PSA

To all persons who work in labs:

It is never ever OK to mess with other people's stuff. While you may have the best intentions re: organizing and consolidating and effeiciencizing things, and you may be the most organized and fastidious person on the planet and your lab mates may drive you crazy when they are not, it is still NOT OK to "reorganize" other people's shit.

Especially other people's experiments in progress.

You see, what looks disorganized to you actually is not. It is meticulously organized. It's just that you don't see it because you don't have the secret decoder ring. So when you fuck with other people's organizational systems, you bork the code. Data points will be lost and those other people are gonna come down hard on your ass.

I repeat: your good intentions to do other people a favor and "reorganize" their shit, or conversely your obsessive need to maintain everything in neat little symmetrical rows, are irrelevant. DO NOT FUCK WITH OTHER PEOPLE'S SHIT. Even if you are the PI.

Nerd Love

Today marks 3 years since the departmental retreat at which BH and I met. Our posters were opposite each other's and since we were both doing interdisciplinary work only peripherally related to everyone's favorite topic du jour, nobody came by to talk about our research. So we talked to each other instead...and the rest is history.

I feel pretty fucking lucky to share my life with such a stellar guy. Three years may not seem like much, but I hope it's the beginning of many more to come. It is such a liberating experience to share your life with someone who is not always trying to change you. It sounds cliche but it really is the best thing ever to be with someone who loves you for being yourself. He just fits.

Happy Anniversay BH - I love you.

Updating the Blogroll

It's messy, very long and includes a fair number of long-defunct blogs. I'll be cleaning it up shortly. In the process I'd like to add some of you who are not currently on it. Especially those of you who read and/or comment here frequently. I often click over to your place after you comment, and do some reading and/or commenting there myself. But I'm lazy and forgetful and sometimes don't manage to add you to the list.

I'll try to be better about this in the future, but if you notice that you're missing from the blogroll, leave me a comment here telling me to get off my sorry ass and give you some props already. I won't be offended. Likewise to lurkers: leave a comment and let me know you're out there. I'm always interested in knowing more about my readers so give me a link to your place. Or, if you don't have a blog, feel free to leave a comment here to introduce yourself. I won't bite. :)

$$$$

• Landlord's business office has lost our rent check...again. Third time in 2 years. Last time their "solution" was to ask us to pay by cashier's check. Um, so, you want us to shell out extra $$ every month because your business manager is incompetent, then send through the mail a form of payment that could be cashed by anyone, after your business manager has already demonstrated a propensity for misplacing such things? I don't think so.
• I won a VISA gift card at the vendor show a few weeks ago. They sent it to my campus address (apparently), but it hasn't turned up. They are now sending me one to my home address, with instructions to spend both in case the first one ever escapes the campus mail vortex. w00t!
• MegaResearchInstitute (home of GradLab) had me do a fuckton of paperwork last year so that they could retrieve from the IRS the ~$4K in tax that they erroneously removed from my stipend during the 4 years I was supported by a training grant. The first installment of this money was supposed to be in my hot little hands sometime last month. I still have not seen hide nor hair of this money, nor the fuckton of paperwork that I need to do in order to get installments 3 and 4. Is this some kind of hoax?
  

Come on over to Neurotopia...

...where I'm blogging ejaculation.

I get mail...

I just received an email from a company I buy reagents from, which is addressed to
"Mrs. AA".

WTF!?!?

These clowns started sending me emails addressed to Dr. AA, when I was a second-year grad student* and now that I have the doctorate they assume that 1) I don't, and 2) I'm married.

A pox on vendor-who-shall-not-be-nameed!

*I figure you're always safe with "Dr.". The people that this actually applies to will not be annoyed, and the grad students will feel like they're getting away with something. I know I did.

FML

Remember when the AA residence was under siege???

Well, it seems it's happening again. The joys of living on a corner lot -- they finished the street that runs north-south past our place sometime last fall.

This morning (with no warning at all) they began similar siege tactics on the street that runs east-west past our house. I was hoping to sleep in this morning since I was imaging til eleven last night. No such luck. Seven AM on the nose I awake to find the light fixtures shaking and the pets acting very nervous. Earthquake? Not likely around here.

