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Category: Barbara

Friday, 7 September 2012

09:19 – Things are slow at work, so Barbara decided to take today off. Her parents are starting their move this weekend from their house to the retirement facility. For now, they’ll be moving into a guest apartment temporarily while the one they’ll ultimately be in is cleaned and painted. We’ve been accumulating boxes for the move, which is no problem at all here, with science kit component shipments arriving frequently. Barbara just hauled a load over to her parents’ house, where she’ll spend the day helping them get some of their stuff packed up and ready to move tomorrow.

Science kit sales have been erratic. Some days, we sell only one or two science kits, or even none. Other days, we sell five or eight kits. As of now, we’re still in relatively good shape on biology and forensic science kits, but we’re down to half a dozen finished chemistry kits in stock. Fortunately, we have a dozen more that just need to be boxed up and 30 more after that in progress. The biology kits worry me a bit. We have about 20 of those in stock, but once we run dry we have to start from scratch to build a new batch. That means making up and bottling a bunch of chemicals and so on. So I guess we’d better get started on a new batch of at least 30. I’ll probably make up and bottle sufficient chemicals for 60 kits and leave the extra 30 sets of chemicals in stock when we build a batch of 30 kits. That makes it a lot quicker to build another batch of 30.

I remember the first time we had an order from the same person for both a chemistry kit and a biology kit. That happens relatively frequently, but I thought it might be a while before one person ordered all three of the kits in one order. That happened this morning for the first time. I just thought how I’d have reacted as a teenager or even an adult to have all three of these kits show up at the door. It’d be like Christmas in September.

10:39 – Wow. Drew Peterson convicted of murder on literally zero evidence. I haven’t really followed the case, but my sense of it from what I’ve read is that he probably is guilty. But this prosecution violates what had until now been a sacrosanct principle of criminal law: hearsay evidence is not evidence at all. The state had to pass a special law to allow hearsay to be admitted in Peterson’s trial. Otherwise, the prosecution had no case. Since the beginnings of our legal system, it’s been a fundamental precept that “better 100 guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted”. It is up to the state to prove the guilt of a criminal defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. There is nothing about this case but reasonable doubt, but in its determination to convict this guy no matter what, the prosecution (i.e., the government) managed to get the rules changed. This fundamental violation of legal principles may come back to haunt us. It’s a small step from this to the Star Chamber.

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Monday, 3 September 2012

09:20 – Yesterday I finally got around to building a new system on the Intel Atom motherboard I ordered a couple of months ago. Ultimately, that’ll be Barbara’s new system, but for now it’s sitting in the den next to my end table. I want to get the kinks worked out before I move it to her office and reclaim the hex-core beast she’s using now. For an extremely low-end processor, the Atom does pretty well. It probably doesn’t hurt that it’s a quad-core model. I installed 4 GB of RAM, which is the most that it accepts. Performance for web browsing and email is snappy, and that’s all Barbara does most of the time. It’s running Kubuntu 12.04 LTS. Just for the heck of it, I may blow that away and take a look at Linux Mint.

We’re still getting stuff cleaned up upstairs and moving components downstairs, but we’ve already made a lot of progress. Barbara wants to have the library/living room cleaned out today, as well as the foyer. We’ll get that done, except that there’ll be a stack of boxes in the foyer awaiting pickup tomorrow by USPS.

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Saturday, 1 September 2012

08:38 – We made the 31 August deadline to start shipping forensic science kits.

Barbara had a relaxing day off yesterday, and was delighted when she arrived home to find the new deck complete. We downsized significantly. The old deck was 16×20 feet (about 4.9 x 6.1 meters). The new one is 10×12 feet (about 3 x 3.7 meters). That’s big enough, because we very seldom have more than one or at most two other couples over. Mainly, Barbara just wanted room for a gas grill and and small table and chairs. She likes to sit out on the deck and read during pleasant weather.

I spent some time yesterday roughing out a couple of new science kits. I’ll have to write manuals for both, which will be the major time commitment. Mary Chervenak suggested our next kit should be one that focuses on advanced biology, with an emphasis on recombinant DNA, gene manipulation, and so on. That’s tempting from an intellectual point of view, and I suppose we could position it as an AP Biology kit, but I have to think through all the implications before we proceed with it. But it’s definitely a candidate, along with AP chemistry, first-year physics, earth science, and physical science (which is basically a combined introduction to biology, chemistry, and physics).

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Friday, 31 August 2012

09:05 – Barbara is taking a well-deserved personal day. She left at oh-dark-thirty to meet her friend Bonnie and drive up to a flea market in Hillsville, Virginia. The deck guys are supposed to finish up today. It’ll be nice to have some peace and quiet around here. The saws and nail guns make it hard to concentrate.

