See you on the other side

This will be the last post journal entry made on my hand-me-down Pentium 2, 4 gig hard drive computer that I inherited from Dr. Ortega (who'd been the last to retire before I joined here). My new computer has finally arrived. And that's definitely been the best thing to happen in a day that has otherwise been riding on the edge of crisis from the word "go."

After I got out of my two early morning classes, I got back paperwork concerning the searches for new faculty positions. We were approved to search for four new faculty; paperwork came back listing only three. Bad. Apparently, some of the paperwork got "lost" between the Dean's office and the Provost's office.

Then, the editor for one of my manuscripts emailed me asking when I would have the revisions done. Ugh. I've got to do that pronto, or the whole process starts from scratch.

On the plus side, that revision will be much faster once I set up my shiny new computer.

Hm. On second thought, I should add one qualifier to my first paragraph. This will be the last journal entry on my old computer. I hope.

Another working weekend

Spent both yesterday and today in my office. Of course, I wasn't the only one. Plenty of other tenure-track professors (and even a couple of tenured ones!) were in at various times, too (though I think I was there longest of anyone on the second floor).

Fred Zaidan was there. I was chatting to him about what he was doing (because he's not single like some of the other new guys. it's less typical for him to be in on weekends). He mentioned he'd spent the day working on his Faculty Research Council grant -- a small grant that's internal to UTPA. I'd planned to submit one, too. He commented, "I really hate the six page limit."

I look blankly and ask, "Six page limit?"

"Yeah, for the project description."

I rushed back to my computer and discovered that I'd filled in all the forms, but there wasn't any form for the project description -- you had to write it yourself on good ol' plain white paper. I'd completely and utterly missed it. I hastily retrieved my proposal from the department chair's mailbox and started writing. This proposal was due tomorrow, and I had to teach, so I had to finish it toute suite.

It was about 4 pm, and I had five pages done just before 7 pm. Whew! Luckily, a few things were in my favour. Those 6 pages had to be double spaced, and I needed to have references. I must remember to thank Fred for unwittingly pulling my fat out of the fire.

One of the interesting things about doing this proposal so quickly was that I finally got to use a software program I'd bought a few months back, EndNote.

Oh. My. God.

End Note is a bibliographic program. In order to really use it effectively, you have to enter all your references into the database, which I've been doing very slowly. The beauty of this thing -- which I'd known intellectually but hadn't really grasped in that "in your bones" kind of way -- is that all you have to do is select a database entry, and it creates your reference list automatically. In the format of your choice. This is fantastic, because every journal in the world wants references a different way. Some want a numbered list (so if you move one reference, you have to renumber everything), some want them alphabetical, some want the year behind the author's name, some want the year closer to the end... and so on. The reference list is an absolute time-killer, because it is so fiddly that it almost invariably generates a mistake somewhere.

Once I start to get more entries into the database, this software is going to save me so much time...
Rephrase: Once I start to get more entries into the database, and get my new office computer... My current computer is just about ready to enter a new and rewarding career as a doorstop, so I've been busily awaiting arrival of a replacement. Given the recent theft of Chris's computer, though, I'm really nervous that it'll be stolen before I have a chance to do anything with it. Hope I'm wrong.

;;;;;

OoooOOOOOoooh! Soon -- not yet, but soon -- it'll be three weeks with a busted ice machine!

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.

Theft

My colleague Chris Little just had his "sweet" new iMac computer stolen from his lab this afternoon. Bugger. I gave him a hug, but was annoyed that there wasn't more that I could do except express sympathy. Was also worried. I heard about this as I was walking to my lab to check on some data for Anna S., and panicked for a moment. His lab is only four doors down from mine.

And what's worse is that he already had scientific data on that machine. Computers can be replaced. So can data, I suppose, but having to redo experiments is not something a tenure-track person wants to be wasting time on.

Unfortunately, his computer is the latest in a string of computers that have been stolen from this building. Several were taken from the Chemistry Department upstairs -- I think this is the first from Biology recently.

Keeping up with the ladies

I try to make it a policy not to ask others to do things that I wouldn't do myself. This is particularly true of my students. The downside is that when you have a really motivated student -- or colleague-- you have to keep up with them or risk looking bad.

Virginia (L) and Anna (R, who realized I was taking a picture)

My student Anna S. (blonde Anna) is pretty motivated. And so is my colleague Virginia Scofield. To finish up some tunicate development experiments they started yesterday in time for Anna to get to her classes, they decided that they should meet in my lab at 7:00 a.m. And considering that Anna was willing to drive to Edinburg from Harlingen, which is about 45 minutes away, I wasn't about to back out and not show up. And even with my short walk in, Anna was still in the lab before me!

In other good news, a set-up for a study Anna A. (brunette Anna) did yesterday with sand crabs also looks like it will work. We still need some fine tuning, but we're convinced it will work.

Meanwhile, my poor colleague Fred Zaidan borrowed an old Wal-Mart styrofoam cooler from my lab to take some things home last night. While he was walking in to return the eskie, someone stopped him and asked, "Are you selling tacos?" This rather took him aback. I think he had some problems grasping the idea that someone would be looking for a wandering taco salesman...

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.

A quick entry before bed

I'm up a little late tonight, working at home, getting a quiz ready for two of my General Biology classes to take Wednesday. My third class, Neurobiology, also has a quiz Wednesday, which I'll have to finish tomorrow -- in and around hosting a visit by my colleague Virginia Scofield, a graduate studies committee meeting at lunch (blast no, no noon workout again), meeting with students, writing budgets for students, writing an internal grant proposal, answering emails, marking off the calendar that will show we've been over a fortnight without a working ice machine, and I'm sure one or two other little tasks...

