Today at work we went on a field trip! W00T!
The promotion ceremony was held today down at One Police Plaza and since our Mgr. was getting promoted, and we really didn’t have much else going on today at the lab, we were able to go down to see it. So all 15 of us left the lab around 9 and headed down town. We ended up breaking up into two groups, I went with �my girls 
� Allison, Melissa, and Siobhan. Most everyone else,went in another group with a few brave souls that drove in. We wanted to stop at the drugstore by work on the way, hence the splitting into separate groups. Our trainer, and now new supervisor Tom went on his own in his car. There is a point to telling you this so bare with me. Anyway when we got to the subway stop for city hall and the police HQ we were exiting at the same time at the other group. The thing is that the new kid Jay, who we had thought was with them wasn’t. So we hoped that he went ahead and would be waiting out front 1pp for us. Well he wasn’t. When we finally met up with Tom and everyone else he was no where to be found so for a good half hour we were convinced that on our first trip out of the lab together we had lost a trainee! In the end it turns out he stopped home to change or something with out telling any of us but before we found that out it was quite funny.
Anyway the ceremony was nice and short, we got to see our Mgr. get his promotion and everything. After we all took some group pictures with him. Then he took us all out to lunch! So there were 15 of us, him, his GF, and Tom and he insisted on picking up the whole check! Because we were technically on duty still we wouldn’t of been able to drink alcohol but because of what time it was and some other odd rules with the NYPD and stuff if we were willing to use up an hour of comp time it would make it like we actually were odd duty! So I had my self a glass of wine and a good chicken Caesar salad. We all ate at this little place down at south street seaport. Then because I had given up that hour of time to drink I could just go home because my lunch hour combined with that and the fact that it would take an hour to make it back to the lab meant I was free to go! Again W00T! (Everyone else could go home to but the non-drinkers still had to give up an hour of time so us boozers got a double bonus! )
On top of all that it was a uber nice day out AND I don’t have any OT this weekend so I can sleep in for the first time in about two weeks.
All in all a pretty damn good Friday if I do say so my self!
ps. There is currently a bug in my blog software. If some one posts a comment or karma vote the mood and music goes bye bye. They know about it and say it’s fixed and as soon as they release 1.3a it will be patched.
Student loans can bite me! »« Fun with FTIR…well not really and lets sell the kids on TV rant…
We are still having fun with FTIR at work this week. Had another review session today with Dr. Scott, who just got him self promoted. He is now something like the director of the CSAS, which will make Tom our main trainer. All in all probably wont affect us much from a training standpoint, we are still on track to be done and on the bench by the end of August. From what we covered in the review I am feeling pretty good about all this stuff, or at least better then I was before. I knew most of the answers to the stuff he was asking us today, and knew most of the answers to the stuff other people were asking him so I guess that means I know the stuff well enough. Not to say I will stop studying it, just now I can study a tad less and worry less about it all. This next week we will start the instrumental part of the IR section and get to run samples on IR. Similar to the Marihuana section with knowns and unknowns and all that. Should be a good time.
Not much going on outside work per-say. I did get my federal tax check today, thanks Mom. Sadly it will go for bills and stuff but it will be a nice help. I was going to run down to the bank and deposit it tonight but now that I am home and all that I am too lazy and will probably do it tomorrow on my way home. Plus tonight is survivor all stars and I can’t miss that! Hehehe. Speaking of reality TV has anyone else herd about that 20-20 special they are doing tomorrow night? As one poster on boingboing.net put it: “The ABC-TV program 20/20 will air a contest between five couples on the show this Friday — the winners get to adopt a real-live, pooping, crying baby. So, let me get this straight. You can’t say “fuck,” but you can broadcast a raffle for a human being?”
Yah, just when I think that as a culture we can’t sink any lower they go and do something like this. What next? There was an episode of some show, maybe one of the new versons of the twilight zone or something, that was based on a reality show where a womans kid was taken and she had like 4 hours to find him and get him back. I swear thats where we are headed. Next week on FOX mothers have to rescue their babies before they get eaten by some of the animals on “When Animals Attack 12”. Sigh.
