the veiled sibyl

I have heard and said more inanities, since you took me in tow, than in all the rest of my life.

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like a dripping faucet

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

a life that's so sublime

Something is afoot here at FishWorld.

Rumor has it that someone made Spigot an offer which RW couldn't possibly beat. It's curious because he's been using loads of sick leave and vacation leave lately... hmmm. To add to it, Spigot has been having some trouble with the wife, and has been telling the GG's that he's about had it with the marriage. We were wondering what he would do if he split up with her. She's pretty much the breadwinner as far as I can tell, and I'm pretty damn sure he would never have gotten this job without her being who she is. Personally, I wouldn't be sad to see him go. It's not like he's really doing anything around here (see Rules of Conduct #6). And that marriage? Shit, it was doomed from the first day he walked (or rather, cop-strutted) into her classroom.

It's also been going around that NRA may be heading down the "short-termer" tunnel. This worries me, as I'll have to pick up the slack if she does venture away from us. I hear that her hub-sand got a big raise, either from his current job, or maybe he has a new job - not clear. I've been trying to find out what her potential plans are, but I don't have a good mole. She won't say anything to me, because I'm sure she thinks I'll run right to RW (I won't.) Poopie doesn't know, or at least isn't saying, and Cakes is too affiliated with me and RW to get any info. I think I may be able to get the scoop from Spigot, at least, if he ever comes back to work!

We all know TheBride is planning her exit. RW is looking for someone to replace her already. I say good riddance! She used to care about the work, but lately, she couldn't give two-shits about anything.

On the upside, we're still riding the bloated whale we call the federal budget. (Thank god for republicans????) Looks like we're getting another 1.8 million next year. Now we just need to find a way to spend what we got last year. (And yet we quibble over a measly $42,000 instrument? More on that another day...)

Monday, November 15, 2004

The master plan

Rules of Conduct.

1. If you want it done one way, don't tell me to do it another way. Do not ask "who told you to do it that way" when you know damn well that you told me to do it that way.

2. Do not come up to me while I am in the middle of something and ask me to write out a step-by-step plan of your entire graduate research project. Especially avoid this behavior if I have no idea what your project is. Please realize that I can't do a step-by-step outline of what I'm going to do in the next 15 minutes, much less figure out what you are going to do for the next 2 years.

3. Do not plagiarize published papers verbatim. If you must plagiarize something that I wrote, please have the intelligence not to ask me to edit "your" writing. When I tell you to rewrite the plagiarized work, do not ignore me and take "your" work to the boss for editing. This is especially important to remember if some of the paragraphs you copied were originally written by him.

4. If I tell you that I want to purchase something, and ask for a quote, please give me a quote. Do not ask me if I'm serious... I'm not frigging Bruce and Harriet Nyborg - I don't like talking to salesmen.

5. Do not tell me to tell a salesman that I am serious, and ride my ass about getting a quote, then change your mind about the whole thing the day before the quote comes in.

6. Do not tell me sixteen times a day that you can write better software for X than so-and-so. I don't care. If you can do it, fantastic. Do it. Talking about it doesn't help me.

7. Try to keep your imagination under control. Words like Boston, Maryland, and California are common and are generally free of ulterior motives. Likewise, certain names are common among the population, and are frequently used. In a related note, please remember that some names are also nouns (like heater). If you overhear me talking with someone else, try to eavesdrop enough to get the jist of the conversation rather than making an assumption. More than likely I'm just talking about water.

8. If someone asks you if you would like to go to Italy for a conference, don't say no. If the same person asks if you think I would like to go, consult me, do NOT say no for me.

9. If I tell you my contract doesn't cover repairs, believe me. If you think I am wrong, please check on it before you start the repairs. If I ask you three times if you are sure that the contract covers the repairs you have already started, please be sure that the contract covers the repairs you have already started. Do not come up to me 10 minutes after I asked you repeatedly if the contract covers the repairs and say, "Oh, it looks like your contract doesn't cover the repairs."

