Contamination Fairy Drawing Contest [Updated]

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a lab far far away there worked a microbiologist. For several years this microbiologist did her job, learned how to work with her cultures and developed methods that would allow her to test the objectives of her projects. She had her share of problems along the way, perhaps more than her share some might argue, but that was in the past and she was ready to put it all behind her as much as possible and move forward. About this time she was asked to help get another grad student trained in the art of working with her cultures. This concept made the microbiologist a bit nervous, the last time she had been in charge of training someone had been in her days of being a deli slave and it had not always gone well. As a deli slave whenever they hired someone it tended to be someone older that her and they did not always take kindly to a "stupid kid" trying to teach them how to do something. She quickly found out that V was not like that, working with V was great!

For awhile everything was happy and productive in the lab far far away, the only problems the microbiologist and V had were minor and they got through each of them without any trouble. They worked so well together, the microbiologist did not feel as isolated being the only one not working with pathogens and under a different professor in the lab anymore. And then one day the microbiologist looked at her plates and noticed that there were different looking colonies on her plates and when she looked at them under the microscope they were not the same, she had contamination! She decided that perhaps she had been using the same stock tube to get her cultures from too long and switched. That seemed to fix the problem at first until V showed the microbiologist her new plates, they were beyond contaminated, the Bifidobacteria had been totally overrun and there was nothing but contamination visible. They went back and forth a few times, sometimes V's plates were contaminated and the microbiologist's were fine, sometimes the reverse has been true, sometimes they have both had contamination...

About a month of testing and the source did not reveal itself and the microbiologist and her boss decided they should try moving forward again. And so they did, V made a new batch of yogurt and the microbiologist did her final preliminary run before getting going on her project at long last. The microbiologist waited anxiously for V's plates to come out of the incubator so she could look at them to see if she spotted any problems, and they looked fine. Then she took her own out, and they were quite obviously contaminated, she was crushed! The joy of getting back on track was derailed much like a toy train in the presence of a toddler. Being one that does not like to show such emotions in front of others the microbiologist took a few deep breaths and did what she does in such situations, she tried to make it funny, laughing is way better than crying! And thus the Contamination Fairy was conceived.

The Contamination Fairy is an evil fairy that likes to mess with the poor microbiologist's head. It randomly attacks the microbiologist and V's cultures leaving no trace of how it came in so the microbiologist is helpless to stop it from getting in that way again. It has been said that in order to beat your enemy you have to know your enemy, and this is where you come in dear readers. I am asking you and or your kid(s) to draw me pictures of what you/your kid(s) think the contamination fairy looks like. To give some incentive I am offering the winner their pick of one of the GIANTmicrobes. Here are the rules:

1. Each person can submit one picture, it can be anything from being drawn on paper using crayons/pencils/marker, it can be drawn with a computer program like adobe or pc paint, it can be a picture of a play doh/clay sculpture, as long as it is in good taste it can be entered. If you have several kids who can be conned into playing then each can make their own and be entered. To make it easier please make one comment per individual on this post, I will publish your comment after I receive the picture so you will know that I got it.
2. Electronic submissions are best, you can upload them on a hosting site and drop me a link in the comments, use this contest as blog fodder and link me to your post about it, or e-mail them to microblogologist@yahoo.com. I will allow certain people to mail me entries (no anonymous requests, I have to have some sort of proof that you are not a serial killer ;)), e-mail me and we'll discuss it.
   
3. Since I am allowing the idea of snail mail I will arbitrarily have the contest end on October 31, 2008 to give time for it to get here, I must receive all entries before 5pm central (3pm west coast, 6pm east) on the 31st. Winner will likely be announced that evening or on the 1st of November depending on how busy I am.
   
4. I have an international reader or two I think, not sure of the logistics of sending you the prize but I am more than willing to try to figure it out if you want to participate and have your art chosen.
5. This is just a silly contest and the prize is a silly stuffed toy that costs about $8. Don't take it too seriously and get mad if you don't win or something. Trying to sue me would be pointless, I owe the bank more than I am worth. (This should be unnecessary but you never know...)
   
6. Keep it clean, I will disqualify any entry I wouldn't be willing to show my niece (who is 5) and like the idea of decorating my lab bench with them.
   
