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Category: science kits

Friday, 3 July 2015

08:34 – Greece is in the toilet. Greek banks cumulatively are down to less than €500 million cash, or about €40 per person. With the daily €50 withdrawal limit, that means the banks will run completely out of cash this weekend. Ambulances aren’t running because more and more of them have run out of gasoline and can’t get more. Not that that really matters, because hospitals have run out of many critical drugs and can’t get more. Foreign tourists have been warned that food and drugs are so short that there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to eat or get urgent medical care. Famously, one Greek newlywed couple in New York is living on the street and begging for food because their credit cards are no longer honored.

It would appear that the goal of the eurocrats is to drive Tsipras from office and force the Greeks to knuckle under, after which a trickle of aid will resume, just enough to keep Greeks from starving. One way or another, Greece is finished, a failed state.

Unless Greece tells the EU to get stuffed, defaults on its existing debt pile, and abandons the euro for a native currency. That’s their best option at this point. The new drachma would be introduced at parity with the euro, and would quickly loose most of its nominal value. Greeks would face at least another decade of grinding poverty, much worse than they’ve already experienced. But the alternative of giving in to the EU and continuing with the euro is worse still.

We’re working all weekend on kit stuff. I was hoping to find a Confederate flag to fly out front tomorrow, but there are none for sale anywhere.

10:29 – We’re back from a quick Sam’s Club run, where we picked up Coke, orange juice, and not much else, other than 35 pounds of soybean oil. Now, to work on kits.

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Thursday, 2 July 2015

08:06 – I’m surprised it took this long. Yesterday, a Montana man, citing the recent SCOTUS decision on same-sex marriage, applied for a marriage license to allow him to marry a second woman. If Montana officials have any sense, they’ll grant it.

The real problem is that everyone has been arguing around the real issue, which has nothing to do with same-sex marriage, plural marriage, group marriage, and so on. The question that should have been before SCOTUS was whether the government has any right to be involved in marriage in any way. My position, of course, is that it’s none of the government’s business. Marriage should be a purely personal arrangement between private persons. The government should be forbidden to be involved in marriage or to consider marital status in any way, particularly with regard to taxation.

By making marriage a purely personal matter, as it should be, we eliminate the problem. Churches cannot be forced to marry a gay couple, nor can gay-owned bakeries be penalized for refusing to bake wedding cakes for heterosexual couples. The IRS could no longer discriminate against married people because everyone would be taxed as an individual. Get government completely out of marriage, and the problems go away.

Barbara has tomorrow off work for the holiday, and we plan to spend most of the long weekend doing science kit stuff. Inventory of finished kits is low, and we need to start building it up for the rush that starts later this month.

16:02 – I just shipped a science kit to Canada, which was apparently the first one I’d shipped there since sometime in May. On 31 May, USPS changed prices for Priority Mail International, but only for Canada. All other countries remain the same: the only factors that determine price are the weight of the package and which country it’s being shipped to.

But USPS now has zoned rates to Canada, taking distance into account. Not zones in Canada, mind you. For a given weight, the price is the same to anywhere in Canada. Instead, the shipping price varies according to where the shipper is located in the US. There are now eight US zones,from 1.1 to 1.8. If you’re in a low zone, 1.1 or 1.2, the shipping price may actually be less than it was before the price change. If you’re in a high zone, it goes up dramatically. For example, a shipper in zone 1.8 (e.g., Honolulu) will pay something like $30 additional to ship a 5-pound package. For what we ship–6+ to 8+ pound packages–our break-even probably would have been Zone 1.2. Unfortunately, Winston-Salem is in Zone 1.4, which means our shipping costs to Canada for a typical package have increased by almost 30%.

The shipping surcharge covers more than just the additional shipping cost. Our actual costs also include higher credit-card charges on international shipments, additional packing materials, and the extra half hour or so it takes to re-package and ship to an international customer. We’ve been charging a $44 shipping surcharge on Canadian shipments for three or four years now, which means we absorbed two or three increases in postage costs by leaving the surcharge the same. Until recently, we were paying $36.43 in actual postage, which left only $7.57 to cover those other costs. The kit I shipped today went at the 6+ pound rate (< 7 pounds) and cost $44.11 in actual postage, leaving us -$0.11 to cover the additional costs.

