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Week of 28 September 2009


Latest Update: Friday, 2 October 2009 13:20 -0400

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Monday, 28 September 2009
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08:59 - The good news is that I seem to be recovering. The double vision is starting to go away and my balance is returning. I'm still using my mother's walker frame because my balance still isn't perfect, but at least I'm able to take Malcolm out in the yard. I hope within the next couple of days to be back to normal.

The bad news is that Barbara has been run ragged for the last few days. Her mom and sister took off last Friday on a bus tour up to Cape Cod, so her dad is on his own until her mom returns. Her dad is in reasonably good health, but he is 87 years old. Barbara spent Friday and Saturday nights at her parents' house, but was happy enough with how her dad was doing that she spent last night here. Still, she's taking care of both houses and both yards along with all the other stuff that she has to do because her dad or I can't do it.

Yesterday, I finished a massive task: going through every single lab equipment item in Maker Shed, checking and if necessary fixing the item descriptions, assigning categories, and entering the product codes for related items. That's something I had to do myself because I'm the only one of the team who knows, for example, that a Büchner funnel and a vacuum pump are related items. There's still some cleanup to be done, and a lot of items are still hidden because they're in transit or still sitting on the loading dock awaiting unpacking, but the Maker Shed Science Room is starting to fill out nicely.

Now that we're all dressed up, or nearly so, the next task is to start driving more traffic to the Science Room.


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Tuesday, 29 September 2009
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10:02 - Autumn is definitely here, earlier than usual. We had a cool summer, and that's continuing into the autumn. If this keeps up, we may need to turn on the furnace in the next week or two, a couple of weeks earlier than usual.

I'm not entirely recovered from the labyrinthitis/vertigo, but I'm getting there. I hope to be able to shoot some video this weekend. I need to reshoot the videos for the bacteriology kit, which I reconfigured. Originally, I planned to include a package of 20 pre-sterilized plastic Petri dishes, and I shot video of using them. Upon consideration, I decided to replace the 20 plastic Petri dishes in the kit with four glass Petri dishes.

Glass isn't as convenient to use as plastic, but it has the inestimable advantage of being reusable indefinitely. The plastic Petri dishes are essentially one-use. You can kind of sterilize and reuse them, but there's no way in a home environment to sterilize them thoroughly. Even full strength chlorine bleach or hydrogen peroxide won't kill all spores. Glass, on the other hand, can be sterilized completely in a 400 °F oven, which melts plastic Petri dishes.

On the other hand, I did get some useful information from an unintentional experiment I ran with the plastic Petri dishes. I made up the agar culture using semi-sterile procedures (capping the beaker in which I made up the culture medium with aluminum foil to prevent contamination by airborne bacteria, simmering the agar solution for several minutes before allowing it to cool, and so on). Everything I've read says that culture dishes and slant tubes made up under such conditions should be used within a day or two, even if they're kept refrigerated. The concern is that the culture medium and culture vessels aren't 100% sterile, so some bacteria will be present and will grow in the medium. When I made up the culture dishes and slant tubes, I intended to use them within a couple of days. Because of my vertigo attack, they've been in the refrigerator for more like two weeks now, and there's no sign of bacterial growth on them. They're still as clear as when I poured them.


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Wednesday, 30 September 2009
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Thursday, 1 October 2009
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12:12 - I've been so busy that I didn't have a spare moment to post yesterday. I'm just as busy today and for the rest of the week. I'll post if I have a moment.



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Friday, 2 October 2009
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13:20 - It's been two weeks yesterday since I developed this vertigo problem. I'm a lot better than I was, but still not completely over it. For most things, it doesn't matter. I can read normally and use the computer. But I'm still not steady enough that I can work in the lab or shoot videos. Fortunately, that hasn't been a real problem, because I've been working heads-down at the computer for the last couple of weeks. But it's getting to the point where I need to get back into the lab and get some videos shot.



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Saturday, 3 October 2009
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Sunday, 4 October 2009
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