An hour I will never get back

I just spent an excruciating hour listening, well, sort of listening, to LB's data club. Which of course, contained no real data of value. He spent the entire hour showing other peoples' work, with some his own, and explaining how his vaccination study didn't work.

Since when is it appropriate to give a presentation of your data, while sitting cross-legged on a table, calling your boss the fearless leader? Data club is supposed to be casual but people at least try to act professional about what they are presenting.

He took credit for a lot of work he didn't do. In fact, he talked about how this construct and virus he made was what he was most proud of in his project. He didn't have anything to do with it! He couldn't clone if his life depended on it. Someone in another lab and Ding made all of his stuff. Data club is a place were ideas are tossed around, suggestions made, stuff like that. Several people were trying to figure out why he got the results he did and what it all meant. When it can be interpreted because you can't conclude anything from a study where the administered vaccine wasn't titered and the drug therapy was miscalculated. Geeka and her boss kept asking him questions trying to expose how much of an idiot he is. It was amusing at least. He couldn't even answer the question about what kind of cell types had the receptor for the cytokine he was using.

It's amazing how my anxiety physically increases when I hear him talk. I mean, I can feel my pulse go up. And an hour was almost intolerable. I wouldn't have been there except I had to escort the new postdoc and I wasn't going to leave early because Geeka came to keep me company. However, it would have been amusing if both her and I and her boss all left at the same time.

FD has some good suggestions for LB to do for his project. The problem is, it actually involves work and LB doesn't do work. In the past 3-4 weeks he's only been lab 3 times, and not to actually do work.

Kiwi wasn't even there, he had a biosafety meeting to attend. But apparently that pissed of some faculty who were there. It looks really bad when the PI isn't present for his own student's presentation.

Geeka and I said in our next data club we should show the mounds of data we have of stuff that hasn't worked, and title it "Can I get a Ph.D. with this?" A professor I talked to with a great sense of humor said "At last, an honest presentaion title."

Perverse satisfaction

After yesterday's episode, FD informed me that LB's flow staining that he did yesterday didn't work. He used several antibodies and all he got was autoflorescent background tails.

So sad. I can be spiteful, I know it's wrong, but sometimes he gets me to the point where I just don't care.

I'm going to bop him in the head

He pushes my buttons, I admit it. He just plain pisses me off when he speaks. So it is just compounded when he's speaking to me and arguing about my methods.

Our poor lab tech Ding is trying to learn too many things at one time. She getting the procedures confused and mixed up and she knows it. But the Kiwi wants her to learn everything as fast as possible all at the same time. LB is teaching her a couple things, one of which FD and I are going to have to reteach her, namely flow. But she's trying to do flow and elispots at the same time. She offered to work late tonight to get it all done so the work she's doing fits into his schedule. He's not the one with a 2 month old baby to take care. He's not the one with 10,000 things to learn in two weeks. So I told her if she wants to do the flow staining tomorrow she can. Just fix the cells, put them in the fridge, and stain them tomorrow. It will be fine, she's only doing CD14 staining.

LB stood there and told her it was a bad idea. I told him it's perfectly fine. He told her it isn't. Notice he's talking about what I said, disagreeing, to her not me. Which pissed me off even more. Then he said it's "bad practice." I almost decked him and called him a f#$% a$%^hole right there. I said I do it all the time, my stuff is fine. He told her it's bad practice. I finally looked at Ding and said both procedures are perfectly fine, it just depends on what you're doing and what antigen you are looking at. Neither way is wrong and neither way is bad practice. Then I walked out.

I am soooo pissed I'm shaking. I know he shouldn't upset me so much but he's an arrogant bastard. Someone who leaves antibodies on for 2 hours to overnight so his staining looks better, who counts background as events, who doesn't even have the appropriate controls needs to keep his mouth shut and learn from someone who does it all the time. FD called me a flow guru, it's true, I need to calm down.

But I really want to hit him. He better not speak to me again. That's the first time since the email episode awhile back (part 1, part 2)and all he does is act like an a#$%hole.

Might be an experiment free week

So I'm still pissed at LB, he sent me an email saying several things, among which I am now "discourteous" and ended the email with 'have a pleasant weekend.' Not to mince words, I wanted to rip his passive aggressive, arrogant, stupid face off. I was once accused of being passive aggressive, so he's also a hypocrite. And as anyone who knows me can tell you, I can be aggressive (or I like to say assertive) and definitely I'm never passive.

