The 4 R's of Academic Research

What have I done to anger the gods? Was it my push for the tech-Jesi (e-Jesus, m-Jesus, web-Jesus, and pod-Jesus) over snail-Jesus? Or maybe it was my whole "you betrayed Shiva," Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, act I used when my neighbor took the last Old Style and I made it burn his hand so that I could have it. Then again, he did declare a Jihad against me for stealing his OS. But I'm getting off the subject, 'The 4 R's of Academic Research'....stay the course.

You see, I am trying to finish some research for a conference I have to attend in September where I shall present a poster. My research consists of fermenting ground grain sorghum and pulling samples at different stages of the process, drying down the material and extracting the lipids to determine if any of the unit operations reduce the amount of lipid present. I acquired 4 hot/stir plates and 4 scrw top 1000 mL erlenmeyer flasks and built a hot water bath with submersible water powered stir plates. I also use a Soxhlet for the lipid extractions and a bench-top MEGAFUGE 2.0R centrifuge for separating the whole stillage from the wet grains. Two weeks ago I get my fermentations started and the Soxhlet dies. I figure no biggie, I can store the samples in the freezer and run them all at once over a couple days. Two days ago, my centrifuge stopped working. Now we're talking crazy shit, because research has just stopped.

Yesterday, my advisor and I call the company, and they tell us to basically hot wire the centrifuge. It displayed the message "OPEN" on the panel when the lid was clearly closed, so my first that was bad switch...it makes sense to bypass the switch and force the centrifuge to 'think' the lid is closed. We hot wire the bad bitch with the help of our department electronics guy, who is rather pissed because his hot sandwiches he brought for lunch were getting cold, his insulin was kicking in and his nicotine buzz was wearing off. Anyways, we get the centrifuge to work and I start processing samples to get "research going again".

Next we decide to focus on the Soxhlet and we decide to take the whole Mother F#c*$r apart (the same attitude that drove my mom nuts and drove me to become an engineer...remember kids, you can always hire someone to put it back together). We start to take it apart only to hear a pop from the centrifuge and smell burnt circuitry......research has stopped again. We say "oh well" and go back to the Soxhlet, where we discover a clogged line. I clean the line and put the Soxhlet back together and it works magnificently.

Resesarch is almost back online.

But rather than repair the centrifuge, we decide to borrow one from another lab. This thing is bad, it looks like an old dishwasher or washing machine, it even has dials on it like a washing machine. All it really needs is a quarter acceptor and a pay-per-spin setup. Anyways, this afternoon we will be moving this washing-fuge to our lab.

Oh, and the 4 R's...

Repair, Rebuild, Rig, Repeat

And it begins again...

Well, the Fall 2006 semester at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln officially started yesterday, the 21st of August. This is technically the beginning of my 9th year of college...how the time flies. Some of my friends have been training for triathalons and marathons and I'm sure they would be happy if I referred to them as triathletes. But me, I'm the exception to the rule. I have been training to be a Decademian, and I am almost there.

The funny thing is that every time a semester starts (this would be my 18th) I get the same feeling of excitement and always look forward to learning more and more about the magnificent world of math modeling. However, this is the first time I have been enrolled in a class and had it cancelled because too few students enrolled. I suppose is was bound to happen eventually, but I didn't think I was getting into the knitty-gritty of biotechnology, or least to such a level that MS or undergrads would not want to learn the magnificence of the various biosynthetic pathways within s. cerevisiae. The coolest part is how those pathways impact ethanol yield and more importantly what compounds are lost from the fermentation broth/mash that are value added co-products that I am interested in extracting from the left overs.

I have another first time experience this semester and that is helping to write/develop a class, which is going under the working title "Unit Operations for Biofuel production". I have always said that I would go to industry and help Uncle Archie to conquer the world with my R&D abilities, but this will test my feelings on teaching. Hopefully, I do not get too attached to teaching, god forbid I have to puss out and give up on world domination by "Unlocking Nature's Potential".

If I won the lottery

Today I was cruising Yahoo! to read the news about the suntan lotion terrorist plot and about the Isreali's whipping ass in the Middle East. I love Yahoo! because I am a news junkie, but CNN or MSNBC just can't get the news to me fast enough. I want to jump from topic to topic like a fly jumps from pile of manure to pile of manure. If I could I would consume news like my friend Mark Wu, where he TiVo's the CNN and MSNBC all day while he is at work, and then when get gets home in the evening he watches both replays in split screen mode on his HDTV. An HDTV that, as he puts, would make me look more clear through the TV than if I was actually standing in front of him at a similar distance. But the problem with such high definition news on fast forward is that for being so well defined, you wonder about the quality of a news program like that. What are they hiding behind the attractive, young anchor people and flashy graphics? Where has the substsance gone? Another issue I have with the TiVo your news strategy is that you are always 8 hours behind, becuase you have TiVo the evening news while you watch the dual, fast forward, high definition rebroadcasting of the daily news. And if you miss a day, you're only compounding the problem. In the end you get two opinions at once, and no commercials.

But getting back to my experience on Yahoo! this afternoon. As I was purusing the most popular pictures I noticed that the butter cow from the Illinois State Fair was on the list. Being from Illinois and a huge fan of the butter cow I was reminded of a conversation I had with my father once whilst we gazed upon the glory of a life sized cow expertly sculpted from 700 pounds of butter.

Dad: "That butter cow sure is amazing, look at the detail."
Me: "Yep, that is pretty intense."
Dad: "Don't you just want to drive a truck through it, just to see what happens?"
Me: "Up until you just said that, "no, I hadn't", but now it is my life ambition."

If I were ever so lucky to win the lottery, I can tell you right now that I would buy 2800 pounds of butter and have a herd of butter cows so dad and I can drive through not just one butter cow, but four butter cows......Just to see what it does. And we'd probably have to order lots of salt, popcorn, and sweet corn, because you just can't let all that butter go to waste.

I think it's the Wii

Whilst watching AOTS today I learned that in addition to the zelda game being available for Wii on release day, ubisoft has pledged 7 games. It's looking like there will be a ton of games on release and nintendo will have games to pepper throughout the year. I think it will be the Wii...for now.

Wii or PS3

How much sleep should one lose over the new generation of video game consoles? Lately the I've been plagued by the PS3. Every morning I wake up and my heart screams "Buy a PS3, you need a PS3", and then my brain says, "Why buy that PS3 when it is still first genereation, remember how XBOX 360 used to overheat and turn itself off? You gotta wait until generation two." My other concern is that there will not be enough titles available for the system on release date. Plus $700 is a lot to pay even for the baddest of the bad console. But then there is Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, that game looks amazing. And the new final fantasy...

My distraction plan was that I would buy a Nintendo Wii which is $200 vs. the $700 for the PS3. A new video game console in the house, aleviate all desire for the PS3. And for a month, that plan worked. Every day I would wake up jonesin' for a PS3 and then I realized that I'm going to buy a Wii and forget about PS3.

Unfortunately, now I wake up everyday and I want a PS3 and then I remind myself that I'm buying a Wii. But now I don't want a Wii and not a PS3, I am trying to figure out some scheme to buy a Wii and a PS3.

Oh, the trials and tribulations of being a gamer.