7. Since I am only going to allow for one winner and have this open to everyone I plan to use a random number generator or something like that to pick the winner. I HATE picking favorites of pretty much anything and one cannot really compare a drawing done by an adult or older child with a younger one. This is why I ask for one comment per entry.
   
8. GIANTmicrobes inc is not aware of this contest, they are not liable for anything having to do with it (please don't sue me GIANTmicrobes, I love you guys!)
9. A few lines explaining why you/the kid made it the way they did would likely amuse me greatly (and would be a hilarious blog post that would totally write itself) but you don't need to, I would like to know the age of the kiddies so I can do the "That is sooooo cute!" thing.
10. Most importantly be creative and have fun!

**Edited to extend the contest deadline since I have not gotten a single entry =(. Niecey and Cheryl both made me pictures (I am not counting them in the "contest"), they are awesome and are currently hung with pride on my lab bench. Perhaps they will help spark someone's imagination:
Oh and special thanks to Deb, she wrote a totally sweet post about me and pimped this contest, it made my day! She is one of my favorite bloggers, which makes her the equivalent of a celebrity in my world, not only does she write hilarious posts but you get a bonus mini-post if you read the labels she puts on her posts. I totally try to copy her with mine but definitely do not have her talent for it! Oh and her linky love caused a huge jump in my google analytics stats, I have named the spike in the graph Deb's Peak. Thank you so much Deb!

Guess that Gizmo

Way back when I introduced (somewhat prematurely) what I plan to have be a regular feature on this blog: Guess that Gizmo, I hadn't even convinced Baby Sibling to make an awesome graphic for me (check out that awesomeness, thanks Baby Sibling!!!!!). I've been contemplating how I wanted this to work and decided that I am going to borrow some concepts from The Roaming Southerner and have it be a contest where people earn points over a given time frame and at the end someone gets a nerdy piece of blog bling that they can display proudly if they so choose (the time frame will give me time to figure out how blog bling works...). So here are the official Guess that Gizmo rules:

1. Guess that Gizmo will follow an academic calendar give or take:

• Fall Semester: Late August through Mid December.
• Spring Semester: Mid January through Early May.
• Summer Semester*: Mid May through Mid August.

2. The point system is as follows:

• Wrong but amusing answer: 1 point
• Right answer: 2 points
• I will not be giving the right answer until the end of the semester so more than one person can be right, for multiples of the wrong answer(s) only the first person gets the creativity point(s).

3. There is currently no limit on the number of guesses, if a miracle happens and I get swamped I may need to revisit this one.

4. Guess that Gizmo is meant to be fun, don't take it too seriously! There are things I encounter in labs that I have no idea what they are and sometimes try to guess what it is/does, figured that it might be fun to see what other people might guess.

5. And since one never knows: I am not making any statement for or against a brand/product/company by including it or its competitor in Guess that Gizmo (though I will totally sell out for an anaerobic incubator**! I am NOT kidding!) and my employer has absolutely nothing to do with the content of this blog and it is written on my personal computer.


*As a grad student I do not get the summer off, school is year round for us, so why should you all get the summer off Guess that Gizmo? ;) (LiteralDan's use of footnotes amuses me greatly and so I wanna be cool like him and use them on my blog, citing my source makes it totally ethical to blatantly copy him)

**Anaerobic means without oxygen, the bacteria I work with are anaerobes and will not grow in the presence of oxygen so I have to put my cultures in airtight jars with expensive packets that convert the oxygen into carbon dioxide and/or water, pain in the butt and limiting. An anaerobic incubator is pretty much #1 on my wish list. I have come close to having that dream come true, once it was the wrong thing and broken anyway (that was soooo embarrassing, though it tricked Dr. M too) and the next Boss Lady decided we needed a food grade centrifuge (machine that spins samples so that the solids in a liquid go to the bottom and stay there as the liquid is poured off) more than we needed the most awesomest incubator in the world (she is right, part of the project calls for people to sample what I make and so I need equipment that has never been in the path lab to get the study approved by the ethics board, she is not cool with my idea that we could just recruit people we don't like for the taste panel...).