OK, I think I've got the hang of the beamline here. So now I can play on the as-seen-on-TV Infinite Ladder (I think that's what it's called). Way more involving than sitting on my ass at the computer.-MB
Certain things in life are better shared.

Since those select citizens number about as the left-handed pygmies of the world, I'll fill in you the reader on the scientist's best friend: his Faithful Hunchbacked Brain-Fetcher. The FHBF of choice amoung my colleagues is, of course, Igor.
Igor Pro Version 5, specifically. He isn't squeamish about the type of data (e.g. sounds, text files with numbers in columns, pictures, graphs, tables), or the task (manipulating files over the net, controlling your laboratory equipment, harvesting organs from the dead). Igor can be trained (with unlimited awkwardness)to do most any task that his master might require of him. I've been as uncommunicative as I have because I've been working away in the lab, getting to know Igor, trying to make him a properly useful Faithful Brain-Fetcher.

"Two Americans, an Irishman, a Greek, a Kiwi, and an Indian (not shown) walk into a synchrotron in Sweden..."