My cyborg acronym!

Totally me! Seen on Lars' Fischblog.

So ... uhm ... sorry Mary, you're virgin pregnant

Even though this web-comic is completely dorky and I don't understand any of the toy-related jokes, you got to love it for goldies like this.

Wow, it took me a few attempts to get the HTML code for an image right. It's been a while...

Dark Room

Damn microscope setup! I'm 1.85m tall (6'1" for those with imperial measures) and I believe the table is built for midgets. Even with my chair on the lowest height, the microscope would need to be another 4 inches higher up, just to keep my neck straight. And «thankfully» there are pipes somewhere near the feet on the floor, so I can't even stretch them out. By the end of my PhD, I'll be a hunchback, will chronically lack vitamin D and be as pale as ... well, I guess I can't get much paler [1].

[1] Thank you England!

The council is full of morons

In London (and I assume that applies for most of the UK), people have to pay council tax according to their housing standards. Why this isn't done less annoyingly by an equal spread and through the general tax is beyond me, but it exist nevertheless. It wouldn't be such a big problem, if the people in the council managed not to cock up.

I'm happily sharing a flat and I'm also happily tax-exempt being full-time exploited as research-bitch. To my knowledge that relationship has been confirmed by this neat letter of student confirmation when I moved last year. Then, out of the blue sky, a council tax enquiry letter asked for details [1]. Not nicely, but with the bold threat [2] that I'd have to pay £50 if I didn't reply on time. Being a good EU citizen, I complied, not knowing that those idiots had already closed my flatmates account (which comfortably ran via monthly direct debit) and started billing me for the complete previous year! Imbeciles.

Three phone-calls [3] and half an hour (!) later, we (the moron and I) had finally established the above status quo. Sigh, now I'll have to send them another student status confirmation...

[1] The form was full of typos and errors. Who's typing these things? Monkeys?
[2] I should have ignored it. After some time the TV people stopped sending us letters as well. I presume they ran out of red ink, as the letters turned progressively more colourful.
[3] To be fair enough, only one made it successfully past the automatic band machine. Funky music. Word of advice: don't call, if you only have 10min time between some wash steps in the lab.

Boredom has come upon me

Looking at my latest post date, I guess I have neglected my weblog «a little». To my defence, I've finally come to a time in my studies where can't write about my work without either disclosing publishable information, or without seriously annoying the people I work with. No wonder most high-spec bloggers in academia are incognito, unless they have endless amount of time to ruminate about sensible matters [1].

This afternoon at the cryo-stat - as a rare boon all sectioning went through without problems - I started to contemplate my future career. On the one hand, I thoroughly enjoy my part in biological science [2]. At least all those moments of experimental success. (In fact, I've started to have tiny celebrations for each successful immuno-staining.) Then on the other hand, I'm pondering whether I can see myself for the next 10 years, chasing one limited-term job to the next; post-docing around the world, no real place to settle, always on the verge of finding new friends and a suitable community. And that every three-or-so-years?

Well, and just a second ago I got bored of watching Family Guy and decided to alter my blog design, which to my utter disappointment, isn't as easy as expected. All those new blogspot features require me to start from scratch ... not now.

Right, I'm off. Got to catch up with the «latest» Star Trek movies before I hit the movies. Toodle-pip everyone.

[1] e.g. PZ-whatever at Pharyngo-whatever writes so much that I can't even be bothered to read it (at) all.
[2] How many people do you know that work on photoreceptor transplantation, ha?

PS. After re-reading all this, I believe I've set a new record in random post composition.