Man, I say way too much marihuana today! Bet thats not something thats said too often. Hehehe! We spent today looking at the rest of our known samples. Todays batch included coffee (to show how it will give a color change with the Duquenois – Levine test), another sample of strait marihuana, a few mixed samples (marihuana parsley and such), and a sample of concentrated cannabis. The analysis it self is not too difficult per-say, its just looking through a microscope all day for tinny little hairs of varying types and sizes can get a bit tiring after 6 or so hours. The worst was the concentrated cannabis sample. I had no problem finding the trichomes were easy enough to find but the cystoliths were damn elusive. Seems every time I think I found one and called some one over to check em out it ended up being a case of “well I would say that definitely could be one but its still a bit iffy”. Grrrr. In the end I found a few that I was happy with and will spend some extra time on that sample tomorrow when we start the knowns all over again. I figure I will be fine as long as my eyes hold up to being glued to a microscope for yet another day. Tis the life of a criminalist I suppose.
You don’t get this level of excitement on CSI do you kids? 
Going postal »« Happy Birthday to Me!
Today is my birthday! Yay! Hehehe. Didn’t really do anything very exciting today though. At work we started working on our known samples which is cool. Then we got to take a little break around 11. We got coffee and doughnuts as a post exam/happy birthday Andrew celebration. Tom got me 2 black and white cookies too! Hehehe. They aren’t Birthday cake but just as good. As a little celebration for my self I got a pizza for dinner, a big pizza. In hind sight a small would have been enough but eh now I got lunch for tomorrow, and maybe dinner too.
Ah well. My internet connection is sucking tonight (damn you time warner) so I will attempt to post this and then go vege to TV perhaps. WOOT!
So much Marihuana … »« “Hey man, I got some real premo weed!”
We finally had our exam today at work! I did fine, ended up getting a 96. Not the 100 I got last time but I made one stupid mistake and out smarted my self on another question. In the end it really doesn’t matter, just as long as we get at least an 80 we pass so all is well. The real fun came after the exam! Upon returning I was able to pick up “K-01” which is my first known sample of Marihuana. Today was really just an introduction to looking at stuff under the microscope and to give us a vague idea of what to look for/ what were looking at under the microscope. Tomorrow we are going to start working on our known samples more officially, doing color tests on them and documenting what we see and such. We will end up looking at 10 known samples, though not all of them will be straight Marihuana. (And for what ever reason the lab decided to spell it Marihuana like 15 years ago and its been that way ever sense so thats the spelling I use here). Some one our samples will be Marihuana mixed with other plant material (oregano, parsley), one will be bleached Marihuana where the Delta-9-THC has been removed, one or two will be concentrated cannabis, one will be straight oregano to check that we can tell the difference, and there will be a sample of Coffee because some types of coffee can give a positive reaction with the color test we use. We will spend a week or two looking at our 10 knowns, then we will be issued 10 unknowns which will be the same as our knowns but with different numbers and we will have to identify them. The final test will be our first practical exam where we will be given a number of unknown samples and we must either identify them as Marihuana, Concentrated cannabis, or as no Marihuana present. We must get a 100 on this to pass. Scary yes but after looking at my sample today I’m not too worried, I think I will do fine.
Now for two pointless and totally unrelated stories! Last night I had wondered into my kitchen happened to glance out the window into the back yard of my appt. building and I saw a decent sized raccoon on the fence across from me. It sorta wondered around for a while before climbing onto the roof of the garage right across from my building. Not one to waste an opportunity to pester nature I ran to my desk and grabbed my laser pointer. While it wasn’t as fun as when I would pester the cats with it, it still was kinda fun to sorta play with a raccoon from a distance. It didn’t really chase it but I did see it and sorta follow it around for a few minutes before it got bored and wondered off.
My second pointless story deals with my subway ride to work this morning. Like every morning I was on the J train headed to work when I noticed some graffiti that caught my eye. Usually its just the normal pointless names written or scratched on the windows and stuff, but this was a little different. Who ever had written “*#@% YOU! J TRAIN” now the thing is, is that is exactly how it was written. The person actually wrote “*#@%” instead of the actual word. Now just stop and think about that for a second. You are the type of person to write such a message on a subway car window but not to use profanity. It just struck me as very odd I guess. Like why bother then. Did this person think they would get in less trouble if they got caught but hadn’t actually written any swear words? It would be like me writing “Andrew was here” but leaving off the Andrew so it just reads ______ was here. Maybe who ever it was wanted to express their displeasure with the J train (which I could totally understand) and yet didn’t want to offend any innocent children or old ladies who may have to see it.
Alas, I guess some things we will never know.