Now that we’re officially in-stock and shipping forensic science kits, Barbara suggested that I take it easy today. I may do that, although I’m already thinking about our next science kit and may start preliminary work on it. In one year, we’ve gone from having just the chemistry kit to having chemistry, biology, and forensic science kits. I’d like to have a fourth kit available by the end of this year, and a fifth by next summer. I’m not sure yet what they’ll be.

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Thursday, 30 August 2012

07:41 – Barbara is taking today and tomorrow off work to give her a five-day weekend. We’ll get a dozen or so forensic science kits boxed up today and ready to ship tomorrow. That’ll cover outstanding back-orders and give us a reserve of built kits. We’ll build the remainder of the first batch of 30 over the next week. Then it’ll be back to building a new batch of biology kits, our stock of which is getting smaller. And then more chemistry kits.

The deck guys worked only until noon yesterday, by which time they’d torn down and removed the old deck and put in footings for the new columns. Those have to be inspected before they can frame out the deck. They should finish the project tomorrow.

12:16 – I just updated the forensic science kit page to say that we’re now in-stock and shipping. That’s true in the sense that we’ll have kits available tomorrow, which is the earliest we could ship anyway. We’ll ship outstanding backorders tomorrow and will be ready to ship any orders received from now on.

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Sunday, 26 August 2012

08:07 – Barbara returned mid-afternoon yesterday from the visit to one of the retirement facilities she and her sister had short-listed. The good news is that her parents loved the place and are excited about moving in. This is the facility that has one unit dedicated as guest/trial quarters. The actual unit her parents would be moving into isn’t ready for occupancy yet, so the facility manager suggested that her parents could move temporarily into the guest unit while the unit they’ll actually occupy is being cleaned up and painted. The monthly cost is a bit more than their monthly income, but VA will pay a portion of that cost and they do have savings and other assets, including their house, which will offset the difference. Barbara is going to talk to the VA Monday to find out exactly how much they’ll pay toward the monthly cost, but it looks doable. Now the trick is to get things rolling before Barbara’s parents have second thoughts or another medical emergency occurs.

While we were walking Colin last night, he stood and urinated for about a solid minute. Barbara commented about the strong smell of his urine and wondered if he had a urinary tract infection. He’s been acting a bit strangely for the last week or so, including having accidents (solid, not liquid) in the house. That’s one possible symptom of a UTI. UTIs in dogs can be very subtle, so I decided to start him on amoxicillin immediately. I gave him 1,000 mg as a loading dose last night. When he urinated this morning there was no strong odor, which suggests the amoxicillin has already knocked down the infection. We’ll give him 500 mg tid for the next few days, and then I’ll do a microscopic examination of his urine and an occult blood test. If that’s clear, we’ll assume the amoxicillin is working and continue it 500 mg bid for a couple more weeks. Then I’ll do a urine culture, just to make sure.

We’re making good progress on the first batch of 30 forensic science kits, and should be able to start shipping them by the end of the month.

15:47 – I decided to boost Colin to 750 mg tid. Years ago, I treated another of our dogs for some sort of infection. I followed the canine recommendations of the Merck Veterinary Manual, which IIRC were 5 to 7.5 mg/kg amoxicillin bid. The infection did not clear up, and when we took the dog to see Sue Stephens, our vet, she said that dosage was very low. So I looked elsewhere for the amoxicillin dosage for canine UTIs, and came up with a range of 10 to 25 mg/kg bid. For Colin, at about 32 kilos, that’d be 320 to 800 mg bid. So, although 500 mg is well within that range, I decided to go nearer the upper end. In fact, Colin tolerates a 1,000 mg dose without any problem, so I decided to go with 750 mg tid for the first couple of days and then 750 mg bid for the remainder of the two weeks or so.

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Saturday, 25 August 2012

10:41 – Barbara just headed over to meet her sister and parents at one of the retirement facilities on the short list. Barbara’s mom is doing much better. The doctor prescribed antibiotics for the UTI and Xanax for her panic attacks. The combination has worked very well. Barbara says her mom is now back to normal and is actually excited about moving to an independent living facility. Frankly, I hope they like the one they’re visiting today enough to sign up for it. Barbara’s parents really need to be in such a facility, and it’d be best to get things rolling before anything else happens.

Yesterday was a first. We’ve sold kits to customers in nearly all the 50 states, but yesterday we sold the first one to a customer in Puerto Rico. It started with a query email asking if we could sell kits to someone in Puerto Rico. I replied that I thought so but I wasn’t sure, and asked the woman to send me her address so that I could try running a dummy postage label and make sure the USPS would accept the package. She replied that she had three possible shipping addresses. The first was her home address, but she said they’d had problems in their neighborhood with the mailman leaving a package on the porch and someone stealing it. So that was out. Her second address was her work address, which was the US Federal Courthouse. I could just imagine what might happen if we shipped a box full of chemical bottles to a federal building, so that was obviously out. Fortunately, she has a PO box, which the USPS happily delivers to, so that’s where we shipped it.

