Electrophysiology

Anyone else patch clamp?  I think there should be an extra gold star attached to anyone's diploma who does their dissertation primarily using electrophysiology.  It is the most nerve-wracking, tedious, and mind-numbing form of experimentation.  It seems to be nearly impossible to get all conditions (of which there are about 50) to be all correct, at the same time in order to get a good recording.  The experiments I do require an hour of stable recordings from one neuron.  Let's just say that in the past 11 days in a row of recording, I have yet to have a single full-length recording.  I've gotten frustratingly close, like 45 minutes and then the damn cell explodes or just gives up the ghost to spite me.  I literally will not graduate if some of these cells don't start cooperating.  Like if I don't have a certain number of these and the right kind of them, I will be here until the day that I do.
The funniest part is, my PI came in to try to help me trouble shoot today and it was immediately apparent that his patching skills are a bit rusty.  I think it might have been a bit painful for his male ego.  He left in a huff rather quickly spouting some nonsense about "off air currents" and "building vibrations" that he was sure was hindering his success.
And the best part (or worst part) is, I am the worst personality type for this.  I have a lot of excess energy and enjoy managing multiple things at once.  This requires sitting in a small, dark, isolated room and doing the same repetitive task over and over and over ad nauseum.  Plus I'm not actually getting any data therefore I am essentially wasting my time unless you consider this "good practice."  Does anyone else recognize this as the recipe for crazy (ie doing the same thing over and over without appreciable results)?  Yup.  I think that's actually what PhD training is about.  We don't start out crazy but we are by the time we're finally done.

The pretty GFP+ neurons I'm trying to patch.

My micropippete attached to a neuron.