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Category: science kits

Monday, 10 October 2011

09:04 – Barbara went to the hospital Thursday for knee-replacement surgery. Everything went extremely well. She was released yesterday and will now be recuperating at home for the next few weeks. Colin, of course, is delighted that she’s home. Few things worry a puppy more than having a litter mate disappear. He was obviously stressed the entire time she was gone. He had been just about perfect on house-training, but that suffered while she was gone. There was constant whining, yipping, and wandering around the house looking for her, and that was just me.

Barbara left the hospital with only two prescriptions, one for 10 syringes of an injectable anticoagulant and the other for a hundred 5 mg oxycodone tablets. She insisted on stopping at Walgreens on the way home to get the prescriptions filled, so I handed them to the pharmacist and waited while she filled them. I was quite disturbed at what happened. When she’d finished making up the prescriptions, she told me that they had only two of the anticoagulant injectors in stock and that I’d have to stop by Tuesday to pick up the other two. The other two? I was expecting eight more. I figured maybe the injectors were multi-dose, but when I got back out to the car I asked Barbara and we checked the paperwork they’d given her. Sure enough, we were supposed to get ten syringes. So I went back in and waited another five or ten minutes to talk to the pharmacist. When I mentioned the problem, she treated it very casually, saying that indeed I was supposed to get eight more syringes on Tuesday and that she’d been confused by the dosage of 0.4 mg into thinking I was to get a total of only four. Isn’t the first duty of a pharmacist not to make such mistakes in dispensing medication? In this case, we caught the mistake, but we shouldn’t have had to. I’m still thinking about whether to report this to Walgreens. She seemed like a nice young woman, but mistakes like this could have fatal consequences.

10:18 – This is cool. My old friend John Mikol just emailed me:

Leo Laporte was plugging your chemistry set and book, I hope it sends some sales your way.

It’s about 32 minutes in: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/twit.cachefly.net/ttg0811.mp3

13:24 – Incidentally, I just realized I hadn’t commented yet on using the Baby Kindle 4. Side-by-side with my Kindle 3, the Baby Kindle 4 is noticeably smaller and lighter. Not that the Kindle 3 is particularly large or heavy, but the Baby Kindle 4 is enough smaller that it’s much easier for me to grip securely. With the Kindle 3, I was always afraid that I’d drop it if Colin nudged my arm or something. I can grip the Kindle 4 securely. And it’s still running on its original charge, despite the fact that its battery is half the capacity of the Kindle 3’s and I used it fairly heavily while Barbara was in the hospital. Overall, I’m very pleased with the Baby Kindle 4 and happy that I chose it rather than the touch model. Even the ads aren’t intrusive, although I understand there’s now an option to remove them by paying Amazon another $30.

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Friday, 7 October 2011

10:37 – I’ve just had my first report of shipping damage on a kit, in this case a broken thermometer. The buyer wanted to know if there was anywhere local that she could buy another one. I apologized for the inconvenience, and told her I’d get a replacement in the mail this afternoon, which should arrive Monday. It surprised me that it would even occur to her that the breakage was her problem.

That is, perhaps, a commentary on the declining level of customer service among many American companies. Not all, by any means. Companies like LL Bean and Costco do well, in no small part because their policy is to treat their customers (and employees) as they themselves would want to be treated. That used to be the norm for American businesses: “The customer is always right.” That’s the type of business I patronize, and I’ve always known that when I started a business, that’s the way I’d treat my own customers.

Doing so is simple enlightened self-interest. Treat customers badly, and they’ll never buy from you again. They’ll also tell everyone they know of their experience. Treat customers right, and you’ve made a friend for life. They’ll continue buying from you, and they’ll recommend you to their friends.

Solving a problem for a customer at no expense to them often involves incurring a cost, so “results-oriented” short-term thinkers consider it foolish to take a loss rather than charge the customer again. In fact, that small short-term loss nearly always translates into a much greater long-term profit. For example, one person who bought one of our kits emailed me to say that she’d spilled one of the chemicals, and asked if she could buy another bottle. Sure, I could have charged her for the replacement bottle and shipping costs, and she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But instead I just shipped her a replacement bottle without charge. Counting the item itself, as well as time, packaging, and shipping costs, that might’ve cost me $10 or $12. But that small loss translates into a very happy customer. She’ll tell her friends, and some of those friends may in turn become new customers.

