jam∙at∙registration∙roller

 First of all, it sounds like my house is about ready to blow away.  I wish my house were made of Rock Chalk limestone (if you haven’t read it, I’ll let you borrow my copy of "The Three Little Jayhawks"). 

 A gmail chat conversation I just had got me thinking about pet peeves.  This post is likely to grow over time (twss).  In no particular order:

 (1) Leaving the microwave door open
 (2) The annoying high pitched noise a muted TV makes
 (3) People who aimlessly pace while talking on the phone
 (4) Pistachios that can’t be cracked by hand
 (5) Stopping behind the line on a left turn yield light
 (6) Stopping the microwave before time has expired (and then not clearing the remaining 2 seconds)
 (7) Cars in the passing lane that are going 1 mph faster than the car they’re passing
 (8) Stepping in gum
 (9) Email forwards
 (10) The word ‘actually’
 (11) Improper use of PowerPoint (this could/may be a whole separate post)
 (12) Synchronized clapping
 (13) Crooked window blinds
 (14) Bad sound reinforcement in any setting with amplified sound
 (15) People who swear by macintosh and think pc’s are the devil (and vice versa)
 (16) Continuous use of a laser pointer in a presentation (I’m like a cat…I will follow it wherever you point it)
 (17) Writer’s strikes
 (18) Fingerprints on my monitor
 (19) Small talk
 (20) Grading wordy lab reports (can you tell I’ve been grading all night?)

 Twenty sounds like a good number for now.  Comment if I’m missing any major pet peeve’s of yours. 

I’m tired of studying name reactions.  The following five reactions were optimized and named by me (except for the 1st one, which I received on a postcard from New Belgium Brewery):

 (a) The Poultrification Reaction (best yields are obtained on Sunday afternoon)

 (2) Ethanol-catalyzed Degradation of the Over-worked and Underpaid Graduate Student

(question: does the amount of a reagent need to exceed 100 mol % before considering it stoichiometric as opposed to catalytic?)

 (3) The Houseplant Dehydration Reaction

 (b) The Payday Reaction (best yields obtained on 1st day of the month)

 (e) Four-Component Lab Report Elimination Reaction 

Back to work.  I’m pretty sure the other 229 reactions that I should learn are more likely to be on the exam. 

 I just got another "Jam at Registration Roller" error…I’ve been watching Criminal Minds this weekend, and they always look for the stressor in an unsub’s life that makes them go serial.  I think I know what my stressor is, and I’ve resorted to serial blogging.  Anyway, we had a discussion at lunch today about a student using the safety shower for a "chemical" spill.  The guy broke a test tube containing 2 mL of water, 3 drops of 0.1 M nitric acid, and a small amount of an ionic compound.  He got a little on his hand (and hair?), freaked out, and pulled the safety shower.  I know that you should be better safe than sorry, but honestly, they don’t let general chemistry students near anything that requires a safety shower.

 I am a little jealous though, as I have yet to see a safety shower in operation.  I test the emergency eye wash station in my lab at least daily and I’ve had water fights in Brian’s lab with the safety drench hose, but I’ve never had the balls to pull the shower lever.  I’m thinking about talking one of my students into pulling it tomorrow…we’ll see how that goes.  I did find a decent video (with some really obnoxious guys in it) of a safety shower, which I’ve included below:

  I still want to see one go off in person, but this will do for now.

 UPDATE: Why does the teacher tell the student to take his shoes off in a chemistry lab?  She may have to demonstrate the first aid kit next.

I’ve decided the general theme for my site is going to be "Things that delay my graduation date".  In my seminal post I explained the title of the blog and expressed my frustration with printer jams, which waste at least 2 minutes per day of my time.  Two weekends ago, I experienced my first hard drive crash on my laptop.  It was a great reminder of why we back things up in multiple places.  The timing of the crash was not the best, occurring four days before my presentation on the total synthesis of lycopodine.  A month’s worth of ChemDraw structures were saved on the drive, along with the grades for all of my students (I’m not completely stupid…I had hard copies of both, just not digital backups).  Miraculously, I was able to recover all of my data, as detailed below:

Per a suggestion given to me by the Lenovo tech support agent, I purchased an external 2.5" SATA hard drive and gutted it.  I removed the crashed hard drive from my computer, plugged it into the guts of the external drive enclosure, and plugged it into the USB port on my desktop. 

 After several hours of coercing (during which I convinced myself I would present my lycopodine presentation on transparencies rather than redraw 6 total syntheses worth of structures), the desktop finally recognized the drive as unpartioned free space.  I quickly acquired software from Power Data Recovery, scanned the drive, and three hours later recovered all of my lost data.  Later in the week I received a new drive from Lenovo, scrubbed the ‘borrowed’ drive according to DOD standards, and promptly returned the reassembled portable drive to an unnamed retailer.  My laptop is once again speedy, the new drive is still squeaky clean with loads of free space yet to be filled, and my separations presentation for Monday is backed up.  In two locations.

At the end of Michael’s Dunder Mifflin commercial, he states that Dunder Mifflin supplies "limitless paper to a paperless world."  Grad school is far from being paperless.  I find myself using a printer or copier every day, printing publications, assignments, presentation drafts, quizzes, grading sheets, TA notes, etc.  I don’t get along with most of the printers and copiers in this building.  The copier down the hall jams once for every page copied.  Ryan told me yesterday that if you shut the side door really gently after a jam that it works fine.  I have yet to prove this.  The color laser printer in our office always locks up due to the dreaded "Jam at Registration Roller."  Xerox makes the following recommendations for this error:

 It’s not a difficult fix (steps 4-6 always seem to work), but I feel that I have enough problems as a grad student that I shouldn’t have to "remove jammed paper" every time I send a print job to the printer.  So, I’ve decided to create a blog in lieu of cursing at the printer.

 If you know me well, you are probably well aware that (a) my stories are usually long, pointless, and boring, and that (b) I am not a very good writer.  I apologize and remind the reader that you don’t have to keep reading.  In honor of the Xerox Phaser 6250DP, I envision the content of "Jam at Registration Roller" to include (1) rants about graduate school, (2) summaries of my outdoor adventures (backpacking, skiing, fishing, biking, and hopefully soon, rock climbing), (b) commentary about recent organic chemistry publications, (4) random remarks about pop culture and recent news, (5) photographs, and (d) haphazard outline numbering in tribute to my favorite organic professor.

 You, the reader, should comment often.  Paper copies of blog entries are available upon request, pending the success of my print job.