11:22 – Colin had a pretty bad evening. He’s only two years old, but he’s already terrified of fireworks. Someone in the neighborhood was setting off heavy stuff. Not just little bottle rockets and firecrackers, but serious rockets with heavy bursting charges, and in large numbers. Hell, they may even have been using a pyrotechnic mortar. Colin jumped every time one of the heavy ones detonated. I’m guessing that whoever was doing it probably burned at least $1,000 worth of fireworks.
I’m working today on internationalizing the biology and chemistry kits, which involves changes to a few of the chemicals in each. In many cases, we can comply with international hazardous materials shipping regulations simply by decreasing the concentration and increasing the amount. For example, the standard biology and chemistry kits include 15 mL of 6 M ammonia, which is hazardous according to IATA. So we’re going to substitute 30 mL of 4 M ammonia in the international kits, which makes it perfectly legal to ship.
For one or two chemicals, the change is more radical. For example, we ship 30 mL of 6 M (~ 20%) hydrochloric acid in our US kits. The maximum concentration allowable under IATA regulations is < 1%, or about 0.3 M. So we'll ship 100 mL of that, which is enough to get most of the labs done. The really annoying thing is the IATA rules on sodium (or potassium) hydroxide, for which they have zero tolerance. Shipping even one mL of 0.001% hydroxide solution violates their regulations. Fortunately, in most countries it's pretty easy to get ahold of solid sodium hydroxide, which is sold in hardware stores, DIY centers, and so on as "lye" or "crystal drain opener". So for hydroxide we have no option but to tell international buyers they'll have to get it locally.
The rest of the changes are pretty minor. For example, in our US kits we ship 15 mL of Sudan III stain solution, which is a tiny amount of the solid stain dissolved in isopropanol (rubbing alcohol). The only way to ship IPA legally under IATA regulation is at a concentration much too low to dissolve the stain powder. So we’ll ship a bottle that has only about 6 mg of the solid stain in it. International buyers will have to fill the bottle with 15 mL of rubbing alcohol and let the stain dissolve.
We’ll ship international kits via USPS Priority Mail International in boxes we provide, rather than using USPS-provided boxes. Although the boxes cost us a buck or so each, the postage will be at least a few dollars less than it would be if we used a USPS Large Flat-Rate Box.
Other than the chemical differences, the main difference for international buyers will be that they’ll have to pay postage. We won’t know exactly how much until we can get a weight for the international kits, but for the biology kits I’d guess we’re probably talking a postage surcharge of maybe $40 to Canada, $50 to Mexico, and $60 to the UK and most of the rest of Europe. Of course, depending on country, they may also have to pay import duties, VAT, or other fees to the postal carrier when the box is delivered.
The other difference is that for international sales we have no option but to ship FOB Winston-Salem, NC USA. In effect, that means our responsibility ends when we hand the package to the USPS carrier. All risk of loss or damage is assumed by the buyer. We may offer insurance at an additional cost, but it isn’t cheap and it may take literally months to settle a claim for loss or damage, assuming it’s settled at all.
17:25 – I just made up a liter of 0.5 M dipotassium oxalate solution for the international chemistry kits. Which of course gave me a good question for the AP chemistry course I’ll eventually write…
When I was in high school, all of the seniors took the Kuder test. It was intended to come up with recommendations for the careers we were best-suited to pursue. My top three recommendations were, IIRC, research scientist, university chemistry professor, and high-school science teacher. I suspect if I’d been a high school or university science teacher my students would have feared and loathed me.
So, here’s the question I came up with: “You dissolve 56.1056 grams of potassium hydroxide (FW 56.1056 g/mol) in 1000.0 mL of 0.5000 M oxalic acid to make a solution of dipotassium oxalate. To four decimal places, what is the molarity of that solution? If you have insufficient data to answer the question, specify what additional datum or data you need.”
Heh, heh, heh. I remind me of my ungrad p-chem professor. Each test day, he wore his test t-shirt, which had an image of an erect middle finger on the front.
Das feurwerken were being lit off by the amateurs around the Bay here last night and some of it was similarly heavy ordnance which must have cost some bucks. Further down the Lake we could hear several towns doing theirs and the glow in the sky off the clouds. All this was in addition to thunder and lightning in the near distance. Our GR mutt doesn’t like any of this much and is a bit nervous but not yet a basket case like his predecessor. The cats couldn’t possibly care less and nap through it all.
High 80s here today and sunny with blue skies.
