Category: computing

09:13 – Our overnight low was 31.0F (-0.6C), not much under freezing, but enough to make sure that any bugs that somehow survived the previous night froze to death unless they were deep underground.

A lot of people scoffed at my comment that Windows is on its way out. All you need to do to verify that that’s true is go look at some screenshots of Windows 8. This is not an OS intended for desktops and notebooks. Microsoft must be fully aware that the Windows franchise is nearing its end. They’re trying to reposition Windows as an OS for mobile devices as well as traditional PCs, kind of the “Windows Everywhere” redux. It’s not going to work any better this time than it did the last time. If Microsoft is smart, they’ll realize that Windows is the past. They need to get their real cash cows–Office and Outlook–ported to run on Linux, Chrome, Android, and all the other Linux-like OSs. They haven’t done that so far because they’re convinced that Windows and Office support each other. That’s true so far, but the big danger is that the world will leave both behind. What Microsoft should really be aiming at is corporations continuing to run Exchange Server as a backend for Outlook running everywhere. Trying to keep the OS business is likely to cost them both the OS and app business.

I thought November would be a very slow month for science kit sales, and so it’s turned out. Still, slow is relative. In November 2011, we shipped maybe half a dozen kits total. In November 2012, we’ll ship four or five times that number. Of course, we now have three different kits available, versus only one last year. Still, my master plan, such as it is, had us shipping twice as many kits in 2012 as in 2011, and twice as many kits in 2013 as in 2012. It doesn’t look like either of those goals will be difficult to meet. In fact, we’ve already far exceeded our goal for 2012. We plan to add at least two and possibly three new kits for 2013, which should help us make the 2013 goal.

09:30 – Ubuntu 12.04 is hateful. The Atom system in Barbara’s office is now running Kubuntu 12.04. Very slowly. Extremely slowly. As in, when I click on the icon at the lower left corner to bring up the main menu it may take 15 seconds or more for the menu to appear. I’m not sure what I did to cause this, but I think it’s my fault. I could swear that the performance was snappy before I started playing around with the installation. The only thing I remember doing that should have affected performance was turning off the screen effects, ironically in an attempt to minimize the load on this minimal system. Right after I did that, the system started acting like molasses in January. So I toggled the effects back on. Still slow. I rebooted and verified that the effects were still enabled. Still slow. Meanwhile, Barbara would like to be able to check her mail, post to her blog, and so on. I may end up punting and connecting her original system back up.

One thing’s for sure. The display in the den is wonky. Today I’ll order a new display, along with a new mouse and keyboard.

11:57 – I decided on a tactical withdrawal, AKA an advance to the rear. I’m currently in the process of blowing away the Kubuntu installation on the Atom system now in Barbara’s office and replacing it with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Mainly, I just want to see how it runs. Once it’s installed, I’ll disconnect everything and reconnect Barbara’s old hex-core system, which is still sitting under her desk. That gets her email and web and everything else she’s used to. Then I’ll set that Atom system aside for the time being.

I have a new display, keyboard, and mouse on order from Costco, which’ll probably show up late this week. Meanwhile, the DVD writer in my office system no longer writes discs. The most accessible replacement drive is in the Atom system that’s currently in the den, so I’ll pull that drive and install it in my office system for now. At that point, Barbara will have what she needs, and I’ll have what I need, for now.

As of this morning, our inventory of ready-to-ship biology kits was at zero. I found an order for one in my email first thing this morning, so I boxed up the six that were almost ready to go and shipped the one that had been ordered, leaving me with five in stock for now. Based on recent order history, those five biology kits may be anything from a one- or two-day supply to maybe a week’s worth. That’s uncomfortably little, so as soon as I get the computer stuff done I’ll get started on making up another batch of 30 biology kits.

I did learn something about PayPal from that biology kit order, which came in late yesterday evening. Every six months or so, we’re forced to increase the price of our kits because our wholesalers increase their prices. To give people a chance to order at the old price, I’d updated the main biology kit page a couple weeks ago to announce that the kit price would increase from $170 to $185 as of 1 October (or $210 to $225 for kits shipped to Canada).

So, yesterday evening I logged on to my PayPal account and updates the relevant buttons. When I did that, PayPal generated new button code, which I copied/pasted into the HTML of the biology kit main page. I intended to publish that page first thing this morning, putting the new prices into effect. But the kit order that came in yesterday evening was charged at the new price, so obviously that button code in the HTML page doesn’t control the price. I emailed the customer, apologized for charging $185 instead of $170, and refunded her the $15 difference.

10:40 – We’re still working on building science kits, which is going to be my life for at least the next three months or so. We’re down to about five chemistry kits from the last batch of 30, but we’ll finish a new batch of 30 this weekend. Then we’ll immediately start on yet another new batch of 30.

I had been making up chemicals in one- and two-liter bottles. One liter is sufficient for 60 kits for chemicals that we supply in 15 mL bottles, and two liters sufficient for 60 kits for chemicals that we supply 30 mL. I made up the chemicals in small batches to ensure freshness. But now that we’re shipping more kits, I’m going to make up two liters rather than one and four liters rather than two. That’s sufficient for 120 kits with some to spare. It takes little more time to make up twice as much, and time is becoming an issue.

Actually, rather than make up two two-liter bottles, I’ll probably make up 3.8 liters in old gallon orange juice containers. Those have recycling codes of 2 (HDPE) and 7 (Other), so I’ll need to test them with some of the more corrosive chemicals we make up, such as 6 M hydrochloric acid and 6 M sodium hydroxide. I know, I know. In general it’s a horrible practice to make up hazardous chemicals in old food containers, but there’s no one with access to our work areas who’s likely to mistake a gallon of hydrochloric acid for a gallon of orange juice.

We’ll also be building Barbara’s new system this weekend. The Intel D2700MUD motherboard/processor showed up Monday and the Crucial 4 GB memory kit yesterday. We’ll use her existing hard drive and put everything in an Antec Sonata Designer case. This will be a very simple, low-power, quiet system. I don’t think we’ll bother to install an optical drive, since Barbara doesn’t use the one she has in her current system. We’ll just hook up a DVD writer long enough to install Linux and restore her data from disc.

I was going to order a new hard drive for Barbara’s new system. The one in her current system is an old 750 GB Seagate Barracuda. But it passes an intense disk test, so we’ll keep it for now. Speaking of Seagate, I think we’re finished with them for a while. We’ve had numerous premature failures of Seagate hard drives, including just yesterday a hard failure of a 2 TB Barracuda that had less than 100 hours of use. Hard as in rattled loudly when powered up. These things seem to go in phases. Years ago, we used both Seagate and Western Digital drives and had about the same experience with both. Then WD had a horrible run for at least a couple of years, when I wouldn’t touch one of their drives on a bet. For the last several years, WD drives have been much more reliable and Seagate drives appear to be in a bad spell. I have an unused 3 TB Barracuda that I intended to use as the primary drive in my new system (Barbara’s old system), and I’ll probably still do that. But I’ll keep a close eye on it. If I need to replace it, I’ll probably go with a Western Digital Caviar Green.

14:47 – I just ordered another 5,000 15 mL and 30 mL bottles and caps. It occurred to me that many of our wholesalers routinely post price increases as of the first of January and July, so I figured I’d better take some time now to get some purchase orders issued. I was actually going to order about twice as many bottles and caps, but the things take up a lot of space, which is in short supply right now. With the bottles already in stock, this order gives us enough bottles to make up about 60 more each of the biology, chemistry, and forensics kits. Now I need to get orders placed today and tomorrow with some of my other wholesalers for other kit components.