And the weeks marched on...

Alright-it has been awhile since I posted.  Rest assure it has been a busy month in the Dr, Zeek household. In the last four weeks:

• my laptop melt-down resulted in a complete wipe and reinstall (thank the gods we had carbonite installed)
• all the experiments I needed for the poster for the upcoming conference worked about two weeks before I needed to start putting everything together--so there was a massive push to analyze the data
• then, a really bad cold knocked me on my ass for a few days a week before christmas
• which resulted in my stressing
• which resulted in stress-induced muscle spasms in my lower back--no relief except laying flat on my back in bed.  It is hard to work on a poster when laying in bed.
• resulting in more stress--and the viscous cycle continued until I finally went to the doctor for some muscle relaxers
• which resulted in family Christmas festivities in a somewhat drug-induced haze and still no poster (which needed to be printed by today at the latest)
• which resulted in a marathon illustrator/photoshop session (12 hrs on the 26th and 12 hrs on the 27th) and a beautiful poster to print yesterday
• and a corrupted illustrator poster file
• which resulted in few panicky tears.  4 hrs later the amazing IT/media center people printed my poster

It has been a rough few weeks, but the poster is printed, the holidays are almost over and we fly out to places warmer for the conference on Sunday.  I almost cannot wait to get back from the conference so I can put my life back to some semblance of normalcy.  Oh, wait, the weekend after we get back is Mr. Dr. Zeek's surprise birthday party.  Then maybe some normalcy?

Bad planning....

Shit.  The two key things I need to run the short experiments this week will not get here in time (even though I ordered them early last week).  One will show up late today and one late tomorrow.  I realized while walking to the bus stop this morning that I am out of both of the key things needed-basically screwing up the routine/schedule I had formulated in my brain before I finally fell asleep last night.  I hate when the things I plan to do don't get done.   Damn. damn. damn.

While during a "normal" work-week, this would pose little problems since I would have multiple, multi-day experiments starting/running.  Alas, the shortened work-week though has put a huge monkey-wrench in the plans.  (and while this may make me a horrible scientist-I am not working on Thanksgiving--Mr. Dr. Zeek and I have plans to visit family and goddammit I want to watch me some football-St. Kern will be pissed....) 

With only a month before I have to have my poster printed for the conference in Jan, I am freaking out a tad.  I suppose I should go over those damn papers again and start doing some of the figures/general things for the poster.  Damn.  Damn. damn. 

WTF....

I just ran across a paper that contradicts a whole slew of things/experiments I have seen/done with this project.  I *know* my data is right (excluding that little snafu before). 

Wait, let me explain.  We do NOT see what they are seeing.  We see the exact polar opposite.  As in a yes/no.  There is no gray area in this one.  I would be worried if someone else in "our" lab(s) haven't had seen the same thing, so at least we are self-consistent.  But WTF? 

And this is not something you can hand-wave away with "it's from a different source" crap.  And it doesn't make sense.  So now I wonder if I can "trust" the rest of the stuff in the paper which really sucks because, well, it's a cool paper and I thought would be useful for the discussion.  I guess not. 

Damn.  What a way to end the week....

PS-blog post theme for next week- just because it is published (or in this case written in a patent) doesn't mean it works....or how I spent the past two months beating my head against the wall....

Paper push

So right now there is a huge push to get three manuscripts out the door by the end of the year (two of which I am first author on so no pawning it off on anyone else).  On top of getting more than "preliminary" data for an upcoming conference in January.

Therefore, Dr. Zeek needs some new music for her iPod.  Any suggestions*?  I have been obsessively listening to Mumford and Sons lately, although now I am getting a tad bored with the album (and I have a tendency to do that--listen over and over to an album till my brain turns to mush).  I need things that I can rock out to in and out of the lab and have no problems listening to Metallica (old-school---not the new crap off of "St. Anger") while I am writing a paper**.