But now? Off to bed.

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.

My name on a T-shirt. Was bound to happen, really...

Yesterday I was talking to one of the seven (!) students I'm supervising this semester, one of my Annas. (I'm working with Anna A., who’s from here, I think, and Anna S., who’s from Germany). So we were happily discussing research plans, had been for several minutes, when I suddenly stopped, and said, “Does that shirt say, ‘Zen’?”

It was one of those bizarre, “A-ha!” moments. It was like how you sometimes you look at an optical illusion, and you suddenly see something that you didn’t see a second ago.

Her shirt was pink, with stylized clouds outline (at least, they looked liked cloud outlines to me) in slightly darker pink. Also in slightly darker pink was a sort of scaly ribbon, running and twisting around through the middle. At first, I first thought was a pink Chinese dragon. The shirt a slightly Asian feel – although the very definite pinkness of the shirt made it perhaps feel slightly less Asian than it would otherwise.

Anna hadn’t realized at all that her shirt said anything (“Doesn’t it say, ‘ZEM’?”), much less spelled out her supervisor’s name.

;;;;;

Today? I tracked down information I needed for my tenure folder, did some emailing regarding the International Society for Neuroethology website, made a trip out to the Coastal Studies lab to gather some tunicates, took care of the crayfish, introduced my student Anna S. to tunicates, and introduced my student Gloria to crayfish.
Oh yes, and wrote a blog entry. ;)

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.

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.

;;;;;

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

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.

Back to class

Not a bad first day. Only bad moment was in my neurobiology class, when someone pointed out that I had dates for last semester up instead of this semester. Whoops. Then, I discovered that some of the updates I had made to the class website were done too late before the class changed servers, so I had to redo some work.

End of an era

The University of Texas - Pan American can no longer boast of having the longest serving university president in the U.S.A. Our current president, Miguel (Mike) Nevarez, announced that he was going to retire in a year. He's been president 22 years. Made me think, "Do they even remember how to select a new president?"

The question over cake today, of course, was, "Who's going to replace him?" Hopefully there will be a good slate of candidates. Because I can think of at least one person who, if elected president, would seriously make me think of looking for a new gig. I'm sure any of my colleagues in the University reading this will snicker in recognition when they read that last sentence.

Class creep

...And by "creep," I mean "sneak up stealthily," not "reprehnsible individual."

The first day of the fall semester is this Monday. This means I'm spending the second half of this week preparing for classes. The tasks are routine and time consuming. Fortunately, they are not terribly mentally stressful, now that I'm teaching classes that I've done at least once before. It also means that with increased traffic around the university, I won't be able to skateboard into work any more.

I have discovered one thing this week that I'm pretty excited about, though. I'm a long time computer geek. To give you an idea of how long I've had a home computer, the first one I owned used cassette tapes for data storage. Awful. Slow and nothing remotely resembling reliable. The first 5.25" floppy drive I got was a revalation. Then came the 3.5" floppy diskette, which has had a surprisingly long lifespan in the computer age. Still pretty good for most thing, but they're definitely reaching the limits of their usefulness as filesizes invariably get bigger.

I'd had nothing but bad experiences with zip drives (every single one succumbed to "the click of death"). CDs had many great great, but were limited for a while because they were "read only," and still somewhat clunky. And while rewritable CD burners are common, they're still not everywhere. I need only look in front of me.

I think I've finally found the replacement for floppies, though. USB drives, a.k.a. flash drives or thumb drives. I got a small, cheap one this week to try it out. It's fantastic. You plug it into a USB port, and the computer automatically recognizes it and you can use it just like a floppy drive. They're solid state so don't seem to be susceptible to magnets, they're very small, and have good capacity. I got a 16 MB one for $10, but that's the real low end; 124 or 256 MB drives are available for more. Definitely my favourite new toy of the week.

Erika

It's hard not to be a little disappointed. All the build-up, the warnings, the University shutting down, the forecast of 15 cm of rain...
And it's just a cloudy day out.

Not particularly windy. Not particularly wet. Nothing really out of the ordinary. I thought I vaguely heard some rain and thunder early in the morning, but that's about it. I guess the storm went a little further south; it seems Mexico is getting the bulk of the rain. Now, I do admit that some of the news footage taken overnight from nearby South Padre Island looked a little more like what you'd expect a storm to look like. And I certainly don't mean to trivialize the seriousness of a storm.

First, Claudette veers north and comes nowhere near this place. Then, Erika seems to dissipate into not very much. I can only hope all my hurricane experiences are like these...

&nbsp

Some pictures taken from my apartment balcony around lunchtime.
I think I'll be taking the opportunity to stay in today, maybe clean up a little. Give myself a mental health day after two rather frantic days in the lab. Speaking of which, the gods of science were rather stingy with me. It appears that not many of the stains I tried actually worked. Which isn't surprising, given that the tissue was decomposing as I was working on it. The last dead lobster of the day I dissected was so bad, I just gave up on it.

Whoops, not yet

Ah, the rain stopped, so I guess the onset of Erika is not quite as near as I'd feared.

5:20 pm and Annette hasn't shown up.

The nick of time

I'm just about done processing my lobster samples. And it started raining about 5 minutes ago.

Place your bets

I'm betting my student Annette won't come in this afternoon to check on the ascidian experiment she started yesterday. Which would mean I'd have to check on it.