Category: science kits

08:40 – Barbara’s father is back in the hospital. She made a quick stop at the supermarket and library on the way home from work yesterday, and then headed out to cut the grass while I made dinner, timed for 6:30. Around 6:15, Frances called to say that their dad had fallen while getting out of her car on their way back from a doctor’s appointment for their mom. He wasn’t injured, he’d pretty much just sat down rather than actually fallen, but he wasn’t strong enough to get up. Frances got a couple of the staff at their retirement village to help get him up and into his wheelchair. Frances said it wasn’t an emergency, and just to let Barbara know to call her when she finished mowing the lawn. She said they couldn’t leave Dutch with just Sankie to help him, so they were going to have to start staying over there at night.

As I was talking to Frances, my call-waiting beeped, but by the time I was able to hookflash over to the new call it had been disconnected. The caller ID showed it was Barbara’s parents’ apartment calling, so I called back. Sankie answered the phone, obviously very upset. I asked if she’d just called, and she said she had. She said Dutch had fallen and Barbara needed to come over right away to help them. I asked Sankie if she meant that Dutch had fallen again, in the apartment, or if she was talking about his fall out in the parking lot that Frances had just told me about. She was obviously confused, and just hung up. So I called Frances’s cell phone back. She’d been out in the parking lot moving the car, and arrived back in Dutch and Sankie’s apartment just as I called. She said her mom was talking about the fall she’d just told me about, and that he hadn’t fallen again.

I heard Barbara just finishing up outside. When she came upstairs, I told her what was going on. She called Frances back and told her to call 911 and have Dutch transported to the hospital. Barbara said Dutch’s symptoms were exactly what they’d been the last time they’d brought him home from the hospital and had to turn around immediately and take him back. She told Frances that she was going to change clothes, eat a quick dinner, and then head over to the hospital.

Barbara left around 7:00 for the hospital, and got home about 2:30 this morning. I’m sure she’ll post more details on her page when she has time to do so.

10:24 – I’m still trying to get a reasonable projection of what our science kit sales might be for the year. A big part of the problem is that our sales are extremely seasonal. More than 90% of our sales last year occurred in the last seven months of the year. Put it this way, in 2012 we had higher sales in our biggest month (August) than in the first six months of the year combined. And in every month so far in 2013, we’ve had higher revenue in that month than we had in the entire first quarter of 2012.

The scary part is that in 2012 we shipped less than a dozen kits on our biggest day. If the current sales trajectory holds up, in 2013 we may need to be prepared to ship 60 or more kits on a big day, which obviously means we’ll need to have a boatload of kits in inventory come July. I’m not even entirely sure that I can process 60 orders and ship 60 kits in one day. And, of course, the other scary part is what happens if somehow this sales increase is just a blip. I’d hate to end up with several hundred kits in inventory and no orders to fill.

08:22 – Barbara took her dad to the doctor yesterday morning for a follow-up appointment. We didn’t get any phone calls overnight, so apparently Dutch settled in successfully for his first night at home. Barbara is leaving work early this afternoon to take her mother to a doctor’s appointment. Her mom has yet another appointment tomorrow, but Frances is taking her to that one.

We’re now up to about five dozen assorted biology and chemistry kits in finished-goods inventory. I’m building a batch of forensic kits today, using the finished subassemblies we have in stock. Next on the schedule is a batch of 30 life science kits, followed by 60 more biology kits and 60 more chemistry kits. After that, it’ll be lather, rinse, repeat for the rest of this year. May is historically a pretty slow month, about like April. But things start to pick up in June, before the crazy time starts in July and August. June should be about three times the May’s volume, and July and August each three or four times June’s volume. So, for the next six months or so, my life will be spent making up chemicals, filling bottles, issuing purchase orders, building subassemblies and kits, and processing orders and shipping kits. Not that I mind. I like to stay busy, and I like making stuff.

14:28 – I just called Katie Dugan, my vendor rep at American Educational Products, to check price and availability on some items for a purchase order I’m putting together. Every January, AMEP offers four coupons for things like free shipping on any order over $750, a 10% discount on any order over $300, and so on. So, intending to use one of the free shipping coupons, I gave Katie the item numbers and quantities to verify: 30 dozen each 10 mL graduated cylinders and 100 mL graduated cylinders, 30 dozen 250 mL glass beakers, and so on.