So I just increased the shipping surcharge for Canadian shipments to $60, which is actually a couple bucks more than our actual cost. But I figure it’ll probably be another three years before I get around to updating it, so this way we won’t end up taking a loss when postage prices go up again next year.

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Wednesday, 1 July 2015

07:30 – The morning paper says that Greece is officially in default and Puerto Rico might as well be. No surprise here. That’s what happens when spendthrift governments borrow money that they can’t print more of. The question is, why do investors lend money to deadbeats that they know are deadbeats?

Work on science kits continues.

11:50 – Our real-estate agent has sent us several more possibilities, including a couple that are in “move-in” condition. I’m trying to be as flexible as possible, because I want to get moved and settled in by this autumn. We’re not sure yet when Barbara will retire from her current job, but I hope it’s in the next 3 or 4 months.

I told her that the bulk of the moving tasks would fall on her, simply because I have to keep business operations as normal as possible. That means she’ll be doing most of the packing, other than kit stuff. Our new house will be only 1.5 hours away from our current one, so we have the luxury of being able to move in stages. We’ll concentrate first on getting the essentials into the new place, so we can sleep/eat in either place. We’ll gradually get more stuff moved up there until we’re eventually ready to have a moving company move all the furniture and so on. And the whole time I need to be able to ship kits from either place.

12:22 – Well, it’s official. Barbara’s last day of work is 30 September, which is just about ideal. She’ll probably be using her accrued paid-time-off between now and then by taking Fridays off when there’s stuff to be done. Next up, we need to figure out health insurance. There are several options, including COBRA and Obamacare. Also, Barbara has 20 years in with the Forsyth County Public Library, which is part of the NC state retirement system. She hasn’t officially retired from the library, but we’ll look into that as a health-care option for her since the NC retirement system provides retirement benefits to retirees.

Meanwhile, with Barbara going full-time with our company, I’m going to look into setting up an employee benefits arrangement that would, for example, reimburse all medical costs not covered by insurance, including co-pays, drug costs, and deductibles. That’s a legitimate business perk and a legitimate deduction. I’m also looking into setting up a SHOP Obamacare account, which would pay health insurance premium for all full-time employees and be deductible from business income. If we go with a Platinum plan, I may even be able to get our personal income down to a level that’d make the company eligible for subsidies. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

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Tomorrow’s Post, but Today

11:30 – I was making up nitrogen-free fertilizer stock solutions for biology kits yesterday when it struck me again as so odd that I’m using reagent-grade chemicals to make up fertilizer solutions.

Each of the solutions contains macro- and/or micro-nutrients. We have to supply them as three separate solutions because if you try combining them in the concentrations needed for stock solutions, you get a nasty precipitate.

So I made up 15 liters of Fertilizer A, enough for 120 kits at 125 mL/kit. Fertilizer A is basically just a concentrated solution of monopotassium dihydrogen phosphate and dipotassium monohydrogen phosphate. (You use a specific mix of the two chemicals to maintain the proper pH.) Fertilizer A supplies potassium and phosphorus, both of which are macro-nutrients (The “PK” in “NPK”). That solution, as expected, turned out clear and water-white.

I went on to make up 2 liters of Fertilizer C, which provides calcium, cobalt, and boron ions. Again, that solution turned out clear and water-white.

Ah, but then I went on to make up 4 liters of Fertilizer B, again enough for about 120 kits at 30 mL per bottle, and provides magnesium, iron, copper, manganese, molybdenum, and zinc ions. What a mess. There’s not a precipitate per se, but the solution is a cloudy brown. Cloudy enough that I don’t want to run it through my dispenser pump, which is a precision instrument. So I guess I’ll hand-fill 120 30 mL bottles. Better that than buy a new dispenser pump.

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Tuesday, 30 June 2015

11:30 – Science kit sales are picking up, as expected. We shipped five kits yesterday, and have three more queued up to ship today, assuming that PayPal releases the hold on two of them. We’re at about 150% of last June’s sales. June is always a slow month, but better than the dead months of February through May. The busy period is the two month stretch from mid-July through mid-September, when we can expect to do 40% to 50% of the year’s sales. We’ll likely have many good days during that period when we ship more kits than we do some weeks during slow periods. I’m still making up solutions, filling bottles, and shipping kits, never-ending tasks this time of year.

