I have... not been around much

[kaberett]

In the "posting or commenting" sense, though I am reading; nonetheless: as I'm on the mass spec for the next two days, any questions/curiosities/discussions? No guarantees about how rapidly or thoroughly I'll reply...

Comments

[alatefeline]

What's a pet peeve?

And what's something that makes you absurdly happy?

[kaberett]

(a) People passing persnickety comment on my writing using the wrong linguistic prescriptivism. Relatedly, my inability to remember how -ise/-ize suffices work in British English.

(b) A little while ago, while shopping for actually useful things, we spotted a blue whale piggy bank -- sort of a cross between <http://www.childtocherish.com/product/mini-whale-piggy-bank-blue/">this one and this one (plain bright blue, VERY smiley). It was six quid. I could not quite justify to myself getting it; A decided it would definitely bring him £6 worth of enjoyment to get it for me. It sits on top of the fridge and smiles at me when I'm having breakfast and I put all of my copper coins (that I pick up, or get in change deliberately) in it with great glee.

[alatefeline]

Your whale has now made me gleeful as well! Thank you!

[kaberett]

You are very welcome :D

[redsixwing]

What's your favorite icon, and what's the story behind it?

[kaberett]

... oooh, difficult. Probably this one, because it's a glorious optical illusion of a bare tree being reflected with leaves of light in the river, but it isn't a very good photograph, technically! I was in Skansen museum, Stockholm with P in February 2015; it was Bloody Cold but nonetheless a delightful tramp round the world in the snow. We were above, as I recall, the bear enclosure; there were cubs flolloping around ineptly; it was grand.

[redsixwing]

Oooooh, lovely!

[lebannen]

Hello,

One of the items on your todo list is catalogue the BPAL. That's also an item on my list; and in my case at least, it's an item tidily located in a drawer in the spare bedroom and therefore not having much chance of actually happening any time soon. I will be in London in early April and again in June; if we were to both get around to doing any sort of sorting out, would you be interested in a possible swap of things that have turned out not to suit?

I don't yet know my work schedule for those dates, and might not be able to get away at all, so this is totally a provisional question and will very likely be subject to some kind of change.

[kaberett]

Alas what is actually going on there is that I've decided that I really don't get on with the carrier oil BPAL uses -- it seems to be pretty strongly correlated with miserable headaches, for me. So swapping is not so much a thing -- the cataloguing is a first step toward selling it on, which I meant to do two house-moves ago and would rather not drag out to "three house moves ago" -- but I would be absolutely delighted to give you the list of what exists and let you have first pick! So, in answer to the provisional question with the expectation that plans will be Subject To Change, a yes to meeting and half of a yes to swaps. :-)

[lebannen]

I have been reminded by circumstances that I am a bad person and never replied to this. Sorry.

London at the start of this month was hectic and I wouldn't have had any time to be sociable anyway; when I am in London again at the start of June is likely to be better in that respect at least.

Am sorry to hear that BPAL doesn't work at all for you, but despite the fact that I also have quite a lot of things that don't work for me (and some that do), I am still interested in acquiring more :)

And now I will fall back off the internet into the North Sea (am in Newcastle en route to Aberdeen, whee, it's bloody cold up here and I have to get up at stupid o'clock in the morning).

[wohali]

Ooh, what kind of GC/MS setup do you have? And how did you find out you had a leak? Did you fail a routine air/water check, or are you lucky enough to have a helium leak detector?

I hate compression fittings. hate hate hate.

[kaberett]

I'm actually using a multi-collector inductively-coupled-plasma mass spectrometer, which means that the very expensive vacuum leak is by design -- sample is introduced in a plasma chamber at atmospheric pressure, which has been pumped down to 10^-9 mbar by the time you get to the analyser end of the machine! Which at least means that doesn't need troubleshooting (except when the analyser ends up overpressured, but having cocked that up yesterday morning it was at least a fairly straightforward fix...).

We run on argon rather than helium; this means that Hilarity Ensues, because our argon supplies contain trace quantities of mercury... which exhibit isobaric interference with several of the elements I'm actually trying to measure. So in addition to monitoring stable isotopes of lead and thallium, I have to simultaneously monitor ²⁰²Hg so I can apply a correction factor for the ²⁰⁴Hg interference with ²⁰⁴Pb...

Compression fittings are, similarly happily, Not My Problem. :-) But I did, when swapping cones over, end up having the replace the graphite ring that provides a seal and good conduction, it having very comprehensively stuck to the cone that was seated on it...

[nanila]

Hello! I like you! That is all.


<33333

[kaberett]

♥

[shanaqui]

*waves* Reading anything lately?

[kaberett]

ALAS NO Pokemon has... kind of eaten my brain, and I'm stalling a lot on what to read? In that I don't really have the brain for new stuff/anything that isn't a comfort re-read, in much the same way that I don't have the brain to write much, AND I am trying to not read two books by White back-to-back, which of necessity means reading a lot of new things, and I am mostly executive-dysfunctioning out.

Having said which I did in January read the collected and (dubiously) translated lost Neruda poems; I have two other books of poetry out from the library that I really need to read AND ALSO RETURN.

I would like to work out a way around this, but. :-/ Even stuff I've been excited about getting has all got loaded onto the e-reader and then just... not touched...

[shanaqui]

Even stuff I've been excited about getting has all got loaded onto the e-reader and then just... not touched...

This happens to me all the time, and I'm not entirely sure why.

[the_quorum]

Which Pokemon? I got into Sun & Moon, but kinda fell off them in favour of other things lately. Close family person is very-into Pokemon Go & Duel on the Android, and so have been catching random episodes of the anime while we're together. It ages surprisingly well.

[sporky_rat]

My research into familial dead people leads me to let you know that my great-great grandfather was Curtis Fletcher Marbut, the ridiculous Soil Dude. (He has a Wikipedia page.)

Bert Kempster and Gilbert Chester are my great-great uncle Harry Hornsby Clifford Gibbons' pseudeonyms for writing pulp fiction. Sexton Blake was the person he wrote about. He was sort of the black sheep of the family. They didn't approve of his marriage. They were from Middlesex.

[kaberett]

AWESOME.

[sporky_rat]

I thought you might be amused by the familial dead Ridiculous Soil Dude. My great-grandfather went as far as possible career-wise away from soil - he was a surgeon.