Sometimes you don't want all the bells and whistles

The benchtop microfuge (small centrifuge) I use broke last week. Sort of. See, most of the microfuges we have in the lab are old and look as if they had been made in someones garage out of spare parts from a 54 Chevy, but they work fine. I'm not that vain. Well, the person that shares my lab bay used some of her excess fellowship money to buy a new one, an ultrafancy one, the one we both use, the one that broke. I was spinning a plasmid prep, the rotor was spinning down when an error came up on the display "Tacho - Error". A tachometer error, fine, whatever. But no amount of shutting off/on or unplugging could get it to reset. I had to use the emergency "fuck you" release to get my samples out. I screwed around with it a little, said forget it, and emailed our lab manager. The microfuge was back today and working. My lab manager sent me an email containing the email she got from the tech support. Now, I want you to bear in mind, this is a brand new, less than one month old, ultra fancy high tech piece of sophisticated lab equipment. How do we get it to reset? I quote:

"open the lid
turn power off
spin the rotor by hand in a counter-clockwise direction
while the rotor is spinning, turn the power on.
You should see the RPMs counting down in the display. If you can do so without hurting
your hand, go ahead and halt the rotor from spinning. You should now get the operating
display."

....the fuck? The way to fix a high end machine is to manually spin the rotor? Why don't they just write in the manual "if you get an error message, pound the machine firmly with your fist until it corrects itself."

But wait, there's more. How did this error happen you ask? Well the tech support guy speculates:

"A Tacho 1 error occurs when a mis-count of the rotor recognition pulses generated
under the rotor occurs. This is kind of a soft error, and I can't really account for
why it happens. Usually something like a power sag or Radio Frequency interferrence
may cause it to happen."

Um, what? Radio frequency interferrence? You have got to be fucking kidding me. Most microfuges I've worked with are so old that I'd be lucky to have any kind of LCD display. Most just have knobs on springs. This damn thing is so fancy that moving too fast past it with my cell phone in my pocket can screw it up. Honestly, that's too much. I find it too fucking hilarious. I'm fighting the urge to make the machine its own personal tinfoil hat and sending an email to the lab letting them know how the foil is there to keep out them pesky alien signals. Seriously, is this thing equipped with Bluetooth? If I start getting text messages from my microfuge at 3 in the morning telling me how lonely it is, we are going to have a "talk". With a sledgehammer.

Well, what do YOU want?

Cause I know what I want. I want the cute girl in the stockroom. I....want...her.

Just sayin'. Want.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas

Mission accomplished

Top 5: Night of the Living Top 5

Top 5 people I'd like to have over for a dinner party

5. Robert Osborne

4. Socrates

3. Martin Scorsese

2. Jesus

1. Roger Ebert

Honorable mentions: David Hume, Abraham Lincoln, Nikola Tesla, Martin Luther, Alfred Hitchcock, Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Maggie Gyllenhall (ok, so it'd be a big dinner party)

Top 5: Marriage of Top 5

Top 5 songs that aren't played at weddings but probably should be.

5. "Coming Down" - Anders Osborne

4. "Blues On A Holiday" - Susan Tedeschi

3. "Fall Too Fast" - The Wood Brothers

2. "Baby Your Love (Is All I Need) - Eugene "Hideaway" Bridges

1. "Don't Tell Me" - Taj Mahal

Honorable mentions: "Loving in my Baby's Eyes" by Taj Mahal (Eric Bibb version also acceptable, "Please Call Me, Baby" by Tom Waits, "Little Trip To Heaven" by Tom Waits, "The Staunton Lick" by Lemon Jelly, "That's What Angels Can Do" by The Wood Brothers, "Lola" by The Kinks, "Couch Potato" by Weird Al Yankovic

Detritus, page 4

1. So talking to my mother last night I was informed that my grandmother died. My paternal grandmother. Aka, my father's mother. As such, I haven't spoken with her in about...oh....15 years. Not that I had anything against her. In fact, I probably got along with her better than any of my other grandparents. But when things soured with my father I understandably lost contact with that side of the family. My father was wheelchair-ridden due to diabetes and for the past 10 years has been living with his mother with assisted-living people assisting their living. Or so I'm told. Like I said, I don't contact that side of the family. But I am sad my grandmother passed on. According to my mother, she was 93. She was, as my father once put it, a tough old bird. And she really was. Her maiden named was Drake (how awesome a name is that?) and my mother always tells me she thinks I got my genes from that particular branch of the family tree. The Drakes were large people. Tall and wide, big bones, big frames, not fat per se, just big people. I'm built like that. Underneath the fat, there is a large frame and I'm obviously pretty dang tall. As my mother described it last night, we are built like trees. I like to think that makes a more direct connection between me and the one redeemable branch of my paternal family tree (the Drakes). Rest in peace, Grandma. Life handed you a speeding bullet of shit, you took it on the chin, and never complained one day. You were a lady made of steel. Time for your rest.

