Alex Speed
@awhspeed
Chemistry Professor at Dalhousie University. Interested in sustainable organic and main-group chemistry, and asymmetric catalysis, with phosphorus, nitrogen, and sulfur compounds. Camper, plant hoarder, and Victorian house enthusiast.
LOL, my first grant in 2017 was for $33k a year. It took considerable more than 4 pages to apply for. This is from "The Puzzle People" by Thomas Starzl, a book I must re-read soon. If you don't know who Thomas Starzl was, he's a fascinating character.
I'm not very gifted at crosswords, but I've made it a tradition to always do at least the easiest Monday NYT crossword. Well, being discombobulated from my camping trip, I sat bolt upright at 1:10 am on a Tuesday, realizing I had not done it.... glad the site was forgiving and keeps my streak alive.
I felt bad for 4 drenched hikers I encountered after this. I decompressed and dried out at the always hospitable Liverpool Best Western after my trip. It's near where I grew up, and the radio masts on Great Hill are always a comforting sight. I saw them every night going to sleep as a child. (4/4)
In a first for me, I got caught in a torrential downpour, with thunder and lightning, including less than one second interval between the lightning and thunderclap in one instance. I was very lucky to be in close proximity to a wood-shed, and later a warden cabin, for the worst of the storms. (3/4)
As is typical in mid-summer Nova Scotia, star-gazing was complicated by clouds, but I got a good session in on my second night. It was so warm I had to take the fly off my tent for a breeze. My fairy light looked like an angel. I also saw lots of fireflies, and bats! (2/4)
Tackling my dislike of driving one trip at a time, I have another camping trip in the books. This one hammered home that I need to get in better shape. Kejimkujik stopped providing wood in the backcountry, and carrying wood in for 10 km almost knackered me! (1/3)
Yikes, maybe I shouldn't have had my heat-pump and dehumidifier on at the same time.
Home sick, but spotted this cool flock of strange looking birds. They were flying very fast.
Hard to believe it's been about 5 years since I repacked a glovebox catalyst bed! Went very quickly this morning.
Here's an unusual throw-back I found from 6 years ago. I was experimenting with some transfer techniques, and found myself in possession of a solid chunk of SF6. I filmed it subliming. A slightly environmentally irresponsible thing to have, though I will have made up for it by the end of my career.
Was back home for some family stuff, and got some photos. Highlights included seeing a "sea monster" (likely some kind of goose), an old tree blooming that I remember playing under, spotting an escaped rooster, and seeing Venus and Jupiter close together.
The other bonus of westbound travel is that you get off the train in the morning, rather than spending all day on the train. This is just outside of Montreal.
The sunset on the train is always my favourite time. While the scenery is generally better going west to east, the sunset when you go from east to west in the summer usually takes place in beautiful Northern New Brunswick.
I posted things mostly form my train trip from Toronto to Halifax, but the other direction was fun too!
Yes, that's very helpful. Of course I meant to type "needs", and not "nXDS"..... another website made impossible to use in the name of "improvement". It will not let me search this term. I guess I won't be buying spare parts from them.
In grad school, we had a rotavap in a fumehood, for particularly nasty or high-boiling stuff. There was a switch, "house vac", or "high vac". One day, one of us asked "what provides the high vac", and followed the lines to a pump with no trap, that we previously thought connected to a vac line.
At least the glovebox has a record of when the failure occurred. Some time on Sunday afternoon (ignore the incorrect time setting).
Things that don't need AI..... the portal which I upload my reimbursement requests to. Let's take something that works fine, and make it shitty, and use more of my time asking people for help.
The o-ring seems intact if a bit swollen, but the centering ring is completely corroded and embrittled. I have never seen anything like that. Out of paranoia, I pulled all the other rings from my other glovebox pump, and they are fine. So this seems like a real mystery.
Discouragingly on my return to work after the conference, we found a vacuum pump burned out. Our machinist said it was the worst one he had ever seen. Only in use for about 2 years, and we are diligent with oil changes. Possibly a leak in the flange caused overheating. 1 step forward, 2 steps back.