of a semi-employed physicist.
6:40 am – Wake up, locate glasses and laptop, check email from bed. No job offers have appeared overnight.
7:20 am – Head downstairs to make tea, start process of becoming less human. Watch BBC news, wonder about the standard of science reporting on TV.
8:00 am – Head to work
9:00 am – Get to office to discover I was beaten in by PhD student. Get coffee from the machine because it is less vile than the tea. Check email, usenet, blogs, webcomics.
10:00 am – Head into the workshop to finish building a 40 dB power tap for the logarithmic amp. Get as far as drilling four holes and fitting two connectors before I realise the rest of the parts have still not arrived.
10:45 am – More coffee.
10:50 am – Console PhD student that has just found out a vacuum flange she ordered six months ago (and which has finally arrived) is useless. It is a custom made part and can’t be sent back. Try and find someone that might be able to make it work for her.
11:23 am – Stuck waiting on an email from the HOD in reply to a proposed project. PhD student finds a way to work around the problem – just need someone that can produce vacuum compatible welds.
11:40 am – Email arrives from Elsevier Author Services containing the offprint of my latest paper. Yay! Still no word or sign of HOD.
11:46 am – Pondering lunch.
12:30 pm – Lunch at desk. Have located parts to finish building the 40 dB power tap.
12:53 pm – Every soldering iron the dept appears to be dead except a stonking great 500 watt job – you could solder up whiskey stills with this…
13:32 pm – Set up printer for PhD student.
13:47 pm – Get email from old PhD supervisor promising some samples to play with.
14:57 pm – Power tap is finished.
16:40 pm – Head home, pass up chance to perhaps, maybe, see the Elephant Man’s skeleton (not much chance of seeing it anyway)
18:00 pm – Home. Do stuff. Working day at an end (well apart from some writing and some code for another project)
Flange? Wasn’t flanging what John Lennon used to call some recording technique (mind stretching back to broadcast I heard when I was about 11 or 12 here…)