Went to a communal independence celebration in Rosenberg last night with about five thousand other celebrators. Saw none of these underdressed morbidly obese women with lots of tatts that OFD talks about. No underdressed skinny women either. In fact, was surprised how many people were wearing jeans in the 90 F heat and humidity. Very multicultural crowd of hispanics, whites, blacks and orientals.
Our Lt. Governor showed up and gave a speech before the spectacular fireworks. Nobody cared about the speech.
“Saw none of these underdressed morbidly obese women with lots of tatts that OFD talks about.”
Either I’m living in the wrong region or simply hallucinating, which wouldn’t be a stretch for a maniac like me with decades of substance abuse behind me. All I gotta do is sit by my office window here and watch them lumber by; I note that the obese ones don’t smoke but the skinny ones do, like chimneys.
I’d move to Texas but I reckon you got enough Yankee bastards there already and it’s just too damn hot and I seen pictures of Gila Monsters and diamondback rattlers longer than me and in far better shape, apparently. I also worry about your water table. And hordes of invading narcotrafficantes. And former wonderful President G.W. racing around on his dirt bike and wielding a chainsaw.
We won’t know exactly how much until we can get a weight for the international kits
Good luck with Europe. We used to be able to send packages to Europe as packages, took a couple of months, but it was not too costly. Now everything we send has to be sent 1st class mail. Gets there quicker but the cost is really high. I don’t know that $60.00 would cover your costs. If you do find a better way to ship let me know as we send several packages a year to Germany.
Ray, USPS eliminated surface shipping to overseas destinations, hence the drastic increase in costs.
All I gotta do is sit by my office window here and watch them lumber by; I note that the obese ones don’t smoke but the skinny ones do, like chimneys.
Oh, there was plenty of morbidly obese people there, including yours truly. They were just all covered up. I did not see anyone smoking though as we have taxed those nasty, nasty, nasty ciggies to death. A pack is about $7 here. I can remember my FIL quitting when they hit 50 cents as that was just unreasonable.
I also worry about your water table.
Turns out I was an idiot. The well guys came out and told me to throttle the line so that it did not run the well pipe dry. The water table is just fine as long as I don’t pump 30 gpm on it for a couple of hours. So I am putting in water at the rate of 5 gpm or so. Have raised the north pond by a foot over the last 4 days or so.
And hordes of invading narcotrafficantes.
I hear that 70% of the USA is on prescription drugs (I’m one of that bunch) so I’m guessing the other 30% is just trying to catchup.
About 20-25% of my ham radio kit orders are international, mostly Europe with Australia the largest non-European base. All by first class mail (under 4 lbs) or Priority Mail.
Out of the several hundred international packages I’ve shipped, the only ones “lost” in the mail have been to Italy and Russia. For those destinations, it’s a “risk of loss is the purchaser’s responsibility” and I provide the customs declaration number and sometimes a scan of the declaration form.
Around the first of 2013, the USPS had a large – 20% or more – increase in international rates. USPS is still the cheapest shipper however. And, keep in mind that in many countries, alternative shippers such as UPS charge a high customs clearance fee, something that the post office does not do. In terms of cost, it’s best for customers, therefore, to stay with USPS.
It also used to be much faster for shipments to some EU countries. Germany was consistently 2 weeks from US post office to delivery. Last few shipments have run 50 to 60 days.
Also, if you ship Priority Mail, the large (one-half of a 8.5×11 sheet) customs form must be used except for the small flat rate boxes for which the small form is accepted. Some countries require the pouch that holds the customs form to also have copies of the invoice. France in particular and another one or two that I can’t recall at the moment. I found this out because I had to fax copies of the invoice to my customer who then sent them to French customs. (All my shipments have an invoice copy inside the box, of course, but this was apparently not sufficient.)
I quit the ciggies in 1978, cold-turkey; had done maybe a pack a day for six years, total. If memory serves, they were 65 cents a pack then, outta the machines, anyway.
Only drugs I take now are a once-in-a-blue-moon Benadryl if the allergy is really kicking my ass or an occasional aspirin or ibuprofen for various aches and pains which accompany my long slide into decrepitude and decay. Other than that, nothing; I could be a hadji bastard or a Seventh-Day-Adventist or a Mormon. Seems like the hadji bastards have more fun; blow shit up and go to strip clubs and then behead other people who do the same thing.
This article sums up the state of the country. Cops can and will do anything they want with impunity:
http://www.timesdispatch.com/opinion/our-opinion/columnists-blogs/bart-hinkle/hinkle-commit-any-felonies-lately/article_58344fc1-7d4f-584a-8d16-36a1b1f2cdc0.html
Colin had a pretty bad evening. He’s only two years old, but he’s already terrified of fireworks. Someone in the neighborhood was setting off heavy stuff. Not just little bottle rockets and firecrackers, but serious rockets with heavy bursting charges, and in large numbers. Hell, they may even have been using a pyrotechnic mortar. Colin jumped every time one of the heavy ones detonated. I’m guessing that whoever was doing it probably burned at least $1,000 worth of fireworks.
