Ice machine 2, biologists 0

If we have a symbol of the problems that new tenure track faculty at this university face when they try to get research done... it is our ice machine.

An ice machine is not exactly a high tech piece of kit. Freeze water. Break up frozen water into little pieces. That's about it. Not so very complicated. But various people in our department -- including me -- need that shaved ice to do research. I need it to quickly and properly anaesthetize various critters that I work on (cold knocks out crustaceans, you see). In short, the ice machine is a mundane but necessary piece of scientific equipment in our department.

Our ice machine is broken. It broke yesterday.

Now, here's the thing. It's been broken a hell of a lot more than it's been working for the last year. We shall soon have enough data to publish a bloody monograph on the subject of ice machine breakdown.

Over the last year, a distinct pattern has emerged. Ice machine breaks. Ice machine is taken away, leaving bare pipe sticking out of the wall where it should be sitting. My colleague Mike Persans (who is a self-admitted pushy New Yorker) keeps after the maintainence people, asking when it's going to be fixed.

Days turn into weeks. Weeks turn into months.

The ice machine finally returns. It works for about a week, and breaks again. Back to square one.

It's like some weird battle of nerves between the machine and maintenance versus the biologists. I think we biologists are going to be the first to break. Because as far as we've been able to determine, there seems to be absolutely no sense of urgency or comprehension on the part of almost anyone else that we scientists need this thing.

It's gotten to the point that when I go to scientific meetings, or talk to friends, or whatever, about how my job is, I almost inevitably tell them about the ice machine. I asked one of my colleagues, "How long does it take to get an ice machine fixed at Harvard?" He answered, "They never break."

Since I've already been telling my colleagues about these ice machine woes, I have now decided that I will turn to one of my few remaining weapons in this battle: satire. After all, when polite requests, earnest pleas, outright begging on bended knees, patience, threats, and bribes don't solve a problem, maybe it's time to turn to public ridicule.

Maybe I can turn a profit on this. I can start a betting pool. "I'm tipping four months, one week for the next repair. Who wants some of this action?"

The university I work for, UTPA, has the goal of becoming a bona fide research institution. Great goal. Would help my career a lot. But this whole bloody situation with the ice machine just goes to show that a lot of people here do not have a clue what it takes to do research. How are we supposed to conduct experiments when things don't get fixed? In the competitive field of research, comparing a department where equipment doesn't break versus where a campus where the equipment doesn't work isn't a competition, it's absolute black comedy. Or perhaps grim parody.

History repeating, not repairing

Warning: This post contains strong language. Four letter words. Curses! Swearing!

Set the wayback machine, Sherman. Back to the very early days of this blog.

Back in the early days of this blog, when I still had some of that new Assistant Professor smell, I wrote about our ice machine. Quite a bit, actually. The first post is here, dated late August 2003. It’s not a bad little rant, though I say it myself:

Over the last year, a distinct pattern has emerged. Ice machine breaks. Ice machine is taken away, leaving bare pipe sticking out of the wall where it should be sitting. My colleague Mike Persans (who is a self-admitted pushy New Yorker) keeps after the maintainence people, asking when it's going to be fixed.

Days turn into weeks. Weeks turn into months.

The ice machine finally returns. It works for about a week, and breaks again. Back to square one.

It's like some weird battle of nerves between the machine and maintenance versus the biologists. I think we biologists are going to be the first to break. Because as far as we've been able to determine, there seems to be absolutely no sense of urgency or comprehension on the part of almost anyone else that we scientists need this thing.

There are intermittent updates until about April 2004. Because that was about when we got this fancy new machine:

See? All stainless steel, looks like something you’d find in a real classy hotel restaurant or something.

But alas! Like Old Mother Hubbard...

We ain’t got no ice. Above the scoop is this sign:

It’s been like that for about six and a half weeks. That breaks the 40 day record back in October 2003.

And it’s the same goddamn shit all over again. Nobody outside of the department seems to have any interest in getting this simple piece of common equipment fixed during peak research season.

For. Fuck’s. Sake.

