Lifting a curse and beating the hydra

My week started to turn around a little today. First, my student Anna and I finally got some fluorescent antibodies to label some neurons in some long preserved ascidian embryos. This is a pretty big deal, because I have been struggling for literally two years trying to get something to glow from any fluorescent technique. I really felt I had some sort of curse with me and these techniques, because they are widely used by so many labs, and I'd had such trouble. I hope to post a picture of this later, if I can figure out why the camera is colouring things purple on the screen that are green through the eyepiece.

In between meetings with students of various sorts, I composed a remarkably restrained email to the director of the Helpdesk; copied to his boss (Director of Academic Computing), my department chair, and the Vice President for Research, about my recent computer problems. I said that I thought the response time was poor but I could live with that, but that messing with my computer operating system settings so that I couldn't use it as I saw fit was unacceptable. To my surprise, I had a staffer from the Helpdesk in my office before the day was out, fixing the problem that needed to be fixed. While he was finishing up, I had a phone call from the Director of Academic Computing, who apologized and explained why they had made the changes they did.

Vindication.

Tomorrow, I will write a follow-up email to those same people saying thanks for taking me seriously. I wasn't sure if I could get someone to pay attention to the problem without me flying into a blind rage in someone's office. Other than me venting in my own office... I got plenty mad, visibly upset, but! Not at the support staff. I didn't lose my temper with any of them.

The Helpdesk hydra is not dead -- I know I will be tangling with them again, probably over installing software on classroom computers -- but the head has been buried under a rock, where it will lie dormant and not spawn new heads. For now.