13:37 – Colin is closely related to both Duncan and Malcolm, with several recent ancestors in common, so it’s no surprise that Colin shares many of Duncan’s and Malcolm’s personality traits. Colin is much nearer in personality to Duncan than Malcolm in most respects, and I was reminded of one of them a minute ago, when I gave Colin a dog treat.

Malcolm would eat anything we were eating, without hesitation. Pickles, celery, anything. In fact, Malcolm would eat anything we offered him. That made it very easy to give him pills. Hold down the pill to him, and he’d take it gently and swallow it without question. Duncan, on the other hand, was almost insulting. He’d beg when we were eating, but if we offered him some of what we were eating, he’d sniff it thoroughly before eating it, just to make sure. I actually had a conversation with Duncan about this, explaining that he was insulting us by implication, suggesting that something good enough for humans might not be good enough for him.

And Colin is much like Duncan in that respect. I just went into the kitchen to refill my Coke, and decided to give Colin a dog treat. He watched me take down the container from the shelf. He knows that container is full of dog treats. He sat on command, waiting for the treat. When I held it down to him, he spent two or three seconds sniffing it before he took it. Just like Duncan.

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Monday, 26 September 2011

08:52 – Barbara and I put together four dozen of the test tube sets yesterday while she watched golf. We would have done more, but we ran out of test tubes. Each set is half a dozen glass test tubes, each in a 30x120mm polypropylene tube with a screw cap, with half a dozen more 16x120mm polypropylene capped tubes, all in a one-quart zip-lock bag. We’ll use these in the chemistry kits, the biology kits, and (eventually) the forensics kits, so we’ll just build a bunch periodically and keep them on hand for assembling kits.

More details about the EU “shock-and-awe” campaign are becoming available, and they’re not encouraging. One of the big problems the EU has is that the current bailout fund, at €440 billion, is much too small to backstop Spanish and Italian bonds. The FANG nations are unwilling to commit to more funding because their taxpayers/voters are already near revolt. So, the EU instead plans to use the accounting trick I referred to yesterday, which is called leveraging. (Actually, it’s less an accounting trick than a massive fraud, but we’re not allowed to say that.)

Most economists agree that €440 billion is much, much too little, and that the bailout fund needs at least five times that much to present a credible backstop to Spanish and Italian debt. So, the new plan is to leverage the existing €440 billion at 20%, which magically (and fraudulently) increases the size of the bailout fund to about €2 trillion. With such a massive warchest, the EU hopes to stop runs on Spanish and Italian bonds (and banks) before they can get started. The problem is, it’s all smoke and mirrors. There’s no more money there than there ever was, and if push comes to shove that will quickly become evident. The fundamental problem is that the EU believes it can “fool” the markets. Good luck with that.

Meanwhile, it’s crunch week for Greece. The “troika” decides this week whether to approve the next portion of bailout money for Greece. All along, the troika has insisted that Greece must meet the agreed goals for spending cuts and tax increases if that payment is to be approved. Greece has not and cannot meet those goals, so if the troika stands by their ultimatum the payment will not be approved. If that happens, it’s game over for Greece, and we find out what a disorderly default looks like.

It’s extremely likely that a disorderly Greek default would be followed immediately by Spain and Italy coming under extreme pressure. Yields on their bonds, even with ECB intervention, are now nearly as high as they were before the ECB intervened, near the utterly disastrous 6% level. If Greece topples, yields on Spanish and Italian bonds will immediately skyrocket, which will require a huge bailout to avoid an immediate collapse of the euro. The EU authorities and the IMF are as aware of this as anyone, which argues that the troika will approve the next bailout payment to Greece despite the fact that Greece hasn’t come anywhere near meeting the required goals.

