Luminex, Bane of my Existence

Hi, today is World TB day, so at work we had a "Tea and Brie" function. They had neither tea nor brie, but they did have coffee and a nice assortment of cheeses. My Coffee Compatriot, Dr. Peter Sayles, gave a talk. I, being a lowly lab-tech, couldn't stay to hear his entire presentation, but I did stay long enough to take a couple of pictures. I'll post them later - I've used up my (second) monthly Flickr allotment, and so will have to wait to post them until I get home and can use Picasa.

On a related boring (to you!) lab topic, here is another of the machines I use with some regularity:

When turned on, it has blue lights! Behind that piece of $#!* you can see two of our benchtop analyzers. Maybe I'll describe them at a later date. Boo.

This instrument - A Luminex 100 - does much the same thing as a flow cytometer - it excites a flourochrome with a laser and reports back to the user what it's seeing (in a nutshell...). Instead of cells, however, it looks at microspheres that are attached to individual molecules - usually cytokines. It basically does the same thing an ELISA does, if you know what that is. The machine itself is a cynch to use - an ape could use it. But someone dumped a new software package on my desk a while back that's supposed to streamline things and make this thing even easier to use. Problems with this:

-New software has NO FREAKING INSTRUCTION MANUAL!

-I can't print from this computer, so I can't, as yet, compare data gathered with new software to data gathered with old software.

-Somebody misplaced my Excel Macro that I improved (okay, okay - the twins helped me out more than a little bit) and have used for EASY data analysis in the past - so I had to hunt around on the server today to find my macro.

-The old software/analysis method worked just fine. If it ain't broke...

So that's my bitch for the day. Now, I know only maybe three or four of the people that read my blog will have any idea what I'm talking about. Peter may even be able to correct some of my misinformation...

I'll be back tomorrow with more...I have plenty of pictures downloaded that I haven't posted yet...I just get a little bored with posting pictures of the kids and not having any excitement or adventure to share along with them...because the lab *is* exciting, and adventurous...just not while I'm there...