I may have been putting off this post perhaps because it is not as fun reporting as good news.
I went to APS a couple of months ago to collect data on the miracle crystals (see link above). Cory from Emerald Biosystems was able to swing by (at nearly midnight!) and mount then plunge the crystals. Despite the channels being narrow, the mounting process is easy and by adding the appropriate buffer after opening the card there is no need to rush. I then transfered and screened the crystals. The result…
Salt crystals…
The crystals had a number of different morphologies, but unfortunately they were all salt crystals.
Although I have seen many others have the fun of collecting on salt crystals this was my first time. If you haven’t had the experience it is like watching a unicorn die.
I have been to the APS Synchrotron quite a few times and realized that there are a couple tricks of where to sleep, if you don’t stay at the Guest House. I often see newbies trying to do the head on the table approach, but in a rolling chair this can be tricky.
So what to do?
1) Sleep on the floor
Pro: plenty of space
Con: the floor is concrete
If you are going to go this route then at least sleep on a coat or put your head on a bag (bring a pillow!).
2) Conference room (located along outer rim of the building)
Pro: decent space, very thin carpet, darker and less noise than being near the beam lines
Con: 
group members may think you have disappeared, if you don’t let them where you are sleeping
3) Couch
Pro: located near the beam line and a lot better than the floor
Con: bright, few around, maybe on the shorter side if you are tall
I have not been to Brookhaven, but here is a tip from @modernscientist:
We traveled to the Advanced Photon Source this past weekend and rocked out on beamline 21 for 24 hours. The beamline had robotics for crystal mounting and although we did not use them for auto-mounting it was neat to see the set up. If you are interested in robotic mounting at a synchrotron near you then this page is worth exploring.
I picked a couple of bits of information about the robotics on this particular beamline.
1) Robots do not work well with certain pins. Although the 18 mm Hampton-style pin is recommended as the universal standard you need to be sure you select the right one. The Hampton Copper Magnetic HT was not allowed while the Hampton Copper Magnetic ALS HT was fine. The reason was due to the ‘upper lip’ that is present which differs between these two pins. ‘Upper lip’ meaning the ledge that is present before the pin tapers to meet the vertical copper pin. A picture can of these pins can be seen here (view full size – the left pin is not allowed while the center pin is fine). Molecular dimensions also has caps and pins that can be used.
2) Hampton caps (the plastic part that fits over the pin) were not allowed and instead had to use caps by Molecular Dimensions. The reason was being due to the consistency of length in Molecular Dimension caps. Personally, I have never noticed a difference in the lengths of the caps from Hampton.
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The crystal sits on a pin which is in a puck. The puck is placed in a container filled with liquid nitrogen. The robotic arm removes the pins from the puck, which is located inside the large container on the right side of the above picture.
I really enjoy reading and hearing stories about crystallography. A brief history of crystal mounting leading up to robotics is wonderfully covered in a paper (pdf) by Cele Abad-Zapataro.
Stephen also wrote a great post discussing his exciting times at a synchrotron awhile back.