Back to Basics
We had an awful time at the Olive Garden the other night, which prompted me to fire off an email to their corporate offices complaining about the level of service. The squeaky wheel gets the oil; they thanked us for our comments and are sending a gift card in the mail as an apology. Not a bad way to start off a Friday morning.
It’s all about lithium enolates today. It’s been quite some time since I last used any lithium reagent (properly), so I decided to brush up on the basics as a refresher. The University of Rochester has an impressive website entitled “Not Voodoo,” which features the rudimentary concepts of synthetic organic chemistry along with a few pearls of wisdom intertwined (http://chem.chem.rochester.edu/~nvd/). There’s a very interesting laboratory guide that’s perfect for the inexperienced organic chemist, Advanced Practical Organic Chemistry by Leonard, Lygo and Proctor (ISBN: 0 7487 4071 6). The book covers all of the basics without going into excruciating detail and/or half-directions—characteristics of many Ph.D.’s.
While on the subject of standard operating procedures, as many of you know, Perrin and Armarego published an excellent book entitled Purification of Laboratory Chemicals (ISBN 0 7506 3761 7), which has recently been a personal favorite. It’s pretty much an encyclopedia preparing a number of reagents for reaction-level purity (organic and inorganic). The best part is that the majority of the purification procedures have references for primary literature (if that sort of thing matters to you).
Switching gears, what’s up with the Red Sox as of late? We once had a 12-game lead on the Yanks, and now we’re down to 7 1/2 after losing a 3-game series to the ROCKIES at Fenway. Maybe we can get the bats swinging against San Fran this weekend.
On a more personal level, there’s a great article in the Crimson White about how UA is extorting engineering students out of their football tickets this upcoming semester: (http://media.www.cw.ua.edu/media/storage/paper959/news/2007/06/14/Opinion/CoOp-Students.Unfairly.Denied.Tickets-2915148.shtml?reffeature=mostemailedtab). That author must be a genious.
Have a great weekend.