It is funny though that while you can apparently sell a baby on national TV and not cause a stir, if the mother then went to breast feed him on the show she would be arrested, have the kid taken away, and the network would be fined $100,000.
God bless the USA!
What a nice day for a field trip! »« A “bloody” good time…
Ahh another fun week of work. Well it isn’t so bad I guess. We began FTIR this week. A lot of it is coming back to me. We covered it pretty well in Dr. Saliby’s instrumental class. The only thing thats kicking my ass at the moment is all the Michelson Interferometer stuff. I vaguely remember touching on it back in college but most of the stuff we are learning about it now seems totally new to me. Eep! But we have a few days of reading and studying so all should be good I guess.
Monday I also stayed late yet again. Eh its time and a half so its worth it. More fun with files. Luckily I think we finished all the stuff we had to do so that may be the end that stuff for now. Plus I needed a OT break, a few extra hours relaxing at home will do me good. Especially tonight. We had a blood drive at work today so I gave them a pint. I was feeling I had too much blood as of late hehehe. Plus I get three hours of comp time out of the deal so its all good too.
Now I am off to veg and then to bed early. Even before the blood loss I have been tired all day so sleep can only do me good.
Fun with FTIR…well not really and lets sell the kids on TV rant… »« Welcome to the working week….
This last week I have really been living at work almost. We had the usual studying and review stuff the first few days this week. And as you know from my last post our exam Wednesday. The rest of the week we spent working on various projects while the new trainee is getting caught up. Originally I was working on some case tracking project which involved getting the dates and times for a random sampling of cases. The idea I guess is to see where any slow downs are occurring in the lab. What was nice was that Tuesday and Wednesday I got to work on it during overtime. Thursday was an interesting day. For starters it was bring your kids to work day so our trainer Tom brought in his son. The kid wasn’t stuck in our room all day. The Lab had set up fun, if not odd/morbid activities for the kids. Some of the stuff was normal, tours of the sections and special food and lunch for the kids and their parents. But they also had coloring for the kids, but they were given body out lines that the homicide section uses to show where say a person was wounded. They also hid treats and toys and stuff inside BODY BAGS and had the kids crawl into them to find the stuff. Um….yah……ok…..
We were also told that some of the people from the TV show CSI:New York were visiting, writers and producers this time. I guess they were just here to see how a real lab is run. Not that I expect it to help any when the show actually starts in May. As bad as it probably will be I plan to watch. I mean how often do you get to watch a TV show supposedly set in the exact same place you work! For the rest of Thursday I started working on a new “project”. This one involved working with a few of the other guys in the training class down in the file room. We take old files from boxes and put them into folders and then file cabinets. That was it. Not very exciting (I would like to see the CSI guys do that!) But because the job has to get done and soon I got more over time out of it.
I got OT Thursday night, then we worked in there most all day today, and got more OT tonight. All in all its not a bad job. Its easy enough and makes the day go. We did have one guy who was down there with us today who made it a point to let us know all day how much he didn’t want to be down there and just wanted to go back and sit in the training room all day doing nothing. So yah that was a bit annoying, I just wanted to smack him so he would stop complaining. Luckily he “doesn’t do over time” so we didn’t have to put up with him tonight. We are even going in tomorrow to work more on the project. There are a few other people coming in tomorrow too. While coming in tomorrow was voluntary I sort of got the impression that our LT. really expected, at least a few of us, to come in. I don’t really mind though either way. The money is crazy and for what we are doing more then worth it.
I think there was other stuff I was going to write about but I can’t remember it right now so if I do maybe I will add it in tomorrow or something.
A “bloody” good time… »« short post
Just a quick post tonight. We had our MDMA,LSD, ect. exam today. I got a 97.5…WOOT! Otherwise a slow day. Have gotten over time the last two days which is cool, even if I don’t get home till like 7. But the money is worth is so…eh.