Happy Birthday to Me! »« Another Saturday night…
The weather here today was so nice. When I woke up this morning, depressingly early sense I’m so used to getting up early m-f for work, it was raining. But soon it stopped and got really nice. I did some pointless stuff this morning (paying bills and laundry) and this afternoon went for a walk to try and enjoy the nice weather. You for you regular readers it will be no surprise that my choice of walking locations was the local cemetery. Morbid perhaps but for one it was the closest place with grass and trees near me and for two I was hoping I could use it as a short cut to get to a closer subway stop and cut my work commute time down a bit. Alas it is not to be. There are several cemetery’s all in one area (And a few others near me in other locations around me) but after walking for a ways my travels were blocked by a fence that as far as I can tell stretches the whole way across. Grrr. I think there is a road I can take and go around that way but thats an adventure for another day. The cemetery I did go through was alright. This one was mostly new/traditional type monuments, nothing I saw yet as interesting as Cedar Hill in Hartford, but its a BIG place so who knows. There was a big Asian section, and a good number of people visiting relatives today, likely due to the nice weather.
Tonight I made a half-assed attempt at making some bread to go along with my soup. It came out, ok I guess. I mean it was bread and all. Just very, um, course I guess, either i kneaded it too much or not enough. Shrug. It was more for entertainment really so.
I finally updated the wine page today with the last steps and some pictures of the final product. Its been done sense before I left but just never had time, what with moving and all. The wine came out alright, nothing great but eh. For a first try it isn’t bad I guess. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some good pictures of my apartment and the outside area and put them up for anyone who cares. Maybe that means I should clean this place some but eh its easier to edit the picture in Photoshop and just make the place look clean. Though I should spend tomorrow going over my drug notes one more time before the exam on Monday. Pesky delays. I understand some people read/work slower but gods! Me and a few other people in the class have been ready sense Wednesday.
Oh well! I get paid either way so I can’t bitch too much….well I can but probably will try and refrain. Hehehe.
“Hey man, I got some real premo weed!” »« Just say no to drugs…unless they pay you to play with them :)
This week we have been learning all about the big three: Cocaine, Heroin, and Marihuana. All three chapters have been basically the same. First, a brief overview of the drugs history and how it is produced or grown. Then they got into the chemistry of each drug with the structures and formulas and all that good stuff. Finally, there was basic information on how to test a unknown substance for a suspected controlled substance, what color tests were used and how to perform them, and what instrumental analysis is needed. (For those who care/are interested, for Cocaine and Heroin NY state requires we do either a color test and FTIR or GC/MS, for Marihuana we do a macro/microscopic examination looking for specific features and then a color test, or GC/MS analysis. )
Today was mostly low key, with us studying and doing some lite review as a group. One of our trainers, Tom, helped lessen the boredom a bit by breaking out the Marihuana, Cocaine, and Heroin standards and letting us first see what a color test for each looked like and then leaving the stuff in the hood for us to try out our selves. I ended up giving both a try, we did the same tests back at UNH but sense they have a harder time getting drug standards then the NYPD does we could only use really tiny samples so some of the tests were hard to make out. Today how ever that wasn’t a problem, the colors we were looking for came out really nice in most of the cases. At first the Marihuana was a bit sketchy but we were apparently using old reagents so once we got some fresh stuff they looked a lot better. With in the next week or two we will be doing a lot more work with Marihuana when we begin our practical work, but for now it was a nice little introduction. I will have to ask and see if I can bing in my digital camera once we start the practical work and snap a picture or two of me playing with Marihuana to put up here for all to see.
Well I am off to finish making up my note cards for the exam on Friday so wish me luck!
Another Saturday night… »« ASAP
So I was putting a few more things away tonight and noticed that above the top shelf in my closet there was another higher shelf that I needed a chair to reach. So I pulled one over and took a look and to my surprise I found this: 
Nifty eh? Not that I have any use per-say for a “quick-think” game at this time in my life but should the need ever arise now I’m all set! Plus who doesn’t like free stuff.
Just say no to drugs…unless they pay you to play with them :) »« Lets all go to the movies…
After more unpacking and having a fun fun day doing laundry and shopping yesterday I decided today to actually get out of the apartment and go to the movies. I went to see “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” which was a really good, a little on the odd side but still really good. I took the train to the Union Square Regal cinema…mmm stadium seats. After, I looked around the Virgin Mega store for a few minutes but seeing as I don’t really have the money to buy anything it was a short visit 
Now I could clean or put more stuff away, or do some paper work, but more likely I will be a lazy bum, seeing as I have to get up for work and all tomorrow.
Eh..we will see.
ASAP »« What’s Your Geek Decade?
Well for starters I totally got a 100 on the exam yesterday! So W00T for me! We didn’t really discuss our grades too much in class but it seemed most people I talked to only got one or two wrong for the most part. Still I am quite proud of my 100. But really the exam wasn’t that hard. For all the studying of complicated and technical stuff some of the people did (like they were really gona want us to know exactly what was in the different solvent systems we use for TLC).