He is not the only one. My son evidently got mortared in Iraq (he refuses to talk about it) and cannot stand fireworks anymore. Especially the mortars. Even though he was a mortar gunner for the USMC.
People really go through some heavy fireworks nowadays. We live out in the county and supposedly have deed restrictions that say no fireworks. We had fireworks for four days preceding the fourth. My guess is that the fireworks mortars have gotten a lot cheaper than they used to be since all that stuff is made in China.
This article sums up the state of the country. Cops can and will do anything they want with impunity:
There is just so much wrong with that situation that I just do not know where to start. I like the fact that the DA dropped all the charges since they were plainclothes “cops”. Here is another article about the false arrest:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/07/05/911-operator-Virginia
Here in the Great State of Texas we have the charge of official oppression. One wonders if Virginia has the same.
Packets here come in 20, 25, 30 and up to 50 ciggies in each. I still smoke and buy the 30s in “cartons” of 6. Down here a packet of 30 will cost you north of $19 which would be around $12.6 for a packet of 20. You don’t know nothing about taxing to death.
On the cop front, I travelled from Tiny Town to Indy again today. During the nearly 4 years I have been back, the stretch of I-70 between Tiny Town and Indy has had massive construction going on continuously, somewhere on the route for the entire 4 years. Right now the stretch between Greenfield and Mt. Comfort has the westbound lane shifted so it runs on the shoulder and right lane, and one lane of eastbound traffic runs in what had been the left-most westbound lane with Jersey barriers separating those opposing 2 left-most lanes.
Today, a cop pulled over a pickup truck for a traffic offense, and they both stopped on a fairly long bridge, blocking the right westbound lane. The only option was for the 2 westbound lanes to merge into one. That little episode cost me 25 minutes of stop and go crawling, but fortunately, I was not on my way to work, but rather to have lunch with the broadcast people and hit up Fry’s afterwards. The stretch of I-70 between the Indiana eastern state line and Indianapolis is about as crowded as Interstates in Chicago. That stretch needs to be at least 3 lanes. Why America thinks Interstates can only be 2 lanes between cities baffles me. Some of them even need to be 4 and 5 lanes, and there is plenty of room around here for that kind of expansion.
But tell me what traffic offense is worth slowing down miles and miles of traffic for nearly a half-hour? The flow is so heavy, it is impossible to exceed the speed limit—especially with trucks limited to 65 mph and slowing down left-lane traffic as they pass each other at 60 to 65 mph. So the pickup could not have been speeding.
Meanwhile, we have running discussions at the radio project about how important audio streaming is to the station, and different people have different views. Mine has been that streaming is the future.
Today, we had some visitors from Nashville—a couple who grew up and went to school near Indy, then fled to the country music capital. Being from Indiana, they knew some of the regulars at the lunch. She commutes about 25 minutes to work every day in Nashville. There is a morning radio duo in Indy named Bob & Tom, who have been on the air since the ‘70’s. In order to feel more at home, she uses her iPhone to stream Bob & Tom to the car radio every morning via the iHeart app. She has been doing this for years.
The day is coming when broadcast radio is going to be superceded by streaming.
Why would a cop car stop a pickup truck on a narrow bridge and hold up tons of traffic for an hour or more? Why would a cop put four rounds into a guy’s dog on a public street in broad daylight? Why would cops stop a car with two women going to the beach, smell pot in the car and then hold them up for a full body cavity search by the roadside when a female blueshirt thug got there?
Because: “Cops can and will do anything they want with impunity”
We need to start taking down names, dates, ranks, serial numbers, shifts worked, badge numbers, cruiser tags, home addresses, snail mail, email, phone numbers, etc. and posting them all over the net, preferably with accompanying videos or at least still shots. Public shaming and public knowledge of who these out-of-control shitbags are.
It’s either something like that and the outrage we should have for these incidents, or we may as well all drop to our knees and grab the soap.
Trying out my first 4 TB external drive tonight. Big sucker! Took almost a full minute for Windows 7 x64 to do a quick format on it (I always reformat new drives before using them).
The day is coming when broadcast radio is going to be superceded by streaming.
I wish that I could disagree with this but I know too many people using satellite radio in their cars now. Losing local radio stations is going to suck. No weather, no local announcements, no local traffic.