2. In other death related news, Paul Newman passed away. I already covered my feelings on this in other places.

3. I shared this with Taco, but I might as well share it with the rest of you. Don't worry Taco, you're still special, baby. Anyways, people have been doing the google analytics thang, so I decided to give it a shot. Since I just set it up I don't quite have the list of search hits that other people have, but I did have 4 hits through Google search engine that I thought were pretty funny taken as a whole. The first three were fairly intelligent. 1. Do not confuse the pointing finger with the moon. Ok, the zen warning I posted before. That's pretty smart. 2. Edward Scissorhands Ethics Conversation. Hey, that sounds like someone I'd like to chat with, right on. 3. Les Barker Occasional Table. Alright, another Les Barker fan! Spread the word of Englands greatest comedic point. What's the fourth hit you ask? Adultfungirls.com. That pretty much sums me up, I think. A veneer of intelligence over a core of smuttiness. How that search came to my site, I haven't a clue. But right on.

4. I have a crush on the cute girl in the stockroom. Shut up, Blue. I still have no hope. Nothing will happen. NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

5. I took my cat to the vet last week. Nothing is wrong, just time for her 3rd round of booster shots. The vet opened the door to her cat carrier and she stepped out and started sniffing around, checking things out. The vet said, "my, you're a confident little girl, aren't you." And then I realized, hey, she really is. She didn't hide in her carrier. She was presented with a new situation and a new person and she immediately started exploring. I...I'm not sure how I feel about having a cat more emotionally balanced than I am. I would've been at the back of the carrier hiding. I also am pretty certain she is smarter than I am too. Maybe if I'm lucky she'll start bringing in a paycheck and I can retire.

6. I've pretty much stopped using my elliptical runner, which means I'm only working out three days a week. But you know what? This semester the Monday and Friday classes are taught by Crazy Devil Woman. Ms. Hey Let's Do Squats And Lunges The First 25 Minutes Of Class. My quads have stopped working.

7. Coyote, if you haven't watched The Tao of Steve, you really should. I'm just going to assume you have.

8. This past weekend was AV weekend in WoW, and I got the last piece of pvp gear for my mage. I started this odyssey the last AV weekend, so that's 5 weeks. In 5 weeks I upgraded every gear slot for my mage with pvp gear except one (one of the trinket slots, I got the brewfest spell damage trinket and it's not worth grinding honor to upgrade with the pvp trinket. 30k honor for 3 more spell damage? I don't think so). I also spent a day and a half in AV with my shaman getting an upgrade for his MH weapon. I used badges to buy the OH fist weapon and then the Kara group he was running with collapses so he was left with a kickass OH weapon and a shit MH weapon. That has been remedied. So I'm done with pvping. That's it. It's over. No more. One of my guildmates was happy. He said he much preferred my Cranky self (normal mind set) over my Homicidal self (pvping mind set). Pvping really is like swinging two bags of retarded children together. And if you don't play WoW this probably doesn't make any sense. And you should be playing WoW.

9. For those of you that play Spore, the Grox are not to be fucked with. They own every system around the center of the galaxy. Getting to said center is the "goal" of the game. I tried twice to get there. Once I quarter-assed it, the other time I half-assed it. Both times ended poorly. The only way I'm getting there is using my full ass. The systematic destruction of the Grox. Which could take YEARS.

10. We have a departmental email listserv. No shock, pretty much every department everywhere has one. People occasionally abuse this listserv to their own personal gain. For example, advertising a local roller derby match (which I totally have to see) or selling some of their shit. We have a person who washes the glassware for the lab and a couple other labs. She's a middle aged woman, about 5 feet tall with bushy red hair, named Rhonda. Last week she sent an email to the listserv trying to sell a couple musical instruments. A large keyboard and a viola. Today she sent another email to the listserv. This time she's selling a suit of chain mail and a helmet. This is also the woman that walked up to one of the people in the lab one time and proclaimed, "so my ex-husband gave me herpes." Rhonda....Rhonda scares me a little.

The mass of men

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
- Henry David Thoreau (a huge prat)

I was walking along the street one day when I thought about what might happen if you could hear other peoples thoughts. Then I felt sorry for the person that could hear my thoughts. They would hear only a single, continuous scream.

Also walking along the street I overheard a woman talking on her cell phone say, "and then she fell asleep in the laundry basket." I now wish I stopped her and found out the rest of the story. If it weren't for my horse....