I hate patents

I have been slaving over these incomprehensible peices of crud for days. I seriously hate them with a violent passion. Nothing is ever straight forward and the crappy USPTO puts their patents up as quicktime images for crying out loud. Major fail. This means going to freepatentsonline.com and finding it there because SciFinder just links to the god awful USPTO website. Give me PDF or give me death. At least it isn't in Chinese [1].

Meanwhile, in the lab I have been synthesising more starting materials. On monday/tuesday I will be repeating the Barton decarboxylation so hopefully I will remember to bring my camera. Everything here is back in full swing. Even W is in the lab now and then, turning his pump on as well as the argon. It's good he enjoys a bit of time away from his calculations. I know I would. Those things are damn hard to understand.

The talk of the office is also hilarious, a co-worker was recently found to have been using her full name as a password. It was by chance that we found out, someone asked randomly if she did that and her suspect reply was enough to warrant an investigation which led to the discovery of the fact. Subsequently the password was changed after many hours of laughter at their expense.

Soon to come are some interesting experiments, we hope. A number of reactions that require a bit of technique and some clever thinking will hopefully be posted. Not by me cuz that's not my style, but hopefully MSG or Thujone will have a nice treat for you guys out there. I will be looking at posting some more RBF teaches soon which will hopefully help the undergrads out a bit as well as the tutors who teach them.

[1] and I finally get it translated only to find it isn't what I was after in the first place. Hooray for the little wanker who thought he was really smart by obscuring patents. I hope you are really proud of yourself. One giant clap for you buddy.