Thats all for now.
Welcome to the working week…. »« I got a jacket…
This is a mostly pointless post just to show off my nifty new jacket. Have a look will you:
Nifty huh?
Other then the jacket thing work was low key. We did more study and review for our next exam. We did get to take a little field trip up to see an interesting case that had come in. They got a metal cylinder (no idea what the intended use would have been) that they had to have cut open with a power saw. Inside was cocaine and heroin. Just made an interesting example of how some times you can get stuff coming into the lab that is a bit more of a challenge then the usual zip lock baggies.
Zoo trip this past weekend was really fun. Haven’t been to the Bronx Zoo in years so it was fun to go. Plus it was such a nice day that I had to get out. For anyone who cares pictures are up on the pictures page. Now that its nice out I hope to start taking some more pictures around here where I live and stuff. Its funny, every time I walk down the main street here (Myrtle Ave.) I find another cool store. Today on my way home from work and food shopping I saw that there is a pet store (which i hope has some snake supplies) and a health food store. Never noticed either of those before. Go figure.
Man this really is a mostly pointless post but dang it I just had to show off my jacket
short post »« MDMA is a one legged frog!
Well we had our exam yesterday and as expected it was uber easy and I passed fine. Ended up getting two wrong, damn structure questions. Guess I didn’t know them as well as I thought. Oh well. All that matters is that I passed. We got the last three drug chapters later that day. Ch. 14 which covered amphetamines and methamphetamines, as well as MDA, MDMA, and MDEA. Ch. 15 which covers LSD, Psilocin, Psilocybin, and bufotenin (think licking toads ) and Ch. 16 which covered a bunch of miscellaneous drugs that we don’t see too often (steroids, Kat, ritalin, and some of the more obscure prescription drugs.) All in all fun stuff. We are a wacky group to start with and try and have as much fun as we can with some of the stuff. Like if you look at a 2D version of the MDMA molecule it looks like a one legged frog… see:
We will likely have our next and last major drug info exam on Wednesday. We soon will be moving onto instrumental analysys (GC/MS and FTIR) with a break by May 9th when we have moot court. So in a way of looking at it we are over the hump. They still are looking at us up doing our own case work by August! True we have a lot of work to do before then but its not looking so far away now. So W00T!
Among the more urbane thing tomorrow looks like a pointless day of laundry and waiting for the stupid cable guy. Feh! Though I found some other company’s on line that do high speed Internet in NY so at least I have something to fall back on.
And on the �people sending me stuff note�, walking home today I took a different root and saw a store right near my house that (for a small fee) can do package sending and receiving. They are mostly a store that sells clothing/costumes for little kids that dance but as a side line they got the package thing going. The nice thing is that they are open till 6 during the week, unlike the USPS. This is a convince I am more then willing to pay the 2$ fee per package. So if yah want to send me something bigger then an envelope either send it to work (those in the know have the address) or let me know and ill give yah the address/details on this palace.
Guess that teaches me to actually get out of my apartment from time to time eh?
I got a jacket… »« I got a hat!
We have our next exam tomorrow. It will cover the three chapters we have been studying this week: Ch.11 – Opium Alkaloids, Ch.12 – Methadone, Phencyclidine, and Ketamine, and Ch. 13 – Barbiturates and Benzodiazepines. They are all short chapters and the exam is going to be short, around 30 questions total. This is mostly because now days we do mostly all instrumental analysis for those compounds so there isn’t as much to go over as there had been back in the micro crystal test days. On a cool note I got me a new cool hat. Have a look will you?
Nifty eh? They guy that does the ordering for all that stuff came down today and I bought a hat on the spot and put in a order for a light windbreaker type jacket. Yah it was a bit more then I would of spent at say walmart but you can’t get jackets at walmart with the NYPD logo on them and Forensic Investigation Devision text on it!
I suppose I should go over my notes and the structures some more but this week, with all the rain, has had me tired so maybe I will just get to bed early and study in the morning on the train and such.
