Journal Entries
techno-savvy
Posted May 23, 2003
friend elton and i have been increasingly tempted to start a log detailing our boss' hilarious computer-related mishaps. see, i'm my boss' computer troubleshooter, which is to say when things go wrong she comes running to me for help. the strangest thing is that she has this peculiar tendency to experience really odd computer problems (especially when using microsoft word), which mysteriously evaporate the minute i arrive.
so there i was, minding my own business on wibble morning, when she came in to tell me that for some reason, she couldn't remove her page breaks or key in *anything*. i went, and found that switching to normal view solved everything. about twenty minutes later, she burst in again to complain that her cursor was now skipping words instead of characters when she pressed the right and left arrow keys. the first thing elton and i thought was, her keyboard's busted, and she has a stuck ctrl key. so we both went to her office. as she repeated her complaint, she shifted a hefty textbook from where it was lying next to the keyboard. keywords: heavy book, keyboard. and the cursor was behaving normally again. it was all we could do to hold in our laughter and tell her with what we hoped was a straight face that it would seem the edge of her book had been lying on the ctrl key, which caused the cursor to skip. of course the minute we got out of there and back into the lab, we burst into uncontrolled, hysterical laughter!
(needless to say, we propagated that story to our friends...
it was too good to keep to ourselves)
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Latest reply: May 23, 2003
home sweet home -
Posted May 12, 2003
this is my fourth day away from work and back home! home, by which i mean my house in my hometown, and not that grotty little college room in which i reside when i'm at university.
the reason why i'm relaxing back home and not slogging away at the lab is simple: (1) i wanted to celebrate my parents' wedding anniversary with them, and mothers' day with my mum - i'm not sure when i last came home for these two occasions, and (2) i thought that it would be pretty hilarious for me to just suddenly show up at the gate and surprise my folks, never mind that my home is about 900 kilometers away from university.
to make sure that at least my mum would be home on friday (9 may), i phoned her up the night before and asked her if one had to be home to receive express mail. my mum took it to mean that i'd sent her something, and promised to stay home for the next two days. (i'm really, really sorry, mum) ran off to the airport the next day and hopped on the first plane i could get. called my mum again while i was in the taxi, asking her (yes, i know i was being mean) if she'd received her package yet. she guilelessly replied that no, she hadn't, the postman *had* been to our house in the morning but he hadn't called her out, so there was a chance it would come in the afternoon or the next day.
arrived at my house fifteen minutes later, surprising the heck out of my parents (it was lunch time), who had been patiently waiting for the postman. 
i'm still not sure when exactly i'm going back yet, though. you see, i only got a one-way ticket...
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Latest reply: May 12, 2003
natural deselection
Posted May 2, 2003
OMG! my darwin awards article (A988798) made *headlines*! 
Discuss this Journal entry [9]
Latest reply: May 2, 2003
Pyromania
Posted Apr 29, 2003
The world lost a potentially great sculptor the day the science faculty opened its doors to yours truly. On the other hand, medical science may profit from this someday.
To begin the story, I am the sort of person who has to have one cup of coffee in the morning for things to work out in a way that is even remotely normal. Having recently decided to wean myself off my dependency upon caffeine, I have been spending mornings without stimulant in my bloodstream. Which leads us to last Wimpy (er, that's Tuesday for you non-Thingites).
I'd decided to do a bit of plating in the morning so that I'd have a fresh new batch of microbes for my supervisor, who'll be dropping in this coming Wibble. Unable to locate a glass beaker for my alcohol (no, I do not drink in the lab. This was for sterilizing my glass rod over the flame of a Bunsen burner), I settled for a plastic one instead, being insufficiently conscious to realise the possible detriments of using plasticware in the immediate vicinity of a flame.
After I'd flamed my glass rod for the last time, I replaced it in the beaker and lowered the cabinet hood, and brought my agar plates to the incubator. Upon returning to the safety cabinet, I was mortified to find a tidy flame flickering happily over a pool of spilled alcohol as my plastic beaker was slowly fizzing and being reduced to a lump of - plastic.
I had, admirably, the presence of mind to stop the fire by placing a container over it. Deprived of oxygen, the fire burned itself out... leaving me with a glass rod permanently fused to an anomalous lump of plastic - which would certainly have won awards had I belonged to a completely different faculty.
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Latest reply: Apr 29, 2003
setting a record
Posted Apr 15, 2003
unlike most people, i *don't* go online on weekends. so imagine my surprise when i came in on monday morning and found that *three* of my articles in pr had been picked at the same time! cheers, jim! 
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Apr 15, 2003
Farlander
Researcher U206300
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