Nobrainer’s Think Tank

The move to the new house means I’m no longer apartment gardening, but all the containers and their plants seem to be doing well at their new locations.

This morning I picked my fifth tomato for consumption. Friday I picked my first ripe red pepper and a green pepper as well. I have had some insect problems causing me to get rid of a bunch of peppers and some tomatoes.

This is exciting for me as it proves my thumb is at least moderately green. Also I’m recording this in part so that in the future I can reference when my plants began bearing fruit.

Last week my roommate got a new grill. This week I need to start home brewing again. These are heady days in my house.

Here’s the gist of why I hate life sometimes… or at least why I hate my working life as a research assistant. For your reference, I make polymers then try to modify them to change their behavior.

Initially, about 2 years ago, the process was this: make the polymer, put it in a machine, and you’re done. Well that process sucked.

Then we tried another process and it sucked, even though it shouldn’t have.

Now we’ve added another process.

So, in order to run through all the processes and get one set of experimental data, here’s a rough schedule of events, which I am currently in the middle of.

Friday: Spend 30 minutes in the lab mixing the polymer. Let it sit for 30 minutes, revisit it and let it cure overnight. This step is no big deal, and usually I can skip this step since I can make relatively large batches of polymer for later use.

Saturday: Once goals of the test are outlined, spend about 1 to 2 hours doing prep work for the first big process, a chemical extraction. Then spend the next 10 hours waiting to change solutions every 1 or 3 hours, depending on the solvent. Spend about 30 minutes cleaning everything up. This is a pretty farking good way to kill a Saturday, and Saturday night

Sunday: Remove the samples from the oven where they were drying. Spend another hour doing prep work for the 2nd process. Run the first phase of process unsupervised for 3 hours. Spend about 30 minutes cleaning up the messes made by the process. Also begin the 24 hour cleaning phase. During the cleaning phase, the cleaning solution–water in this case–should be changed roughly every 3 hours.

Monday: Having probably slept intermittently in my office, the cleaning process finishes 1 day after having started. Then the samples need several hours of drying. Once dry, tests must be run. The tests may take up to 1 hour to complete. Then the data analysis may take another hour. At this point its probably Monday night, about 72 hours after everything started. I will have spent most of those hours on campus. If I’m lucky the results are good and I learn something. Most of the time something I don’t yet understand screws everything up. And I did all this over the weekend so that I would have something for a Wednesday meeting

Now for the odds & ends

(more…)

Mix a little boredom with curiosity. Provide some dirt, seeds, and the presence of a window. The yield is a new project for Nobrainer.

That’s bullshit.

I’m actually extending previous apartment gardening projects. (So I could use some good manure. Perhaps a quick trip to the nation’s capital is in order.)

In the past, I had only a Meyer lemon tree. I’ve yet to harvest any fruit. It may be the first of the 3 metaphorical castles to burn down, fall over, and/or sink into a swamp.* I blame the aphids. I think they are from the Middle East. They presumably practice a radical version of Islam. Their goal is to disrupt my fruit growing way of life in order to curtail possible lemonade decadence.

I see their infantile motives and raise them tomatoes, peppers, and limes. Indeed, I now have 3 pots currently growing 2 varieties of peppers and another growing tomatoes. I have more seedlings than I can deal with. Moreover, I finally bought the lime tree I’d been wanting for so long.

The Crown Royal tree remains elusive. Nonetheless, I wish to remind the aphid extremists to suck it!