Graaaah.
RL rant, under the cut. Mostly me venting in tl;dr mode about irritiating pieces of scientific equipment at work, to keep sane. You've been warned.
*Long* freaking day at work -- kept getting interrupted, never got the things done that I really needed/wanted to do, and ended up with the %&#*%&&#%^$&#)^& water softener down in the fish room deciding to be a bitch *again.* Let me give you an idea of why I'm about ready to start screaming at this piece of equipment.
Last week I had to spend inordinate amounts of time on the damn thing, first replacing a cracked tank (and I can't say enough snarky things about a system that uses a *plastic* tank for a pressurized application and then sets up the closure clamps in such a way that they're *guaranteed* to apply torque and eventually cause cracks that will cause the end user to be replacing a $190 tank every couple of years).
The tank contains gazillions of ion exchange resin beads suspended in water, and those all had to be siphoned out of the old tank and transferred to the new one, which was irritating enough without having the inevitable dropped beads turning immediately into, tiny, deadly ball bearings on the concrete floor. Then I got the whole thing reassembled and pressurized, let it settle, and ran a test regen cycle.
Of course the whole thing immediately clogged up and ground to a halt. So, I had depressurize it and rip it apart, going from the most-to-least likely causes for the clogging. I got to do this with the "help" of a manual that appears to have been written by illiterate monkeys, and in which all of the diagrams showing the actual parts appear to have been photocopied six times over and reduced at least once.
After emptying the brine tank of 40 lbs of salt (which then had to be discarded) and cleaning it out (it really did need a clean, I have to admit, so that part wasn't wasted), reassembling and repressurizing, depressurizing and dissasembing again when *that* didn't fix things, and fiddling with all the hoses, I finally tracked the clog to a cylindrical drain screen the size of the last joint of my little finger. It was completely clogged with tiny resin beads, which were so firmly lodged in the mesh I had to push them out individually with a pin. That took about 20 minutes. Then I reassembled and repressurized again, only to find that the brine tank wasn't draining properly. After about half an hour of reading the manual over and over, I finally found a tiny gasket, smaller than my littlest fingernail, that had apparently slipped a millimeter or so. It was deep in the pump part of the unit, but after much swearing and finger crossing (after all, I was only half sure I was reading the manual aright, and was pretty scared I might bork the whole unit accidentally) I found it, re-settled it properly, and reassembled the whole pump unit.
When I was lifting the pump off the work surface to reinstall it, what should I see but a tiny, black O-ring that had fallen out from *some*where.
Cue more swearing, and complete dissasembly of the thing I'd just sweated over putting back together, till I found the place the O-ring belonged and replaced it.
*Then* I went through the all-too-familiar reassemble and repressurize sequence, ran a regen cycle . . . and the damn thing worked. I ran another regen cycle, and the angels sang halleluja and nothing leaked, clogged, or blew up. Things were fine for about a week.
Then today, at about 3pm, the tank began leaking again, in a way that suggested the new tank had already cracked.
Cue yet more swearing, and a hasty depressurize and disassemble. Fortunately, the tank wasn't cracked . . . but that meant something else was wrong. However, I had to get to a lab meeting, so I couldn't troubleshoot more. At the meeting, I warned everyone that the tank might be out of commission again, but at least didn't appear to be broken again.
"If that freaking thing had cracked after one freaking week, I was gonna call up the company and demand a box of chocolates, a fruit basket, a signed apology and a free new tank," was how I summed it up.
"Wow. You put a lot of thought into that outburst," was my boss's admiring comment, and then we got on to the meeting proper.
Afterwards, I figured out the problem was probably that the silicone joint lubricant used to help seal the main attachment points must have gotten worn off by my constant disassembling/reassembling the week before. So I went looking for some more.
There wasn't any, and it hadn't been on the list of things to buy when I took over running the fish room a couple months ago. I'd assumed we were fine in that department but I hadn't done a full inventory (more fool, me). And this wasn't something that could wait -- the softener needed to be up and running for the weekend; it's how we keep the main sumps topped up.
The only other lab that might have had some silicone I could borrow was already closed up for the weekend (4pm on the Friday of Finals Week at a University is guaranteed dead time), as were both Biostores and Chemstores, the two on-campus supply rooms. I phoned around, and the only place in town that had what I needed was a 30 minute walk away (I don't drive, and even if I did I wouldn't bother with parking my car on campus since it's only a 15-20 min. walk from my home). It was 6F according to Yahoo, and snowing. Joy.
So, I bundled up and hiked it there and back, ripped apart the water softener once again and applied a "sparing" coat of silicone as directed by the packaging.
It still leaked. Repeat the above about 4 times, with gradually increasing amounts of goo, until the last time when I gave up and slathered the stuff on like peanut butter.
Wonder of wonders, it held when I repressurized. It even held through a regen cycle. It was 8:30 pm.
