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Category: science kits

Saturday, 27 July 2013

09:14 – We got an order for a biology kit overnight, to be shipped to Australia. That’s the first order we’ve gotten from Australia. Well, the first valid order, anyway. We got an order from Australia a few days ago for a chemistry kit, but the buyer hadn’t added the shipping surcharge. I emailed him to tell him we couldn’t ship until he’d paid the shipping surcharge, but I haven’t heard back from him.

Barbara is out running errands this morning. This afternoon, she’ll be labeling bottles for 30 sets each of the two forensic science kit supplements. She may also get started on labeling another set of bottles for 60 biology kits. Which reminds me that I need to check our inventory of empty bottles. We use the things by the thousands, and we stock seven or eight different types of bottles.

12:39 – It’s raining. Again. Officially, we have “only” about 5 inches (12.5 cm) of rain month-to-date. At our house, we’ve had over 8 inches (20 cm) MTD through yesterday. Today, we have monsoon weather. The instantaneous rainfall rate at the moment is about 1.5 inches per hour, with flood warnings posted by the NWS. Our rain gauge has more than 2 inches (5 cm) in it, and our front yard looks like a rice paddy.

13:39 – And an hour later we’re up from 2.1 inches to 3.6 inches DTD. I’ve decided to stop work on lab kits and start building an ark.

13:59 – Two of the annoying things about Netflix streaming are their extremely liberal definition of “New Arrivals” and their very short notice when a title is about to disappear. They list titles as “New Arrivals” that we finished watching almost a year ago. Disregarding the fact that they shouldn’t list any title that we’re current on, even if we just finished watching it yesterday, claiming titles as “new” that in fact have been available on their service for a year borders on deceptive. And when their rights to a title are about to run out, they list the expiration date, which is seldom more than a week before the title actually disappears. Certainly they must know from the time they license a title when that license expires, so why not post the expiration date immediately? Otherwise, they put their customers in the position of starting to watch a series that’ll go away before they have time to watch all of it.

The obvious problem is that for the last year or more Netflix has been forced to pay much more to license content. They obviously want to make their streaming catalog look more comprehensive and up-to-date than it actually is. They’re not doing themselves or their customers any favors by deceptively padding their new listings. I’d much rather see a new-this-week or new-this-month list that actually has only new titles than have to scroll through a bunch of stuff that’s “new” only in the minds of the Netflix marketing folks.

And, as I’ve been telling them every time I talk to them, at $8/month, their streaming price is much too low. Double it. They’ll lose some customers, sure. But not many, I suspect. At $16/month, Netflix streaming would still be a great bargain compared to what cable and satellite TV providers charge, assuming that Netflix uses that additional money to license more content.

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Thursday, 25 July 2013

16:01 – Barbara and I have started watching One Tree Hill, which revolves around two high-school basketball players and their extended families in small-town North Carolina. It’s set in the fictional small town of Tree Hill, NC, which is apparently in the extreme northeasternmost part of the state–somewhere around Essex, Massachusetts if the 01928 zipcode is to be trusted. So far, the series seems decent, and there are multiple cuties for me to watch.

We rotated this series in to replace Glee, which we dropped a couple episodes into series three. Barbara thought it was getting repetitive. I thought it jumped the shark midway through series one. Finding out that the late Cory Monteith, the male lead, had been not just a doper but an actual junkie pretty much sealed it for me. I had no desire to watch a dead junkie. And, like most straight guys, I don’t particularly like show tunes, which it seemed was all they were doing for the last several episodes we watched.

Science kit sales are picking up, although not to the extent I’d expected. We’re shipping kits at a 15 to 20 per week rate, which is accelerating. I’d hoped to be at a 30 kits/week rate by late July or early August. Still, I guess I should be careful what I wish for. Shipping 15 or 20 kits a week is sustainable; shipping twice that would get very hectic very quickly.

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Wednesday, 24 July 2013

12:48 – When Danny delivered the mail yesterday, I asked him about some of the stuff I mentioned here yesterday. He said that as far as he knew anyone could get delivery to a curbside box, even if there was a CBU in the neighborhood. He thinks CBUs are insecure, curbside boxes somewhat more secure, and porch boxes most secure of all. Apparently there are frequent thefts from CBUs, probably because it’s not obvious that the thief has no business there. Theft from curbside boxes is less common, probably because the thief is in plain sight and it’s obvious to neighbors that he’s messing with a box he doesn’t own. Theft from porch boxes is still less common because the thief has to walk right up to the porch to steal the mail.

