ESP Engineering weekly mtg (11-08-2007)

Present: Brent Roman, Addie Harris, Scott Jensen, Cheri Everlove, Jim Birch

 Tech Transfer: Build of 2 new instruments moving along smoothly.  New motor brackets being sent to El Camino for machining.  That charge (~$3500) must be subdivided b/w various accounts.  Wait to talk to Scholin about this.  By Thanksgiving, both machines should be wired and plumbed.

Much discussion about puck sticking to O-ring, and possible fixes/re-designs.  Scott looking into.

 Software:  Ported our code from v1.6.8 up to 1.8.6 and (unfortunately) found exactly the same errors at the same spot.  Cannot be made to fail on the simulator, but fails on the actual instrument.  Brent attacking this by tracing log comments.  Brent attended Ruby Conference in Charlotte, NC and is interested in J-Ruby for our shore station. Will look into.

 MFB:  still not working but Chris and Addie have run a large number of experiments to try and isolate where our reagent mix is being 'killed'.  Conclusion so far is that something within the fluidics block is inhibiting the reaction, since building slugs from the block show diminishing PCR activity the longer we wait to run on the 7700.  Trying to build slugs only going through ARV, and other permutations to see where the contamination is entering.

 Vacations discussed.  Brent will be away for most of Dec.  All others have short holiday vacations planned.

Discussion about starting to keep notes on Confluences, this record being the first.  Question came up about how easy it would be to search Confluence records.