Administration tells us to use the one in the Chemistry Department. And yes, it’s good that theirs is working (even though it’s not as good as ours when it works). I mean, it’s wildly improbable that we would have two ice machines in two departments breaking at the same time... Wait, I have a blog post that records exactly that happening last time. Perhaps proof that probability is a lesser force in the universe than the Law of Maximum Inconvenience.

But dammit, what pisses me off is not that I have to go up one storey in the building. It’s the principle of the thing. This is exactly the sort of things that universities supposed to keep running with that cut they take out of research grants that faculty get. The principle is having things that work. About having requests met. It’s about competence of the people around you.

Which leave me wondering, to paraphrase Dr. Evil, why I am surrounded by friggin’ incompetence?

Cue the music, Miss Bassey: “And it’s all just a little bit of history repeating...”

I hate forms!

Arg. I send in a travel application, requesting a trip to go to Bethesda to attend a short course by Cambridge Electronic Design. I ask for the university to take pay for the travel using funds I was awarded from a Faculty Development grant. I get back... nothing. Is it approved? It is not approved? It's a mystery.

Anyway, without an “okay” to remind me, I forgot to check into the travel arrangements. They are, of course, sitting on the travel officer’s desk, and they’re waiting for me to book flights, etc. Of course, now that it’s closer to travel time, the flights are going to be more expensive... Argh. Argh. Argh. Yes, it’s partly my fault for not checking sooner. But still... why does so much information stall on other people’s desks?!

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Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles!

We have a new ice machine! And it seems to be working!

Of course, getting the ice machine was not without its trials. They were having some issues about putting in filters for the water, so they wanted to order some new filter holders. Turns out that in the time it took to order the machine and get it here, the holders for one of the filters went out of production. Yes, one last absurdity of the slower than slow process it takes to get anything done on this university.

Sympathy for the chemists

We in the Biology Department share our building with the Chemistry department. We take up the first two floors, they take up the third floor. We have a lot of shared interests, shared facilities... and shared problems.

Their ice machine's busted too.

Which sucks for us, because sometimes we in Biology have been known to nick a bit of the chilly stuff from the chemists.

In other news, I have several things vying for my attention besides getting things together for my students. I have tenure-track review and merit folders to put together. The annoying thing about the merit folder is that they're normally used to determine a merit-based raise -- but there is no such raise this year due to state budget cutbacks. Yet we go through this compilation of data anyway...

And there's also an internal faculty grant proposal that is going to be due in a couple of weeks. I'm going to try to pull something together for that, but it won't be easy. But at least it'll be easier than getting our ice machine fixed.

That's eight ice-free days in biology and counting.

But... for how long?

Correlation does not mean causation.

But after yesterday’s rant about our ice machine being broken for over a month and a half, look what I spotted in the bottom of our ice machine late this afternoon...

It’s white, cold, and wet when it melts... could it be?

And I managed to get The Manuscript That Will Not Die off my desk^* and back into the hands of the editor!

^* Figuratively speaking, of course. I’ve never printed the manuscript. It only exists as only computer bits, so never physically been on my desk.

Fast times at SPI

South Padre Island, that is. Spent most of the day out there collecting animals, after I failed to gather any when I was out there for the weekend enjoying Sandcastle Days.

Meanwhile, the ice machine is back! Repaired in a record 8 days! I wonder who got leaned on, and how hard, to make a repair that fast this time. Of course, there's still the niggling question of how long it'll keep ticking. It's like some weird game of nerves -- man versus ice machine.

South Texas freezes over!

Incredibly, our ice machine is back and working!

It took 40 days to get it repaired, which is probably a record for repair in the last year. Of course, it's still about four times longer than it ought to be.

I will be taking down my "When will the ice machine be fixed?" count-up calendars, and replacing them with something more akin to the calendars they have in factories. You know, that say "23 accident free days." This one will say something like, "23 breakdown free days."

Six down....

...Two to go. Our latest faculty candidate was apparently loaded onto a plane this morning without incident. We are now 75% done our on-site interview schedule! That's six accident free interviews -- a fact of which I am inordinately proud.

The other two major things I did today was to run a short faculty meeting related to faculty searches, and attend a meeting on research at UTPA. The research meeting was surprisingly... promising. It's not exactly been a secret that we have had problems with research here. The infamous ice machine saga has been one that I documented at some length in this journal. So a few of the biologists, myself included, showed up loaded for bear. We were vocal.