I left a note for Leon, the weekend kid who feeds fish on Sat. and Sun. and makes sure nothing dire is happening with the system, saying that if the thing started leaking again he should turn off the feed water, unplug everything, and call my cell. If the Science Gods are bein' kind, the cell won't ring and I'll actually get a weekend off. After all, it's traditional (4 years in a row now) that something major will blow out in the fish room on Christmas Day, and I'll be the only responsible adult available in town when a panicked undergrad calls around for help. One of these years I'll get to slop around in my jammies all day like everyone else . . . but this year I said the hell with it and scheduled myself for automatic fish room duty in a preemptive strike. What they hey, I'd be going in one to work one way or another. I just hope the bad juju doesn't hit on some *other* day off in retaliation.
Anyway, back to tonight, there I was, walkin' home at 8:30 in the pitch black and single digit temps, after yet another day of snow dumping on us. I was plenty warm, with good winter clothes and nice insulated waterproof boots, so it wasn't *that* godawful. Campus (and, indeed the rest of town) was dead as a doornail -- not a surprise, given the end of Finals and the weather in general, so the walk was pretty peaceful.
And boy, was it sparkly. The temps were just right today to give us real, proper snowflakes: gazillions of tiny, powdery, glittering stars, rather than the lumpy, damp stuff we more usually get. They coated every surface, fragile and nearly weightless. Every branch and dead weed looked like those fake branches they sell at crafts stores, coated in plastic glitter . . . except the craft store versions are hideously tacky, and these, being natural, had a grace and beauty that Michaels' will never be able to replicate. Even though it was cold enough to make the breath crackle in my sinuses, I actually stopped walking several times, just admiring how *pretty* it all was. Winter is brutal, but it can be beautiful.
At least it's beautiful if you have a warm house to go to, which I do. The pipes haven't frozen yet, thankfully (nothing like having to live on bottled water till it gets warm enough for things to thaw, and melting buckets of snow by the heater so there's water to flush the toilet with), which is nothing short of a miracle given that the last few years running they've been solid ice at the drop of a hat despite our best efforts to the contrary. I had some tasty leftover chili, and a holiday package sent by a friend offered the final, ultimate treat: a small pack of Walker's shortbread, accompanied by a single-serving container of Nutella. OMG, but that is the combo of utter win. So, after all the aggravation, at least there are simple pleasures to be thankful for. Gotta remember that.
(Of course, if things were going to be *perfect,* there'd be a lovely, solicitous man waiting in the other room to give me a nice sloooooow back rub and coo over what a lousy day I had . . . but there's simple pleasures and then there's freakin' pipe dreams -- must keep perspective. :P ;) )
I wanted to get some fic writing in, or some of the organizational posts I need to get out for the upcoming reenactment group 12th NIght . . . but I just needed to sit and rant for a bit, which, gentle reader (if anyone *is* reading this far along) is what I've been doing.
"LiveJournal -- better than bubble wrap." (TM)
*Long* freaking day at work -- kept getting interrupted, never got the things done that I really needed/wanted to do, and ended up with the %&#*%&&#%^$&#)^& water softener down in the fish room deciding to be a bitch *again.* Let me give you an idea of why I'm about ready to start screaming at this piece of equipment.
Last week I had to spend inordinate amounts of time on the damn thing, first replacing a cracked tank (and I can't say enough snarky things about a system that uses a *plastic* tank for a pressurized application and then sets up the closure clamps in such a way that they're *guaranteed* to apply torque and eventually cause cracks that will cause the end user to be replacing a $190 tank every couple of years).
The tank contains gazillions of ion exchange resin beads suspended in water, and those all had to be siphoned out of the old tank and transferred to the new one, which was irritating enough without having the inevitable dropped beads turning immediately into, tiny, deadly ball bearings on the concrete floor. Then I got the whole thing reassembled and pressurized, let it settle, and ran a test regen cycle.
Of course the whole thing immediately clogged up and ground to a halt. So, I had depressurize it and rip it apart, going from the most-to-least likely causes for the clogging. I got to do this with the "help" of a manual that appears to have been written by illiterate monkeys, and in which all of the diagrams showing the actual parts appear to have been photocopied six times over and reduced at least once.
After emptying the brine tank of 40 lbs of salt (which then had to be discarded) and cleaning it out (it really did need a clean, I have to admit, so that part wasn't wasted), reassembling and repressurizing, depressurizing and dissasembing again when *that* didn't fix things, and fiddling with all the hoses, I finally tracked the clog to a cylindrical drain screen the size of the last joint of my little finger. It was completely clogged with tiny resin beads, which were so firmly lodged in the mesh I had to push them out individually with a pin. That took about 20 minutes. Then I reassembled and repressurized again, only to find that the brine tank wasn't draining properly. After about half an hour of reading the manual over and over, I finally found a tiny gasket, smaller than my littlest fingernail, that had apparently slipped a millimeter or so. It was deep in the pump part of the unit, but after much swearing and finger crossing (after all, I was only half sure I was reading the manual aright, and was pretty scared I might bork the whole unit accidentally) I found it, re-settled it properly, and reassembled the whole pump unit.
When I was lifting the pump off the work surface to reinstall it, what should I see but a tiny, black O-ring that had fallen out from *some*where.
Cue more swearing, and complete dissasembly of the thing I'd just sweated over putting back together, till I found the place the O-ring belonged and replaced it.