Other than Kastle-Meyer reagent, which we store refrigerated and add individually at ship time, we have plenty of inventory of the FK01A core forensic science kits, but we’re nearly out of stock on the FK01B and FK01C supplement kits. Time to build more of those. I’ll probably do only 15 or 20 of each, because at least half of the orders for forensic kits are for the core kit only.

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Monday, 22 July 2013

10:22 – As usual, I’ll be working on science kits this week. I also hope to be able to devote at least a few hours to several longer-range projects. There’s never enough time.

13:38 – I keep seeing these articles in the MSM about how the economy is improving, consumer confidence is up, and so on. I don’t buy it. I think things have really tanked in the last couple of months. We see that in our business. From January through the end of May, our sales were running between three and four times month-on-month 2012 sales. Then things seemed to fall off a cliff. In June, we beat June 2012 numbers by maybe 20%. We may or may not beat last year’s number this month.

But it’s not just us. I’ve exchanged email with several other small business owners, and they all tell me the same thing: sales have really slowed over the last couple of months. And I see other evidence as well. I’m getting a bunch of promo emails from many of our minor vendors. They’re all similar. One formerly offered free shipping on orders over $75. They’re now offering free shipping on any order. Another dropped the limit for free shipping from $250 to $25. Yet another is offering 20% discounts on any order over $100. And so on. And none of these are vendors for whom this is ordinarily a slow time of year. That tells me that a lot of businesses are trying desperately to generate traffic and sales. Even Costco seems to be pushing harder than usual.

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Friday, 19 July 2013

07:51 – Well, it’s official. The city of Detroit has finally filed for bankruptcy, the largest ever municipal bankruptcy. They’re not even sure exactly how much they owe, but it must be on the close order of $20 billion. This in a city that has been hemorrhaging both population and businesses. Most of the rich and middle-class population has abandoned Detroit, a process that’s accelerated over the last decade or so, leaving only 700,000 or so residents, mostly poor and on government assistance. Detroit’s tax base is pathetic and getting worse. Large swaths of the city are row upon row of abandoned homes and businesses. Detroit is never coming back.

The reality is that Detroit’s creditors are likely to see at best a few cents on the dollar, and that’s if they’re lucky. City government employees will have their pensions slashed by 90% or more, and many vendors who trusted the city will be left holding an empty bag. The city government employee unions are screaming bloody murder, of course, but I have zero sympathy for them. Their demands played no small part in driving Detroit under. Now, no doubt, they’ll be appealing for the state and federal governments to bail out Detroit. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

Unfortunately, the problems that beset Detroit and eventually drove it under are by no means unique to Detroit. Although Detroit may be the most extreme case, there are hundreds of other local governments who have made and are still making the kinds of mistakes that ultimately killed Detroit: spending money they don’t have, assuming massive debt loads, making promises they can’t keep, allowing public employee unions to run roughshod over taxpayers’ interests, creating environments that are hostile to businesses and employers, and so forth. Detroit isn’t the first municipal bankruptcy, and it certainly won’t be the last.

09:19 – As of yesterday morning, we were down to two of the SK01 core prepared slides sets in stock. We sold both of those yesterday, but I built a new batch and as of this morning we’re back up to 30 sets in stock. But as of this morning we’re down to only 15 of the CK01A chemistry kits in stock, which this time of year means we urgently need to restock. Other than a few of the chemicals, we have everything we need to put together another batch of 60 of those, which I’ll be doing over the next several days.

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Thursday, 18 July 2013

07:44 – Despite our best efforts, we’ve been in OMGWO inventory mode on kits for the last few weeks. We get down to one or two kits of a particular type in stock. I think to myself that we’d better restock, but have other things occupying my time. Then someone orders the last kit, and I think to myself that we really, really need to build more. Then an order comes in for a kit we’re out of stock on, and I drop everything to build another batch. So far, we haven’t had to delay shipping any order because we were out of stock, but it’s come close.

