10:36 – I’d thought we had enough kits on hand to cover us through the end of the month, but we’re now down to five each of our flagship chemistry and biology kits. Those might last through the end of the month, but it’s also possible they could all disappear tomorrow. So we decided to do short runs of kits just to get our finished goods inventory up to more comfortable levels. We built a dozen biology kits yesterday, everything but the tubes. Because, as I discovered, I’d forgotten to order more tubes. So we decided to leave the dozen biology kits tube-less, along with the dozen chemistry kits we’ll build next. That way, we can allocate our inadequate supply of tubes to biology kits or chemistry kits, as the need arises.
I just cut a PO for cases of test tubes, 15 mL centrifuge tubes, and 50 mL centrifuge tubes, all of which we use in all of our kits. Fortunately, our usual vendor for these generally has them in stock and ships quickly, so we should have them by the end of the week. What annoys me is that the last time we built major batches of kits, I made a mental note to order these things and then promptly forgot to do it.
“What annoys me is that the last time we built major batches of kits, I made a mental note to order these things and then promptly forgot to do it.”
Getting old is hell. ™
It’s not the years, it’s the global warming.
As a side project to occupy my copious free time, I think I’ll start modifying old homilies with Global Warming, Climate Change, and the imminent Ice Age.
Never look a gift evidence of global warming in the mouth.
It is better to keep quiet and be thought a Global Warming denier than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Come on guys. There’s no question that the planet has been warming up over the last century or two. The questions are to what extent, if any, have human activities affected this warming, and whether warming is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing.
Given the data I’ve seen, I think there’s no reason to believe that human activities, including carbon dioxide production, have had any effect on the warming curve. I wish they did, because global warming would, overall, be a very good thing for humanity, given the alternative.
At what point do you break down and start using inventory control software to replace the OMGWO method?
Fair enough. I’ll confess to laziness in typing “Global Warming”, with optional extra syllables and exclamation points, rather than “ZOMG! Anthropogenic Global Warming We’re All Gonna Die!”. And anyway, “global warming” (latterly rebranded as Climate Change), as used by the innumerate majority, has almost nothing to do with demonstrable effects of actual rises in temperature and almost everything to do with fear, ignorance, mystical thinking, hatred of humanity, desire to bring down the successful, and desire to get in on the looting. Sure, I could type all that, but it’s easier to write “Globule Wormening!!!1!”.
Around here, everyone gets excited when there is a new historical high for some day in history. Yeah, there’s about 3 of those every summer, and has been all my life. Now if we had new record highs for every day of the entire summer, that would be something. This year has been much cooler in the Midwest than previous years, and this fall is the coldest in a long time. I just keep referring to it as the cool down caused by global warming.
Of course we’re undergoing climatic change! That fact is inarguable.
We always have undergone climatic change, and until the sun “burns” down to a clinker we always will.
Every climatic figure you see will be at best an estimate, a guesstimate, or at worst “an onagerian estimate”.
Now choose your time-frames, locations, and methods of measurement in order to fix the averages and directions of movement of the figures you want to compare in order to arrive at the conclusions you’ve determined to be desirable.
There it is.
Speaking of weather; we were having light snow flurries here yesterday afternoon and since Mrs. OFD’s flight from Chicago to VT was delayed 3.5 hours, I had more time to work on stuff upstairs here and barely noticed that it had gotten dahk outside. So about the time it was to go get her at the airport, 8 PM, I went outside and everything was covered with snow and ice, a veritable wintuh wunduh-land! Got up on the interstate in the Saab convertible, a mistake, as I stupidly thought they’d have the highway sanded and salted by then and it would be better points south. Wrong. Sucked all the way down to the airport, crummy visibility, no snow tires, slippery, and doing 35-40 maximum all the way, thirty miles. If I’d known what it was like up there and been more intelligent, I would have just taken the truck, Dodge 4X V8 with aggressive tires. Nope, dopey Davy takes the Saab. It ran OK because I went slow and carefully, but we bagged the trip back and spent the night at MIL’s place instead, right down there about five miles further south from the airport on beautiful Shelburne Bay, which doesn’t hold a candle to our Saint Albans Bay.
Continued strong wind gusts today from O Kanaduh, changing to single-digits tonight, continued single digits at night for the next couple of days, and then snow and rain showers, and then Tuesday into Wednesday an alleged 3-6 inches of snow coming. The weather liars screwed up the forecast for last night so we shall see (they’d said just light flurries, not a damn ice storm).
