I’ve been working with terrifyingly dangerous coherent light sources for 30 years now and I’ve been an institutional or departmental laser safety officer as a part of a couple of previous positions. I spent the last two days retraining to do this with a postdoc (who is destined for greatness) for our school and college until someone more senior — and responsible — takes over.
Pupil damage example, but our laser, at 10.6µm is more likely to start a fire than vaporise tissue. I actually want to cook something with it when it gets decommissioned in a few weeks.
I’m always uncomfortable with this sort of admin position. “Health and Safety” has very little to do with actual health and safety; on the contrary, it is about mitigating liability and protecting the institution.
The calculations were fun. They’re like a puzzle but there are also multiple paths to the same solution. Frustrating, I reckon, for scientists but the kind of no-real-answer abominations that give old school engineers like me massive erections. Or, THAT could just be a springback from the side effects of the meds I’m coming off of.
We recently had a thorough inspection of the labs by the Health and Safety Executive which is essentially the same as OSHA in the States. Thorough and a little bit harrowing but they only took in the labs and not our common areas like the offices (where paper, cardboard, and other flammable material apparently are not an issue like they are in the labs just through a door on the same floor) or the galley to which I bring your attention, here.
The broad picture, you would think, seems focused on hygiene. The utter filth that we are willing to tolerate in lieu of some basic housekeeping is frankly impressive.
But, the part that always grabs my attention is the pressure relief vent on the boiling water device: it points directly at whoever is using the sink. In risk assessments, I am implored to include allowing warm instrument parts to cool to room temperature lest they cause someone discomfort. For users of the food and tea refuge, potential scalding by pressurised superheated water is not an issue.
The last day before my vacation started — albeit still days away from wrapping up the Pre-Debra refurbs — I finally managed to reverse engineer the OEM controller for a laser we need at work for about 4 hours. At 10% power, this continuous wave beast made this pretty little hole in 100ms. That’s waiting for my return to work, now.
We went to Manchester the night Debra flew from Raleigh-Durham so we could meet her at the airport first thing the next morning. Manchester is just lovely and easily the most european city in the UK. We, on the other hand, dined in a Thai place in Chinatown (considering the Vietnamese place next door, Pho Cue, to have too cutesy a name).
There were pubs, of course, but mostly we just wandered about marvelling at architecture we’ve previously overlooked. Too little time, this trip, but whatthehell, right?
The totals for the month: 91 miles running, 23 pubs, 8 kebabs, 7 fish and chips, 1 short review. Here’s the cartoon of the month (not necessarily a monthly feature):
I sent the photo of the Slim Chickens sign with the subject line, “What in the Wide World of Sport is a goin’ on here?” because the NHS email filters would have blocked, “Somebody’s gotta go back and get a shitload of dimes.” She ignored the reference to the venerable Mr Taggart, instead noting that this Slim looks like a pimp.
Red tulips opened the first week of the month and there were as many as a dozen still hanging on merrily here at the end. Jimi also seems to be rejoicing at the sun.
In fact, without the sunlight he would be deprived of his two favourite toys: reflections and shadows:
Picking up a newspaper one Saturday I spotted the Wild Turkey Rye on the top shelf at the newsstand. For a laugh, I asked how much and the price was disturbingly low. I’ve really got to go back and buy the rest of these:
Graffiti lasts about 4 hours before getting painted over at the pedestrian subways under the 5 Ways Roundabout so I have to be quick to record them. This one seems to be a bit less clever than the ones about corporate crimes or homelessness but I do like the way the red bits could be taken to be the letters of LOVE being spread by a tongue (you see it or you don’t):
Been catching the evening trains to Wolverhampton for a beer, to check out progress on the tram branch to the station, and to just have a pootle about the Other City out this way. Saint Peter’s Gardens is always very nice:
Successfully introduced a laser through the beam path of the LTQ mass spectrometer. The IR laser should also pass through this same line of apertures and will allow us to break apart amino acid chains, non-covalent complexes, and detergent micelles.
The erstwhile ‘IRMPD Control Board’ mostly just reports on the state of the laser with the only inputs from the instrument control end a safety interlock and — as it turned out — a dc voltage that drives a voltage controlled oscillator fashioned from a couple of op-amps. I’ll need to make a cable that bypasses this last feature so I can run this laser from our arbitrary waveform generator but that can wait till after the bank holiday, tomorrow.
I also bought a new chisel, speaking of fragmentation mechanisms:
One of our post docs who is a very competent instrument designer wants to fire a laser into an outrageously expensive bit of kit. The Principal Investigator is understandably dubious. Then a few months ago, the C-trap on the the Orbitrap Elite failed and needed replacement that essentially doomed the beast to the skip. I told him we had a proof-of-principal toy to play with and started extricating the working- from non-working-bits.
I disconnected the Linear Ion Trap (the LTQ) from the electronics that couple it to the Orbitrap and reinstalled the software so that I could use it as a stand alone ion trap mass spectrometer and everything worked. I needed to pump down the Orbi chamber because it is all one vacuum system as supplied, but that was the only connection to the old instrument of any sort.