*Then* I went through the all-too-familiar reassemble and repressurize sequence, ran a regen cycle . . . and the damn thing worked. I ran another regen cycle, and the angels sang halleluja and nothing leaked, clogged, or blew up. Things were fine for about a week.
Then today, at about 3pm, the tank began leaking again, in a way that suggested the new tank had already cracked.
Cue yet more swearing, and a hasty depressurize and disassemble. Fortunately, the tank wasn't cracked . . . but that meant something else was wrong. However, I had to get to a lab meeting, so I couldn't troubleshoot more. At the meeting, I warned everyone that the tank might be out of commission again, but at least didn't appear to be broken again.
"If that freaking thing had cracked after one freaking week, I was gonna call up the company and demand a box of chocolates, a fruit basket, a signed apology and a free new tank," was how I summed it up.
"Wow. You put a lot of thought into that outburst," was my boss's admiring comment, and then we got on to the meeting proper.
Afterwards, I figured out the problem was probably that the silicone joint lubricant used to help seal the main attachment points must have gotten worn off by my constant disassembling/reassembling the week before. So I went looking for some more.
There wasn't any, and it hadn't been on the list of things to buy when I took over running the fish room a couple months ago. I'd assumed we were fine in that department but I hadn't done a full inventory (more fool, me). And this wasn't something that could wait -- the softener needed to be up and running for the weekend; it's how we keep the main sumps topped up.
The only other lab that might have had some silicone I could borrow was already closed up for the weekend (4pm on the Friday of Finals Week at a University is guaranteed dead time), as were both Biostores and Chemstores, the two on-campus supply rooms. I phoned around, and the only place in town that had what I needed was a 30 minute walk away (I don't drive, and even if I did I wouldn't bother with parking my car on campus since it's only a 15-20 min. walk from my home). It was 6F according to Yahoo, and snowing. Joy.
So, I bundled up and hiked it there and back, ripped apart the water softener once again and applied a "sparing" coat of silicone as directed by the packaging.
It still leaked. Repeat the above about 4 times, with gradually increasing amounts of goo, until the last time when I gave up and slathered the stuff on like peanut butter.
Wonder of wonders, it held when I repressurized. It even held through a regen cycle. It was 8:30 pm.
I left a note for Leon, the weekend kid who feeds fish on Sat. and Sun. and makes sure nothing dire is happening with the system, saying that if the thing started leaking again he should turn off the feed water, unplug everything, and call my cell. If the Science Gods are bein' kind, the cell won't ring and I'll actually get a weekend off. After all, it's traditional (4 years in a row now) that something major will blow out in the fish room on Christmas Day, and I'll be the only responsible adult available in town when a panicked undergrad calls around for help. One of these years I'll get to slop around in my jammies all day like everyone else . . . but this year I said the hell with it and scheduled myself for automatic fish room duty in a preemptive strike. What they hey, I'd be going in one to work one way or another. I just hope the bad juju doesn't hit on some *other* day off in retaliation.
Anyway, back to tonight, there I was, walkin' home at 8:30 in the pitch black and single digit temps, after yet another day of snow dumping on us. I was plenty warm, with good winter clothes and nice insulated waterproof boots, so it wasn't *that* godawful. Campus (and, indeed the rest of town) was dead as a doornail -- not a surprise, given the end of Finals and the weather in general, so the walk was pretty peaceful.
And boy, was it sparkly. The temps were just right today to give us real, proper snowflakes: gazillions of tiny, powdery, glittering stars, rather than the lumpy, damp stuff we more usually get. They coated every surface, fragile and nearly weightless. Every branch and dead weed looked like those fake branches they sell at crafts stores, coated in plastic glitter . . . except the craft store versions are hideously tacky, and these, being natural, had a grace and beauty that Michaels' will never be able to replicate. Even though it was cold enough to make the breath crackle in my sinuses, I actually stopped walking several times, just admiring how *pretty* it all was. Winter is brutal, but it can be beautiful.
At least it's beautiful if you have a warm house to go to, which I do. The pipes haven't frozen yet, thankfully (nothing like having to live on bottled water till it gets warm enough for things to thaw, and melting buckets of snow by the heater so there's water to flush the toilet with), which is nothing short of a miracle given that the last few years running they've been solid ice at the drop of a hat despite our best efforts to the contrary. I had some tasty leftover chili, and a holiday package sent by a friend offered the final, ultimate treat: a small pack of Walker's shortbread, accompanied by a single-serving container of Nutella. OMG, but that is the combo of utter win. So, after all the aggravation, at least there are simple pleasures to be thankful for. Gotta remember that.
(Of course, if things were going to be *perfect,* there'd be a lovely, solicitous man waiting in the other room to give me a nice sloooooow back rub and coo over what a lousy day I had . . . but there's simple pleasures and then there's freakin' pipe dreams -- must keep perspective. :P ;) )
I wanted to get some fic writing in, or some of the organizational posts I need to get out for the upcoming reenactment group 12th NIght . . . but I just needed to sit and rant for a bit, which, gentle reader (if anyone *is* reading this far along) is what I've been doing.
"LiveJournal -- better than bubble wrap." (TM)