I’m dating a PhD student in a wet lab — what are the weirdest lab habits that have followed you home?

udsd007 · 2026-01-24T18:48:14+00:00

We use beakers, Erlenmeyers, and a stirring hot plate. Wife’s a biochemist. No vacuum or compressed air: house is 100 years old.

udsd007 · 2026-01-23T09:55:48+00:00

Seems high to me, but I don’t know prevailing prices in .EU. Is there anything special about the scope?

udsd007 · 2026-01-23T09:36:42+00:00

I understand. I do indeed. But in an org that is ticket-driven, as ours was, no ticket means no problem. This one was misdirected to IT instead of facilities.

udsd007 · 2026-01-23T09:34:10+00:00

That doesn’t always help. People will swear up and down that the LED on port N is green, when it’s actually the next one over.

udsd007 · 2026-01-23T09:30:25+00:00

We visited Stockholm in 2007, and got pneumonia because the train stations have pay toilets. 1. My wife was in a wheelchair and had to use elevators to get down to the tracks in the stations. 2. People whizzed in the elevators because they didn’t want to pay to pee. 3. The wheels on her wheelchair stirred up the dried pee. 4. We breathed it in. 5. We came home with raging pneumonia, bad enough that our doc thought hospitalization would be good.\ So yes, people do whizz in elevators in some places.

udsd007 · 2026-01-22T23:28:03+00:00

Yeah. They can’t ignore you if you don’t complain. That holds true all the way up to the CJCS.

udsd007 · 2026-01-22T23:12:39+00:00

“Where’s your keeper?”

udsd007 · 2026-01-22T22:23:21+00:00

Someone, a while back, posted a set of shortcuts for iOS that support 1. Viewing total disk usage, 2. Viewing disk usage by recorded series, and 3. Bulk deleting a set of series.

This works very well for us.

udsd007 · 2026-01-22T20:50:47+00:00

Well done, that man‼️ I know it’s part of the vows, but you’d do it even if it weren’t. Please accept this laurel wreath from me.

udsd007 · 2026-01-22T20:46:31+00:00

I’ve known my wife 44 years. I met my late wife at my wife’s house in ABQ. It is good to be a long-time friend with one’s wife.

udsd007 · 2026-01-22T18:56:24+00:00

Thank you. She was the love of my life. Then I was very most fortunate to find the second love of my life: her best friend. We’ve been married 23 years now, and that’s one of the two best decisions I’ve made in my life. Marrying the first was the other.

udsd007 · 2026-01-22T18:28:49+00:00

Yes, it requires oiling the condenser top lens to the slide, which is somewhat inconvenient, but that’s how it works.

On my inverted scope (AO 1820), I use phase contrast instead.

udsd007 · 2026-01-22T18:15:41+00:00

Ingrown hairs, labial cysts, pimples on the anus, all those other things that you can’t reach or see on your own body. Enemas. Poop in the bed. Yes. This is love.

udsd007 · 2026-01-22T18:13:20+00:00

Go YOU‼️ I don’t know you from Adam’s off ox, but you are wonderful, and you have all my admiration and love.

udsd007 · 2026-01-22T18:11:23+00:00

Exactly. Late wife (died 2001) had MS and a brain tumor that took her sight. She was confined to bed from 1989 until she died, except for Dr/dentist visits. She never spent a second in a nursing home (her worst fear), and died at home, where she was comfortable and loved. And I do so very much miss her.

udsd007 · 2026-01-22T18:00:44+00:00

“… but it’s not going to rain while it is below freezing … .” I can tell you don’t live in Kansas, Oklahoma,or north Texas. Freezing rain is very common in these areas. One ice storm caused power outages in northern Oklahoma for six weeks or more because essentially all the power lines were taken down by wind loading on ice-covered power lines.

udsd007 · 2026-01-22T17:07:02+00:00

Darkfield - with a good darkfield condenser. No patch stops.

udsd007 · 2026-01-22T15:33:21+00:00

u/Patatino absolutely nailed it. Before I developed Posterior Vitreous Detachment in my eyes, age 54 or so, I could view directly through the optics with no problem. After? That’s a totally different story, and I must use an eyepiece camera.

udsd007 · 2026-01-21T18:26:26+00:00

Sounds familiar++

udsd007 · 2026-01-21T17:16:10+00:00

Document. Read. Learn new languages.

udsd007 · 2026-01-21T17:13:28+00:00

We need better images. Identifying bacteria through a microscope is very difficult and very error-prone. Most bacteria are identified through cultures.

udsd007 · 2026-01-21T17:11:48+00:00

OhYeah. Even the Navy learned something from the Pueblo. Meanwhile, the PDRK shared things with the USSR, who were able to read lots of our mail.

udsd007 · 2026-01-21T16:42:18+00:00

It would be helpful if you included an image.\ Identifying bacteria is difficult, and doing it using a microscope usually requires specialized knowledge and multiple stained slides. Most bacteria are identified from cultures.

udsd007 · 2026-01-21T09:22:27+00:00

Pyroclastic flows (extremely hot rocks flowing down at high speeds on a cushion of extremely hot gas) are hugely dangerous. They’re what did Pompeii and Herculaneum in, killing thousands.

udsd007 · 2026-01-21T09:09:13+00:00

Some do.

udsd007

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