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Month: November 2013

Sunday, 10 November 2013

08:39 – As Barbara and I raked leaves yesterday, we didn’t realize that we were risking attack by predatory insects. According to the entomologist interviewed for the article, these insects “feed on caterpillars and people raking leaves.”

While she labels bottles, Barbara watches stuff on Netflix streaming that I don’t watch, things like Grey’s Anatomy. While she was doing that yesterday, FedEx showed up with the balance of the order from Amazon that I’d placed Thursday. As I was opening the box, the doctors on Grey’s Anatomy were talking with a young patient and her husband, one of whom commented that they thought they were prepared for anything. When the doctors asked what they meant, the patient and her husband explained that they were preppers but they didn’t make a point of telling people because everyone would think they were nuts. Then they started talking about bug-out bags and suggesting that the doctors should prepare several of them for themselves and keep them at home and in their vehicles.

So, of course Barbara asked me what was in the box. I told her there were several USB 3 flash drives and some other items that we’d use in kits. And then I pulled out the final item, a 10-pack of aluminized Mylar space blankets. For our bug-out bags.

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Saturday, 9 November 2013

13:03 – I’m happy with Amazon Prime. I placed one order for half a dozen items Thursday. Two of them arrived yesterday and the others today. Also, with the addition of their watchlist queue, Amazon Prime Videos is now quite usable. Not as featureful as the Netflix queue, but good enough. At $79/year (~$6.50/month), it’s a no-brainer. Amazon has become to us what the Sears catalog was to our parents and grandparents. When I need to buy something, I check Amazon and Costco. Between them, they get most of our non-local purchases.

Barbara and I just spent a couple hours blowing/raking leaves. I tried to convince her to burn them, thereby returning their captured carbon dioxide to the atmosphere where it belongs, but she wouldn’t do it, probably because there’s a local law that forbids it.

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Friday, 8 November 2013

10:44 – As it turns out, Amazon Prime Video now provides a queue, which they call your watchlist. After I signed up for Prime, I started adding series that aren’t available on Netflix streaming to our watch list. I added series 3 of Downton Abbey and series 3 of Justified without any problem. Then I added Under the Dome. It showed up on our watchlist, but rather than having the Prime logo under the series icon, it had a note that it costs $2.99 per episode. I went back to the page for Under the Dome, which indeed showed that series as free with Prime. So I contacted Amazon tech support.

When I got to the page with contact information for Amazon tech support for Prime instant videos, there was no phone number. Instead there was a field to enter my phone number and there were two icons, one for “Call Me Now” and one for “Call Me in Five Minutes”. I clicked on the Call Me Now icon, and phone rang literally less than two seconds later. After about 6 minutes on hold (versus the 5 minute estimate) I was connected to a support person. I explained the weirdness about Under the Dome. She checked on her own system and said that she was seeing the same error that I was seeing and that she’d report it, but that I could indeed watch the series without being charged per episode. I verified with her that any time we attempted to watch video that was pay-per-view I’d have to enter my PIN number, so I didn’t have to worry about being charged unexpectedly.

So, I added Amazon Prime videos to my channel list on the Roku box and verified that my watch list showed up on the Roku. When Barbara got home from work, we decided to watch Downton Abbey. We watched the one-minute summary of series 3 and started the five-minute summary of series one and two. About two minutes into that, the screen went black. Not good. Then the Roku box rebooted spontaneously, something that had never happened before. I hope that was coincidental. We’ll try Amazon video again tonight.

14:27 – I just saw a report that yet another former NFL player, Tony Dorsett, has been diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The only reason Dorsett’s illness is notable for me is that I met him once or twice when I was a photographer for my high school newspaper and yearbook. He played football and basketball for Aliquippa/Hopewell, which New Castle High School frequently played against. Tony was a year behind me. Back then, his name was Dorsett with the emphasis on the first syllable. I seem to remember that he changed the emphasis to the second syllable when he was in college or early in his NFL career. I was very sorry to read of his problem. He was, as I recall, a nice guy and a hell of an athlete.

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Thursday, 7 November 2013

08:15 – The end of an era. Blockbuster Video, which a decade ago had about 9,000 stores, announced yesterday that it’s closing its distribution centers and its 300 remaining stores. The Onion sums it up.

It’s not often, even in retrospect, that one can point to a single small error that will kill a business. But in Blockbuster’s case it’s possible to point out just such an error. In the late 90’s, a Blockbuster customer returned a video late and was charged a $40 late fee. That pissed him off. His name is Reed Hastings, and instead of just stewing about it he went out and founded Netflix. Which killed Blockbuster.

11:45 – I’ve spent the morning issuing purchase orders and buying stuff. I ordered some stuff from Amazon, and they asked me if I wanted to sign up for a 30-day free trial of Prime. I’d done that before and let it drop before the 30 days expired. I did it that time mainly to try Amazon Prime Video, which turned out to be a PITA compared to Netflix. Incredibly, Amazon has no queue. You have to search for each video you want to watch and start it playing manually. I thought that first Prime trial was a one-time only thing, but about six months ago Amazon started offering me a second chance. So today I decided to sign up again. This time, I’ll just keep it and pay them their $79/year. We’ll probably watch some videos on Prime–stuff Netflix doesn’t have yet–and the free 2-day no-minimum order shipping is a minor plus. Also, Barbara sometimes wants a Kindle book that’s priced outrageously. With Prime, she gets one free book a month.

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Wednesday, 6 November 2013

08:30 – Boy, things can change fast. On Monday morning, I thought the month was starting slowly and that we had enough kits in stock to last through the month. As of this morning, we’re down to one chemistry kit and three forensic science kits in stock, so I desperately need to build more. Particularly since we can expect to do at least twice as much business next month as this month. I have enough sub-assemblies in stock to assemble another dozen chemistry kits, so that’s the first order of business. Then we need to get to work building more sub-assemblies. What concerns me is that we have two or three other possible bulk orders that could arrive at any time, so we could suddenly find ourselves with orders for 100+ kits on no notice. But it’s nice to be busy.

