You gotta love machinary
This is my first post in an age, largely because of busy life and lazyness in the bits which aren't busy.
So here's a quick update:
I have 16 weeks of lectures left before my finals (ARGH) but this number does not count christmas and easter holidays so it's actually quite a while.
I sent off my application for teacher training last week, very exciting as this constitutes an effort towards "getting a life" after I graduate.
I'm doing a research project as a dissertation for my degree course, on the whole this is going well but see below for irritation.
Got freshers' flu (unjustifiably I feel as I'm not a fresher) and passed it on to Rob who has turned it into a large case of man-flu.
That's about it really!
I'm doing a project on x-ray crystallography. in a nut shell this involves making a protein into a crystal and then shining x-rays through the crystal to see what the protein looks like. so i have my purified protein. and i even made it into a beautiful crystal. but the bloody x-ray machine isn't working. very frustrating for everyone in the lab, as we have at least 3 sets of crystals we need to x-ray. blah. last week it wasn't working and cost £300 to get the guy out to fix it (maybe that should be my job - he only changed an internal lightbulb!). yesterday it wasn't working because the light that tells you it's ready wasn't working (bulb had blown) but then we changed that bulb and it seemed fine. then half way through the warm up process the vacuum seal went on some internal part and had to be reset overnight. this morning something had gone kaput inside it. when i left the lab my supervisor was approaching it in a menacing way with a large spanner. this is a £200,000 piece of equipment, surely it should be slightly more reliable...?
So here's a quick update:
I have 16 weeks of lectures left before my finals (ARGH) but this number does not count christmas and easter holidays so it's actually quite a while.
I sent off my application for teacher training last week, very exciting as this constitutes an effort towards "getting a life" after I graduate.
I'm doing a research project as a dissertation for my degree course, on the whole this is going well but see below for irritation.
Got freshers' flu (unjustifiably I feel as I'm not a fresher) and passed it on to Rob who has turned it into a large case of man-flu.
That's about it really!
I'm doing a project on x-ray crystallography. in a nut shell this involves making a protein into a crystal and then shining x-rays through the crystal to see what the protein looks like. so i have my purified protein. and i even made it into a beautiful crystal. but the bloody x-ray machine isn't working. very frustrating for everyone in the lab, as we have at least 3 sets of crystals we need to x-ray. blah. last week it wasn't working and cost £300 to get the guy out to fix it (maybe that should be my job - he only changed an internal lightbulb!). yesterday it wasn't working because the light that tells you it's ready wasn't working (bulb had blown) but then we changed that bulb and it seemed fine. then half way through the warm up process the vacuum seal went on some internal part and had to be reset overnight. this morning something had gone kaput inside it. when i left the lab my supervisor was approaching it in a menacing way with a large spanner. this is a £200,000 piece of equipment, surely it should be slightly more reliable...?