At my last job, I was responsible for sourcing some bar code scanners.
They were for tracking patient's casenotes around a hospital, but they also had to work with the "Bloodtrack" system we'd just brought in which tracked packets of blood and made sure that patients got the right blood, rather than another type which would make them ill, or in fact die.

So it was that one auspicious Tuesday morning I found myself in the blood unit, holding a sample scanner in one hand and a bag of chilled blood in the other. It wasn't how I expected; almost black, fading to red at the edges where the pack was thinner...quite near to freezing but not actually freezing, and more solid than liquid, with just enough movement in the bag to suggest an "oozing" sensation.

I didn't eat any ice-pops for a while after that.
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Wed 13 Aug 2008, 16:58, Reply)