Today was quite a bit more low key. In the morning people worked on different projects (Dr. Scott promised that he would be finding me something in the near future which is cool, I can definitely use the overtime.) I used the time to run errands like fixing my address and mailing some stuff. See isn’t real forensic science just as exciting as it is on CSI!?! hehehe. We also re-ran our TLC plates with a slightly different solvent system TB-2 to be exact. We got to use MDA and MDMA standards and unknowns and my plate came out damn near perfect. What really surprised me was that some people in the class really didn’t have the whole plate spotting technique down too well, again as much as I disliked UNH at times I did seem to learn a lot of stuff there that I guess other schools just don’t stress. After that I got to be copy boy and made up the next three chapters we are covering: Cocaine, Heroin, Marijuana. Fun times! It’s still all book work but at least it’s getting a bit more interesting then studying safety. So looks like we will be covering that for the next week or so with another exam as soon as next Friday, which got panicked looks from some in the class but I say bring it on.
The only other thing worth mentioning today happened on my subway ride home. Just one stop after I got on two NYPD cops got on, which was good timing because they caused the crazy lady in my car to quickly get off so yay for that. But I’m just sitting there listening to my music when both of them walk over to the side of the car where I was sitting and one of them leaned in to look at me. Well it took me a second to remember I still had my NYPD ID card around my neck and thats what caught their attention. We had a nice little chat, asking me what I did and then talking about forensics and all that for a few minutes till they had to get off. Ahh the power of a NYPD id card hehehehe you meet all sorts of people.
Anyway this is getting long enough, though I am typing in OpenOffice.org’s word processor which I have to say so far I like about 100X better then crappy MS word, plus its totally free so check it out. It wont be enough for the hardcore MS office user but if yah just need something to type in with spell check and all that its definitely worth it.
Captain Science signing off.
What’s Your Geek Decade? »« Lousy Smarch Weather…
Ahh snow…again…goodie. Though I must say that it is days like this that I am actually sort of glad that I take the subway into work and don’t have to deal with driving home in the snow. We have our first exam tomorrow. Review today was what I expected and from what we are told is just about what we can expect to see on the exam. There are still some people in my class that are a bit freaked out by the exam and are studying big time. I sorta think that some of them are really getting them selves worried about things that I doubt are really going to be on the test but hey good for them I guess. I am not worried at all, maybe I should be but eh. I’ve studied and am ready.
On the computer end my Internet is working about 1000X better. It may just be a coincidence but after it dropping connections all night I pulled everything out, removed the splitter, and put the modem in the other cable outlet in my bedroom and its fine now so go figure.
Anyway I guess I should give my notes a look just so I am as ready as I think I am for tomorrow
Cocaine, Heroin, Marijuana »« Episode VI: Return of Captain Science
Well I am back! I finally got Internet access here at my new place in NY. So where to begin? Well I moved all my things into my new apartment here in Glendale, Queens NY on 2-29-04. It is a nice little place. A tad pricey, but given the neighborhood it is in and just the apartment/building it self I don’t have any complaints. The past two weeks I have been settling in and going to work at the Crime Lab in Queens. The first two days were just like the first one. We did nothing…at all…all day. I read a bunch and played games on my palm pilot and that is about it. Then on Wednesday the third all the people we were waiting for finally arrived and we were able to being our actual training class. From this point on I plan to try and keep a daily or at least semi-daily record of the training here on my blog but for sake of time I will try and condense these first few weeks down (mostly because we haven’t done too much yet really). We have out first written exam this Wednesday (we must get a passing grade of 80% or better, if we get less then that on any three exams it is a very bad thing). The first exam is covering chapters 1-7 of our training manual. The first few chapters were just introduction and lab safety. Then we moved on to the law chapter where we learned about the controlled substance schedule’s in NY state and other procedural rules and laws (180.80 and 220). We were also given some in class problems to do where we were given names of controlled substances and we had to look up where (if anywhere) they appeared on the schedules and then go to 220 and see what weight amounts were associated with each substance for sale and possession. We then also touched on the basics of the color tests, and quality control, and TLC. Other then running some TLC plates last week everything has been reading and lecturing so far. Ideally by the end of the month we will get to start on some more practical work with marihuana identification. So far the people I work with are all cool and it seems like it is going to be a cool place to work. From what Dr. Scott was able to tell me even once I start doing case work posting here about it should be no problem as long as I don’t include things like names or other vital details of the on going investigation.
Well that is it for now. Yes, more has happened in the last two weeks then that but you get the idea and really most of it isn’t very interesting anyway.
Be sure to check back from now on for more regular updates and this weekend you will probably see a good number of updates to my web page too.
Lousy Smarch Weather… »« In the lab