I’d also intended to order some chemicals from Katie, mostly the same ones I’d ordered from her late last year. Stuff like 2.5 liters of 30% ammonia, several 500 mL bottles each of n-butanol and glacial acetic acid, and so on. AMEP doesn’t actually carry chemicals, but their sister company, eNasco, does. And the last time I ordered chemicals from Katie, they were actually shipped from eNasco. The problem is, eNasco is retail-oriented, and they apparently have no one on staff who has any clue about hazardous shipping regulations. So for my prior order, eNasco had essentially shipped everything as hazardous, with each bottle as a separate shipment. That means they had to pay a separate hazardous shipping fee for each bottle. What they should have done was combine all of the bottles in one box. If they’d done that, they’d have had to pay only one hazardous shipping surcharge instead of a dozen or more. Needless to say, eNasco billed AMEP for the shipping charges, which probably totaled several hundred dollars rather than the $27 it should have cost them. I apologized to Katie and told her that I’d never have ordered from them if I’d realized how much “free” shipping was going to end up costing them. And I suggested that eNasco really, really needs someone on staff who understands at least the basics of hazardous shipping regulations. That’s non-trivial. In fact, it’s almost a full-time job. Different requirements apply to different chemicals. For example, for shipping under the Limited Quantity Exemption (which is completely different from the Small Quantity Exemption, which in turn is completely different from the ORM-D exemption, which is being eliminated anyway), you may be able to put 5 liters of one chemical in a single package, but only 500 mL of a different chemical. There are also restrictions on which combinations of chemicals are allowed to share a box. As Katie said, they learned an expensive lesson.

09:15 – Barbara called last night around 7:30 to say her dad was back at home and doing pretty well. I was mistaken about Frances staying with their mom and dad tonight. Barbara said they’re going to leave their parents alone tonight and just keep their fingers crossed that Dutch will settle in.

I got another batch of biology kits assembled yesterday. Today, among other things, I’ll start building another batch of two dozen chemistry kits. With what’s already on hand, that should give us enough biology and chemistry kits to last through the end of May. Then I’ll get started on building subassemblies for the first batch of 30 life science kits, which start shipping the last week of May.

13:05 – I thought of Barbara’s father when I saw this:

I’ve assembled four dozen science kits in the last two days, which got me down to dangerously low inventory levels on several items. For example, I’m down to only four 12″ lab thermometers and less than 70 splash goggles. Fortunately, I’d just issued a purchase order this morning for 400 thermometers and 400 splash goggles, along with a bunch of other stuff. That vendor had everything I really needed in stock and they generally ship pretty quickly, so I suspect the stuff will arrive late this week or early next. I was also going to order a couple or three gross of 250 mL glass beakers, but this particular vendor doesn’t stock glassware and sells it only by the case. The trouble is, their lead time on glassware is 90 days give or take. Oh, well. I can get those beakers quickly from any of several other wholesalers.

10:16 – Barbara’s dad gets his last IV antibiotic dose at 4:00 this afternoon. Barbara and Frances are leaving work early to pick him up from the nursing home and take him back to his apartment at Creekside. Barbara will stay with him tonight because she’s concerned that her mom won’t be able to deal with Dutch physically on her own quite yet. Dutch is now able to stand and walk, but still has some trouble getting up out of a chair and so on. Frances will have dad-sitting duty tomorrow night and then she and Barbara will decide if Dutch is able to be on his own with just Sankie there to help him.

Our finished goods inventory of science kits is getting low again, so I’ll spend some time today and tomorrow assembling more finished kits.

11:52 – Never, ever even think of ordering anything from Vitality Medical. I ordered 500 oral syringes from them a year or so ago, and they’ve been spamming me ever since. At first, it was one or two spams a week. Now it’s up to at least one a day. I’ve repeatedly clicked on the unsubscribe link in their emails, with no effect. I’ve emailed their customer support repeatedly, again with no effect. I’ve called the support number repeatedly, again with no effect.

Yesterday, I finally checked the email headers and found that apparently Vitality Medical subcontracts their spamming out to a company called Constant Contact. No shit. They do what their name says. The FTC needs to shut these bastards down.

08:16 – Barbara’s dad’s IV antibiotic course finishes tomorrow. She has to take him to a follow-up visit to his doctor Tuesday, so she’s going to pick him up from the rehab facility and take him back to his apartment after he visits the doctor. She says he’s up and about, which is all that’s necessary to make his own apartment the best place for him. The last thing Barbara and Frances want to do is split up their mom and dad, so they intend to keep him at the Creekside retirement village as long as possible. If/when there’s another crisis, they’ll get him to the hospital and wait until he’s well enough to come straight back home. They don’t want him in a nursing home until/if it’s completely unavoidable.

The heat sealer I ordered from Amazon arrived yesterday, and I immediately put it to the test by sealing a couple of bottles of iodine solution in a quart ziplock bag. The bags are 2-mil (0.05+ mm) polyethylene, and it takes only a couple seconds for the sealer to melt a seal into the bag. I intentionally left plenty of air in the bags so that I could check them for airtightness. They are in fact airtight, but unfortunately that doesn’t stop the iodine vapor from penetrating the bag. There’s a very, very slight iodine odor, but that’s good enough to keep the iodine vapor from staining other parts in the kits. We’re going to start including a separate iodine bottle label that people can affix to the bottle once they open the bag. I’ll probably also use the heat sealer to seal the other chemical bags in the kits.

