Because it matters

Acetonitrile is an organic solvent that is widely used in organic synthesis and HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography). Because it is one of the few solvents that is practically UV-transparent (does not absorb UV light), it is an excellent solvent for liquid chromatography where the detection is done with UV absorbance.
A major manufacturer of acetonitrile was damaged when hurricane Ike hit Texas. Also apparently China shutdown their production for the 2008 Olympics. As a result, the price is more than doubled at the moment (see the VWR quote below). Read the rest of this entry »

The title of this post is supposed to be shocking, coming out of the mouth (keyboard?) of someone who blogs about Linux. Anyways, to add another excuse to not posting anything for a while, a couple of days ago, I was trying to put in a hard drive in an old desktop computer that is used to as our proxy, web, SFTP, Internet filtering, DHCP, and DNS server. Then as I was pushing on one of those plastic things that fill the space for extra drive expansion, my hand hit something sharp inside. Then I saw my beautiful (?) bone and muscle tissues through a 1-inch laceration on my knuckle! For the first time in my life (since a car accident 18 years ago), I had to go to an emergency room and get the would stitched up.
Now the picture below may not be for everyone (it's not really that bad). I took it with my ancient cell phone in the ER. Read the rest of this entry »