I got to play with the UCPD bomb squad today as I checked out their toys and methodologies for gremlins.  Did you know the University had a bomb squad?  Neither did I, but it makes some sense when I think about it considering that it's Berkeley.

A highlight from the adventure -

*Our intrepid heroes have set up the portable x-ray unit in an equipment ( Read more... )

UC Berkeley has its own hyena pack.

Not exactly what I expected to discover when I went to do an annual radiation survey today.  I was expecting to play with a finicky old fluoroscope.  This is the kind of variety I love about my job.  Former reactor bits one day, the next a Cal football player reacting to me like I was Darth Vader on the bridge of ( Read more... )

http://www.arf.fsu.edu/equipmentRMXRD.cfm

If I could get everyone with an x-ray diffraction (XRD) unit to have one of these lovely units, life would be so much easier.  No radiation leakage from the case of this beauty which means no need for dosimetry.  This is a 110V table ( Read more... )

There is a researcher who needed to get a fresh permit-to-operate for his x-ray machine, which he had been given as a gift. The snag was that his research involved human subjects. That has some extra requirements for training and certification for the operators. He didn't know what they were so he asked, not quite kindly, if I could tell him ( Read more... )

If I hadn't been there having ignorance admitted to me by a grad student, I wouldn't have believed it either ( Read more... )

Working at Berkeley has forced me to pick up a new quasi-healthy habit.  If I wish to be functional in the morning, I must have a large cappuccino or any documents I try to read will just be nonsensical derivatives of Pheonician scribblings that might as well be in Pheonician.  Heaven help the poor soul that depends on my math before 10am without ( Read more... )

Long ago, my dad pointed out to me that as time goes on the circle of people I associate with will become smaller and smaller and more and more global.  You start with your fellow high school shitheads that you happily bid farewell to as the first cut.  You finish in your college major and it narrows down to the other whatevers you are.  Then, ( Read more... )

0645: I have discovered a previously unknown psychological phenomenon.  I call it Phantom Gas Pedal.  No matter how hard I try, I cannot make the train go any faster when it comes to a stop for an unknown reason for the second and third times ( Read more... )