Beyond the Drawbridge

Thanks to the Black Knight for offering me a place to vent things that I’d rather not put on a blog with my name on it. Like this story about the FACS booking system…

During my time at my old lab, I used the hospital’s flow cytometry facility to sort my cells. When we (lab and facility) moved to a new building, the facility merged with that of another hospital, and they changed their booking system.

The old system worked like this:
I would pop over to the facility, and the tech would say:
-“Oh, hi, how have you been? Need to sort? That’s great. I have some time on Wednesday two weeks from now.”
-“Nah, Wednesday is no good for this, can I go on Thursday or Friday?”
-“Well, I can fit you in on Friday, but I’d have to start half an hour earlier. Is that okay?”
-“Sure, thanks! See you!”
And they would write the booking in by hand on a supplier-swag monthly wall calendar, and I’d plan my transfection for the day before my appointment, and everything just functioned.

The new system “worked” like this:
They switched from the wall calendar to an online booking system that was originally meant for something else entirely, and adapted that so it kind of works for booking time on their machines. Everyone who had been using the facility needed to attend a seminar in which they showed us how to use the system. (To be fair, that was a good idea, because nobody could ever have figured it out on their own!) At the training they told us, by way of motivational story, how people at CSHL or Johns Hopkins or some other fancy US institute had to line up at 2AM for their FACS sorting, and we should be glad that we got this new system, which was at least not as bad as lining up at 2AM.
It’s very, very close, though.
Read more »

A certain person used to complain at me for sending frivolous emails to the departmental mailing list: someone would make a request and I’d say something funny, or carry on a discussion for all to see because I thought they might be interested. I stopped doing it in response to the complaint: and now people stop me in the corridor and tell me they miss my emails.

So the departmental mailing list is a bit boring these days, although I do extract as much juice as I can for the labrats. But you’ll be pleased to know that the new gig is likely to provide endless entertainment too. This just in, sent to all 3-400 people at SN:

My plain burgundy cup has gone missing from my desk.
If you borrowed it, please return it.
I want my tea.

I’m helping Jenny edit a certain anthology. And this is appropriate.

I’ll say more once it’s all out of the way…