It’s happening again. I got an order overnight for a biology kit with the core prepared slides set. We currently have 38 of the biology kits in stock, but only two of the prepared slides sets. So today I’ll build 30 more of the slide sets. We’re also down to only 16 of the CK01A chemistry kits, so I’ll get started today on another batch of 30 or 60 of those.

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Wednesday, 17 July 2013

08:39 – I get so tired of hearing Sharpton and the other demagogues playing the race card at every opportunity. Yes, Martin was a young black man. Yes, Zimmerman has a “white” name. But Zimmerman self-identifies as Hispanic, and is apparently of mixed white and black heritage. To attempt to portray this incident as a racially-motived killing goes beyond contemptible. In a rational world, Zimmerman wouldn’t even have been charged with a crime. It was so clearly self-defense that the police didn’t charge him for weeks, until they caved to political pressure.

Much has been made of Martin’s age and race, that he was somehow “profiled” because of them. Maybe so, but so what? It is not sexist to state that men are much more likely than women to commit violent crimes. It’s fact. It is not ageist to state that young men are much more likely than older men to commit violent crimes. It’s fact. And it’s not racist to state that black men are much more likely to commit violent crimes against whites than the converse. It’s fact. Whites are immensely more likely to be the victims of violent crime perpetrated by blacks than the converse. That’s not racism. That’s reality.

Everyone has situational awareness of threats. It’s been bred into us by millions of years of evolution. If I, as a 60-year-old white man, am walking down the street and see someone approaching me, I instinctively evaluate the situation without even having to think about it. If the person approaching is female of any age or race, the potential threat is minimal unless she’s behaving strangely. Not zero, but not of much concern. If the person approaching is male of any age or race, the potential threat is much, much greater and I am accordingly more alert. If the man is also young, I’m still more alert. And if the young man is also black, I’m still more alert. And if it’s a group of young black men rather than just one, I’m on full alert. And if the group of young black men is rowdy, I’m in DEFCON 1 and mentally prepared to engage multiple targets. And there’s nothing sexist, ageist, or racist about that.

13:59 – This is very cool, at least to me. Tracking information on the two science kits I mailed Monday to the UK.

Customs Clearance UNITED KINGDOM July 17, 2013 6:14 pm
Customs Clearance UNITED KINGDOM July 17, 2013 6:13 pm
Processed Through Sort Facility UNITED KINGDOM July 17, 2013 6:02 pm
Processed Through Sort Facility ISC MIAMI FL (USPS) July 16, 2013 11:06 am
Arrived at Sort Facility ISC MIAMI FL (USPS) July 16, 2013 10:45 am
Processed through USPS Sort Facility MIAMI, FL 33112 July 16, 2013 9:24 am
Depart USPS Sort Facility GREENSBORO, NC 27498 July 15, 2013
Processed at USPS Origin Sort Facility GREENSBORO, NC 27498 July 15, 2013 8:07 pm
Dispatched to Sort Facility WINSTON SALEM, NC 27106 July 15, 2013 5:33 pm
Acceptance WINSTON SALEM, NC 27106 July 15, 2013 4:07 pm
Electronic Shipping Info Received July 15, 2013

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Tuesday, 16 July 2013

09:54 – Kit sales have been slower than expected for the last month or so. Yesterday was the first time in a month that we shipped five kits in one day. Our original goal for 2013 was to double 2012 units and revenue. For a while earlier this year, it looked like we might quadruple sales year-on-year, and that may still happen. But even if it doesn’t, doubling or tripling sales year-on-year is nothing to complain about.

Yesterday, we shipped the last CK01B chemistry kit we had in stock, so I spent some time building another batch. That puts us in good shape on both chemistry kits, the biology kit, and the life science kit. But we also just shipped the last forensic science kit we had in stock, so today I’ll build another batch of those.

10:38 – Interesting juxtaposition. One of the front-page stories in this morning’s paper was about Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center here in Winston-Salem. US News & World Report recently completed a study that evaluated 4,806 hospitals nation-wide on 16 aspects of adult care. The top tier for each of the categories was defined as being in the top 50 of all hospitals evaluated. Only 147 hospitals (3%) had a top-tier rating in even one of the 16 categories. Wake Forest had top-tier ratings in 12 of the 16 categories. Among North Carolina hospitals, only Duke University Medical Center did better, with 13 top-tier ratings. Nationwide, only 12 hospitals had more top-tier ratings than Wake Forest.