Oh wait...is that the melodious sound of heavy machinery right outside my bedroom window?? You bet!!

When I tried to leave this morning I discover a 4-foot deep PIT OF DEATH right outside my front gate, surrounded by three front-end loaders. I fail to understand the necessity of three of these things (only one at a time can get near the hole) other than to completely shut down traffic flow through the intersection as well as my ability to leave my front yard.

I inquired of the workers enemy combatants when they thought I might be able to open the gate and depart for work. They advised me that they had not blocked my driveway. Well that's awful nice of you folks but I don't drive to work. My bike is locked to railing of the deck that is situated in the front yard, which is surrounded by a fence, which has only one gate, which you have dug a PIT OF DEATH immediately in front of. The driveway really doesn't come into the scenario at all.

So I just decided to leave when I felt like it and they got all pissy about having to move 2 of their 3 pieces of heavy machinery and direct traffic so that I could leave my house without getting squished. Sorry for the inconvenience fellas!

I do science in my sleep

When my alarm went off this morning I was dreaming a new cloning strategy for some vectors I've been working on. I was lucid enough to determine that this was in fact a valid cloning strategy and that it would actually circumvent some of the more complicated steps in my previous strategy. Thus, I decided it would be beneficial to turn off the alarm and finish dreaming the cloning strategy to its conclusion.

A few minutes later, BH snuggled up for some sexy-time. I wasn't done dreaming the last step of the cloning strategy at this point.......................so I rolled out of reach.




OMG WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME!!?!??!?!???!?!???!?! (In my defense, I wasn't fully awake yet, but really.)




Science is making me frigid.

I'm talking about sperm

at Neurotopia today.

Your daily dose of funny

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials.

Published in the BMJ.

The abstract is funny enough, but for the full effect you really ought to read the article. Some delightful snippets:

From the text:

One of the major weaknesses of observational data is the possibility of bias, including selection bias and reporting bias, which can be obviated largely by using randomised controlled trials. The relevance to parachute use is that individuals jumping from aircraft without the help of a parachute are likely to have a high prevalence of pre-existing psychiatric morbidity. Individuals who use parachutes are likely to have less psychiatric morbidity and may also differ in key demographic factors, such as income and cigarette use. It follows, therefore, that the apparent protective effect of parachutes may be merely an example of the “healthy cohort” effect.

From the sidebar:

What is already known about this topic

• Parachutes are widely used to prevent death and major injury after gravitational challenge
• Parachute use is associated with adverse effects due to failure of the intervention and iatrogenic injury
• Studies of free fall do not show 100% mortality

What this study adds

• No randomised controlled trials of parachute use have been undertaken
• The basis for parachute use is purely observational, and its apparent efficacy could potentially be explained by a “healthy cohort” effect
• Individuals who insist that all interventions need to be validated by a randomised controlled trial need to come down to earth with a bump

From the Acknowledgements/Author Contributions/COI Statements:

Contributors: GCSS had the original idea. JPP tried to talk him out of it. JPP did the first literature search but GCSS lost it. GCSS drafted the manuscript but JPP deleted all the best jokes. GCSS is the guarantor, and JPP says it serves him right.

Funding: None.

Competing interests: None declared.

Ethical approval: Not required.

You're welcome.

I'm not at home...

...instead I am guest-blogging at Neurotopia today. Go check it out!

Cranky pants

I'm impatient. Coming off the final year of grad school, when everything magically started working (thank the thesis gods!!!), and manuscripts started writing themselves, and I turned around one day and found that I had permission to defend, I've grown a little accustomed to the fast pace of data production.

It wasn't like that at the beginning, and now I'm beginning again. The difference this time is that now I know how it *should* go, and so now that it's slow again I'm starting to get a little twitchy.

It's the learning curve to be sure, it's the newness of my new lab - things are not quite the well-oiled machine of GradLab.

It's the impending fellowship deadlines. It's the stagnation of one of my manuscripts while we wait for yet another data set from GradLab. It's the feeling of spinning my wheels. It's the worry that I won't have much to show for the last two months when I give lab meeting for the first time.

It's making me itch.