If that happens, Greece could choose to default anyway, and may well do so. Greeks rightly perceive that the bailout payments aren’t for the benefit of Greeks. This next €8.5 billion bailout payment, like all of the others, is simply a transfer payment via Greece of EU money to banks that hold Greek debt. The EU doesn’t care about the suffering of the Greek people or the destruction of the Greek economy and society. They believe, with justification, that Greece brought this calamity on itself. Many Greeks understand this, which doesn’t make their suffering, now and for the foreseeable future, any the less.

I told Barbara the other night that it wouldn’t surprise me if a real, hot revolution broke out in Greece and if before long we see UN peacekeeping forces deployed there. In a country the size of North Carolina and with a population of less than 11 million, there have been about 70,000 small business failures so far this year, with many more to come. The Greek middle class is well on its way to joining the ranks of the poor, with doctors, attorneys, teachers, shopkeepers, and college professors now participating in riots (which we’re supposed to call demonstrations). Greece really is a powder keg, with the burning fuze nearing the touchhole.

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Sunday, 25 September 2011

09:55 – Barbara had to take her mom to the emergency room yesterday. Her mom was in pretty severe distress, but refused to go to the hospital, so Barbara rushed over to take charge of things. Fortunately, the problem turned out to be relatively minor, or at least as minor as such things can be for a woman in her 80’s. The doctor put her on antibiotics and sent her home, where she’s now doing fine.

I see that the EU authorities and the IMF plan to introduce another smoke-and-mirrors campaign to fool investors into holding worthless government bonds a while longer, thereby staving off the inevitable catastrophic eurozone defaults for a few weeks or months longer. They’ve announced that they’re boosting the last-resort bailout mechanism to €1.7 trillion. Three problems with that: First, €1.7 trillion is still much, much too little to backstop the worthless eurozone government debt. Second, the additional money is imaginary; it doesn’t actually exist other than by an accounting trick. Third, investors are already fully aware of points one and two.

As I’ve said repeatedly, I hope the US government is not foolish enough to throw money down this rathole, either via direct subsidies or via the IMF. Unfortunately, the available evidence tells me that the US government is likely to jump in with both feet. It’ll be much too late to help, of course, but it will at least succeed in transferring a considerable portion of EU liabilities to US taxpayers. Which has probably been the agenda all along.

A cautionary tale about Greek politicians

12:01 – I just did a field-expedient packaging test on the new arrangement for test tubes. I put together six assemblies, each of one glass test tube inside a 50 mL polypropylene centrifuge tube with the cap screwed on. (I really must start calling these things “large test tubes” or something; few kit buyers have any idea what a self-standing centrifuge tube is.) I packaged six of those assemblies in a one-quart ziplock bag, took it down to the basement, and dropped it on the concrete floor several times from head height (~ 2 meters). There was no damage to the contents, and even the bag looks no different than it did. That should be sufficient to protect the tubes from shipping damage, especially since they’ll be in a box with additional cushioning.

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Saturday, 24 September 2011

11:08 – I installed Zen Cart yesterday, and spent some time playing around with it. It’s an e-commerce/shopping-cart package, and it reminds me a great deal of the hosted e-commerce package that Maker Shed uses. Which is to say that I have no clue how it works in terms of setup and administration. I don’t intend to bring up a storefront right away, but I figured it was time to dip my toe in the water. Zen Cart is free (as in speech and beer), and it appears to have more than enough capability to do anything I’d want to do in the foreseeable future. Critically, it appears to work seamlessly with PayPal, which will allow me to accept credit cards without having to establish a merchant account or worry about keeping people’s credit card information secure, since I’ll never see it.

I got a delivery from one of my wholesalers yesterday that includes most of what I need to assemble a dozen biology kits. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll spend some time doing what amounts to a 3D jigsaw puzzle, trying to figure out what size box to use for the kits.