Any doubts from now on on these airport trips and OFD the Dummy takes the truck.
Bob, you need to figure out an organizational system so that you have a list of things to do somewhere so you don’t keep forgetting them. It probably needs to be an electronic list so that you won’t misplace it.
Or at least that is what I find that I need to do, and I am younger than you.
Dave, did Mrs OFD say you could drive the SAAB?
Bob, I knew I’d come across the “onagerian” thing before. It’s some time ago now, but what I’d heard (January 2006) was “onagerian surmise”. Pretty much same meaning, of course – in fact the author used the exact same definition.
OMGWO = Oh My God We are Out of this very important stuff ???
Inventory management is tough. Ask Wal*Mart. They still use mainframes to do it.
Climate change is definitely still going on. A little cooler, a little warmer, all natural and not caused by mankind. The A in AGW is a joke, just like the Houston Texans.
I am beginning to get worried about the petulant man-child who is the President of the Unites States. He is showing signs of guileness by trying to switch the national concern from his failing healthcare plan to nuclear weapons in Iran. My prediction is that it will not work but he may totally screw up the works for Israel protecting themselves. I do not think that we should protect Israel, they should do it for themselves. But we should not tie their hands though.
Anyway, I was thinking that with the obvious failure of healthcare.gov, that Obummer would start calling for Medicare for All ™. After all, that is what he really wants according to the media and Rush. Instead, he wants us to look at curtain #2. I think that he may be messing with curtain #1 to make it fail even more horribly and force Congress’s hand. But in the meantime, we are going to get it and get it good while everyone tries to pick up the turd by the clean end in order to keep some semblance of their health insurance.
BTW, I am an expert turd picker upper as I clean up after my dog on our daily two mile walks. Plus I had my office septic tank cleaned out last week and got really grossed out. I have learned that some turds are easy to bag and some turds are best left alone. Healthcare.gov looks like one of those really nasty turds that squishes apart into the grass the minute that you touch it with the baggie.
So, what will the man-child do next with the best healthcare system in the world? And yes, I have seen the graph of USA cost versus the world:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddhixon/2012/03/01/why-are-u-s-health-care-costs-so-high/
Plus my secondary worries here are that we are sliding into a new recession based on the fact that no one know what the cost of their healthcare insurance is going to be in 2014. The worst thing that you can do to a businessperson is to vary their costs without giving them some sort of guidance on the range of change. Responsible business people all over are cutting back their spending in order to have more dollars for insurance.
After all, no one wants to go naked in a possible situation that might bankrupt you just because you had a heart attack or got cancer. Or decided to forgo treatment just because you do not have the cash.
You don’t have mains sewage out there in the boondocks?
The newest member of my extended family:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/0fz7byfcn9qn7sf/IaE4FvOBbf
Meet Barkley, a chocolate coloured BC. I think he’s about two months old, born in Queensland, and now training my younger nephew and his wife in Adelaide, SA.
Why are US health costs so high? Why does a jet fighter cost more than $100 million? Two aspects of the same problem: rent-seeking, cronyism, whatever you choose to call it. Legalized corruption.
This happens everywhere, but the US is especially bad. That’s just one random reference, but it’s pretty well established: get elected to Congress, become wealthy.
I don’t use formal inventory-control software, but I do use a spreadsheet. When we build kits, I update the quantities for each item that goes in the kits.
I hope they realize their lives are no longer their own. That little creature will be running things from now on.
I’ve told them. (shrug)
They don’t have any sheep so I’ve told them to prepare for them and any visitors to be herded.
You don’t have mains sewage out there in the boondocks?
Nope. All that I have coming onto my office site is electricity and phone lines. We have our own water well (30 gpm) and our own two stage aerobic septic tank (2500 gallons) with a chlorination stage and two “water” sprinklers. Nasty water.
No natural gas either. I have been told that if I am willing to pay around $6,000, that they will pull a natural gas line for me onto the property down at the office building. Not today.
And no cable either so no cable modems. Just two DSL lines that I have networked together.
“Dave, did Mrs OFD say you could drive the SAAB?”
I don’t need permission from Mrs. OFD to drive the Saab. And she is not qualified just yet to drive the truck, haha.
Should be landing at the airport just about now from the one-day trip to Mordor and coming back here, unless she’s too beat and the weather is a mess again; very windy and potential snow showers again.