Anyway, there is a necrospy tomorrow. Well, I guess today because his monkey is too sick to last until Friday. It's his own fault his monkey's are dying so fast. I was tempted to run 5 minutes late again, this time on purpose just to piss him off. Instead I decided why should I get up early to get done before the samples get there. I no longer do experiments on Fridays that have necropsy's. Why should Mondays be any different? Should I feel guilty using the necropsy as an excuse not to work? I don't think so. And to be perfectly honest, I didn't do the proper prep work for Monday so I'd have to get there waaay too early to be done by 11am.

On the downside, my entire week is pretty much shot before it gets started.

Monday: no experiments, analyze data, using necropsy as an excuse.

Tuesday: no experiments, have to attend a class on how to write an electronic dissertation. And set up for Wednesday.

Wednesday: process blood, maybe do experiment I set up the day before. Haven't decided if I should go to the newly scheduled department meeting. If I do, my day is shot.

Thursday: probably no experiments this day either, promised a master's student I would attend her exam practice because she didn't pass it the first time. Normally I skip these things but Kdog suggested she talk to me and she actually asked me personally instead of just sending me an email. I feel obligated to help.

Friday: blood in morning, and yet another necropsy, designated data analysis day, if I have any. Maybe lit review, which I haven't done in a while.

And just a short statement to clarify why I can't do experiments when anything else is going on - all my experiments have 1 hour timepoints. That is the longest incubation time in an experiment that can last anywhere from 10 to 14 hours. So if I attend anything, a seminar, data club, journal club, anything, I can't do any assays on that day. Kind of sucks.

In all actuallity, I do have a lot of data to analyze right now as well as a lab notebook to update. I have several live-cell microscopy experiments to analyze and they take hours upon hours. Each experiment has about 2o stage positions, and the scope takes a picture of every stage position every 4 minutes for 5 to 10 hours. It takes a loooong time analyze and I've been putting it off. Guess this would be a good week to get it done.

Other good thing, I have to analyze the data in another lab so I won't see the Kiwi.

The gloves are off

I am so pissed that I can't even work now. I get here at 7am on necrospy days to be done before the samples get here. I was 5 minutes late last Friday. 5 minutes! LB felt compelled as he was leaving today to inform me to be done on time on Monday. I said I was only 5 minutes late. He told me it was rude. I controlled myself, I didn't kill him or string him up. I just looked at him and said "You really don't want to start this." And walked away. He is the LAST person to be calling anyone anything. He publishes data that is false, he lies about how much work he does, he order technicians and other people around like he is the boss and not a student.

If he wants to start acting like a dick he picked the wrong person. I will not put up with it like other people in lab. I sent him an email informing him that his comment was uncalled for and he is the last person to be calling anyone anything. I don't care that it's in writing. Just let someone ask what I meant and I'll be happy to explain it to them.

He is stepping on the wrong persons toes. I have been civil to him thus far but no longer.

I'll be done soon and just don't care anymore. The gloves are off.

Now it's a logo

Not only does our boss want flags, now LB is talking about a logo. When Kiwi was talking about flags LB was talking about how the new logo for our facility is lame. How someone he knows should design a new one. Then LB suggested that we need a logo for our lab. I think he was serious. I also think he saw the look I gave him. I told Mo and her first comment was that it would have to be a gay flag.

I feel I need to make a disclaimer. We have nothing against gay people. I have gay friends. We just have a problem with the ones that we work with, especially our boss.

Lab crap

Someone needs to shake me. I'm trying to resist the urge to complete reorganize (or organize) this lab by myself. I can't take it. There is no reason why anything is located where it is. When we lost our storage room last week everything was put above our benches, nowhere near the hood rooms. LB was pissed because he was the one who had to take everything out of the storage room. So he put stuff in no conceivable order. Pipettes are everywhere, conicals are everywhere. Every time I need something it's like a scavenger hunt. The hood rooms are just as bad. He randomly put stuff in those rooms, instead of putting useful stuff in there. I've been fighting the urge for days and I don't know how long I can hold it off.