One of the people in the meeting, though, was a gentleman who is responsible for implementing a new computer system that is pretty much going to run UTPA. And although it took him way too long to get to the point, ultimately he got around to saying that pretty much every procedure in the entire university is being torn apart and reworked from the ground up. No more physically carrying paper around from building to building for signatures; we'll be able to send this requests through electronically and and track where requests and orders are. If something is sitting in someone's office for a week, we'll know -- sort of like tracking a package when FedEx ships it. Should be brilliant if it works as advertised.

Not only that, but I found 55 cents in the return slot of one of the Bio department vending machines! Woo-hoo! (Probably happier about that than I should be, but things like that have always made me smile.)

Other things that make me smile? Ice cream. The sound an ice cube makes when you put it into ice tea on a really hot day and it cracks. Godzilla toys. (I got this one Mechagodzilla figure on a bottle cap recently that I love. It's molded in translucent plastic that looks black, but if you hold a light behind it, is more a smoky grey. It looks sooOOOOooo cool. The picture doesn't do it justice. I was having a major geek out about pulling this out of the box because it’s one of those “can’t see what you get until you buy it” toys.)

Lest anyone think this was a good day, though, let me balance that out. I've spent most of the week mad, and yet again, anger bit back. I was reaching around a cabinet to pick up something, with a little more force than strictly necessary, and caught one of my rings on the bottom of a cabinet drawer. Ouch! My poor students got a very loud Irish curse. I am cultivating what is sure to be a lovely bruise on my ring finger. Less drastic than when I messed up my back the last time I got mad, though.

But I think I gave a pair of great lectures today. I seem to lecture really well when I’m angry.

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People unclear on the concept: “You remember that? How do you remember that? Do you study?” (heard in hallway outside teaching lab).

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More lines I'd like to use in a movie: “I’d rather French kiss a moose.”

Finagle's Law

I am not the first to note that life is unfair.

I worked at home yesterday, because I was expecting a new computer to arrive at home. My S.O. was out that day, so she wasn't around the apartment to make sure it was delivered, so I stayed home. I waited and watched... but nothing came until 6:42 pm. So I had stayed away from work all day for nothing, really. While the day wasn't completely a waste, it wasn't the most productive day I'd ever had.

Anyway, the computer finally arrives. Boo-yah! I'm psyched. I take my 4.5 year old laptop off the desk and plug the new machine in, turn it on... and am treated with the most gawdawful sound I have ever heard a computer make. (And I've owned many computers.) Two long whines, followed by a "put your teeth on edge" screech. A message comes up saying, "Hard drive not found." Bad sign.

I phoned technical service. After several back-and-forth diagnostic tests, the fellow I'm dealing with comes to the conclusion, "I think your hard drive's broken." Not exactly surprising news there. I'm now waiting arrival of a shipment of a new hard drive from the computer company.

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Five days without ice. Round 2. The ice machine has been taken away for repair again.

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Oh, the meaning of this entry's title? Click here.

Where’d it go?!

So here it is, a day with very little teaching, one phone interview (done), so I went into my lab and started to set up to do an experiment. I went down the hall to get some ice...

And the flipping ice machine is gone! Blast it! Apparently, it was taken away this time because it was leaking.

I am persevering and trying to continue with the experiment.

Tomorrow's Friday! Already?!?

Where has this week gone?

I swear I'm not a stress junkie, but I always have problems reorienting myself when big projects come to a close, and I have to start new projects. Work sort of eased up on me like that last weekend; I was even able to clean out a lot of stuff in my office for the first time... well, since I got there two years ago. Literally! I threw out stuff that had been sitting in a pile for two years.

But it's been a weird week; I just haven't managed to make headway on anything for me. Today, for instance, I spent almost the entire day in meeting, after meeting, after meeting. The first meeting was the most fun, in a way. The University of Texas system has a consulting group (the "WAG" -- the "Washington Advisory Group") going around to 8 of the universities getting input on how to strengthen research.

Yes, I ranted about how we can't get an ice machine fixed. Oh, I think we're up to day 39 with no ice!