We also added yet another country to our list of disappointed would-be customers. I got a query asking if we could ship a biology kit to Switzerland, and was forced to tell the man that we couldn’t. That makes more than 20 countries now.

We’re full speed ahead on building forensic science kits. My original goal was to be shipping them by August 28th, which was originally the date the book was to be published, but it looks like that may slip a bit. We’re accepting pre-orders on the web site, where we say that the kits will ship in “late August”, and I’m determined to start shipping on or before 31 August to meet that promise. We still have a lot of work remaining, but we should have at least enough kits finished by the 31st to ship outstanding pre-orders, with at least a few in reserve.

13:51 – Wow. NYPD cops got into a shootout with a man who’d just murdered another man by shooting him five times. The two NYPD cops fired 17 shots and managed to hit 10 people, of whom nine were innocent bystanders. NYPD says there’s nothing else the cops could have done. Really? I thought cops were trained to avoid firing their weapons when there were innocent bystanders in the line of fire unless the criminal was about to fire on those bystanders. I wasn’t there, and I realize that at times it may be unavoidable to fire when there’s risk of hitting an innocent bystander, but hitting nine(!) innocent bystanders in an eight-second shootout seems a bit excessive. Assuming each cop fired roughly half of the 17 rounds, that’s about one round per second each. That’s not quite Timed Fire, but it’s certainly leisurely. Fortunately, none of the innocent bystanders who were shot suffered life-threatening injuries.

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Thursday, 23 August 2012

07:17 – It’s never good when the phone rings before 6:00 a.m. Barbara’s mom called this morning to say that she couldn’t breathe or stand up and that she’d called 911. Barbara called her sister, who lives much closer to their parents, and Frances said she’d head over to their parents’ house immediately to meet 911. Barbara jumped in the shower, got dressed, packed a bag, and headed for the hospital. She’ll have to stay with her dad tonight if her mom is admitted to the hospital, because they won’t let him stay alone at night.

This is how it’s been for months now for Barbara and her sister. A medical emergency followed by a couple days of normality, if they’re lucky, followed by another medical emergency. The level of stress on their parents is unimaginable, but it’s no picnic for Barbara and Frances, either. This simply can’t go on.

11:48 – Barbara called a while ago to say that the hospital hadn’t admitted her mother. Frances was taking their parents to their home while Barbara made a drugstore run to get prescriptions filled. Apparently, her mother has a UTI. The doctor also prescribed Xanax for anxiety. Barbara’s mom is terrified that Barbara’s dad is going to die. Her mom can’t sleep because she’s afraid that Dutch will die with her asleep.

Actually, that’s not an unreasonable fear. Dutch is, after all, 90 years old and has some serious health problems. Barbara’s mom is terrified that her husband will die before she does. Considering that she’s several years younger than Dutch and in better health, that’s of course more likely to happen than the converse. Barbara’s mom just can’t accept the fact that, awake or asleep, there’s not a thing she can do about it. If she were a doctor, there would still be nothing she could do about it. And so Barbara’s mom is putting herself under even more stress and suffering panic attacks.

Unfortunately, if it happens as Barbara’s mom fears it will, the survivor’s guilt will be devastating. I watched it happen, years ago. Back in the mid-70’s, I moved in with my girlfriend, who was renting the upstairs of a house owned by a young widow. She was a nurse, and had been married to a doctor who suffered from a congenital heart problem. One evening, they fell asleep in the den, he in his recliner, and she sitting on the floor leaning against his legs. When she woke up, he was dead. He was in his early 30’s and she was in her late 20’s. To make matters even worse, she was a cardiac-care nurse. She was left with an infant girl and a devastating guilt that she’d slept through her husband’s death. This despite the fact that her husband’s doctor and all her other doctor friends told her the same thing. There wasn’t a damned thing she could have done if she’d been awake. There wasn’t a damned thing she could have done if she’d been a cardiac surgeon in a fully-equipped operating room. It wasn’t her fault. She understood that on an intellectual level, but emotionally she felt responsible for his death. Almost 40 years later, I suspect she still does.

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Wednesday, 22 August 2012

09:51 – Barbara’s dad visited one of the retirement facilities yesterday and loved it. They keep one unit available for prospective residents to stay in overnight to see how they like the place. I suspect Barbara’s parents may give that a try.

It’s official. Greek living standards have already gone into the toilet, and are going to get worse. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said, “Greek living standards have declined over the last three years by approximately 35%. A return to the drachma would immediately lower it by at least another 70%.” So, a 35% decline takes them from 100% down to 65%. A further 70% decline takes them from 65% to 19.5%. Samaras is an optimist. Their living standards are going to plummet whether they return to the drachma or remain in the euro.

