An exploration of ultracoffee, radiation safety, and more often than not a beer or two.
Once upon a time, the radiation safety officer (RSO), let’s call him Bob, had been out performing the inventory of source material* and ran across a bit of excitement. In this particular lab, they had approximately 10 grams of uranyl acetate, a very common contrast stain for electron microscopes. The poor unfortunate grad student who was …
Continue reading “The Picric Acid Tale or “Why I Can’t Have Four Day Weekends Anymore””
Adding this slice of life from almost a decade ago at LLNL to the permanent record of Funranium Labs as a reference point for Test Subject Vision Scientist (subcategory: Male) [SCENE: Early April 2008, Lawrence Livermore Nat’l Lab. The transition to the new managing private consortium, primarily run by Bechtel, has proven to be very uncomfortable …
I think I promised that I would write up this rant roughly five years ago. Recent announcements of the coming changes to our printed currency has finally triggered me to share one of my favorite old man grumbles with you, a grumble I’ve had since I was 12 years old. The TL;DR version: I HATE …
The other day I was trading tales with the former BBotE Ambassador of NYC, @EditrixW, and after sharing my new favorite Beatles cover song from Mongolia we drifted by COMPLETELY REASONABLE CONNECTIONS to the reason why my Lovely Assistant and I haven’t played Scrabble in quite some time. You see, we used to play it in a way I …
Continue reading “Klingon Scrabble and Odd Units of Measure”
I expect there’ll be radio silence from me for a while after this as I vanish into an eggnog + BBotE + slivovitz & Fallout 4 haze until 2016. It’s time to do a round up to close out the year. There are still a few slots left for the production window ending on December …
So, the shame of not having even started holiday shopping is setting in and it’s getting to the point where glasses of egg nog that are mostly bourbon isn’t blunting that feeling is it? Trust me, I feel your pain as I’ve been spending a lot of my time making BBotE and Steins of Science …
Continue reading “BBotE And Steins For The Last Minute Crowd”
As my Birthdaytide Fortnight draws to a close and Berkeley’s holiday lights go up in the trees, I must acknowledge what is coming and say the words that must be said. The BBotE production window that closes December 1st is now up. This window is a little longer than normal because Thanksgiving is in there and …
Oddly, there’s been another surge of questions lately that have come in often enough that I reckon I should tackle them for the benefit of everyone: Question 1: “Holy crap, you’re Atomic Robo’s Phil!” – Vernon, Goleta, CA Okay, that’s not a question but with the current story arc of Atomic Robo, Volume 10: The Ring …
Test Subject Ivan has kindly submitted his BBotE rib recipe for you all in the aftermath of one of America’s prime BBQing holidays. Enjoy! Six shots, each shot is roughly one and a half ounces. That’s over a cup of BBotE. And Deathwish? Hoh, boy, that’s just over half a cup of the deadliest joe …
Just a quick heads up that while I’m sad Panama left the line up for the season last month, but two old favorites are back again and you can review their flavor profiles here. After a year off , Guatemala Nueva Vinas from the lovely folks at Caffe Vita is back again. I have pounced …
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a piece of Nevada that America decided was expendable. It had eaten countless settlements, boomed and busted so many times with the precious metal of choice, and the taken the lives of settlers with it. We then sacrificed it on the altar of national security and …
This was originally written on June 16th, 2012 after my family’s Father’s Day viewing of “Prometheus”. It was then published in the final issue of Coilhouse. The editor of Coilhouse, Meredith Yayanos, immesuarably improved my words by adding excellent illustrations, such as the one to the right. Hollywood, we need to talk about your dating habits. …
Okay, wow. Despite the ongoing denial of service attack, despite all the backend fiddling with hosting we’ve had to do to keep Funranium Labs up, you’ve managed to zero out all the June 13th pre-order window slots. Ten days early at that. I am impressed. Perhaps you’re all having residual horror from last year when The …
Alright, I’ve good news, better news, great news, and a small bummer for you all. The bummer: my roaster of choice for my Panama declares end of season. Accordingly, it has been removed as a selection on the radio buttons when you’re placing an order. It will be missed, as it always is, and hopefully …
TL;DR moral of the story: do not prank emergency responders. We will play it straight and you won’t like it. Once upon a time, several years ago, a grad student decided to call the spill response line and call in a spill in a non-radiological control area. Because my name is first in alphabetical order …