After that came a curriculum committee meeting, where I tried to pitch a new lab-based neurobiology class.

Finally, a meeting with several people in computer science who are looking for computational problems to apply their expertise to. Not sure I was able to give them anything they can sink their teeth into yet.

Hope to get refocused on my research projects over the weekend so I can crack in on them Monday.

Movement on the ice front!

Hey, they've actually done something about the ice machine...

At this point, a copper pipe sticking out of the wall is a sign of progress. It only took us twenty-six days to get this far...

I freely admit this my obsession with this piece of equipment is a sad, sad commentary on me. But everyone needs a hobby.

The Coolest Thing in the Universe

No, it's not an MP3 player. (Though those gizmos are pretty darn cool.)

No, it's not Chow Yun-Fat. (Though he is arguably the coolest man in the universe right now.)

No, it's not even a working ice machine. (Though it would be extremely cool if day 18 was the last ice free day on this floor.)

Nope, as of today, the coolest thing in the universe -- officially -- is a cloud of ultracold sodium atoms at MIT. They were cooled to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. You can read about it here.

Annual purgatory

I like my job, but I hate documenting it.

It's the time of year when I have to submit a big binder for my annual tenure-track review. While I appreciate that there needs to be mechanism to establish that someone is doing his or her job, the amount of documentation makes performing this task an absurd extravagance of time. And they couldn't find a better time to ask us to submit them than the start of the fall semester?

On the plus side, while I was in the office printing emails (more documentation), I was also running back and forth to my lab to work with blonde Anna on some simple little experiments we were doing. And whaddya know -- they worked! Still very preliminary, but it was a good sign nonetheless. Particularly since my colleague Virginia Scofield will be visiting Edinburg next week; Anna and I wanted to make sure we could get this experimental set-up working so we could take full advantage of Virginia's trip next week.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: we're up to day 13 with no ice. The ice machine is still sitting in its spot in the equipment corridor, immobile, empty, and, I'm sure, sad.

A distinct lack of chilliness

Today, we celebrate four glorious ice free days. And here's the photographic proof...

The light is low, so my little digital camera gives a fairly scratchy picture. But the cord dangling over the front, instead of being plugged into the socket, and the absence of anything white and frosty inside the bin is pretty much a dead giveaway.

The lab grows...

How did I end up trying to supervise seven people? Four Honor's students, two students supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute program at Louisina State University, and one entering first year student. It's all because I'm a big pushover who can't say no, that's why.

I met with all of them, except one of my Anna's, who I don't think is back from visiting her home in Germany. It was good to talk to all of them, although things are going to get really ratty really fast when I try to get their projects going.

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The Ice Diaries, day 3: Ice machine still broken.

Sometimes, it's a breeze

Today has been a good, but busy, day.

My colleague Virginia Scofield has been in working with my student Anna (blonde version) and myself running experiments, and we've getting very nice and clear results. I was joking with them, "So, you reckon we can have a letter to Nature out by, what, end of October?"

And I had my student Anna (brunette version) in setting up an experiment. And Gloria and Nisha in the lab were in doing things. too.

I had a bit of a concern this morning when my students started to tell me that there was a problem with one of the questions in their online quiz, but it turned out to be a relatively trivial issue.

Today definitely beats yesterday, when I got sidetracked several times before I got to do anything. First, I tried to put in my new contacts, and could barely see out of one eye. I wear monthly disposible contacts, and this was a new batch, so I was convinced they'd just given me the wrong prescription. Turned out not to be the case, but that took two hours to fix in the morning before I even stepped into my office. Then, I got email from the Dean concerning the job advertisement for the faculty positions we're hiring -- that took another hour. Then I had a meeting at lunch. That meant I really didn't get anything started until 1:00 pm, and I was expecting Virginia to arrive around 3:00 pm to start some experiments! Fortunately, I somehow managed to finish the major tasks (writing a quiz) I had to do by the time Virginia arrived.

So, as Stevie Nicks once sang, "Sometimes it's a bitch, sometimes it's a breeze."

Unless it's the ice machine. That's never a breeze. I saw service people looking at it today, but I'm quite sure that today is day 16 with no ice.