I have a appointment for Saturday afternoon for someone to come down and look at my cable Internet. Sense I got it the connection has been crappy but the last week or so its been worse then crappy, I would be better off with dial up at this point. If they can’t find a way to make it work better I guess I will have to start looking for some other (ideally high speed) ISP. I’m not going to pay what they charge for half assed Internet. Feh! I say feh on time warner!
On the plus side I may go to the zoo on Sunday which is cool. I will get to see monkeys. I like monkeys!
MDMA is a one legged frog! »« Easter Weekend
This past weekend I went back home to Connecticut. It was a combination of needing to run errands, easter dinner, and Les Miserables with Val. Hence it was a crazy weekend and no where near long enough. Train ride home after work Friday was un-eventful, actually so was work it self Friday. Mom picked me up in New Haven and I got to stop at walmart (ewww i know) to buy some random crap for my apartment. I now have curtain rods! When I got home I got my belated B-day presents. The best of which was Futurama Volume 3! As well as assorted food stuffs and a nifty left handed can opener! We need more left hander products I say! W00T! Saturday was spent at various banks and the like as well as getting a hair cut. (See my readers read this blog just for that kind of detail!) Anyway, then that night I drove down to New Haven to see Val and go see Les Miserables. It was my 4th time! It was a really great performance though, way better then the one at the Oakdale we saw a year or two ago. She also had belated birthday presents for me. The best of which were these Uber cool Bullwinkle pajama pants and a nice set of martini glasses as a house warming gift. Sunday we had easter dinner at my house. Mmmm…ham. Oh which I was able to get some nice left overs. Maybe too much actually. Had ham for lunch today, and dinner, and will have a ham sandwich for lunch tomorrow, and will finish off the rest in a 15 bean soup (pity my poor co-workers the next day 
) Then Sunday night mom and dad drove me back to NY and got to see my nifty apartment. All in all a eventful weekend! But again, not long enough. Was supposed to do laundry tonight but I needed a night off so maybe tomorrow.
Work this week is going to be both slow and fast paced if that makes any sense. We will cover three chapters and have two tests this week. But all the chapters are really short and the test will be little too. Thing is other then reading the short chapters we really don’t have much else we are doing. Any work on projects is sort of hampered at the moment seeing as our computers are all infected with the MS Blast worm (doh!) and tend to shut off every 2-10 minutes on their own. Oh well! I am off to veg some more before sleep.
I need another weekend to recover from this past one!
I got a hat! »« Marihuana exam.
Today at the lab we had our Marihuana practical exam. Ten unknown samples that we had to ID. Was a piece of cake (or hash brownies as the case may be ). Only took about two and a half hours and I of course passed it with flying colors. So ok, I had to get a 100 on it to pass but still. As far as I know everyone in the class passed also which is cool. In the end they aren’t looking to make it TOO hard on us, or they will just have to retrain us and spend even more money on us (right now its costing them about 40,000 each to train us!)
I guess the coolest part of the whole thing is that now that I have taken and passed the exam I am now officially qualified to perform Marihuana examinations in NY. W00T! Tomorrow will be mostly low key again. Dr. Scott has the day off, (has relatives from Scotland visiting and will be doing the tourist thing with them, or so he says). We will get the next few chapters to read, but given that it usually takes all of 45 min at most to read that stuff I am bringing some extra books and games for the palm pilot to keep my self entertained. Then right after work I am heading home for the weekend. Partly to have easter dinner with my family on Sunday (and pilfer as much stuff from home as I can), and am also going to see Les Miserables with Valerie on Saturday night down in New Haven. So along with all the errands I have to run and stuff its gona be a crazy weekend!
