doing any more work than normal. Full of win. Just set the incubator to 18, attach the CO2 line, and  .... shit, there is no CO2 line piped into the coldroom. Why would there be? Who would need a CO2 line in a cold room?

Mad scientists, that's who. 

Luckily, I work at a big institution with a whole department full of engineers. I call them, and someone comes to look at the issue. There is a CO2 line in the larger room that contains the coldroom, good. It actually runs right next to the coldroom -- even better. Just put a hole through the wall and seal it well, and  ... hold on, that codl room doesn't have ventilation. It just recirculates the same air to keep itself cold effectively. It doesn't vent air out, and it only gets fresh air when the door opens. Regulations state that any area with closed ventilation cannot have any gas line run into it unless we also install an O2 sensor, to make sure we don't accidentally create a deathtrap. They didn't get the memo - we're mad scientists, deathtraps are sort of our thing. That argument doesn't convince her. So maybe ...

this post is enormous. to be continued. I need to actually go DO some mad science. 

Inscrutable

Turns out merriam-webster has a word of the day , and it's inscrutable. Cannot be scruted. 'Scrutable' is actually a real word as its antonym, they say. I guess they don't feel its a verb. I feel they didn't scrute hard enough.

I'm freakin sick of management crap in the lab. I really want to do science, not do all the 500 little things that keep the lab running and compliant and blah blah blah. Whine whine whine.

Have been trying to research amplification options for cello in the event that such will be needed for the Les Mis pit orchestra. I think it will be, but I have no idea how it will be paid for, because even the cheap options that are ok but not fantastic sounding run $200. The nicer systems run twice that and more.... I rediscover yet again that I could spend pretty much my whole salary on cello toys and accessories ... Just like I could on the RPG hobby ... why should hobbies be expensive? its not fair!

Started listening to a D&D AP (actual play) podcast, which is listening to another group sit around their table and play. Sometimes its really boring, and their sound recording quality isn't awesome (I have been spoiled by Fear the Boot (an amazing gaming podcast that is not AP)), but I do kinda like the story they are telling so far. Time is an issue. Maybe if I didn't sleep at all, I would have enough time to do all the stuff I want to do. Reading, playing, parenting (playing with kids), cello (playing), watching TV (playing video) ... but all the stuff I have to do steals time.

This post is BORING! I think I am a little depressed by my life. Which is dumb, I think - objectively, I do fairly interesting things. But I write down anything about it, and I feel like 'how dumb is that!' Maybe its a confidence thing. I probably still need more confidence. I wonder if that is also too expensive.

Stuff that is happening

Following in the footsteps of an old friend, I think its time to revisit my blog.

Admission: since breaking my finger last Thanksgiving, and then it taking all winter to heal to the point I could take the splint off (I am now wise in the ways of battling splint-stink), I finally got my cello out again to play. Unsurprising in retrospect, I have absolutely no callous on that finger anymore, but aside from that I think it went pretty well. I still remembered which hand to hold the bow with, and which end of the cello goes down, and my fingers had an impressive repertoire of muscle memory.

The reason for such an admission, or rather the reason that I got out the cello, was because I'm going to be playing in the pit orchestra for a production of Les Miserables right here in Rochester! I'm quite excited about this development, even more so because Audrey is singing in the ensemble and I am actually, for the first time since ... well, since ... um ... some show in Florida - Beauty and the Beast maybe - Audrey and I are working on the same show! Maybe I'm celebrating a small victory here, or maybe you, dear reader, are underestimating the difficulty of working out how both parents of three children can work on the same show without the children living at the theatre.


Also I'm now running two D&D games, which I'm quite enjoying. Currently, I should be designing clever defenses for the gnoll (except the gnolls look like trollocs) fortification that my players hope to assault next week. So far it has a front door, which is guarded by a spiked dry moat and a wooden stake wall with a single small (wooden) tower; and a back door, which is concealed, watched by hidden snipers, and both entrances lead to the underground portion of the fort ... and I can't really write any more than that because what if one of my players reads this? Dead giveaway is what it would be. Maybe next time I write about D&D I'll seed it with a bunch of details that are wrong, and see if anyone was paying attention. See, you don't HAVE to be devious to run a D&D game, but it doesn't hurt either. Maybe all those bits I already wrote are wrong, even! Devious! This was posted by one of my players in that game:




You know you're a geek when you are very proud of yourself for custom-making two lego pegataurs (yes, winged centaur) - but you're even more of a geek when you find that brickforge already makes centaur bodies that fit minifig torsos, and you deflate a little cause they look better than yours.


The other game already has its own blog - X-Crawl - and it hasn't been updated in forever either. I am not making any promises.