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Category: science kits

Tuesday, 23 February 2016

10:36 – More labeling of bottles and vials today. Barbara got enough done yesterday to almost run us out of unused 30 mL cylinders and run us down to just over a case of the 15 mL cylinders. I’ll reorder those today.

Barbara is heading down to Winston on Thursday to have dinner with a friend and run errands. She’ll stay with Frances and Al on Thursday night, have lunch Friday with a different friend, make a Costco run, and head back home to Sparta. That leaves Colin and me free to pursue wild women and parties while she’s gone. Or not.

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Monday, 22 February 2016

13:00 – Barbara is pretty happy with the state of the house, so we’re back in kit-making mode. I’m running labels for 15 mL bottles right now, hundreds and hundreds of them, and Barbara is labeling and bagging the bottles. I’ll start making up chemicals tomorrow, and we’ll be filling thousands of bottles and vials over the next week or so.

I also need to re-order bottles. We’re down to maybe 1,500 of the 15 mL cylindrical bottles and about 1,000 of the 30 mL cylinders, most or all of which will be labeled in the next few days.

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Monday, 15 February 2016

10:58 – We got maybe 3″ of snow and sleet overnight, with more expected today and tonight, perhaps with some freezing rain mixed in. We don’t need to go anywhere, so we’re just staying indoors other than to give Colin a little outside time.

We were down to only a couple of biology kits left in stock, so we made up another dozen or so yesterday. For this time of year we’re in good shape now on finished-goods inventory. We’re shipping less than one kit per day on average, which’ll be the norm through the end of next month.

I finally got my new Lenovo Core i7 micro-tower system unboxed. It’s sitting on my office desk downstairs downloading and installing Windows 10 updates as I write this upstairs on my notebook. Once it finishes updating, I’ll pull two or three backup copies of the fresh installation to DVDs, download and burn the current Linux Mint, replace the hard drive with a new one, install Linux Mint, restore all my data, and get things configured the way I want them. That’ll probably take all day today, on and off, and maybe some time tomorrow as well.

The video card has dual outputs, so I’ll probably connect a second display to the system. Linux Mint handles dual displays well, and I just happen to have a spare 25″ display that’s not being used. I’ve never worked with dual displays before, so it’ll be interesting to see how the extra screen real estate changes how I work.

I started writing my PA novel last night, but only in my head. I’m using the real names of the people I’m basing characters upon because otherwise I’d have a hard time keeping things straight. I’ll just go back and do a search and replace when I finish the first draft, followed by a very careful read-through to catch the inevitable S&R errors. I actually have no idea whether or not I can write a decent novel, so I’ll post the first couple of chapters to let you guys tell me how I’m doing. If it turns out that I’m a mediocre novelist (or worse), I’ll just bag it. It’s not like I don’t have lots of other stuff to fill my time.

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Thursday, 4 February 2016

11:04 – We managed to get the 100 pounds of sugar, 50 pounds or so of rice, and 30 pounds of cornmeal repackaged yesterday, but we ran out of clean PET bottles and so didn’t get the 100 pounds of flour or the 25 pounds of oatmeal finished. We’ll continue work on that today and tomorrow.

We’ve also been drawing down our supply of science kits. This time of year, we’re shipping kits in relatively small numbers, but we need to get more built. We’re down to four or five biology kits in stock and maybe half a dozen forensic kits, so those’ll be top priority this week and next. That, and getting shelving set up in my office and the unfinished area of the basement, which Barbara calls the “natural area”.

I’m back at work on the prepping book, AKA The Book That Will Not Die. In my copious free time, I’m also starting to outline a fiction PA book and write character bios. One of those characters is Lori, the woman who delivers our mail. In addition to her USPS job, she has a 40-acre farm, where she raises Black Angus cattle. I asked her yesterday if she’d like to have dinner with us one evening, to which she readily agreed. I think I’ll name her character Harry the Mailman. Oh, wait. That’s already been taken.

I’m sure that Barbara will be happy to know that, other than stuff I need to do/buy for research on the prepping book, I’m pretty content with our current level of preparations. If things do go pear-shaped, we’re pretty well set to ride it out. Sure, there’ll always be more I want to do, but we’re in reasonably good shape in terms of water, food, shelter/heat, medications, communications, and defense.

I’m not really expecting any kind of catastrophic long-term emergency, but it wouldn’t surprise me if one did occur. I think the most likely such emergency is widespread civil unrest. If that happens, we’re well-placed to ride it out here in small-town North Carolina in the mountains. I don’t expect hordes of rioters and looters to show up here. If anything, the converse is likely to happen. History shows that if things get really bad, rather than big city dwellers heading for rural areas, rural dwellers are more likely to head for the big cities. That’s where jobs and government services are available. If the lights do go out, I’d expect power to be restored first in the big cities. Small-town and rural America would be way down the priority list for emergency aid, restoring services, and so on. And that’s fine with me.

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Monday, 1 February 2016

09:18 – We’re back to kit stuff this week, along with getting my new desktop system installed and working.

Colin got a huge shock this morning when I took him out to pee. As he walked out the front door and around the corner of the house, what should he spot but two or three dozen gigantic squirrels right along the back fence? He shouted, “Look at the size of those squirrels!” and went on alert. I explained to him that they were actually Black Angus squirrels and that it’d be a really bad idea to chase them. He shrugged, lifted his leg to pee, and came back into the house. Oddly, there was one Holstein squirrel mixed in with all the Black Angus squirrels.