The area where our lab is located is about 75% empty, but it is slowly filling up. And in order to entice certain scientist to join the place, the director wants it to look as open and empty as possible (shows room for expansion). However, that means that every time someone moves in, we are forced to compress stuff, like losing the storage room. We all had to move sinks down. It's ridiculous because as soon as an area is set up we have to move it. Anyway, our benches were at the end, now there other people are at the end. We all keep walking down the wrong row. At first I thought he was kidding, but he mentioned it again today to LB, who of course thought it was a great idea. He suggested putting nationality flags at the end of the benches to help people walk down the right ones. He's serious. For one thing, the outside aisle barely fits two people, a flag will get in the way, and we will probably hit our heads on it. He can pay workman's comp for someone getting stabbed in the eye. Plus, we just need to pay attention. If we walk down the wrong aisle, it's our own fault. Flags are stupid.

Friday frustration

I was actually going to be able to go home at a normal hour today, i.e. home by 6pm, but alas, the lab gnomes have foiled all my plans. The Central Blood Back screwed up again today. They didn't draw my buffy coat. They said if I really wanted one they could draw one this afternoon. I said it's not that I really want it, I really need it. I have recently discovered that the main reason my stuff hasn't been working for quite a while is that I need fresh dendritic cells. My frozen DCs just don't cut it. This is a wonderful discovery because now stuff is working. The downside is that now I have to process blood twice a week, which wouldn't be so bad except I have to do large experiments at the same time. I can't lose 2 days per week of experiments.

That being said, since I've been sick this week my energy has been consumed quickly so I was only going to process blood today and go home. Now the blood won't show up until around 4pm if I'm lucky. Which means I will be here until 9pm, at the earliest. I could have slept in today. But now I'm stuck here because it is pointless to take the bus home because I'd have to be back by 4pm.

To top it off, my boss apparently isn't here today. I could have left early with no hassle. One bright light, sort of, is that I don't have to come in this weekend. (Except to feed my cells but that doesn't count.) The laser is out on the microscope I use and won't be fixed until sometime next week. Downside - can't analyze my slides. Upside - don't have to come in!

Later in the day:

More frustration, so when I get back to lab from the CBI, I find out that a monkey is "being sacked as we speak" using my boss's words. It was supposed to go down next Friday. This is the second time this has happened and it's getting pretty old. I called my boss because he wanted to talk to FD or LB, neither of whom was in the lab. He was taken off guard because he didn't want to talk to me, but besides Mo I was the only other one here at the time. My boss told me that samples were coming from the facility and FD needed to talk to the vet tech to arrange a pickup here. He said if I see FD or LB to tell them whatever. I said flat out, "Well, LB doesn't come in when he isn't signed up for the hood. He's not signed up today so he probably won't be here. He hardly ever comes in on Fridays." My boss just kind of stuttered on the other end and changed the subject.

Then we went from frantically trying to get stuff done before the samples arrived to slowing down. They were putting the monkey down but snap freezing the samples so we weren't getting anything. Apparently, FD talked to the boss and told him he was tired and already had plans and wasn't going to process any tissue. And LB couldn't be found, once again he wasn't answering his phone. Surprise, surprise. The boss wanted FD to call LB and figure out what monkey is going to be put down for next week (it needs to be decided by Monday), and FD told the boss if he left a message on LB's phone then there was no reason for FD to do it. I guess the boss was pretty irritated. Good for him. It's not our problem that his golden child is never here and won't answer his phone. Why should we do his work when he's off probably smoking dope and being a bum?

I'm speechless but I shouldn't be

So, our lab, together with the other labs on this floor, recently purchased a 14-color flow cytometer. It's crazy - I wish it had been around when I started my project way back when. There is so much I could have done, but since I have no intentions of learning a new system and a complicated machine from scratch I will stick with my old 4-color flow cytometer. Anyway, my lab mate just showed me a sheet of paper that our boss set on LB's desk. It is a nice table that lists two cytometers (we also have access to a 12-color), the fluorochromes, the emission spectra, and the exciting laser. There are also three more tables that list several dendritic cell and T cell relevant antigens, the function of the antigen, the fluorochrome available, and the exciting laser. In other words, LB doesn't have to think. The boss is now researching reagents and planning experiments for the student.