It has been a while since my last post. A lot has happened in the last couple of months.
#1) The great flood of 2014
On Sunday May 2, 2014 there was a great snowstorm in Lawrence, KS. It was so cold I kept my faucets dripping in the house to avoid frozen pipes. It wasn't the first time this winter, nor was it the coldest night of the winter. It was icy and snowy, though. For reasons that I do not understand, two pipe burst in SBC.
Below is a picture taken by me of the office of my friend. His office was the epicenter of the 2nd pipe bursting around 1 PM that day. (By the way, I did not rush in to help, because by this time ServPro was on the scene. I was trying to batten down the hatches in the NMR lab and stay out of the way). ServPro and FO guys were right there, so the water got shut off mighty quick. I show you this picture first so that you can imagine how several HOURS of water leak would appear.
Apparently, the first pipe burst sometime in the early morning and ~1 inch of water filled up the floor of almost all of the instrument labs in SBC. The building manager was first on the scene and immediately called a high-ranking University official, who was there in a flash to help out. Kudos to him for being so hands-on. I don't know who called the Mass Spec facility director, but he then called me and I got there as soon as possible.
In the meantime, the building manager, high-ranking University official, Mass Spec facility director and two FO technicians triaged the whole building. The turned off all instruments and tried to move water towards floor drains. I was very impressed. ServPro was there when I arrived with industrial strength suction and big bad fans to dry everything. Things were looking good before we discovered the 2nd leak (see picture above).
With the NMRs already off there wasn't much I could do. The floor in the lab were mostly dry by the time I go in. I brought in some wood to prop all cables off the ground and moved everything to the center of the lab. I feared maintenance guys near the magnet more than anything, so I put up big signs. Anyways, we were without NMR for a couple of days. Big fans dried the sheet rock to prevent mold. Both NMRs fired up and we felt like we dodged a bullet. I guess there is an important lesson about clearance on the floor in case of water.
#2) Mysterious shim troubles
On March 12, 2014, the shims on Florence went for excellent to lousy. This instrument is usually very robust and the shims do not need to be adjusted that much from day-to-day or month-to-month. Suddenly and without warning the shims were so bad that I could not get close to line shape specification. I don't know why. I had to shut down the instrument for a couple of days.
We don't have a hypothesis why the shims got all drifty after years of stability. One observation, and I don't know if it is relevant, is that over the winter we had a few days where the temperature in the NMR room went higher than we'd like (~27 C). It has to do with balance the AC and heat in the winter months, particularly on warm weekends. Good users altered me to the heat and I got in to shut down the system and/or open windows to cool the room.
Anyways, a couple of days of diligent shimming and we can make line shape spec again.
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A hard winter. Let's hope spring is easier.