For the chemistry kits, I use Priority Mail large flat-rate boxes, which cost about $15 to ship whether the destination is next door or in Alaska or Hawaii. Those boxes have a weight limit of 70 pounds (~ 32 kilos), which is much more than the kits weigh. But USPS also offers regional-rate boxes, which cost anything from about the same as flat-rate boxes to several dollars less to ship, depending on destination zip code. They’re limited to 20 pounds, which isn’t a problem for the biology kits.

The problem is, there’s a size difference. The large flat-rate boxes are 12″ x 12″ 5-1/2″, or 792 cubic inches (about 13 liters). The large regional-rate boxes are 12-1/4″ x 10-1/2″ x 5-1/2″, or 707 cubic inches (about 11.6 liters). The chemistry kits as currently packaged simply won’t fit the smaller regional-rate box, but the biology kits might. In fact, to keep the price down, I may make some changes in the contents of the kits, if necessary to fit the box. Any changes I make won’t compromise the utility of the kits, but it’s often possible to make substitutions that provide equivalent functionality but fit the jigsaw puzzle better.

Once of those changes will be in chemical packaging. The chemistry kits currently use a styrofoam block that contains 44 15-mL PP centrifuge tubes. The six vacant positions in the block are filled with glass test tubes for protection during shipping. For the biology kits (and eventually for the chemistry kits) I’m going to substitute a mix of plastic dropper bottles for liquid chemicals, wide-mouth plastic “pharma packer” bottles for most solid chemicals, and coin envelopes for some items such as tablets, seeds, and so on. The bottles are actually significantly more expensive than the centrifuge tubes (which aren’t cheap to begin with), but they’re also easier and quicker to fill and seal. The coin envelopes are much cheaper than tubes or bottles, typically three to eight cents each, depending on size and type.

Of course, that leaves me with the question of how to pack test tubes for the biology kit. If I don’t have the foam block to protect them, the obvious answer is to wrap the half-dozen test tubes in bubble wrap. Doing that is time-consuming, and it also yields a bulky component that would have to be fitted into the 3D matrix. It occurred to me that I could bump the number of 50 mL PP centrifuge tubes included in the kit from four to six, and pack each glass test tube in a 50 mL centrifuge tube. That bumps my total cubic for 50 mL centrifuge tubes from about 0.2 liters to about 0.3 liters, but reduces the cubic by the volume that would otherwise have been needed for the bubble-wrapped test tubes.

As usual, solving one problem creates another. I have been using 15×125 mm glass test tubes in the chemistry kit, but those are too long to fit into 50 mL centrifuge tubes. So, part of what’s in that order that showed up yesterday is a couple gross of 16×100 mm glass test tubes, which do fit into the 50 mL centrifuge tubes.

One thing about starting a small business is that it’s forced me to learn to deal with details, which is not my strong suit. Well, it is when I’m writing or working in the lab, but not in my personal life. Running a small business, especially what amounts to a small manufacturing business, leaves no option but to deal with details. I’m doing it, but I’m still not very good at it.

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Tuesday, 20 September 2011

09:37 – If I were subject to fits of giggling, I might have been incapacitated at the statement by a European authority the other day that the EU and the euro were “running out of time”. Technically, that’s true, as it would be for someone who fell from the top of the Empire State Building and has just passed the first floor, going down. Now all anyone can do is watch the catastrophe unfold, like a not-so-slow-motion train wreck. Using the standard calculation method based on CDS prices, the probability of a Greek default is now about 120% (yes, I know…) CNN Money currently estimates Greek default probability at 0.999, with Portugal at 0.62, Ireland at 0.51, Italy at 0.33, and Spain at 0.28. Of course, those last four probabilities are based on current conditions. Once Greece defaults, the probabilities for defaults by Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and Spain skyrocket as the dominoes begin toppling. The euro, and almost certainly the EU itself, are deader than Python’s Parrot.

I just issued a purchase order for most of the components I need to build the first dozen biology kits. The contents of the kit are not yet finalized, but here’s where they stand as of now.

