Like most jobs, mine can get tedious and, yes, a bit boring.
What to do? What to do?
Get creative. Have some fun!
My job entails much crushing and pulverizing of ore samples for x-Ray fluorescence assay. Hence, my own, personal, pulverizer!
A little while ago, I was watching my pulverizer pulverise (akin to watching paint dry), and thought, "you know, they pulverize peanuts to make peanut butter.", and I was off!
I bought a jar of dry roasted nuts, took them to work on a weekend, and got down to business.
The pulverizer-a BICO vibrating unit that uses a steel bowl with steel rings and puck.
Approximately 100g of nuts loaded.
After about 40 seconds of intense vibration at about 900 rpm, 81gr of peanutty goodness!
So, pulverizer-$8200.00, steel bowl & rings-$2022.00, peanuts-$1.00 (dollar store!) = $1.56/gr, or approximately $638.00/lb. to recoup initial cost.
In grad school, I was always tempted to use the lyophilizer to freeze dry some snacks. If it wasn't constantly used for stuff that could kill you (quickly or slow and painfully), I probably would have done it.
I really like peanut butter and really like your idea for killing some time.
It puts me in mmd of my Air Force days which involved large quantities of liquid nitrogen poured into highly amusing places. Hard to believe they trusted us with expensive and secret stuff. Good times.
I'll be passing through Tennessee mid-August so I can pick my order up then and save you the hassle of shipping.