10. Have a wonderful day.

Friday, November 12, 2004

Why not make it an even fifty?

Yesterday in the grocery store, the man in front of me was buying a box of frosted mini-wheats, a package of bacon, a quart of milk, and 47 yogurts. Forty. Seven. (Yes, I counted them - three times.) They were all strawberry and strawberry variations. What the hell?

While I was still trying to comprehend the Lactobacillus-o-phile, a woman trotted by wearing a full-length fur coat. In H.E.B. At 7 pm. On a Thursday. In San Marcos.
The temperature was about 65° outside.


Wednesday, November 10, 2004

is that really necessary?

ya know,

i don't like talking to people.
that's why i work in a lab, dammit!

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

in the shrine of the sea monkey

completely lame work rants:

Radiation and it's aftermath.

Poopie spilled source (32P) in the hot room and didn't bother to tell anyone about it. Hellboy found out kind of by accident - he walked into the hot room with the Geiger counter and it went off like a sonofabitch. Hellboy and NRA were checking things because we had an inspection the next day. Poopie was there, but he quickly disappeared, leaving Hellboy and NRA to clean up the mess. (They got it all squared away, and nothing's hot now and we passed the inspection with no problems.)

Poopie also left several unlabeled beakers of unpolymerized acrylamide in my hood. Three of them were spilled in there, along with various powders, crystals and other unknown solutions. He spilled some mystery solution all over the vacuum pump, and he smeared cello seal all over fucking EVERYTHING. (I don't even want to think about it...)

What happened to Poopie, you ask? A quote: "I ALREADY GOT ON YOUR ASS ABOUT THIS SHIT! YOU NEED TO CLEAN THIS SHIT UP IMMEDIATELY OR FIND SOMEWHERE ELSE TO GO!!!" Yeah, so he cleaned it all up, then didn't make another mess for about three weeks. Of course, it's hard to make a mess when you don't even show up...

Then, the next thing you know... this weekend, I saw that the SpeedVac was on when I went in on Saturday. I didn't think much of it. On Sunday afternoon, the thing was still running. I didn't know what was in there, but I had a feeling Poopie was involved. I went and got the Geiger counter, and sure as shit - he was spinning down hot samples in there! No shield, no note, no nothing! What a fuckup. Of course, it's not that dangerous, but still! The chump just got his ass torched by RW and he comes back and starts pulling the same goddamn crap.

As a result of all this, the drones in the stock center have stopped feeding the fish in the transgenic room. They heard about the spill in the hot lab, so they stopped coming into the main lab altogether. Of course, they didn't bother to tell any of us that they stopped caring for those fish... I only heard about it because one of them asked me (in the bathroom) if I was afraid that I'd be contaminated. WTF? JesusChristMonkeyBalls, I hit the roof when she told me that no one had been in there. God damn. I explained to her that it was all clean, told her it was just 32P and it had a short half-life, etc., etc. But I might as well have told the fucking toilet, it would have done the same amount of good. They act like friggin' FatMan and LittleBoy got dropped in there. Shit.

Now the transgenic fish are all fucked up. Great. The project was already sucking ass and now we have to tell our collaborators that we screwed up two years of work...

On top of that crap, Dim and TheBride were supposed to do dissections for us Monday morning, but they "took the morning off". God DAMN! We'd had a big lab meeting with RW about this whole thing the previous week. This was to be a major undertaking and everyone had their part to do. We were SUPPOSED to be a well-oiled machine... They finally showed fucking up, and bitched and moaned about being "exposed to chemicals". I was having them dissect the tissues directly into phenol (which, by the way was frozen) and they were very upset about that. They were wearing masks and eventually moved the dissections into the fume hoods because the "smell was making them sick and nauseated." Granted, phenol isn't a walk in the park, and you sure shouldn't wallow in it, but jebus! Nauseated? Please. If I EVER see one of them with a bottle of Cloraseptic, it's ON!! These are the same people that make buckets of MNU (N-methyl-N-nitroso urea) and the last time I checked, MNU is a hell of a lot more dangerous than phenol!!

