If were to write a series of books based on my friend Toku and his adventures in America, the first one would naturally be "Tokuhiro Comes To America" and there would be one called "Tokuhiro Goes to New York City" and of course "Tokuhiro Goes to the Beach" and maybe "Merry Christmas, Tokuhiro!"

But the book that would be about today would be called

"Tokuhiro Saves the Day"

because that is precisely what he did.

It was after work, around 6:30 or so, and I was still working as I often am, between checking the rates of U-Hauls and reading the Onion, of course, and Toku came down into the lab. He was so sorry to bother me, he got across, but the RELAB was very hot. The RELAB is a laboratory run by some of my favorite professors which measures the spectra of small objects (oftentimes meteorites and lunar rocks and soils). It is very expensive and delicate. In fact, in order to enter the RELAB you must don little white booties and spin yourself in through one of those darkroom doors. The fact that it was hot was a little disturbing-- after all, some of the instruments in there are dedicated to measuring things in the near IR part of the spectrum... heat! Toku indicated that it is usually not hot in there. So Toku found the closely guarded code to the door and we booted up and spun around into the lab, where it was about 79 degrees, even though the thermostat was set with a minimum of 50 and a maximum of 60 degrees F. There was even a humidity guage... I began to think that someone liked to strictly regulate the heat in this room and that something had gone quite awry.

So I called. I called everyone I could think of. The head of the relab was on a ranch in New Mexico for the summer. The second in command is in Japan. We called almost every professor in the planetary department with no success. Then I called all of the students who had ever worked in RELAB. No success--- they were all supposed to be playing frisbee until 9 pm! Then I called all of the technical staff. Then the administrative staff. I finally got one of the secretaries who was like, "What? I don't think we can do anything. I'll call someone tomorrow if you want. But write me an email, because I'm definitely going to forget about whatever it is that you said was going on by tomorrow." I got a hold of some random students, who suggested some other people to call, but I couldn't reach those people, either.

We went back up to the lab, where in a half an hour the temperature had climbed to 83 degrees.
Surely there was an emergency number? Toku said that he emailed the second-in-command in Japan, since he checks his email a lot. I had no idea what time it would be in Japan. Toku thanked profusely me for my help accompanying his words with a series of short bows but worried that I worried too much. He told me that he would attend to the problem himself from now on because he hadn't meant to disturb me when I was busy. I looked at him dubiously but I agreed that I'd go home and since he works late I told him to check on the lab later tonight and call me if it was "very very hot".

As a last effort, I sent an email out to everyone that I had called and some people who I hadn't (namely the Professor in Charge of Everything), explaining the problem. It was she who finally wrote me back (the only one out of the lot to respond at all). She called the emergency number that had been escaping me and a crack team of the building maintenance team was dispatched to fix the problem immediately. Her email was littered with exclamation marks.

So as far as I know, everything is going to be ok.

And all because of Tokuhiro, who Saved the Day.

How American.
» Dilated on 2007-08-09 01:14:20

Ever heard of CheMin?
Until recently, my PI shared lab space with one of the guys who developed it (David Blake). Sounds like something you'd be into, at least obliquely. At the very least, something you'd commission someone to use to analyze some mineral sample in situ on some other distant planet.

It's being built into one of the new rovers, I think. At least, if the funding for it goes through. (Oh, budget woes.)

Read all about it!

HOORAY COMBINED XRD/XRF ANALYSES!
» ranor on 2007-08-09 02:44:55

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