I brought this up to contacts at Thermo (the manufacturer) and our service vendor all of whom told me you can’t use the LTQ separate from the Orbitrap because it is tied to the Orbitrap and simply won’t work as a stand alone instrument. Fucking liars.
The absolute hardest part of this endeavour was releasing it from the other instrument. Not because it is tied by electronics or software (which, as I mentioned, it isn’t despite the claims of the ‘owners’ of the technology) but because there are four hidden bolts holding it to two hidden rails. They require a 17mm socket and an extender and a little less torque than it takes to open a bottle of catsup.
The other required part for us to prove to the P.I. that it will work on the more expensive instrument (besides the laser which was harvested from a derelict LTQ-FTICR about 10 years ago) is a flange for the back of the LTQ that will have a hole for an infrared compatible window cut into it. That is now in the work shop but in the meantime I’ve just held a piece of sheet metal over the opening and against the Viton o-ring and found that despite my abuse it remains fully functional and surprisingly still within calibration specs.
Yes, I live a couple of streets over from a fast food place named Pizza Gate. Yes, I once had an elevated security clearance in the military and my wife used to work for the National Archives. And, yes, today I sliced thin pieces of human baby hearts up in a ritual that only the elite in my field really understand.
No, I am not Q. Maybe lean a bit B, but not that Q.
I reviewed the Bacchus — which is still beautiful — back just before the bars all closed in March 2020. At that moment in time, the University and all the pubs in the land were about to shut down for the next several months (this one being the next to last pub in the before times) and the bar itself was a ghost town. In contrast, this time the place was even more full than the rightmost pisser in the gents. Fortunately, the leftmost one was wearing protection. Wear your Wellies!
Tipping Point
There are two bars but with the house over capacity they opted to only run one of them…the one that is harder to get to. The wait was ridiculous but at least they didn’t have tableside drinks service for the large group at the meal so that we couldn’t overindulge … it must be nice to be that secure in your financial state in these uncertain times (and, still, someone is going to blame this blog post — read by a couple of dozen people worldwide — as the root cause of pubs shutting down across the UK).
The servers at the dinner were incapable of delivering or retrieving more than one plate or bowl at a time resulting in the first-served finishing their courses before the last ones received them. I haven’t worked in a professional kitchen since 1995 but this level of incompetence still tears at my very soul. (Jackie is even worse and can barely restrain herself from entering the kitchen to take over.)
Despite all this, the bland meal and egregious service was made up for by the splendid company. I really should have made the effort to sit with the NMR people or the molecular biologists but we all seemed to compartmentalise more than any of us should. Perhaps I don’t have exclusive rights to social anxiety — a claim which only Jackie, amongst all my familiars, believes — but the chat that I could make out (I’m also becoming quite deaf) was better than convivial.
About 2/3 of the group left for karaoke afterwards. As anyone who knows me will attest, I don’t hold my own dignity precious but it saddens me no end to see those I admire relinquish their own so readily. I joined an alternative group (led by the professor who owns Jimi‘s birth momma) which headed off to the Christmas Market for beers, mulled wine, and Brummie-watching in the cold. With the rail strikes next week, this may be the last time I see most of them in 2022 so we shared our Christmas well wishes there.
And, Merry Christmas to you all.
Lads, the sign that says “Wet Floor” is a caution, not an instruction
Storms Dudley and Eunice and their aftermaths continue to batter the country. But, a Sunday evening power shutdown at work dictated that the instruments still running sequences over the weekend needed to be shutdown so I made my weekend long run include a stop off at the labs.
It was also still raining but not especially cold and I made my way down there on an overland trip through neighbourhoods that would normally be teeming with pavement hogs but that were abandoned on a lazy, stay-indoors sort of Sunday morning. Already suffering leg cramps by the time I got there, it was nice to see a few leftover bits of baklava lingering in the break room (there is no trace of them now).
Returning on these old shaky legs I hoped that the canals would offer more shelter from the wind than they actually did, but I was able to make it nearly the full distance to the Homebase in Oldbury without significant walking. Slightly more impressive, I made it the roughly 2 miles to complete the journey running except for hills despite carrying two cans of paint in my backpack.
And, it is the first 20 miler (on aggregate) I’ve done since the loop turning in our keys to the last rental on 15 Dec 2019 (2 years and 2 months ago).
I spend a lot of time in a group office meant for 17 people but which currently houses me, another tech, 3 postdocs, 2 PhD students, and an MSci candidate. We moved into these digs mid March 2020 about a week before COVID Lockdownv.1 at which time there were also 4 emeritus professors stinking up the space — and, more importantly occupying all the prime real estate.
I was given clearance to hold a clearance of shit from the most privately situated of these desks and to take up residency there, myself, on Monday. The tree in the above photo seems to come with the squatter’s agreement so I’m glad my best efforts at starving it these past 19 months were for nowt.
It looks a mess — this photo was from 5 minutes after I transferred my items to their new home — but it is more roomy and organised than the one I left. I even have my own phone!
Finally, sad news (for me)…Mort Sahl died. A childhood hero and one of my early role models. Copied a routine of his for a family function when I was 10 or 11 years old and was very proud that it pissed off my dad who told me, “you sound like that commie Jew on Carson.” RIP.
Endless British Pub Crawl (Part 3) 