Professor Friedlander

I was very saddened to hear of the recent passing of Professor Sheldon Friedlander (obituary). He was an outstanding member of his field but still always had time to stop and say hello. I visited UCLA as a potential graduate student in March 2000; when Professor Friedlander learned that I would be staying in town over the weekend, he gave me his home phone number so that I had someone I could call if necessary. He will be sorely missed.

Things are going well here. There's a rumor that it may dip below freezing tonight! Both of my cats have had some sort of stomach virus, so my carpet is in desparate need of cleaning. BUT, the fleas have been nearly eradicated!

I received some lovely tulips for Valentine's Day (thanks mom and dad). Cassie, of course, wanted to eat them, so I took them to work. And then my co-workers decided to eat them. I was talked into trying a petal and they are actually quite tasty. They smell lovely as well.

I complained in a previous post about the slowness of our gas chromatograph (GC), which we use to measure ethanol production. We now have a new and improved GC. It runs samples in 5 minutes instead of 15 and does not need to be babysat - it's wonderful! Here's a picture of Claudia using it.