Incidentally, I mentioned the other day that I’d gotten through about 25% of Cyberstorm, and that it seemed good so far. Alas, it didn’t last. The book quickly degenerated into a piece of garbage, despite the thousands of 4- and 5-star reviews it has on Amazon. As usual, the 1-star reviews give a better idea of the real quality of the book, which is to say 1-star.

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Saturday, 30 January 2016

10:30 – More administrative stuff today and tomorrow. Monday, I start on building more chemical bags and other subassemblies for science kits, as well as getting shelves up in my office and the unfinished basement area and getting my new desktop system set up and configured. Barbara’s been doing yeoman duty upstairs, getting stuff moved in, unboxed, and organized, as well as getting the garage cleared and organized. We’re making progress. We’re entering the slowest period of the year for science kit sales, which gives us time to focus on the other stuff that needs to be done.

My voter registration card came the other day, and I’m debating what to do. I’ll vote in the state and local primaries this spring and the general election in November, but I’m not sure about the federal level races. I’m halfway inclined to write in none of the above for each of them, but I may vote for Cruz in the primary and the Republican presidential candidate in the November election. Whoever that might be must be better than whoever the Democrats run. I’m really inclined to vote for the Libertarian candidates in all races, of course, but they have no chance of being elected except perhaps at the local level. And I’m not fool enough to think that it ultimately makes any difference who’s in office. They’re all bad.

Barbara baked a pan of cornbread yesterday, which turned out very well. Today, she’s baking regular bread and a batch of oatmeal cookies.


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Sunday, 24 January 2016

12:31 – I hope USPS is running tomorrow. I have kits stacked up and awaiting pickup. Barbara shoveled the front steps and walk this morning. I got the Trooper out of the garage and used it to punch through the pile of snow that the snowplow had left blocking our driveway.

We’re watching Last Tango in Halifax and Orange is the New Black on Netflix streaming. The former is typically high-quality British drama. The second is up to Netflix’s usual high standards. It features lots of nekkid women and simulated cunnilingus, so it’s not appropriate for pre-pubescent children, although teenagers won’t find anything new or shocking in it.

Last night, I read Bobby Andrews’ Prepper’s Crucible (Omnibus, Volumes 1-3): An EMP Tale. He’s not a great writer, although he gets better as he goes along. He calls this three volumes, but in really it’s one mid-length novel. The fourth volume is also available, like the omnibus volume, from Kindle Unlimited. It’s only a nominal 115 pages, so I’ll go ahead and read it as well. Volume 5 is imminent, and is available for pre-order.

I’m going to help Barbara hang more pictures this afternoon. Tomorrow we need to make up more biology chemical bags and build more biology kits.

Email from Jen. She reads lots of PA novels, and has decided that she could do a better job. She’s currently outlining the first volume, which she intends to self-publish on Amazon. We’ll see. Lots of people start writing books. Few finish them. On the other hand, Jen is a very determined woman, so perhaps she’ll actually do it.

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Saturday, 16 January 2016

07:21 – I forgot to do a weekly prepping post yesterday, because I’ve been so busy with house stuff and kit stuff that I haven’t had a moment to think about prepping.

Actually, I did start one thing that counts as weekly prepping. I’m putting together a new biology kit supplement page for microbiology that includes half a dozen antibiotics in larger quantities that can be ordered individually by type. They’re all pharmaceutical-grade drugs, but are not repackaged under conditions that the FDA mandates for drugs intended for human consumption. They’re intended for laboratory use only, which of course may be honored in the breach during an emergency. But it does mean that we’ll have reasonable quantities of these antibiotics in inventory.

So what did you do to prep this week?

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Wednesday, 13 January 2016

10:58 – With the move and everything that’s been going on, my inventory system broke down. I thought we had enough of everything other than vials of PTC paper to make up three dozen biology kit unregulated chemicals bags. Turns out we were out of vials of penicillin G potassium powder and neomycin sulfate powder. Barbara will be filling and labeling 90 or 120 of each today. I’m gradually getting our inventory numbers verified by actual count, but we have so many SKUs that it’s a lot of work.

We’re also down to our last five sets of prepared slides, which we made up and boxed yesterday. I reordered 30 more sets of slides yesterday. Five sets may be a month’s supply, but they could also sell in a single day. Fortunately, my vendor is in-stock on 30 each of all 15 slides in the set. Sometimes, they’re not, and I have to wait a month or more for them to arrive on a slow boat from India.

While I was at it, I also did a purchase order for a few kilos of assorted bulk antibiotics to restock our raw material chemical inventory. All of our vendors were out-of-stock on sulfadimethozine, so I ordered half a kilo of sulfamethazine, which is a good substitute for science kit purposes. Fortunately, I already have a kilo of sulfadimethoxine in the freezer.

The weather continues cold. It was 14F (-10C) when I took Colin out this morning, with the wind chill down around -4F (-20C). Colin doesn’t understand why we wimpy humans prefer to stay indoors instead of taking him out to chase sticks.

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Tuesday, 12 January 2016

08:35 – Work continues on building science kit subassemblies and finished kits. We built two dozen of the biology kit regulated chemical bags yesterday. We had sufficient bottled chemicals to do three dozen, but I like keeping some bottled chemicals in reserve, since many of them are used in different types of kits.

We’ll get biology kit un-regulated chemical bags built today, along with another batch of finished biology kits. I also need to order a couple of items that we’re running short of. And, of course, we need to track down all the individual items that go into finished kits. They’re all up here, somewhere. We’ll work today and tomorrow on getting them organized.

It’s still a bit chilly. The forecast low for tonight is 14F (-10C), with winds of 20 to 30 MPH gusting to 40 MPH (64 KPH). I’m not sure what that makes the official wind chill, but it must be down around -40F/C.

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