But you know, TheBride just wants to protect her precious eggs, because spawning is apparently her life's goal. And Dim being concerned about chemicals is a MOTHERFUCKING JOKE!! She's a freaking ex-CRACK HEAD!!!

Goddamn!
Ya gotta have just the right amount of fear (more accurately, respect) for the chemicals you are using - Dim and TheBride are overwhelmed with unwarranted fear, while Poopie is so apathetic that he doesn't care if he exposes himself or anyone else. It's a fucked up combination.

Guess what folks, science can be dangerous.
But, if you use your FUCKING BRAIN (ooh, I know, that assumes that everyone has one...) you don't have to get hurt or hurt others.

Monday, November 08, 2004

One fine day in my odd past

It was old home week at the grocery store this weekend. I ran into my first grade principal and his wife, my senior-year English teacher. It was oddly reassuring to see the two of them after all these years. He's the one who bumped me into the second grade classes after I'd been in first grade for only a month. She's the one who gave me my first (and only) "C" in English. (Oh man, I was distraught about that. Thought my life was over!)

After catching up with them, I ran into another person that I knew from back in the day. I say "knew", but I never really knew him, but I talked to him quite often. He was (is) one of those people who just talks to anyone and everyone - one of the San Martians. We used to always cross paths at Blockbuster back in my grad school days (GradSchool Ver1.0) We'd talk about foreign and independent films and how much Blockbuster sucked. He actually remembered me, which I thought was remarkable. (He's easy to remember, he's got a very distinctive look...) We talked about movies, of course, and blah blah. Nice guy.

Seeing "Movie Guy" got me to thinking about the other San Martians I've encountered over these many, many years...
Haven't seen Angry Chair Vet for a damn long time - and I'm kind of glad.
Dan, of course, is always around. His house burned down, and he's driving a Porsche.
Frisbee Guy is always there - and those shorts are always too damn small.
The Ash Family is still singing away - Em (Julian C) is in Chicago, right on.
Showdown - man, that guy can't possibly still be alive... can he???
KB and the Illuminati Gang are out of sight. Underground, I suppose, counterfeiting auto registrations and e-pubbing their conspiracy 'zine.
Meanwhile, Big Bird is still in the courthouse annex.
And Cricket, the proverbial favorite... he was still here in GradSchool Ver2.0, but I haven't seen him around lately. He lost some of his mystique when he stopped being the green guy. Maybe he just let himself be absorbed into the main? I wonder what ever happened to the kitten?


Saturday, November 06, 2004

Your first line of defense

Used to be that when the yokels needed some vittles for they ol' houn-dog Skeeter they'd head down to Walmart to pick up a bag of Old Roy and be done with it... But lately Petsmart is the place where the mullet and pearl-button-western-shirt-with-the-sleeves-cut-off-wearing set congregate. Is it the result of some agressive nascar-oriented marketing scheme? (Dale Earnhardt memorial pooper-scoopers, anyone?)

A couple of weeks ago we saw this couple who had maybe seven teeth between the two of them, with a passel of sticky-looking children and one exceedingly well-groomed cocker spaniel. One of the kids was crawling on the floor on all fours and the dad(?) said in that familiar too-loud-redneck-drawl, "If yer gonna act like a dawg, yer gonna have to stick yer nose in and start smellin' them other dawg's butts! You wanna smell butts?" To which the mother (who, by the way, had one of the most fantastic brassed-out bleach job with black roots fe-mullets I've ever seen) replied, "He already pisses the floor, he might as well be a damn dog!" Nice.


Friday, November 05, 2004

It's only me this time

Last night I wrote some simpering psuedo-intellectual garbage here...

Today I realized it was just a bunch of pathetic emo-trash so I moved it over to everyone's favorite own personal pinkerton, livejournal.

So there.