Thursday, March 17, 2005
Things that go bump in the lab...Is my lab haunted? That's the question I've been asking myself for the past few weeks. It's a fairly new building, built on what was a car park - but if there's one thing that Poltergeist has taught me, those pesky Injuns bury their dead all over the place.
Often I work late at night, the lights are turned down in the other half of the lab and the aircon cycles down. It gets very quiet...
Now I say quiet - that's not strictly true. Labs are full of dozens of bits of kit that run 24/7. From the whirr of PC cooling fans to the gurgle of the PFGE tank, to the damned squeak of the vacuum pump, the lab is a cacophany of small noises. But these are all familiar and constant.
A few weeks ago I was pulling an all nighter. Dido had finished playing and I had my hands full.
*Shuffle-thump*.
I looked up so fast my neck cracked. Nothing.
I figured that maybe one of the security guards had just poked his head in to check everything was OK and not wanted to disturb me.
The next night the same thing happened. Twice, about half an hour apart.
Now it may be because Michael Jackson's Thriller has just been voted best music video ever. Or maybe watching the Evil Dead when pissed affected me more than I thought. But it occured to me that *Shuffle-thump* is not dissimilar to the noise that a zombie makes just before it appears from nowhere to suck your brains out.
However, I am a SaneScientist and I don't believe in that sort of crap.
But still...
# posted by SaneScientist @ 10:38 pm
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