Why was I...?

...standing in Staples, spending money out of my own pocket to photocopy the latest version of a manuscript I've been trying to get published for, oh, two years now?

Our department decided to get a new photocopier. The old one had served well, but apparently had reached the end of its usefulness. The photcopier came, and worked well... until the ink ran out.

The shelves next to the photcopier are filled to the proverbial brim with toner cartridges -- for the old machine. Apparently, nobody thought to order new toner cartridges at the same time they ordered the new photocopier.

Yet another case of a piece of equipment that we kind of need to do research -- but it's not working. Between this, the ice machine, trying to order anything in a timely fashion, I'm reminded of the old observation that even a lion can be eaten by ants.

Super villain team-up

Yesterday, I described the return of my old nemesis, the ice machine. Now it has been joined by another enemy from my past: the Manuscript That Will Not Die.

The Manuscript That Will Not Die is a writing project that started three years ago now. When I was writing it, it just felt like the more I worked on it, the further away the end got, because as I was researching it, I kept uncovering a whole new line of information that was relevant. And I’m still not sure when anyone else is going to be able to read it.

And people wonder why I blog? Because three years and counting is a long time to get something out.

Ten years of blogging

Ten. Years.

Yes, this is the tenth anniversary of this blog – or blogiversary, if you prefer.

The question “What is the oldest science blog?” comes up occasionally in the science online community. It’s hard to pinpoint which it might be. There are people who started doing similar things on their own webpages with regular updates (Daniel Fischer started in 1996). But no matter how you slice it, this is one of the oldest science blogs, in continuous operation throughout. As far as I’ve been able to find, Derek Lowe started in February 2002; Razib Khan started in April 2002, and I started in May 2002. This predates the entry of a few other well-known bloggers, like Bora Zivcovic in 2004, and I think PZ Myers.

A quick retrospective.

First, this blog is all Neil Gaiman’s fault. In late 2001, he was blogging about writing and promoting American Gods, and that introduced me to the idea that blogging was its own thing. And because of him, I ferreted out Blogger and started to learn how it worked.

I was in the midst of my first year in this job, and this seemed to me to be a good way to document and explain what I do as a researcher. A few people read it here and there, particularly some of my colleagues, who would check out my bitching about our eternally broken ice machine.

Conveniently, the story of this blog divides neatly into two 5 year periods.

Late in 2007, I started to get “born again hard” about blogging. There were a few things that did this.

First, I was conscious that other people had figured out science blogging better than I had and were having more success at it than me. (Yes, I am sometimes driven by jealousy. I am not proud of this, but there you have it.) I wanted to be one of the cool kids. I thought, “I can do more.”

Second, a couple of controversies regarding the teaching of evolution blew up in Texas. There was the dismissal of Chris Comer, the Institute for Creation Research trying to accreditation to give master of science degrees, and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating board review of the K-12 teaching standards gave me huge amounts of blog fodder, which has continued to today. (Oh look, the entire State Board of Education is up for re-election because of redistricting! This could be interesting...)

Third, I got Marmorkrebs in my lab. Initially, I though about not mentioning I had these amazing crayfish to people until I was able to get some papers out, because I was nervous about getting scooped. But then I thought about Seth Godin’s advice:

Ideas that spread, win.

I not only started the Marmorkrebs blog, but I started to push myself much harder. I wanted to see how far I could take blogging. More science, more often, more effort, better writing (I hoped!), and less whinging.

Things I’m proud of so far? There’s some obvious things, like having a piece make it into Open Lab 2009. But there are some you might not expect.

I’m proud that this blog hasn’t moved around much. There were a couple of URL changes in the early days, but that’s been about it. A lot of other science blogs have gone through two or three major regenerations at different hosts, different networks, and the like. It’s been faithfully powered by Blogger for all ten years.

I’m proud that this blog is independent. I’ve never been part of any blogging network. Even more importantly to me, I’ve never had ads on this blog.

Now, onward to decade number two!

P.S.—If you have found this blog useful, or want to give a blogiversary present, a buck towards my #SciFund project would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Photo by mmatins on Flickr; used under a Creative Commons license.