Welcome to the lab

Magic... You just need to keep a Windows XP box on life support to run the damn software.

And don't you dare look at the proprietary-to-serial connector cable that was last made in Czechoslovakia!
Don't let the magic smoke escape!

Beige: the most expensive of equipment colors

This boy only costs a cheap 50k.
And this one over there we got for only 250k

I'm going to start saying "and this is where the magic happens" in reference to everything in my house when showing new people around

gestures toward the water closet
"And this is where..."
- Yes, we all have a closet filled with Waters brand chromatographs

Labs I’ve been in also have at least one inexplicable and kinda scary metal and asbestos monster from the 60s. Like this spinny boi:

Ahh centrifuges, the second most terrifying piece of lab equipment after the intern.
https://web.mit.edu/charliew/www/centrifuge.html they sometimes do this.
- Interesting story and useful safety message, but awful web page design. Who puts white text on a nearly-white speckled background?
  Edit: Turns out this isn't the fault of the webpage, other than the choice of background. Text is perfectly readable in Light Mode on Firefox Desktop and Mobile.
Made in West Germany and sounds like someone's pouring salt into a hair drier, but still more reliable than the Beckman centrifuge bought in 2010.

There's 3 rooms filled with delicate instruments worth 8 figures total, but the toilets are equipped with the roughest single ply paper your butthole ever will see.

That's because the instruments don't need to wipe

And the magic is a hot plate and a spectroscope. The top two beige boxes do the exact same thing qpcr.

Look at this IT nerd. I bet you help a bunch of people out huh. Everyone point and laugh
- I'm a biochemist

Sometimes the box (where the magic happens) is grey or even white :o

If you're really fancy it's both :)
Our gel electrophoresis machine was black, and many weeks of work lived or died by that magic box.

All I ever wanted was the machine that goes PING!

I don't have to click this link to both know what it is, and to hear it, and for that, I'm grateful.

So THAT'S why magic fails to happen in my apartment: none of my stuff is beige!

Lab rats will look at and tinker with these all day and night long, be exhausted, happy, angry, satisfied, and sometimes be awed by them in the most incredibly nuanced ways.

I'm jealous is what I'm saying.

When I started the gc was a magic machine filled with elves that made it work.

A few years later the gc fed the ms which is where the elves relocated after I'd figured out their housing situation.

Now they're living within the triple quadrupole, which I'm quite certain I will never fully understand the mechanics of.

It was fun hearing my explanations evolve as I became more experienced, introducing the interns to my toys every year, the ones that stuck around would overhear my explanations and question why I didn't tell them the same thing, "I didn't know how it worked when you got the tour!" Life long learning!

The first one's Nintendo; I don't think I recognise the rest.

Come up to the lab and see what's on the slab!

Guy in beige wrappings in a glass box where the magic happens!