Left a ketone distillation unattended and heard a loud pop, ran into the lab to see water from the condenser spraying all over the room including on the hot mantle creating lots of steam, smoke coming off of the overheated charred goo left in the distilling flask, and black chunks of charcoal type goo (still glowing red hot) imbedded in the roof above the flask. The window was open, and smoke and steam were pouring out, a car was driving by and stopped to stare, luckily the fire dept was not called. Apparently the ketone had finished distilling, and the remaining crap continued to heat up, overheated, charred and expanded shooting the adapter off of the distilling flask and breaking the condenser in the process. Found chunks of black shit for months after that. DON'T LEAVE SHIT UNATTENDED.
also, pHarmacist (and anyone else with siezed glass joints:
SWIM has got glass joints stuck together a few times and the only method SWIM has found to get them lose is to use a torch. BTW this has worked everytime for SWIM. The type of torch to use is one of those little portable torches you get from the hardware store that has the screw on thing on the top, they're about a liter in size, and are blue, I think they are propane, sorry I don't have the exact info, I don't have mine here. So you take the torch and gently heat up the outer joint for a couple of seconds, then with oven mitts or similar try to twist the joint lose, if it doesn't come yet try again a little bit longer. The trick is to get just the outside joint hot enough to expand enough to loosen, while not transferring too much heat to the inner joint thereby keeping that joint smaller. Hope this helps.