Easter Weekend »« Happy Tartan Day
Today, April 6th is Tartan Day! What is tartan day you ask? Well the definition from some random site I found on google says: �April 6th is a national holiday in Canada and the United States to honor the Scots who have helped to make both countries great.� So being that I’m not Scottish you may ask why I care. Well I care because my supervisor/trainer at work is Scottish. Very Scottish. He says hes seen Nessy! No really! Well anyway, the real point is that to celebrate Tartan Day he brought in all this nifty British snack food for us during our break! Some of it was semi-normal stuff, just with nifty British names and packages (malted milk balls and such) but some of it was really odd and good! The carbury flake bar that I actually snuck home with me was oh so good…mmmm….chocolate dipped in chocolate. But the weirdest stuff had to be some of the bags of �crisps� (aka potato chips to us Americans). I just finished off the little bag of Walkers brand �Roast Chicken� flavor chips! I kid you not. They are good but strange sorta in that they really taste like roast chicken….but in chip form. And according to the package they are �Suitable for vegetarians�, which sorta makes me wonder exactly what the chicken flavor is but then again they are good so who cares!
Other then the uber cool snacks work was mostly uneventful. People finished working on their unknown samples and we went over the first 7 as a group. Tomorrow we will go over the last three and then do the 10 all over again. If everyone is ok with it we may even get to do the exam Thursday instead of Friday which is just fine with me. Last hour or so of the day we got to finish watching refer madness and then watched �Coke Fiends� which was way worse then refer madness in that it didn’t make much sense really. While it was funny and all I think the message was sort of lost in that one of the girls and the cop tracking the �dope pushers� ended up happy and together at the end. So the message could almost be that they owe their happiness to Cocaine. But it was made in 1936 so what did we really expect?
Marihuana exam. »« Going postal
Well this past weekend was mostly a total wash. I foolishly made a point to stay home Saturday because the great old US post office was supposed to deliver the package Jenn sent me. It’s not that I am surprised that they never bothered to show up, that was almost expected. It’s more now that sense I got the first delivery card a week ago I have herd nothing and have no idea where said package is. I hope at best it will get sent back to Jenn in NE and I can have her try sending it again but to my work address this time. Grrrr. There are those that say the post office has outlived its usefulness in this day and age and I’m starting to agree with them. I already am planning to set up on line bill pay with my bank so I don’t even have to use them to mail most of my bills. SO THERE! USPS can bite me.
Well now that my mail rant is done. And I guess I feel a tad better. But I guess I was able to make the weekend a touch productive in spite of all that. I got some cleaning done and finally filled out my taxes which I had kept putting off. Glad I did too. Looks like I will be getting about $100 back from the state and $500 from the feds. This money will sadly have to go to pay bills or loans or something. Probably! There still is that little voice whispering in my ear. What is it saying you ask? Why it just keeps chanting the word “I-pod” over and over! Not that it would be a completely frivolous purchase. My old MP3 player, which is like over 4 years old at this point, is on its last legs. It keeps shorting out where the battery goes so if I have it on and look at it funny it will just reset. Very annoying. Sure you say, “but Andrew, surely you can live with out a music player!”. To that I simply have to reply “Ahh. But I ride on the subway every day to and from work. Besides keeping the trip from being mind numbingly boring it keeps the crazy people from bothering me!”. Being able to tune out my fellow subway riders is so very nice. Were my current player to ever totally bite the dust I would have to at the very least get a portable CD player or some such thing, so why not spend a few hundred bucks more and listen in style! Now I don’t want you my readers to think I am the type to just throw money around, quite the opposite. But when one is about $70,000 in debt to the student loan people and such a few hundred extra really isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things. In the end odds are the money will go to pay my credit card or student loan or some such thing…. probably. (Unless some of my loyal blog readers were to try and convince me otherwise hehehehe)
On the forensic science front, we got our unknown samples today to work on. I was able to finish all ten today! WOOT! Except that now tomorrow I wont have anything to do other then the same ten samples all over again. Which, while it would be good practice, I don’t really think is necessary. I will find out tomorrow how I did on the ten but I don’t see how I could of missed anything. Saw the hairs (or didn’t) and got the BU/PP or PP/PP color (again or didn’t depending on the sample). Eh. Will just have to wait and see. If nothing else I am still making a good dent in my book so at least I got that going for me. Hehehe.
