I know I'm not one to rant normally but today has seriously hacked me off. I've worked really hard getting my cells ready for a set of vital experiments that i've been told to have done before my supervisor gets back off holiday.Meaning I have to work the bank hols. Only to find the materials I use to make my surfaces to grow my cells on have been nicked, namely one of my base monomers so I can't use something else. I've asked for it back nicely and no-one has responded. Am so frustrated as everything in my lab keeps going "missing" and the staff do nothing about it. grrrrrrrr. rant over!

I'm in the lab working all bank holiday weekend.

Is anyone else having panckes today? Am starting to think I can't hold out til tonight but none of the food places round my dept are doing pancakes!

I try and fit in playing cricket and horse riding most weeks along with the gym, but its not happening at the moment due to a needing results for a conference i'm about to go on.

chelated zinc tablets work really well!

Thanks guys that seems to have worked. though when I inport a reference into word its still coming up with the random lines of text. Is there any way to permanently fix it? Plus my images are now coming up as {shape\*merge format} though can see the images when i look at print preview the pictures are there. Weird or what!

I've just re-opened my word lit review document, to find that all of my references i've put in endnote have appeared with loads of blurby code. It saved fine last night, the worst bit is the back up copy is doing this as well. When i put the document on print preview it looks all normal and prints ok, but on normal view it looks a total mess. I'm just worried it's going to start corrupting other bits like my pitures next. Does anyone know how to fix the problem?!Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi guys,
I went through the exact low back in february at my 5 month point. All my experiments had screwed up, weren't working or had total dead ends on them. I felt like i wanted to quit. I went and chatted to a few 3rd years I know who are finishing off and writing up, which helped me loads. Apparently its really common to hit a depressive "brick wall" within the first 18 months. I just took some time out for myself and came back at my work fresh. Really helped!

Thanks guys. I've taken the chance and submitted the abstract today. All I can do now is sit, wait, and see if they like it enough to accept it.

I'm in a bit of a quandry about what I should do about an international conference I really want to go to in December, but the abstract deadline is the end of this week. I've written the abstract but I don't have any firm data to put in it as i'm only 6 months into my PhD and I've only really worked out what I'm doing in the last few weeks. There will be data by December but not in time for the abstract deadline. I only want to present a poster. Is it worth trying to put the abstract in? Or should i give in and wait til I have some data in 2nd year?
Any advice would be really helpful

I'm nearly at the 6 month point as well. My supervisor is expecting lots of lovely results already. The problem is she doesn't seem to understand that what I'm doing is very time consuming, and sometimes doesn't even work at all. I spent most of Monday fixing a machine that someone else broke before I could use it. Now I have the data, the computer is complaining it doesn't have enough memory to reconstruct the images. arggghh

Has anyone done any work on micro-tomography of soft tissues? Has anyone used a contrast agent? Any ideas? If anyone has, how do you get into the tissue?

It is friday after all. I found the kungfu stickman site again, so have been wearing out the z key on my keyboard, with the occasional bit of writing thrown in. Oh well.

Your not the only one with brain freeze, i was doing well at writing my late lit review earler this week, but progress has now slowed to surfing round the internet.

I've spent the first bit of this week, totally time wasting. I've finally felt just about organised enough to start working again, though the thought of my lit review is sending me into procrastination mode again. Its not helping that my office is freezing as the uni turned the heating off over xmas, I have a feeling it only came back on yesterday.