It’s the little things
Jul 11th 2006WallabyGeneral & nerd alert
Estimated cost of a high power femtosecond laser that “just works”: $250,000
Estimated cost of a decent power meter to measure the output: $1,000
Now, my new lab has 5 of one of those two items. It’s got 2 of the other items, one of which apparently doesn’t work.
Two guesses on which number matches with which item.
Total time students and postdocs have had to wait around waiting for someone else to get done using the power meter? Eh, we’ll just have to learn to share. Right? Except for when it turns out that the easiest (if not the very best) way to do a simple experiment is to use the power meter. Or when someone needs it all afternoon because they have to get their system lined up again because their samples expire in three hours, leaving five other people cooling their heels in the meantime due to the unexpected downtime.
It’s not that people haven’t suggested getting another one, or even one for each laser system in the lab. The boss is skittish of spending the extra money on a tool that, ideally, should only be needed a couple minutes a day, for calibration purposes only. Understandable. Then again, one of the first things he “suggested” I do when I started last week was to order myself a brand new desktop. Now I wish I’d gotten a power meter instead and just used my three year old laptop.
It’s like buying a brand new sportscar and then deciding to save money by not getting the fuzzy dice.
Hey boss — it’s okay to be frugal but don’t shortchange *us*. We’re the ones doing your work and writing your papers, remember?
One Response to “It’s the little things”
Tigger on 23 Jul 2006 at 9:47 am #
well, *obviously* the power meters are far less shiny than the big fahhhhncy lasers, and thus they cannot be any higher on the priority list than, oh, 37th place. even when that puts the cheaper, handy tool just under “plenty of packs of bubble gum” on the shopping list.