Processing 66 brain samples this past week, been grueling. Asked my PI if we could automate the steps and he told me "that is automated, we used to squeeze those syringes real slow by hand back in the day". Which isn't great to hear when it's still 2 hours of careful pipette + tube manipulation, (protein sticks to everything, so we try to minimize the number of new surfaces / container changes a sample goes through), syringe pump motor grinding, and plungers getting stuck.

From left to right:

On the plus side, it'll be the biggest application of our technique to this model of Alzheimer's to date, so it should be fun to analyze. On the down side, there's 42 more samples to come for an autism side-project that is my only source of revenue for the lab at the moment.

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I had my first cell-based experiment work this week, after 6 months of flailing. Didn't give the results I wanted, but workable, and the morale in lab is appreciated when your project has been stuck in the "mostly ideas" phase for a year.

Still wishing I could take a few months off and just optimize & automate the shit out of our workflow. There's a lot of facets to polish up. On the plus side, we got a new instrument in lab and it promises a fancy autosampler, better data, and less time sitting around for hours for columns to clog, condition, and crack, gradients to test, frits to break, and buffers to contaminate.

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Realized I'd been mistaking a technician for a post-doc for over a year yesterday. The world around me feels confusing sometimes.