Category: news

08:45 – This is pretty disturbing. I just read a news story about a man who committed a crime, was sentenced by the judge, served his sentence and was released upon completing it, and has now been hauled back into court to be re-sentenced to a longer term for the same crime. Seems to me that the government had its shot, didn’t like the results, and now has gone back for what amounts to double jeopardy. The case, of course, is the teacher in Montana who was sentenced to a 30-day term for statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl who was his student. From the judge’s comments, it’s pretty clear that he thought the girl initiated things and was “older than her chronological age”. Complicating matters is that the girl killed herself while the teacher was awaiting trial. Whether or not one believes that the 30-day sentence was too short, the fact is that the government had its chance, and going back for a second bite at the apple is simply unacceptable. If the government wants to go after someone, they should go after the judge who decided the sentence.

We were running short of bottles and caps, but UPS is supposed to show up today with about 8,000 of them. I’ll be making up chemicals and filling and capping bottles, trying to cut down on the backlog of labeled bottles before Barbara starts labeling the ones that arrive today.

09:02 – The morning paper reports that a 32-year-old woman who was killed Thursday in a head-on wreck was shooting selfies and posting to her Facebook page immediately before the wreck. She should be a serious contender for the 2014 Darwin Awards. We even have her last words: “The Happy Song makes me so HAPPY.” Nice that she died happy. Fortunately, the driver she rammed was not injured.

The Dell laptop arrived yesterday. I fired it up and was immediately reminded why I hate Microsoft. But I got the Stamps.com software installed, and will use it today to ship packages. I did try firing up IE and connecting to the USPS site to try to pay for the labels in my cart. As expected, it refused to accept payment. Now I just need to get the Stamps.com software configured and get a bunch of postage labels printed and science kits shipped.

12:28 – Success! I was running out of space to stack outgoing kits, but they’re all ready to be picked up. The Stamps.com software worked, and I was able to get postage labels and customs documents printed.

I’m not completely happy with Stamps.com. For one thing, the woman I spoke to when I signed up a couple days ago flat-out lied. I asked her (a) did their service do postage only by using a script to send the postage label to my printer, or did it allow me to save the postage labels as PDF copies, and (b) did the discounts on postage that Stamps.com claims to offer customers refer to the standard Click-N-Ship on-line rates or the higher counter rates. She told me that their service did allow customers to save the postage labels as PDF files, which it doesn’t, and that they discounted postage from the Click-N-Ship on-line rate, which they don’t.

Furthermore, their site and software also flat-out lie. They claim that USPS allows only one reprint attempt, after which you have to apply for a refund. That’s clearly untrue, as anyone who has ever used Click-N-Ship can attest. You can print the label(s) as many times as you wish from the screen that comes up after you pay for the label(s). You can also go back later and reprint the label(s) as needed. And you can save each label as a PDF file. There are two icons on the page, one to Print and the other to Save as PDF.

On the plus side, only some USPS services are available with Click-N-Ship. I can (or I used to be able to…) print Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express postage labels, but not First-Class or Media Rate postage. Stamps.com supports all of those, which is a minor plus for me. I seldom use anything other than Priority Mail, but there are times when I need to send out a replacement item. That might cost $10 in postage with PM and only a couple bucks via First-Class.

08:22 – The lead story in the morning paper is about a guy who’s being tried for involuntary manslaughter. He’s accused of passing a stopped school bus, striking and killing an 11-year-old boy. The driver claims that the school bus had its yellow lights flashing, but had not yet extended the stop-arm and started flashing its red lights. At least one witness confirms the driver’s story. At least one other witness disputes it. Given what information the news stories have provided, if I were on the jury I’d vote to acquit based on reasonable doubt.

Regardless of what actually happened in this case, there’s no question that many drivers think nothing of passing stopped school buses. Barbara watched it happen earlier this week. She said the driver didn’t even slow down, just blew past a stopped school bus. That happens in North Carolina thousands of times every year. In the US as a whole, probably thousands of times every week. I told Barbara I was surprised that school buses don’t have HD video cameras installed front and rear as standard equipment, set up to start recording video and GPS data every time the yellow caution lights are turned on. When a bus driver finishes the run and reports an incident, that video should be provided to the police for investigation and prosecution.