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Tuesday, 5 November 2013

10:00 – With less than five days of the month gone, we’re already at about 40% of kit revenues for November 2012. Of course, we could hit another dry spell any time, but otherwise it looks like this may end up being a pretty good month. We’re still in good shape on kit inventory for everything but the forensic science kits, so we’ll get started on another batch of those.

I almost ordered a couple of USB flash drives from Costco yesterday, which would have been a mistake. The drives had a “III” in their names, which I first assumed meant they were USB 3 drives. Fortunately, I checked the data transfer rates, which were only 4 MB/s for writes and 15 MB/s for reads. Geez. Costco didn’t have any reasonably fast drives, so I’ll just order something from Amazon. I have noticed that we’re now buying a very large percentage of the stuff we buy on-line from either Amazon or Costco.

17:27 – With five days of the month gone, we’re now at 96%+ of kit revenues for November 2012, thanks to a bulk order of chemistry kits from a public school distance-learning organization in Kansas. Of course, that also nearly wiped out our inventory of chemistry kits, so I’ll start tomorrow on getting another dozen or two of those assembled. Right after I get all those kits drop-shipped to the students in Kansas.

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Monday, 4 November 2013

09:44 – With all of the news about the catastrophic rollout of Obamacare, I’m surprised that no one has pointed out that these problems lose Obamacare the fig-leaf of Constitutionality that the contingent SCOTUS ruling provided. It ruled that Obamacare was Constitutional based on representations that are clearly false and were known to be false when they were made, and it made clear that its ruling was based on those representations being true.

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Sunday, 3 November 2013

09:00 – After several days of highs in the 60’s and lows in the 50’s, it was 39F (4C) when I got up this morning. The leaves have noticed. A week ago, most of them were still green and attached. Now, a lot of them have changed and fallen. Barbara vacuumed the yard yesterday, and there are already a lot more leaves down. My guess is that most of the deciduous trees will be looking winter-bare by mid-month.

After a mediocre October, kit sales are looking up for November. If the current pace persists, we should do at least double kit revenues this month relative to November of last year. Barbara labeled several hundred bottles yesterday; today she’ll label and fill several hundred more. Among other things, I have the messy job today of filling 500 g baggies of plaster of Paris for the earth science kits. I don’t think I’ll depend on the zip-lock to keep them sealed during shipping. I’ll heat-seal them above the zip.

10:29 – As expected, I get 22 half-kilo bags from each 25-pound sack of plaster of Paris. As I was working on them, I though how odd it is that our abilities change with age, usually for the worse, but our perceptions of our abilities don’t. When Barbara picked up the 25-pound bag of plaster of Paris, I was disappointed that Home Depot didn’t carry larger bags–50 or 100-pound. As I was man-handling a 25-pound bag today, I realized that it felt, if not heavy, at least noticeable. Back in the day, I’d have thought nothing of shouldering a 100-pound bag and carrying it around. I’d have thought nothing of doing that all day long. Now, a stinking 25-pound bag is a noticeable weight for me to carry around, and hauling 40- and 50-pound bags of sand and gravel up and down the stairs is distinctly non-trivial.

I’m a pale shadow of what I once was, both physically and mentally, and I try to keep that in mind. In the immortal words of Harry Callahan, “a man’s got to know his limitations”. About the only thing that hasn’t degraded too much is my reaction time. I still have the reflexes of a rattlesnake, albeit perhaps a middle-aged rattlesnake.

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Saturday, 2 November 2013

09:11 – Barbara had a nice, relaxing day off yesterday. She got home at 6:30, with a stromboli she’d ordered on her way back and picked up just before she got home. Al was released from the hospital yesterday. Frances called about 9:45 to say they were about to leave the hospital. I drove over to their house to meet them, and then sat with Al for a few hours while Frances ran errands and picked up groceries. Al seems to be doing fine, although he’ll be off work for the next six weeks.

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Friday, 1 November 2013

07:55 – Barbara is taking the day off work today and heading out on a day trip with her friend Bonnie. She needs the break. For the last year–the last two years, really–she’s been coping pretty much constantly with serious medical issues with her dad and mom, and now her sister’s husband. She and her sister have both essentially been on-call 24×7, so having even one day off once in a while helps. I tried to convince Barbara to turn off her cell phone today and stay completely off the grid, but she said she’d better keep it on, just in case.

We got hammered pretty badly by the Federal Follies last month. Revenues for October 2013 were only about 120% those for October 2012. I realize that most people would be delighted with 20% growth, but I’m disappointed by anything short of doubling.

09:07 – The numbers for ObamaCare signups are finally becoming public. On 1 October, the first day of sign-ups, the expected flood of sign-ups took place. ObamaCare signed up not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but SIX people. And that torrid rate has apparently continued all month. During October, HUNDREDS of people signed up for ObamaCare. The sign-ups may even have gone into FOUR FIGURES, leaving only about 99.9999% of those eligible not yet signed up. Not to worry, though. There’s still two whole months before the end of the year.

And I’m betting that nearly all of the people who’ve signed up are insurance companies’ worst nightmares, with pre-existing conditions that are hideously expensive to treat. I wonder if the health insurance companies that foolishly supported ObamaCare are finally realizing that the true purpose of ObamaCare has always been to put them out of business and force a change to a single-payer government monopoly on health insurance. If they doubt that, they need only look at the numbers: after only one month, the net effect of ObamaCare is that millions of people who used to have private health insurance now have no insurance at all.

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