OFD wrote:
“I’d move to Texas but … I seen pictures of Gila Monsters and diamondback rattlers longer than me and in far better shape…”
They also have spiders that cause extremities to die and have to be amputated. It doesn’t stop, you have to have some amputated, then more, then more…
And you should see the Texan mosquitos! They’ve been known to carry off children and small adults.
Let me second the recommendation to avoid UPS and DHL for international shipping. Their customs clearance charges are often more than the original shipping charge. It’s actually a really nasty game, if you think about it: they charge the sender to ship the package, and then charge the recipient for delivery.
This evil old man just doesn’t get it:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-06/murdoch-belittles-incompetent-police-in-secret-recording/4803380
I didn’t even know this one happened by Vegas. I guess the cops can now commandeer your house, car, ass whatever. I love the 3rd Amendment case! How long will it be before this happens and the popo get a face full of lead. COP BONUS!!! pepper spray the cowering dog in the corner.
http://reason.com/blog/2013/07/05/nevada-family-says-police-occupation-vio
An outrageous story. What I don’t get – and I had missed on first reading: this all happened two years ago. If the story is true as told, why didn’t they file suit immediately? This sounds like an open-and-shut case that ought to land several ex-police officers in jail. The fact that this didn’t happen – that they are taking action only now, two years later – makes me just a tad skeptical…
It probably was going on but not reported. The same thing happened about four years ago when a Vegas cop beat the shit out of a bystander for videoing him arresting a neighbor. The case went on for two years or so with nothing in the news. The guy finally won with a substantial settlement which wasn’t disclosed. The local papers here are very liberal and on the side of “The Man.” It turned out the guy who go beat was kind of a douche, but that does not give the cop the right to beat him. On his own property, too. I’m sure that’s why my property taxes went up, just before the housing collapse.
“The local papers here are very liberal and on the side of “The Man.”
This sentence caused a brief disconnect in my head; I get it, though. What’s going on here is that the “libruls” were never “liberal.” They’re basically authoritarian, and just want to grab the levers of power and wealth away from the “fascists.” So now they’re on the side of the cops and the soldiers, like the Muslim Brotherhood has been until recently in Egypt. And so long as the Man is beating on Tea Party types and right-wingers that is just fine and dandy with them. They loved it when cops were kicking and beating peaceful pro-life demonstrators praying on their knees in front of abortion industry mills. They don’t read history, though, or they might think about how these things work in circles; next year they may be the people getting beaten, tased and shot.
We’re all just subjects now anyway, rather than citizens; William Grigg has frequently documented cop abuses around the country:
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/
What OFD said. Liberals/progressives are fans of government power exactly as long as they are in control of it. Just look at Obama: after all his pretty words about closing Guantanamo, ending government spying on citizens, and on and on – as soon as he’s actually in control of all those things, he’s suddenly their biggest fan.
Bloody hypocrites, all of them. No different for the Republicans and, sadly, most of the Tea Partiers: Put them in power, and watch the abuses continue.
Where’s the “reset” button?
Well, you guys could gang together and make me dictator for life. I’m sure you wouldn’t like some of my decisions, but I promise you that government at all levels would be a lot, lot smaller than it is now.
Well, you guys could gang together and make me dictator for life. I’m sure you wouldn’t like some of my decisions, but I promise you that government at all levels would be a lot, lot smaller than it is now.
Hah! You say that now but, power corrupts! First, double the tax gatherers. And then double the spies. And then double … wait, this sounds like Obummer.
Power corrupts only people who enjoy ordering other people around. I’m not in that category. I’m a believer in live-and-let-live-unless-some-SOB-tries-to-push-me-around-in-which-case-I-kill-the-SOB.
I’d vote for Bob as dictator so long as he does not move down into Mordor; the atmosphere there evidently fries the brains of everyone who lives and/or works there, especially in gummint. So when, to take the most recent example, the Johnny-One-Note (all they bray about is finance/taxes/economics) Tea Party buffoons got elected and went there, they turned right around and became the usual bona-fide asswipes. When you stop and think of the hundreds and hundreds of people who’ve passed through Congress in the last half-century and I can only come up with two principled guys, Sam Rayburn and Ron Paul, that says a lot. The rest of them drank/drink the local Kool-Aid, whatever it is; probably wealth and power and public attention as some sort of combination aphrodisiac/hallucinogen.
The Great Dictator Bob would probably work out OK; I’m willing to give it a try, seeing as how everything else has pretty much failed since 1787. He is free to move about the country but I cannot stress enough staying away from Mordor.
“Well, you guys could gang together and make me dictator for life.”
I’m glad you’re not in charge of anything–Sarah
lol