As an indicator of what I like- my iPod has almost everything that I can find from Social Distortion, Eve 6, Led Zeppelin***, Buckcherry and a hodgepodge of Motley Crue, Guns N Roses and the whatnot. 

So, any new bands you cannot stop listening to?  Send them my way.  It is going to be a long winter.



*and if anyone suggests Lady Gaga,  I do believe that I will suggest they be drawn and quartered (I understand-Buckcherry in comparison is not the greatest).  Not my cup of tea. 

**For some reason, this absolutely stunned my collaborator.  He, on the other hand needs complete silence or some mamsy-pansy classical or Kenny G going on to write.  Please, listening to that while pounding through data analysis would compel me to stab my ear drums out with a dull pencil. 

***I do believe that "Led Zeppelin II" is one of my favorite albums- I even thoroughly enjoy "coda"

Data woes

Things I learned about MY data today while trying to troubleshoot my friends data:

• multiplying by 1243.27 is not the same as multiplying by 124.327
• milli means a 10^-3 multiplication, not 10^-2
• combining these two mistakes into one cell calculation means that all of my data is off by two orders of magnitude
• using this cell (cut and paste, drag and drop) for all the other calculations means that all the data in the sheet are off by two orders of magnitude
• copying this cell into two other sheets means that all of that data is off two orders of magnitude as well

The good news- the data is not published yet.  The not great news-- I have made a table of these results and have sent them around to the other collaborators and to my PI.  My PI used the data in a talk he gave in July.  My boss will probably think that I am a big, huge fucking idiot....wait, I am a big fucking huge idiot.

Even crappier news-- I had my friend in the other lab trying to figure out why she was getting results that were two orders of magnitude lower. So because of my stupidity and lack of calculating/checking formulas ability I made her doubt was she was doing.

It has been a shitty week.  I have decided that either I am never going to do an excel formula calculation again OR I am going to write the formula by hand in every cell.

I feel like an idiot.
A big one.
Huge.

I just want to go home.... 

And the cloud has lifted....

Mr. Dr. Zeek and I have had a fairly major issue/problem in hometown city that we have been dealing with since we moved to post-doc city more than three years ago.  It has been ongoing and, while not putting a strain on our marriage, has caused numerous stress-induced discussions, tears and frustration. 

We have almost always been on the same page as how to proceed, what actions to take and how to deal with this problem.  At the beginning of the year, we both had decided to throw in the towel, stop fighting and say enough is enough (with the problem, not the marriage--).

As of today, it is done.  The problem is no longer there.  It's over.  Finished.   While somewhat anticlimactic, there is a huge weight gone right now.

Sorry for being so cryptic, just know that there will be much celebration in the Dr. Zeek household tonight. 

Pissing and moaning...

It always seems like I am posting things when nothing is going right, when I am down in the dumps, when I want to scream in frustration.  So, as a change of pace I decided to post a good thing or two.  For the past few months nothing has been working.  Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero.

But I kept plugging along-and seriously, boys and girls- when it rains it pours.  It seems like the three main points of the project are working.  All at once.  In the span of three days, I had data in hand that was (a) clean (b) relevant and (c) pretty fucking cool.  That was about a week ago.  Now on to finishing it all up.  So good news on the lab front.

I still need to wean my new undergrad from asking me "Is this mixed?"  I think tomorrow her and I will spend some quality time together where I will teach her the finer points of making a homogeneous mixture and properly reading the level of solution in a graduated cylinder.  I may even use a sciencey-term or two.  With everything going on and struggling to get the preliminary data for an abstract for a conference (due in two weeks)- methinks I have been neglecting her a bit.

So, a happy Dr. Zeek will go home, watch some football (eh, maybe-doesn't seem like a "thrilling" game tonight) and relax in the new king-size bed Mr. Dr. Zeek and I just purchased.  I didn't realize how small our old bed was until I slept the whole night through without Mr. Dr. Zeek's elbow in my eyeball.