On a final note I am mostly sure the ceiling of my apartment is stuffed with asbestos. When I was trying to get the smoke alarm to shut up I tried to pull it down off the ceiling and in the process found that:
1.It’s wired into the apartments power.
2.The gravel stuff that fell on my head sure looks a lot like asbestos.
Not that it would surprise me given how old this building probably is. Mind you it doesn’t bother me (other then when it was raining down on my head). Way I see it, I will do my thing, it can do it’s thing up in the ceiling, and as long as I don’t go eating the stuff or breathing it in on a regular basis everyone should be happy.
Eh… living in NY I probably get worse riding the subway every day!
Happy Tartan Day »« Going postal
Well this past weekend was mostly a total wash. I foolishly made a point to stay home Saturday because the great old US post office was supposed to deliver the package Jenn sent me. It’s not that I am surprised that they never bothered to show up, that was almost expected. It’s more now that sense I got the first delivery card a week ago I have herd nothing and have no idea where said package is. I hope at best it will get sent back to Jenn in NE and I can have her try sending it again but to my work address this time. Grrrr. There are those that say the post office has outlived its usefulness in this day and age and I’m starting to agree with them. I already am planning to set up on line bill pay with my bank so I don’t even have to use them to mail most of my bills. SO THERE! USPS can bite me.
Well now that my mail rant is done. And I guess I feel a tad better. But I guess I was able to make the weekend a touch productive in spite of all that. I got some cleaning done and finally filled out my taxes which I had kept putting off. Glad I did too. Looks like I will be getting about $100 back from the state and $500 from the feds. This money will sadly have to go to pay bills or loans or something. Probably! There still is that little voice whispering in my ear. What is it saying you ask? Why it just keeps chanting the word “I-pod” over and over! Not that it would be a completely frivolous purchase. My old MP3 player, which is like over 4 years old at this point, is on its last legs. It keeps shorting out where the battery goes so if I have it on and look at it funny it will just reset. Very annoying. Sure you say, “but Andrew, surely you can live with out a music player!”. To that I simply have to reply “Ahh. But I ride on the subway every day to and from work. Besides keeping the trip from being mind numbingly boring it keeps the crazy people from bothering me!”. Being able to tune out my fellow subway riders is so very nice. Were my current player to ever totally bite the dust I would have to at the very least get a portable CD player or some such thing, so why not spend a few hundred bucks more and listen in style! Now I don’t want you my readers to think I am the type to just throw money around, quite the opposite. But when one is about $70,000 in debt to the student loan people and such a few hundred extra really isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things. In the end odds are the money will go to pay my credit card or student loan or some such thing…. probably. (Unless some of my loyal blog readers were to try and convince me otherwise hehehehe)
On the forensic science front, we got our unknown samples today to work on. I was able to finish all ten today! WOOT! Except that now tomorrow I wont have anything to do other then the same ten samples all over again. Which, while it would be good practice, I don’t really think is necessary. I will find out tomorrow how I did on the ten but I don’t see how I could of missed anything. Saw the hairs (or didn’t) and got the BU/PP or PP/PP color (again or didn’t depending on the sample). Eh. Will just have to wait and see. If nothing else I am still making a good dent in my book so at least I got that going for me. Hehehe.
On a final note I am mostly sure the ceiling of my apartment is stuffed with asbestos. When I was trying to get the smoke alarm to shut up I tried to pull it down off the ceiling and in the process found that:
1.It’s wired into the apartments power.
2.The gravel stuff that fell on my head sure looks a lot like asbestos.
Not that it would surprise me given how old this building probably is. Mind you it doesn’t bother me (other then when it was raining down on my head). Way I see it, I will do my thing, it can do it’s thing up in the ceiling, and as long as I don’t go eating the stuff or breathing it in on a regular basis everyone should be happy.
Eh… living in NY I probably get worse riding the subway every day!
Going postal »« So much Marihuana …