So then, as usual, I headed for my office and checked my regular on-line news sites, starting with telegraph.co.uk. Their front page story was about Britain’s National Health Service: NHS inquiry: thousands of patients died amid ‘fundamental breaches of care’

Of course, no one in Britain uses the NHS if they can possibly afford to go private, but even so. Numerous NHS patients have died as a result of unspeakably abysmal care. NHS has literally allowed many patients to starve to death or die of thirst because they literally forgot to feed and water them. You probably think I’m exaggerating. I’m not. And this is exactly what our president wants us to have. ObamaCare is just another word for NHS.

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Monday, 15 July 2013

10:43 – Well, that’s interesting. I just shipped a BK01 biology kit and a CK01A chemistry kit to England, in one box. The man who ordered them added two shipping surcharge items to his cart, for a total of $128, on the understanding that shipping two kits doesn’t cost twice as much as shipping one kit and that I’d refund the difference.

So, as I was filling out the address and customs information on the USPS web site, I noticed that shipping via Express Mail International (1 to 3 business days delivery) cost only a few bucks more than Priority Mail International (6 to 10 business days delivery). Also, with Priority Mail International, the package is covered for only $100 if it’s lost or damaged, with no option for buying additional insurance. With Express Mail International, it’s covered for $100 standard and buying replacement value ($366) insurance cost only a couple bucks. But the real difference was what happens if the package is undeliverable. With Priority Mail International, I had two options: return-to-sender, in which case I’d get the package back but would have to pay return postage; or treat as abandoned, in which case the post office discards the package, and I have to pay an unspecified fee anyway. With Express Mail International, I have the same two choices, but if I elect return-to-sender, they ship the package back to me without charging for return postage. For just a few bucks more, Express Mail International is a far better deal, both for me and for the buyer.

16:30 – The latest video to go viral on YouTube is a brief “news” clip from a Providence TV station. Intrepid reporter Julie Tremmel demonstrates with great enthusiasm what unnamed supposed “experts” recommend if one encounters a bear.

Much though I hate to dispute the authoritative advice of a bubble-headed bleach-blonde, particularly one who believes that a 300-pound (136 kilo) bear is “massive”, I do think that screaming, waving one’s arms and throwing one’s shoes at a bear is not the best way to ensure friendly inter-special relations. I suppose it’s possible that the bear could assume it’s faced with a crazy person and flee in terror. But I think it’s just as likely that the bear would assume that it’s about to be attacked by a crazy person and charge. Better to remain calm, speak to the bear in a firm, low-pitched voice, and wait for it to amble away. Bears, particularly black bears, are essentially super-dogs. They’re smart, they’re familiar with humans, and they know that we’re dangerous to mess with. Those who thought humans look like tasty, easy prey were eliminated from the gene pool long ago.

I did consider emailing Ms. Tremmel with a couple of additional suggestions, in case she ever encounters a bear herself. First, always take your dog along when you head into bear country. Ideally, you want a little yapper. It’ll find a bear for you, bark like crazy, and then run right back to you for protection, with a pissed-off bear following close behind. Second, if you ever encounter bear cubs, you should always pick them up and pet them. There’s no better way to make friends with a mother bear.

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Sunday, 14 July 2013

09:44 – While Barbara cleans house this morning, I’m making up international chemicals bags for both the biology and chemistry kits. I need both because I have outstanding orders for both that are to ship tomorrow. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to build an international kit of either type. I just open a US-only biology kit or chemistry kit, remove the “problem” (restricted) chemicals, drop in the appropriate bag of international substitute chemicals, and transfer the contents of the box to one of the boxes we use for international shipping. Those are larger than the USPS-provided boxes we use for US and APO/FPO shipments, which leaves room for more padding. I’ve never had a kit damaged when I used the USPS boxes for shipments to Canada and APO/FPO addresses, but these internationalized kits will be going to Great Britain, Australia, Hong Kong, and so on, so a bit of extra padding might be a good idea.

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