So I'm back from the synchrotron. I was working from 8AM till after midnight, nonstop. It's one of those things where you have to keep working as long as the microscope is working, becuase you never know when things will fuck up. It was also mind-numbingly boring. It was basically click and wait the whole time. Each image takes a few minutes to record, so it takes forever to set up things the way you want them to look. Then you set up a "stack" which is a series of images at different energies (about 200 images) and let that run for 6 - 10 hours (depending on how you set things up). That's the time you get to sleep. Of course, if you run a stack during the day, you have to sit and talk with the guy working with you for that whole time, just waiting for something to go wrong.

The ironic thing is, for all that time I spent, I don't have any data! I didn't realize that there is extra data processing to be done. So the technician for the microscope is supposed to analyze my data and send it to me in a week or two. But I don't have time to worry about that...I have proposals to write for my Ph.D. exam!