Reagents and Stains

Acetic acid, 6 M
Agar, 10 g
Ammonia
Antibiotic sensitivity test paper, 5×5 cm, amoxicillin
Antibiotic sensitivity test paper, 5×5 cm, cephalexin
Antibiotic sensitivity test paper, 5×5 cm, ciprofloxacin
Antibiotic sensitivity test paper, 5×5 cm, metronidazole
Antibiotic sensitivity test paper, 5×5 cm, tetracycline
Ascorbic acid
Barfoed’s reagent
Benedict’s reagent (qualitative)
Biuret reagent
Bromothymol blue
Dextrose (d-glucose)
Glycerol
Hydrochloric acid
l-Glutamine
Lead(II) acetate
Methyl cellulose, 1.5%
Resorcinol, 1% (Seliwanoff’s reagent part A)
Sodium hydroxide
Stain: Eosin Y
Stain: Gram’s Iodine
Stain: Hucker’s Crystal Violet
Stain: Methylene Blue
Stain: Safranin O
Stain: Sudan III
Stain: Toluidine Blue

Equipment

Beaker, PP, 100 mL
Beaker, PP, 250 mL
Beaker, PP, 50 mL
Centrifuge tubes, 50 mL (6)
Chromatography paper (8.5×11” total)
Cover slips, glass, 22x22mm (oz.)
Forceps
Goggles
Graduated cylinder, 10 mL
Graduated cylinder, 100 mL
Inoculating loop
Petri dish, PS, 90x15mm, two-compartment, sterile, pk/10
Pipettes, PE, graduated
Reaction plate, 24-well w/ lid
Reaction plate, 96-well
Ruler
Scalpel
Slide, deep single cavity, glass, 1”x3”, bx/12
Slide, flat glass, frosted, 1”x3”, bx/72
Spatula
Stirring rod
Teasing needle, bent
Teasing needle, straight
Test paper, pH
Test paper, phenylthiocarbamide (PTC)
Test tube brush
Test tube clamp
Test tube rack
Test tubes, 16x100mm (6)
Thermometer

The resorcinol item deserves comment. Originally, I intended to include a bottle of Seliwanoff’s reagent, which is a dilute solution of resorcinol in fairly dilute hydrochloric acid. Instead, I’m going to include an aqueous solution of resorcinol and have kit users make up their own Seliwanoff’s reagent from the resorcinol and hydrochloric acid.

I’m doing it that way because the paragraph 173.4 “small quantity exemption” regulations allow me to ship small quantities (no more than 30 mL or 30 g) of most hazardous chemicals without paying hazardous material shipping surcharges. But the rules are written strangely. For example, I could ship 30 mL of concentrated (12 molar) hydrochloric acid under SQE in one 30 mL bottle, but if I diluted that 30 mL of concentrated HCl with 30 mL of distilled water and put that 60 mL of 6 M HCl in a 60 mL bottle (or two 30 mL bottles), that package could no longer be shipped under paragraph 173.4, and kit buyers would have to pay a $30 hazardous shipping surcharge.

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Monday, 19 September 2011

09:52 – I’m sure Reed Hastings’ email will be reproduced elsewhere on the web, so I won’t bother. The big news, of course, is that Netflix is splitting into two independent companies, with Netflix keeping that name for streaming and the disc rental service renamed Qwikster. Separate memberships, separate queues, separate billing, separate user ratings, separate everything. Oh, and Netflix might as well have casually announced that GameFly is now toast, since Qwikster will also be renting games.

My first reaction was negative; I don’t really want to have to manage two separate queues without any links between them. The stuff we watch sometimes changes from disc-only to disc-plus-streaming and then back again. More than once, we’ve watched the first episodes of a long series on disc, watched others streaming, and then had to switch back to discs when the streaming contract ended. That hasn’t happened as much lately. Of the 92 titles in our instant queue, only three–The Planets, Walking with Cavemen, and Occupation–are currently showing as expiring. As usual, we get only a few days notice, in this case until the 23rd.

