Back to work

[beige_alert]

I’m back at work after being away since December 23. Excitement from the start. The MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer’s rough vacuum pump stopped turning over the holiday, probably when the electric power problem screwed up lots of people’s stuff. The service engineer has been called. No MALDI until that gets fixed and the machine pumps down.

Comments

[aryana-filker.livejournal.com]

Argh, I just *hate* it when things like this happen. We had a power blackout some weeks ago here, on a weekend, and some very nasty things happened in the microbiology. AND the things in the damn chest freezer thawed, spreading the disgusting smell of old shrimp and squid waste we use to make chitosan out of it in the whole college. Yuck!!!!!

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure everyone loved that smell! The people with lots of precious samples in the -80°C freezers fear power failures, though in theory here they should all be on circuits backed-up by the generators.

I just heard from the engineer. He's going to have a new vacuum pump sent tomorrow and he'll be here Thursday to install it. The turbomolecular pumps tried to spin up when I power-cycled the instrument, so they are probably OK.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Why does MALDI-TOF sound like the name of a comic book villain to me?

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

Either that or what the hero shouts when activating his super powers.

Wondertwin powers, activate!
By the power of Grayskull!
Flame-on!
MALDI-TOF!

Of course, it actually stands for Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-Of-Flight, so you can see why we call it MALDI.