Month: March 2014

10:17 – I somehow had it in my mind that today was to be a pretty nice day. Not so far. I got back from walking Colin around 09:00. The wind chill was well below freezing, and it was drizzling. I even saw some white stuff floating past, mixed with the cold rain.

Barbara just finished the weekly house cleaning. After her shower, she’ll get started labeling more bottles. I’m still working on the manual for the earth/space science kit. I’m also stubbing out some ideas for an AP Biology/biotechnology kit that I plan to enter in the SPARK Competition late this year, assuming they hold it again for 2015.

09:54 – Spring may finally have arrived. March came in like a rabid weasel on meth, but according to the forecasts March will go out like a soft, cute, fuzzy panda, with highs in the upper 60’s (~20C) and lows well above freezing. I blame it on global climate change.

Speaking of which, the climate-change nutters are at it again. I actually saw one story that blamed that enormous mudslide in Washington on global climate change. Geez. Science is supposed to be predictive, not postdictive.

Science kit sales remain slow. We’ll be lucky to do 130% of the revenue this month that we did last March. Still, 2014Q1 revenues will be close to double those of 2013Q1, so I can’t really complain. If the past is any indication, sales will remain slow on a relative basis through April and start to pick up again in May.

I’m still accumulating items for our car emergency kits. I’d considered adding a classic Zippo lighter to each kit, but on second thought I decided not to. The Zippo lighters are extraordinarily reliable and can burn ordinary gasoline but they’re not sealed, so the fuel evaporates over just a week or so. That means I’d also have to include cans of fuel for them. Instead, I’m just going to include a three-pack of filled Ronson Comet refillable butane lighters in each kit, and perhaps a small can of butane. The Comets will hold gas indefinitely even at the high temperatures reached in a vehicle during summer. I’ll also include a 35mm film can of strike-anywhere matches and a magnesium/flint firestarter.

08:04 – Synchronicity. Until I used the word “graupel” yesterday, I don’t believe I’d ever seen it used in an English-language setting. Growing up in Pennsylvania, we called it “soft sleet” or “slush”.

So when Barbara checked her mail and regular web sites after dinner last night, she shouted “graupel?” to me. I told her what it was. A short while later, she told me that a National Weather Service Local Weather Alert on the Weather Channel website was forecasting graupel. Indeed.

Issued by The National Weather Service
Raleigh/Durham, NC
Tue, Mar 25, 2014, 6:11 PM EDT

… SCATTERED RAIN SHOWERS… POSSIBLY MIXED WITH SOME GRAUPEL AND/OR WET SNOW… WILL MOVE ACROSS CENTRAL NC OVER THE NEXT FEW HOURS…

SCATTERED RAIN SHOWERS WILL MOVE ACROSS CENTRAL NORTH CAROLINA THROUGH THE EVENING HOURS. WET SNOW AND/OR GRAUPEL WILL BRIEFLY MIX IN WITHIN THE HEAVIER SHOWERS. THERE HAVE BEEN SEVERAL REPORTS OF MIXED PRECIPITATION ACROSS THE TRIAD AND NORTHERN PIEDMONT DURING THE LAST HOUR AND THIS WILL TRANSLATE EAST OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF HOURS. HOWEVER… WITH TEMPERATURES ABOVE FREEZING AND MAINLY MIXED PRECIPITATION… LITTLE ACCUMULATION IS EXPECTED. ANY WET SNOW ACCUMULATIONS WOULD BE CONFINED TO GRASSY AND ELEVATED SURFACES WITH NO ACCUMULATION ON ROADS OR BRIDGES.

Work continues on building more forensic science kits. We need to get another dozen or two built this week, and then get to work on building more biology kits. We’re in good shape on chemistry kits for now.

09:49 – I just returned from walking Colin. Talk about a wintry mix. It was about 95% cold rain, but with other stuff mixed in. There was snow, sleet (in the US/Canadian sense of tiny ice pellets), sleet (in the UK sense of mushy snow/rain), and I think maybe even some graupel. Fortunately, nothing is likely to stick. Barbara drove her car to work today.

I’m going to go make up some bottles of crystal iodine, which is the only thing I’m short of to make up more forensic kit chemical bags.

12:10 – Science kit sales are extremely slow at the moment, better than last March but not by much, so we’re focusing now on building inventory. Right now, we can build kits a lot faster than we can sell them. Come the summer/autumn months, we’ll be selling them a lot faster than we can build them. So, other than making up and filling chemicals with limited shelf lives, we’re doing all the stuff now that we won’t have time to do later.

Barbara and I have talked about relocating once she’s ready to retire from the law firm and her mom is no longer around. One of my primary candidates, which I think Barbara agrees with, is the mountains up near the North Carolina/Tennessee border. We want a small town, but not too small. We want services like municipal water and sewer, a reasonable local hospital, and so on. Broadband Internet is obviously a requirement, and it’d be nice if there were competing ISPs. Natural gas would be nice, and Barbara insists on garbage pickup, either municipal or private contractor. A Costco within reasonable driving distance would be nice.

The other issues are religiosity and diversity. We were watching an episode of Friday Night Lights the other night. The high school football team traveled to an away game in Kingdom, Texas. As one of the characters commented, “92 churches, no bars”. Although I won’t say I’d prefer the converse, we certainly don’t want to be the only non-churchgoers in whatever community we relocate to. That’s one of the main reasons I was thinking about Boone, which as a university town has a fair degree of diversity and a considerable secular presence.

Barbara has made a couple other suggestions. Sometime this spring or summer, we may do a day trip or weekend trip up to the mountains to look around.

15:34 – As I mentioned, science kit sales have been pretty slow overall. What’s odd is that forensic kits are selling at several times the normal rate. The percentage varies month to month, but ordinarily forensic kits make up 7% to 12% of total orders. So far this month, they’re close to a third. As of this morning we had only three in stock, and that’s now down to two. I need to get more built this week.