Isn’t It Ironic?

I just happened to notice that my post yesterday on my protein purification woes drew Millipore as an advertising sponsor.  Obviously, this makes sense – I talk protein science, scientists come and read, a life science research biotech company sees a target audience.

But the irony comes in the particular product which Millipore is toting – a 0.5mL centrifugal filter for concentrating or desalting/buffer exchange of proteins.

Have I mentioned that I have literally spent 3 years (do you see a trend in my never-ending, unsolvable research problems) attempting to dialyze imidazole out of Protein X?  And how many Millipore columns I have used?

Millipore, why must you taunt me so?  What’s next, Pierce advertising their Slide-a-Lyzer dialysis cassettes for quick and easy buffer exchange? (I am pretty sure that I am single-handedly keeping Pierce in business with the number of dialysis cassettes I use for all my unsuccessful dialysis attempts.)

New rule: if you advertise something as “delivers great performance”, then you better come to my lab and make it work with MY protein!

I'm a Mac... and I suck.

Three weeks ago, I received my "New Year's Present" from the lab:

And a little piece of my died inside. Have I mentioned how much I hate Macs?

Now, it was nice to finally get a computer. I was really starting to feel like a second-class citizen. When I first joined the lab, the rule was that since money was tight, no more computers would be purchased -- graduate students had to provide their own (i.e., bring in our own personal laptops), and post-docs and techs had to make-do with the current computer situation. But then they started getting upgraded computers, and the other grad student had an unfortunate incident with her laptop and a can of peach spritzer (laptop: 0, peach spritzer: 1). She declared that it was the fault of dragging her laptop back and forth everyday (and not the fault of storing a can of liquid in her laptop case) that it met its untimely end and she would not be bringing her new computer in the lab... so of course, the lab bought her one. And before I knew it, everyone had a fairly new-ish computer... except me.

Then, the lab decided that since everyone else was too lazy to back up their computers on a regular basis, and Macs have a habit of running totally smooth and then just up and dying one day (hence resulting in regular, major data loss), we were going to invest in a terabyte hard drive and network all the computers to it for nightly back-ups. Except that everyone had to be on a Mac... and I still had my PC. And hence, a brand new 20" iMac appeared next to my desk.

Three weeks later? I hate Macs even more than I did before... and I didn't know that was possible. Now, if you're not particularly knowledgeable about computers, I get that they are straightforward and far more idiot-proof than a PC. But... they just don't do the things I want! I know my way around a computer well, and made dozens and dozens of tweaks to my PC to have everything run exactly the way I want. And the Mac? It just doesn't do that. In three weeks, I have called Apple seven times to ask how to get something to work the way I want it to, and seven straight times I was told that Macs just don't have those capabilities. Really? Why on earth would anyone pay significantly more money for an equivalent computer that doesn't do what a PC does? Considering the price, I would expect the Mac to go above and beyond my PC... and it has failed, terribly.

Boo.

Although, the 20" screen will be useful come poster-making time... if only all the figures I previously made would show up on the Mac (they won't). Just look at the difference between my tiny little portable laptop, and my new ginormous lab computer!


On the other hand, I do sorely miss having all my personal things with me in the lab. Waiting for 10 hour column runs on the weekend is so utterly boring when I don't have my own files (hence the lack of posts lately -- everything I want to post requires pictures, and all the pictures are on my home computer).

However, a big screen isn't enough to sway my vote. Two thumbs down for Apple.

Oh, the Irony

Knowing my tendencies for extreme over-organization, it probably doesn't surprise you that I manage our finances down to the penny. MS Money is my best friend (okay, fine, after you two, Mark and Shannon), which is why I have found it extraordinary frustrating that since October XX, strangely the EXACT day that I got a letter in the mail as a [Bank] shareholder regarding its merger with craptastic [Other Bank] , I have been unable to access the "Account Download" feature of my [Bank] account to import the information into Money -- instead, I just receive an error message.

Yes, of course, I can do it by hand (and have done so accordingly). But this takes extra time, leaves me more prone to be off by a penny here or there requiring even more time to go back and check every entry, and my entries lack the "E" mark, stating that they have been electronically cleared (and yes, this bothers me).

As such, yesterday I finally bit the bullet and called [Bank] to find out what's going on. Has the account download service been discontinued at the hand of [Other Bank], or is there just some sort of error that they have been too lazy to repair in a timely fashion? Of course, nobody could answer this over the phone, and I was told to submit a message electronically. Fine, done and done.

This morning, I received an email notification that I had a reply, and I needed to sign into my [Bank] account to read the reply. I signed in, clicked on the "Messages" section... and received the following statement:

The service you are trying to access is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Please try again later or call 800-XXX-XXXXX, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for further assistance."

An error message that I cannot access the message regarding the error message I receive in lieu of downloading my account statement. Oh, [Bank], what are you doing to me?

Doodle Calender

I've been getting a lot of traffic to my blog recently from individuals googling for how to ask individuals to serve on their thesis committees. While I don't have genius advice for this, more so than I found it was helpful to attach a brief one page background of the research on which I was currently working and an outline of my current thesis aims so that they had an idea of what I was doing, and why they would be relevant to sit on my thesis committee, I do have a nifty little tidbit for organizing committee meetings. Meet... Doodle Calender, the perfect tool for organizing any sort of group meeting.

I'm not sure how committee meetings are organized elsewhere, but around here, my PI would give me a list of dates that worked for him, and I would email the rest of my committee members the list of dates, and then spend the next several weeks emailing back and forth to try and finagle down one single timepoint that worked. Then, one day, my PI discovered Doodle Calender.That is a screenshot from my Doodle Calender. The blurred-out area is the names of my committee members, which they each entered. Across the top are dates which my PI had told me he would be available, so I selected them as options for the meeting. I then emailed out the link for the calender to my committee members, and they were able to sign in to the calender and mark off what times they could make the meeting. If the times they are available change, they can go in at a later date and change it on their own. When I need to pinpoint a time for my meeting, all I need to do is look at what column has the most green "OK" marks, and I have my date and time selected for me. And I don't have 40 e-mails through which to search.

Brilliant.