I really do wish that Netflix would negotiate permanent unlimited streaming licenses. It’s fine if they delay streaming availability until a few months after the DVD releases. For example, series 3 of Sons of Anarchy just released on DVD. Series 1 and 2 are available streaming, although only Netflix knows for how long. Series 3 will, no doubt, be available streaming in a few weeks or months. So why doesn’t Netflix negotiate a standard contract with the rights owners to Sons of Anarchy? Agree to pay them a fixed sum for permanent unlimited streaming for each episode as the new seasons become available, after a window to allow DVD sales. Most DVD set sales occur very soon after the set is released, and there’s little in the way of paying markets for old series episodes after that. Sure, a few people may buy episodes or even the entire season from iTunes or whatever, or they may be able to sell re-run rights to local TV stations, but an old series is basically spent in economic terms once the DVD set releases.

Licensing on this basis would be win-win-win for the copyright owners and for Qwikster and for Qwikster subscribers. The copyright owners would get “free money” from Qwikster, and Qwikster would build its back-catalog of good TV series and subscribers would have a lot of good content waiting to be discovered.

Of course, people like Barbara and me would love to see such a plan. More and more people are doing what we do; wait until a new series is available on Netflix/Qwikster before starting to watch it. I adore Emily VanCamp, for example, and she stars in a new series that debuts in a couple of days. In the past, I’d have set up our DVD recorder to record the episodes as they were broadcast and then zap the commercials. But we won’t watch it on broadcast TV. Instead, we’ll wait until next summer, when it will release on DVD, and watch it commercial-free.

Work continues on the biology book. I’m currently prototyping the biology kit and putting together purchase orders for a small number of the kits. I plan to have the book 100% complete by year-end, so I have to have kits ready to ship soon after that.

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Friday, 16 September 2011

09:01 – Not all politicians are liars, or at least not all the time. Occasionally, they accidentally tell the truth. For example, here’s my favorite quote from a politician: “Typhoid fever is a terrible disease. Either you die from it or you become an idiot. And I know what I’m talking about, I had it.” (Hint: No, it wasn’t Dan Quayle, although admittedly he did accidentally tell the truth more often than most politicians. Other than perhaps our current vice president.)

I remember some advice my mother gave me when I was a little fellow, back during the 1960 presidential campaign. Never, she said, believe anything good any politician says about himself or his own party; always believe anything bad a politician says about an opponent or opposing party. Which, I think, sums things up pretty well for the ages.

It’s still summer for a few more days, but autumn weather has already arrived in Winston-Salem. Yesterday, the high was in the upper 80’s (~ 30C). Today, the high is to be in the mid-50’s (lower teens C). There’s also a stiff breeze, which makes things feel considerably colder. I just took Colin for a short walk, and it was chilly enough that I wore my hoodie.

Speaking of autumn, I remembered to grab a specimen of the Acer rubrum (red maple) leaves from one of our trees, while the leaves are still green. I’ll do paper and/or thin-layer chromatography of an alcoholic extract of these leaves, along with other leaves I gather just as the leaves begin to change color and still other leaves I gather once the colors are fully developed. The chromatograms of A. rubrum leaves should illustrate that the intense green of chlorophyll conceals the yellow/orange color of carotenoid pigments that are present in leaves throughout the year, along with the presence of red/violet anthocyanin pigments, which develop only in late summer and early autumn as the leaves begin to change.

Right now, I’m writing up a lab session about plant population surveys. I’m using the front yard of the house across the street, which has been vacant for a couple of months. Species diversity is quite high for a residential yard. Although it’s not a plant, I found this spectacular fungi yesterday.

The cap is about 10 cm in diameter. It’s Amanita sp., but, not being a mycologist, I’m not certain which species. Whatever it was, it had disappeared this morning when I took Colin for his first walk.

15:45 – Oh, my. The troika have decided to withhold the next €8 billion tranche of the Greek bailout, which means Greece can’t receive any more funding until at least next month. For Greece, the rational decision is now to declare bankruptcy–possibly as early as today–and default on all of its sovereign and bank debt, whether euro-denominated or otherwise. Even if Greece fails to declare immediately, I’d expect a serious bank run, which should have the same effect on Greece’s banks. Greece may be faced with no immediate choice but to declare bankruptcy, default on all of its debts, and begin re-issuing the drachma, which will of course be worthless outside of Greece.

