A Troubled Day for the Sedigraph Machine

My audience has declared that I have been neglecting my blog and I must confess that it is true. To make up for this neglect, I am going to relate my interesting, yet mundane day to you.

I got up and out of the house at a fresh hour this morning with full intention of analyzing several of my samples on the Sedigraph Grain Size Analysis machine. Today had been declared a day when I could have the machine all to myself and I was going to make the most of it.

I arrived at the lab, peaked around the corner and saw the lab manager, Ute, standing by my machine. I thought, “Oh, how nice of her to turn it on for me so I can get started quickly”. I went back around the corner, took off my coat, and got my notebook. Upon walking into the Sedigraph's room, I realized that Ute was cleaning mud out of the inside of the machine and that things didn't look promising for me. Apparently, a tube in the machine acquired a slit from use and liquidy soil sample was now layered on the inside of the machine. We cleaned for about two hours and I learned all about the mechanics of the machine. I let Ute do most of the work and offered my advice here and there, which she greatly appreciated having someone to give her moral support when pulling screws out of a very pricey piece of equipment. At one point she was trying to put a complicated piece back together and my hands-off assistance wasn't getting the job done, so I offered to put it together myself and “wah lah!”. Mechanic Laurie was born! I was quite proud of myself. While we were maintenancing the machine, I also decided to clean the filter and we replaced a few other tubes in addition to the slit one.

The day carried on quite mundanely after that with the machine functioning properly. It was only on my last sample which I wanted to accomplish today that things went awry. I put in the sample, I clicked Go, I left the room for a few moments to give the machine time to get to the point where I could assess its status, and then I returned. I returned to find an error message on the screen and part of my sample splattered inside the X-Ray compartment of the machine, which happens to have a window on it. Grrr. I first decided to try and clean things up and tighten the guilty looking tube. I tried running the analysis again to no avail. Thanks to my experience with the Instruction Manual in the morning, I looked up the error number to find out what the company suggested I do in this situation. From the option the manual gave, I decided that Ute would surely have to clean this portion of the machine in the morning because this is a sensitive area that I didn't want to mess with alone. Of course, who can resist cleaning up some of the mess and trying just one more time in hopes that things will miraculously change, and I won't have to redo all the steps for this sample that lead up to this machine? Definitely not me. But alas, I received the same error message. I wrote Ute a note, translating the Instruction Manual's suggestions from the English it is written in to German because her English is not so good. I find it kind of crazy that the machine sprung two leaks within a period of only a few days.

After dealing with the Sedigraph's issues, I rushed over to the Erlanger Tanz Haus for Irish Set Dancing! This form of dance is performed in pairs within a group of 4 pairs. And as I found out this evening upon inquiry, there are typically between 3 and 5 sets within a dance. I started out the evening dancing with an old man who tends to have two left feet and a bad memory. But, tonight he danced relatively well, even if I was still leading him around. About half way through the evening we took a break and I was part of a group conversation involving a man who had taught the Tanz Haus some Irish Set Dances a few weeks ago. I was flattered and delighted when he asked if I would dance with him. We were both a bit tired by this time of the evening, but his skill and enthusiasm were great assets with which to be partnered.

Let's recap the positives and negatives of this day.
Sedigraph broken (bad)
Sedigraph functioning (good)
Chatting with Steve (good)
Sedigraph broken (bad)
Left-Footed Dance Partner (bad)
Two-Footed Dance Partner (good)

Oooh, it looks like it is a tie today. But, those are just the highlights. I think that if really keeping score the bad would actually win, but I am writing this while laying very comfortably in my bed, so I am going to override the math and decide that the good wins.