The Key to Sequencher
I have to explain this, because I’m sure there are people who might not understand what in the hell I was talking about the other day. Especially since it happened again.
Sequencher is a program we molecular biologists use to analyze DNA sequence data - yup, all those fun A, T, C, and G combinations that encode life. Our labs share the program on many computers. It’s free to have the program on whatever computer you want, what costs thousands of dollars are the “keys” to use the program. Since they are so expensive, and our contract had recently run out, there are now a very limited supply of “keys” to use the program. So now every time you go to analyze your sequencing data, you play the roulette game of whether or not there will be a key available for you to use the program. Basically, if no one else is using the program there’s plenty of keys, if a bunch of people even have the program open - no keys.
Herein lies the most annoying part…people do not realize that when they close a window on a macintosh computer, the program does not close. There’s quite a few people that just “accidentally” leave programs open like this ALL the time. Obviously, including sequencher. So the best part, if you’ve been given the “there’s no keys available for use at this time, do you want to be put on the waiting list for a key or open the program in demo mode” (side note: in which you cannot do anything, such as save or edit your sequences - you can only LOOK at them which isn’t helpful) message, is that you have to go around to all the labs you know have keys and see if anyone has unknowingly left the program running.
Oh, is that a key ready for me? I’d better go use it now, or forever hold my peace.