All of our Border Collies have had odd personality quirks. Kerry, for example was terrified of ceiling fans and AA cells. Not C cells or 9V batteries, you understand, nor even AAA cells. Just AA cells. Now Colin is exhibiting a quirk of his own. He dislikes my laser printers. When one of them fires up to print a page, he runs over and growls at it. When I remove the paper tray to refill it, he attacks the paper tray viciously. Very strange.

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Thursday, 15 September 2011

08:24 – Building science kits uses labels by the thousands. I’m down to my last box of Avery 5160 labels (1″ x 2-5/8″, 30 per sheet), so I went looking yesterday for a good on-line source. Actually, the labels I use are Maco rather than Avery, because the Avery labels are priced outrageously even at a discount.

I can buy five boxes of Maco ML-3000 labels of 100 sheets each (15,000 total labels) from Maco for $60, or $12/box including shipping, but I decided to look elsewhere. I found the same labels at another on-line vendor for $7.43 per box, but shipping was $17 on one box. So I added more boxes for a total of 5 boxes and found that shipping was still $17. Apparently, most of that $17 is a handling charge, so I wondered what else I might need that I could add to the order.

I’d bought a Brother HL-3070CW color laser printer just for printing labels. I remembered that the Brother manual said the printer included “starter” toner cartridges, so I figured I might need replacements soon. I checked the manual and found that the HL-3070CW requires TN210-series cartridges, with the black cartridge rated at 2,200 pages and the cyan, yellow, and magenta cartridges rated at 1,400 pages each. Each of those costs $60 or so on-line, so replacing the toner would cost about $240. Fortunately, I checked the manual again before I ordered toner cartridges. The starter cartridges are all rated for 1,000 pages. Given that I’m using that printer only for printing kit labels, those starter cartridges are probably less than 20% used.

Colin peed on the bed again last night, for the third or fourth time. Barbara warned him the last time he did that that the next time he did it that she’d get rid of him. He doesn’t seem to believe her. So, I have two more loads of laundry to do mid-week, but I guess that’s just part of having a puppy.

I think most of the problem is that Colin doesn’t get enough activity. I do what I can, but I simply don’t have time to spend all day outside with him as he’d like. Yesterday during the day I took him on ten short walks, down to the corner and back, and sometimes down to both corners and back. That’s a total of about two miles (three kilometers). At a brisk walk, that takes maybe five or six minutes each time, for a total of roughly an hour. Of course, while I got in two miles, Colin was running back and forth and around in circles each time, so he probably got in at least three or four. Still, it’s not enough for a 7-month-old Border Collie puppy.

I’m still hard at work on the biology lab book, as well as prototyping the biology kit.

13:43 – Well, that was interesting. The street vacuuming truck just passed our house. In the past, that was always a standard dump truck with a huge vacuum assembly on the back and a swinging hose that’s maybe half a meter in diameter. There were three crew, one driver and two guys walking along the curb, one swinging the hose back and forth to suck up leaves and dirt, and the second with a rake to position stuff for the hose guy and free up stuff that was matted and clumped. This time, it was a different-looking truck, still obviously a dump truck, but with the vacuum equipment looking more integrated with the vehicle. There was only one crew, the driver.

What interested me was the steering arrangement. The driver was in what would normally be the passenger seat, so I just assumed the truck was right-hand drive. But then as it got closer I realized that it was both right- and left-hand drive, with a steering wheel on each side. Presumably there’s some kind of mechanism to select which steering wheel and pedals are operative, but perhaps it’s set up like a B-17, with two complete sets of controls, both of which work simultaneously.

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Friday, 9 September 2011

08:42 – Well, the copy finally finished at 10:00 p.m. last night, after 13 hours of writing 300,000+ files totaling about 1,300 GB. I’ll probably do the same thing again to a second new 2 TB Barracuda drive and then pull both of the old 1.5 TB drives. Of course, that leaves me with a system drive that’s older than either of those drives. Barracuda drives are extremely reliable, but these guys are well past retirement age in dog years.