Thinking about solar power the other day, it struck me that I already have good inverters, in the form of true sine-wave inverters built into on-line UPSs. I have three of those, totaling about 3500 VA, and 3.5 KW is more than enough to power the stuff I’d want to run with sine-wave power. All I’d really need is few high-output solar panels, a charge controller, and some additional gel or lead-acid deep-charge batteries. I’m not sure what voltage the on-line UPSs convert the 120VAC to for recharging the batteries, but I suspect I could just put the UPSs and battery bank in close proximity to the PV panels and run a heavy-duty extension cord downstairs that wouldn’t normally have anything connected to it. The UPSs wouldn’t be connected to AC power other than for the initial charge, and would therefore run all the time as though the power had failed. I’ll have to do some research, but it seems as though it should work and save me the price of a 3.5 KW true sine-wave inverter.

13:34 – I get really tired of reading really bad prepping advice on websites. I just read one on theprepperjournal.com on water filters, where the author recommended the Platypus. That filter is one of the worst choices you could make. Here’s a detailed Amazon.com review that explains why. The reviewer actually knows what he’s talking about, in contrast to the author of the article, who doesn’t.

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Monday, 29 June 2015

08:09 – It would appear that Greece is now officially toast. Capital controls are now in effect, Greeks are permitted to withdraw only €60/day from their accounts, and an in/out referendum is scheduled for next Sunday. Assuming that the Greek government is unable or unwilling to pay the €1.6 billion due to the IMF tomorrow, the IMF has already announced that it will consider Greece in default. No grace period.

Meanwhile, the “Greek Disease” is spreading, most recently to Puerto Rico, which has already announced it will be unable to make payments on its outstanding $72 billion debt unless the US federal government bails it out. With US taxpayers already on the hook via the IMF for a considerable portion of Greece’s bad debt to the IMF, that means our tax money will be going to pay the debts of both of these deadbeats.

13:45 – I’d forgotten what a PITA it is to fill bottles with glycerol. The stuff is so viscous that it simply doesn’t want to go into the bottle. Fortunately, viscosity decreases with temperature, so I put the glass dispenser reservoir in a deep tray of very hot water, allow it to sit there for several minutes with occasional swirling, and then fill 60 bottles. Rinse and repeat.

I’m hearing from private correspondents that things in Greece are a lot worse than the media is admitting. Although the capital controls apply only to cash, apparently many/most businesses in Greece have stopped accepting credit cards, presumably because they don’t believe they’ll be paid. I know that I wouldn’t accept any kit orders with a Greek shipping address. I might not be paid at all, and I if payment was honored it might be in worthless drachma, with a non-optional conversion factor applied. Greece is now pretty much a cash-only country. Given the way things are, I wouldn’t accept even a certified check, let alone a wire transfer.

My guess is that Greece will crash out of the euro in the coming weeks, and possibly as early as tomorrow–the so-called Grexident that people have been dreading. At this point, it’s clear that the welfare of the Greek people is the absolute last priority of the eurocrats. So much for EU solidarity. All of them are completely in favor of solidarity, unless it’s going to cost them money.

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Friday, 26 June 2015

08:00 – More science kit stuff today.

I knew when we started the science kit business that we would be doing something important, but it’s becoming increasingly clear to me just how important it is. The future of this country, assuming it has one, will come down to home-schooled kids, who are the only ones nowadays who are getting a real education. Public schools have become all about progressive indoctrination. Home-schooled kids are the only ones who are learning about–to borrow a phrase–truth, justice, and the American way. We have to give them the tools they need. So we’ll continue doing our small bit to contribute to that.

On that note, I’ll go back to making up chemical solutions and filling bottles. That seems pretty mundane, but it’s important.


09:05 – I really like these gallon bottles that Costco uses for purified water. They actually hold a gallon when filled to the neck. In fact, for our purposes, they might as well be huge volumetric flasks. I can judge to 3.8 liters ± about 0.5% just by looking at the fill level in the neck. Also, the labels come off without leaving a bunch of adhesive on the bottle. Finally, they’re polyethylene terephthalate, which is the ideal plastic for most chemical solutions other than strong acids or bases. I’m running short of gallon containers, so I’m going to empty one or two of them into 2-liter bottles today so I can use the bigger bottles for chemical solutions. That’ll also cut down on refrigerator space for Barbara’s water.

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Thursday, 25 June 2015

08:01 – With a high of 95F, today is to be the last of our recent stretch of extremely hot weather. Tomorrow and the next several days are to have highs in the 80’s, and lows in the lower 60’s and upper 50’s. I blame it on global cooling.

