updates cause I left you hanging

So after the scare last week when the electricity went out while all of my DNA was sitting in a gel, all was well. One sample didn't work very well. But my ridiculous streak of good luck with these samples continued-the sample that didn't work was one that I still had DNA left and it worked when I repeated the proceedure. So now I have 50-75% of my major lab work successfully completed (the range is because we're trying to get approval to run more samples). All the hard work figuring out what the data mean hasn't even begun, but at least the stage where a little bad luck or moment of inattention or both can completely ruin a sample is nearly done.



I'm heading back out to sea Tuesday. The turn around between the June cruise and this Aug cruise is crazy short. Too short for me to have worked up much excitement about going out again, but hopefully that will come once we get everything packed and organized.



Our collaborators have contributed to my near-dread of the coming cruise, we've been bending over backwards trying to help this lab get samples (they don't have any money for sampling). But they keep demanding more and more samples-we're taking 3 people this time because just 2 of us last time was too punishing AND we dropped several of our planned samples. The work that they are supposed to do will be interesting (providing that they can get their methods to work) but they are increasingly difficult to deal with. The collaborator lab is headed by a very young investigator who doesn't seem to realize that we aren't working for them-we're working with them. And we don't need them, there is a lab in our building that does the same type of work with slightly older methods (as in proven methods). However, collaborator lab can't get these samples without us. Yet they still thought that my sampling plan was somehow a negotiation position, that they could just come back with their demands and we'd drop some of our samples (again) in favor of theirs. There were some veiled threats that they may walk if they don't get there way. then they reconsidered. We'll see if that turns out to be good-saving the collaboration-or bad-prolonging the pain of a doomed relationship.



I think that we all realize that ultimatums are not a good way to go. Professional ultimatums probably are going to backfire. Professional ultimatums when you have nothing to leverage are just stupid.