Jerry Coyne just posted an interesting article about science versus religion, Adam and Eve: theologians squirm and sputter. The whole of Christianity is based on the Adam and Eve myth and original sin. Without that, Christianity has no basis whatsoever. And yet science tells us, indisputably, that Adam and Eve never existed. It is amusing to watch accommodationists try to reconcile religious myth with the cold, hard light of science.

We’ll be using a lot of dropper bottles for the biology kits, so I ordered a couple hundred dozen from one of my wholesalers in 15 mL and 30 mL capacities. These bottles are Chinese-made, and they’re fine except for one thing. They arrive with the dropper tips and caps installed, which means that Barbara and I have to disassemble them all before filling and labeling them, and then turn around and reinstall the dropper tips and caps. Doing that for a few bottles is no big deal. Doing it for thousands involves some work.

We’ll also need 30 mL wide-mouth bottles, which none of my current wholesalers offer. So I contacted a bottle supplier about the wide-mouth bottles and decided as long as I was at it to see what they had to offer in the way of dropper bottles. Their bottles are US-made, which is good, and they come in bulk with the dropper tips and caps in separate plastic bags. The problem is, bottles, even Chinese bottles, aren’t cheap, and the US-made ones cost 30% to 40% more than the Chinese-made ones. Still, I was willing to consider paying more for the US-made bottles. Until the samples arrived.

The problem is the dropper tips. The Chinese bottles have dropper tips whose bodies are long plugs that friction-fit the mouth of the bottle. Seating a dropper tip is a simple matter of pressing the tip into the mouth of the bottle until it seats. The dropper tips on the US bottles have much shorter bodies, and snap into place. The problem is that it requires close attention to make sure the tip has actually seated and snapped into place. This would slow down processing significantly, so I decided to stick with the Chinese bottles.

Speaking of processing bottles, I looked into automated methods and concluded that our current manual method is actually better unless and until we reach the point where we need to produce hundreds of kits per month. Working together, Barbara and I can fill, insert dropper tips, cap, and label the bottles at a rate of about 150 bottles per hour. (I fill and insert the dropper tips; Barbara caps and labels.) The only part of that that can be automated at anything approaching a reasonable price is the filling operation, but that still requires individual attention to each bottle as it’s filled, and actually saves almost no time.

10:36 – Barbara saw an article in the paper this morning about using copper sulfate to kill the mildew that’s appeared on some of her shrubs. I buy copper(II) sulfate by the kilogram, so she asked if I could make her up some right here in the sink. Of course, I agreed. The problem is, what concentration?

Apparently, the concentration needed varies. One site mentioned ranges from 2 to 6 pounds per 100 gallons, which translates to something like 909 to 2727 grams per 379 liters, or about 2.4 to 7.2 grams per liter. Or, as I think of it, about 0.01 to 0.03 molar. Since I keep liters of 1.0 M copper(II) sulfate solution in inventory–the stuff takes forever to dissolve–I’ll just compromise on 0.02 M and dilute one part of the stock solution to 49 parts water.

I did wonder whether the high solubility of copper(II) sulfate would be a problem. If Barbara sprays on 0.02 M copper(II) sulfate, it’ll stick around only until the next good rain dissolves it and rinses it off the plants. That’s apparently why people use Bordeaux or Burgundy mixtures, which are solutions of copper(II) sulfate mixed with either calcium hydroxide (lime) or sodium carbonate (washing soda or soda ash) to form insoluble precipitates of either copper hydroxide or copper carbonate. Apparently these are more persistent because they don’t dissolve in rainwater, but I do wonder whether they’d clog up Barbara’s sprayer. What the insoluble copper salts really are is time-release treatments, because even “insoluble” compounds are very slightly soluble in water. So, apparently copper(II) ions kill fungi even in nanomolar or even picomolar concentrations. I think we’ll start with just 0.02 M copper(II) sulfate solution and see if that makes the fungi gag, clutch their tiny little chests, and drop off the plants.

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