I got way distracted with the whole packing and moving thing last week and haven't been updating. There was more sweeping of plastic cups and there were also a buttload of FAMEs that we ran. Let's see, what else...oh we pulled all of the silage samples we needed, mixed them by a specific genetic trait and starch content, and then took some sub- ( Read more... )

I got my first pay check last Friday. It was nice to see a check that was nearly twice the size of any check I've had before, especially considering the check was for one week instead of two. However, I forgot about the fact that the more money you make, the more they take away in taxes. Boo. Oh well, it's going to be nice to have a steady ( Read more... )

So the DSC took a crap on me yesterday. All of the work I've done earlier this this week is pretty much gone. I mean it's kinda usable, but a 3 day time study really doesn't show much, especially since I had some funky data points in there anyway. Instead, they had me working on more FAMEs, several of them, all at various points in the procedure ( Read more... )

Yesterday and today I was running more of the DSC. There are 24 samples each day and there is definitely no way I can get through them every day. I couldn't even get through the 19 James really wants me to get through. Especially when they hand me another sample and tell me to run it in duplicate before I finish the rest of my samples. >.> ( Read more... )

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While I was initially sad to be back to the oils lab today after being in the ELISA lab, I got to do a lot of independent work today. James showed me how to run the DSC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_scanning_calorimetry) with a couple of ( Read more... )

I was in the ELISA lab again today, but the two males were out, so it was just us girls. Had a lot of fun in there with them and by the end of the day we were all getting pretty slap happy. At one point it took 3 of us nearly 10 minutes to figure out how exactly we were going to make the conjugate for the plates. We initially started to make ( Read more... )

I actually got to be a productive member of the lab team today! After doing a bit of the online coursework, I went over to the lab around 9 to find Mike. We separated out some fermented silage (sounds gross, right?) and took some to the freezer and some to the oven, all of which will be ground up later for carbohydrate content analysis and such ( Read more... )

Still nothing exciting to report from my internship. A boring meeting that I could barely keep my eyes open for, some online "class" work. I'm really tired of people talking at me instead of to me. Most of them it's not intentional, they're just used to rattling stuff off and not thinking twice about it. My mentor is getting better about ( Read more... )

...or the coffee grinder. After finishing the enthralling chemical hygiene plan, I got to actually do something in the lab. I spent the vast majority of the day grinding sunflower seeds in a coffee grinder. Not thrilling, but it was better than more reading. Got to sit down with my supervisor for a few minutes today. He seems really nice, but ( Read more... )