My grades are in

Woohoo! Woohoo!
Another semester survived.

Cost of a chem sample = should I move to Haiti?

I emailed my college chem-major roommate (who's now a children's minister) in a panic over the cost of a chemistry sample. Then wondered if such simple questions have led you to question your lives' paths. Here is the path that went from how much does an analysis cost to should I move to Haiti.

Ack – I’m trying to figure out chemistry stuff. Our staff chemists are long gone so we’ve relied on students the past couple years. And now they’re gone, but we don’t have enough work and $$ to hire a chemist, and the new ecologist just asked how much it costs us to run various analyses. So I need to reacquaint myself with SO4 = sulfate or sulfite?, and most stuff I don’t know but my boss is gone for jury duty.

And we don’t have a chemist anyway, so he’d have to kick in extra money to get us up and running again. And I have definite funding only through Jan 22! But stuff always comes through. And if it doesn’t is that a sign to pick up and move to Haiti, but what about the cats and dogs?

Wikipedia, here I come!

That Exam Doesn't Sound So Good

At my current job we have an old scantron machine that makes loud (but rhythmic) clunks with every wrong answer-- something like an old typewriter with a loud background whirr. Failures tick with every wrong answer and perfect scores glide through with only a tap at the end as the score is printed.
Inexplicably, I love listening as other professors grade their exams. "Wow, that one doesn't sound so good."
In other grading news, I learned that the two characteristics of the rainfrost are "rain" and "frosted" perhaps if I hadn't just read about so many "dessert" biomes, the frosted wouldn't have made me giggle as much as it did.
Happy finals to those of you involved in academia and happy "I don't have to deal with finals" to those of you not.