Accomplishments
I feel sad that what I feel is my greatest accomplishment today was not throwing a $20k piece of lab equipment across the room. The same could be said for most days, but today is the first day that it felt like a great accomplishment.
I've been working, trying to do experiments for the past 4 months (the two previous months I was setting up lab equipment and protocols). On the exact day of the six month anniversary of my last experiment, I attempted another. It failed for semi-technical reasons (I did a little wrong, the equipment did a little wrong which equals no results). I tried again Tuesday and again today, and on both occasions, the same software bug in our old, crappy fluorescence plate reader reared its ugly head. I've spent 6 months that were mostly equipment's fault trying to do an experiment, and now what do I have to show for it? A software bug and about 15 minutes (out of 4 hours) of data.
ARGH!
After the failure, I took a 30 minute walk, and for the machine's safety, I didn't go back into the room with it for another hour (it's across the hall from my lab). Well, I'm going to be trying again tomorrow (with a couple of modifications (again) to the protocol to hopefully work around the bug.
I've been working, trying to do experiments for the past 4 months (the two previous months I was setting up lab equipment and protocols). On the exact day of the six month anniversary of my last experiment, I attempted another. It failed for semi-technical reasons (I did a little wrong, the equipment did a little wrong which equals no results). I tried again Tuesday and again today, and on both occasions, the same software bug in our old, crappy fluorescence plate reader reared its ugly head. I've spent 6 months that were mostly equipment's fault trying to do an experiment, and now what do I have to show for it? A software bug and about 15 minutes (out of 4 hours) of data.
ARGH!
After the failure, I took a 30 minute walk, and for the machine's safety, I didn't go back into the room with it for another hour (it's across the hall from my lab). Well, I'm going to be trying again tomorrow (with a couple of modifications (again) to the protocol to hopefully work around the bug.