Many of our kit customers buy a biology kit one year and a chemistry kit the next, or vice versa, so we decided to create a combined biology/chemistry kit that eliminates the duplication in equipment and a few chemicals. By doing that, we can sell the combined kit for about $40 less than the total price of the two kits purchased separately.

I want to have this combined kit available to ship by the first of August, and ideally sooner, so I needed to get started on it now. I spent yesterday finalizing the kit contents and getting the web pages needed to sell it set up. I’ll continue work on that today and, if necessary, tomorrow. Then we’ll get a prototype built and figure out the minor details like what size shipping box is needed, how to pack it, and so on.

This is the kind of thing that Barbara being available full time will greatly aid. Having her available to do a lot of the stuff I do now will free me up to design more kits, write manuals, and so on.

Someone sent me a link to an article that suggests we’re approaching Peak Leftism, and suggested that I might feel foolish if we relocate only to find that progressivism has spluttered to a halt and that we’ve returned to sanity in this country. Well, no. In the first place, I don’t believe that’s going to happen, no matter who’s elected. In the second place, I’d want to relocate to a small town even if things were normal now.

14:38 – I’m just back from the dentist, where I had my fangs cleaned, polished, and sharpened. I asked the dentist about having new fangs installed, like that guy in the old James Bond movies. Apparently, that’s not a standard procedure, at least not yet.

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Tuesday, 23 June 2015

08:00 – Another hot one today, with the high forecast to be body temperature. Colin and I won’t be spending much time outdoors today.

I’m still making up chemical solutions for kits, four or eight liters at a time. This coming weekend and the following one, we’ll be filling bottles, thousands and thousands of them. I run the dispenser pump to fill the bottles, Barbara caps. By 1 August, we need to have chemical bags and the other subassemblies built for hundreds and hundreds of kits to accommodate the rush from early August through mid-September. Actually boxing up the kits doesn’t take much time. We can do final assembly of 100+ kits a day easily, assuming we have the subassemblies ready to go.

The Greek farce continues, with the Troika (the IMF, the EU, and the European Central Bank) debating whether or not to lend Greece (I almost typed “Greed”) more money that they will then turn around and use to pay loans coming due to … The Troika. That way, everyone can continue to pretend that Greece isn’t a deadbeat that has already defaulted continuously for a decade and has been bankrupt as long as anyone now alive can remember. Greece is a failed country. Greece has always been a failed country. The Kabuki Theater that’s been going on for a decade now is simply the attempt of the politicians to give themselves a fig leaf so that their voters won’t realize that this has all been taxpayer money down the drain and what’s happening now is simply throwing away good money after bad.


14:38 – I’m taking a lesson from Barbara here. When she wants to be sure she’ll be able to recover information later, she posts it on her page.

How To Install kompozer

Kompozer was dropped from the repos, since it is no longer maintained in Debian. But, you can still install it on newer releases.

Use packages from 12.04 Precise

These packages are installable on at least the 12.10, 13.04, 14.04 and 15.04 releases.

First, install dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libatk1.0-0 libc6 libcairo2 libfontconfig1 libfreetype6 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 libglib2.0-0 libgtk2.0-0 libidl0 libnspr4 libnss3 libpango1.0-0 libpng12-0 libstdc++6 libx11-6 libxft2 libxinerama1 libxrender1 libxt6 zlib1g

Then, get the two packages, and install them in the correct order.

For 32bit systems:

wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/kompozer-data_0.8%7Eb3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_all.deb
wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/kompozer_0.8%7Eb3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i kompozer-data_0.8~b3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i kompozer_0.8~b3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_i386.deb

for 64bit systems:

wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/kompozer-data_0.8%7Eb3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_all.deb
wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/primary/+files/kompozer_0.8%7Eb3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i kompozer-data_0.8~b3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i kompozer_0.8~b3.dfsg.1-0.1ubuntu2_amd64.deb

You can now find kompozer in the menu.

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Sunday, 21 June 2015

09:15 – The first day of summer, and it’s coming in around here like a ferocious panda. Highs for the next week or two are forecast to be in the mid- to upper-90’s F. I blame global warming. Either that, or it’s just hot.

With it being so miserable outside, Barbara and I spent yesterday working indoors on kit stuff. We’ll do the same today, after she finishes cleaning house and I finish the laundry.

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