I’m trying to cut down on the inventory of labeled but empty bottles. Right now, I’m working on getting bottles filled for another batch of 60 biology kits. Next up is filling bottles for 90 more chemistry kits, followed by 60 forensic science kits. Then it’ll be lather, rinse, repeat.

14:27 – Hmmm. One of our upcoming kits is for AP Chemistry, so I was out looking around the web to see what else is out there. I came across a supposed AP Chemistry kit from one of our competitors that included the following in its contents list:

Apparently, this kit contains a dilute solution of … water.

16:03 – This isn’t good. Barbara called to tell me that her mom’s caregiver had called to say that her mom had stopped eating and stopped talking. The most she could get out of Sankie was an occasional grunt. Barbara and Frances are going to meet the evaluator from Hospice over at their mom’s apartment at 5:30 to see what the evaluator thinks. If the evaluator thinks Sankie belongs in Hospice now and if they have a room available Barbara says they’ll transfer her tonight or perhaps tomorrow.

10:19 – The morning paper reports a murder in Winston-Salem, our second of the year. I find it interesting how the newspaper code words have changed. Forty years ago, the paper would probably have reported that the murder took place in a “white neighborhood”. Twenty years ago, it would probably have reported it as a “middle-class neighborhood”. Now, they report it as a “quiet neighborhood”. However they word it, this is a pretty unusual murder. The vast majority of murders, in Winston-Salem and elsewhere, occur in poor areas.

I now have everything I need to build three dozen more chemistry kits. It’s just a matter of boxing them up. Rather than do that today, however, I’m going to spend some time checking inventory and placing purchase orders for more components. I have to balance keeping sufficient supplies on hand with storage space.

For example, the chemistry kits include a 9V battery and a purple Sharpie. We’re down to zero 9V batteries and half a dozen purple Sharpies in stock. I used to order both of those five dozen at a time, but I’ve just cut purchase orders for twenty-five dozen of each. That should be enough to carry us through our busy period next autumn. Same thing for 24-well and 96-well reaction plates. We’re down to 75 and 61 of those, respectively. The time before last, I ordered 100 of each of those. The last time I ordered 250 each. This time, I’ll probably order 500 each. If it weren’t for storage space, I’d probably order twice that number, but even 1,000 reaction plates require a non-trivial amount of storage space.

16:07 – The news headlines say that SoD Hagel plans to cut the headcount of the US Army back to “pre-WWII” levels. Not even close. Before WWII, the US Army had about 180,000 people, and that counted the Army Air Corps. Hagel proposes to cut the Army to about 440,000 to 450,000, about 2.5 times the actual pre-WWII headcount, and roughly four to five times what it really should be. I propose that he cut our total military forces to 220,000. Call it 100,000 each for the Army and Navy, and 20,000 Marines. The Air Force should be eliminated as a separate force, with air/space arms of the two major services taking over those duties.

Hagel also proposes to eliminate the A-10’s, which are one of the few warplanes worth having, but to keep all of our fleet carriers. All of the carriers should be eliminated as one of the key steps in rendering US military forces (read “the US government”) incapable of interfering overseas. Eliminate the subs, both hunter/killers and boomers. Close all overseas military bases and bring all of our troops home. Close most of the domestic bases as well. They’re not needed. Transfer the tanks and APCs and warplanes to the state militia organizations. Bring back the DCM, and give an assault rifle and 1,000 rounds to any US adult citizen who wants one, no questions asked, no strings attached, and no records kept.

Withdraw from the UN and all other entangling alliances. Let the rest of the world do what it wants. We don’t need them. We are self-sufficient. If they want to trade with us, fine. But don’t expect us to clean up other people’s messes, and don’t expect us to continue giving away trillions of taxpayer dollars in “foreign aid”.

Patch up our relationships with Canada, Australia and our other traditional friends. We have treated our real friends badly, particularly Canada. We owe them a sincere apology and our best efforts to fix what we’ve broken.