12:27 – Duh. I’m currently making up Herzberg’s stain for the forensic science kits. It’s a rather involved process. I’d made up only a small amount when we were writing the book, but now I wanted to make up enough for at least 200 kits. (The stain is stable for years, but each batch differs slightly in its characteristics, so I wanted to make up a big batch to start with.) So I scaled things up a bit, which often comes to grief.

The first step is to make up a saturated solution of zinc chloride. Zinc chloride is extremely soluble in water. One liter of water will dissolve more than four kilos of anhydrous zinc chloride, producing about 2.5 liters of saturated zinc chloride solution with a specific gravity just over 2.0 g/L. Of course, zinc chloride is deliquescent, which means that standard trade material can be anything from truly anhydrous to a syrupy liquid. In practical terms, that means you don’t bother weighing out the solid zinc chloride; you just keep adding it to the liquid until some remains undissolved in the container.

So I started with 250 mL of distilled water, expecting to end up with about 625 mL of saturated solution, or about 1.25 kilos worth. I have some 1.5 liter PET wide-mouth bottles, which seemed ideal for mixing the stuff up. I even checked chemical resistance and found that PET was resistant to solid zinc chloride and saturated solutions of it. So I started by transferring the roughly 400 g of zinc chloride that remained in an open 500 g bottle to the 1.5 liter PET bottle, adding 250 mL of water, and swirling.

My first clue that I’d overlooked something was the steam condensing on the upper interior surface of the 1.5 L bottle. Ruh-roh. PET is indeed resistant to zinc chloride solutions. What it isn’t particularly resistant to is heat. Of course, I’d neglected to look up the heat of solution for zinc chloride, which turns out to be significant. It seemed possible that the solution would actually come to a boil. The bottle was softening as I watched it, deforming visibly. So I quickly poured the solution into a large polypropylene beaker. (I’d previously checked chemical resistance and found that in addition to PET, LDPE, HDPE, and PP are completely resistant to zinc chloride solutions.) PP is autoclavable, which means it can easily withstand the temperature of boiling water. It’s not possible under standard pressure for even a saturated solution of zinc chloride to boil above the softening/melting point of PP, so I knew the PP would be fine. Right now, I’m waiting for the solution to cool down before I add more zinc chloride. Now I know to use an ice bath.

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Tuesday, 21 August 2012

09:53 – Thanks to Rod Schaffter for his suggestion yesterday that I fill the chemical bottles using a wash bottle and weighing the bottle as I fill it. Talk about a brilliant idea. I’m using ACS reagent grade 98% sulfuric acid, which has a specific gravity of just under 1.85 g/mL. Since all three solutions are 99:1 w/v sulfuric acid:chemical, I can take the specific gravity as 1.85 g/mL. That means to fill a bottle to 5 mL, I just transfer 9.25+ g of solution to the bottle, and to fill it to 10 mL I just transfer 18.50+ g. This should be a quick and easy method. Thanks, Rod.

In fact, I may start using Rod’s method to fill some other chemical bottles, particularly the ones that emit strong fumes, including acetic acid, ammonia, and hydrochloric acid. All of those contain either 15 mL in a 15 mL bottle or 30 mL in a 30 mL bottle, so I won’t even have to weigh those; I can just eyeball the fill level.

I have only two or three wash bottles on hand, and I think they’re all 250 mL. I’m going to add a dozen or two 500 mL unitary wash bottles to my next purchase order. That way, I can just dedicate one or two wash bottles per chemical and store the chemicals in the wash bottles. They’re LDPE, for which the Thermo Scientific chemical resistance table lists 98% sulfuric acid at 50C as “Little or no damage after 30 days of constant exposure.”

The forensic science book is officially published tomorrow, but Amazon already has it in stock and is shipping it. We’re starting to get more queries about the FK01 forensic science kit, which we plan to start shipping by the end of this month.

Barbara and her sister, Frances, are visiting and evaluating independent-living and assisted-living homes for their parents. They’re going to narrow down the candidates to three or four and then take their parents to visit their short list of facilities and ask them to pick one. Barbara’s and Frances’s goal is to get their parents moved to a suitable place as soon as possible. Once they’ve moved their parents, they’ll worry about getting their parents’ home cleaned out and ready to go on the market. I think this is a good plan. Their parents really need to be at a retirement home sooner rather than later. Barbara and Frances could then stop worrying constantly about something happening to their parents, and the facilities provided by the home would also take a great deal of the burden off them for running errands, taking their parents to doctor visits, and so on. For the last couple months or more, Barbara and Frances have been busy almost daily with things they have to do with their parents. They both need a break, badly, and getting their parents into a good retirement home will give them that break.

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