11:36 – Barbara and I just got back from Lowe’s. We needed some 4-foot fluorescent tubes for the basement fixtures, so we picked up a 10-pack for $22. I think I’ll date the things with a Sharpie before I install them. I think some of the current tubes are original from when we installed the fixtures back in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

While we out there, I decided to pick up some chemicals for the kits. Most of the chemicals we use are reagent-grade, lab-grade, or USP, purchased from lab chemical vendors. But three of them we get from Lowe’s or Home Depot, because we use them in relatively large amounts and they’re much cheaper at a DIY super-center than they are from lab vendors. The purity is adequate for our purposes. Those three are copper(II) sulfate pentahydrate (sold as Root Kill), sodium hydroxide (sold as Crystal Drain Opener), and hydrochloric acid (sold as muriatic acid).

Years ago, before I decided to use them, I did gravimetric analyses on the copper(II) sulfate and sodium hydroxide. The Root Kill ($13 for two pounds/907 grams) is labeled as 99% copper(II) sulfate. When I tested it gravimetrically, it assayed at, IIRC, 99.7±0.1%, which is essentially reagent-grade in terms of purity. The remaining 0.3% give or take is probably almost all insoluble copper(II) oxide, which is easy to filter out. The Crystal Drain Opener is labeled as 100.0% sodium hydroxide. Gravimetrically, I got about 99.5% sodium hydroxide, but I suspect it really is 100.0% in the bottle. The problem with sodium hydroxide is that it literally sucks water vapor out of the air. You can put some dry sodium hydroxide in a weigh boat and watch the weight increase as the dry crystals absorb water. The muriatic acid is probably about lab grade in terms of purity. The stuff is manufactured simply by bubbling hydrogen chloride gas into water, so most of the contaminants in the products were in the source water. Still, it’s more than good enough for our purposes.

I also picked up a gallon (3.8 liters) of acetone in the paint department for something like $4.50 a liter. It’s certainly not spectroscopic-grade nor even reagent-grade acetone, but again it’s more than pure enough for our purposes. Acetone is produced commercially mostly directly from propylene by the cumene process or by oxidizing isopropanol, so the process itself inherently produces pretty pure product. Other than water, the only contaminants are typically low concentrations of VOCs that have no effect on the acetone for solvent purposes. We use it 50/50 with USP-grade 70% IPA for making up Sudan III stain. I’ve tested that stain made up with reagent-grade solvents, and there’s no visible difference in results compared to stain made up with the USP and technical-grade solvents.

08:40 – For the first half of April, I thought it would be an excellent month in terms of kit sales. Last year, something like 80% or 85% of our April sales were in the second half of the month, so I was kind of expecting the second half of this April to be big as well. Not so, as it turns out. Things have been pretty dead since the 15th. We’ve sold only five kits so far in the second half of April. Still, month-to-date we’re doing very well compared to last April, and for the first four months of 2013 we’re running ahead of the total sales for the first seven months of 2012–well into our busy season–so I can’t complain too much.

Barbara was finally able to get to the gym yesterday, which was the first time in at least a couple of weeks. That was a very good thing, because the gym is a stress reliever for Barbara, and she certainly needs that given the constant crises for the last several months. It’s been just one thing after another. The amount of stress on Barbara and her sister caused by caring for their parents is similar to the stress of caring for a baby. The obvious differences are that new parents are typically in their 20’s or 30’s rather than their 50’s, and that with a baby one looks forward to the future rather than dreading it. With elderly parents, there’s nothing to look forward to except more of the same and worse.

10:54 – I didn’t notice until this morning, but Amber Marshall is now Amber Turner. Congratulations to her and Shawn. (I hope he realizes he’s not good enough for her…) Amber will soon be shooting season 7 of Heartland. I wonder if she’ll decide to be credited as Amber Turner in the new season or to keep Amber Marshall as her working name.

Our finished-goods inventory is starting to dwindle, so I’m building more science kits today and over the weekend. We’re still trying to build stock for the rush period that begins in July, but we’re constrained by backorders on a couple of key components. One of those is the thick cavity microscope slides, which are included in the biology, forensic science, and life science kits. We have apparently cornered the US supply of those slides. I had 200 dozen on order as of 15 March, with expected delivery of 15 May. Earlier this week, I got a shipment that included 41 dozen, with the remaining 159 dozen backordered, now through 17 June.

To conserve our supply, I decided to reduce the quantity included in the biology kits from a dozen to half a dozen. None of the biology labs require more than six of these slides, so cutting the number included in half allows us to build twice as many biology kits with the same number of slides. The forensic science labs actually use the whole dozen, so those kits will continue to include the full dozen. The Life Science kits include only a two-pack, so they’re not a major issue.

Rather than reduce the price of the biology kits, we’ll simply reduce the price increase that’s due to take effect soon. In fact, ordinarily we’d have increased kit prices as of 1 January, but we’ve held off on doing that. We had been adjusting (read, increasing) kit prices on 1 January and 1 July, but I decided we could afford to go to annual rather than semi-annual price changes. As of now, kit prices are scheduled to increase on 1 June. Cutting the number of thick cavity slides in the biology kits just means the prices of those kits won’t increase as much as they otherwise would have.

Meanwhile, my vendor tells me that they shipped us every box of thick cavity slides they had in stock, and there are no more to be had anywhere until their next shipment arrives. They actually did get a shipment last week, which was the one they were expecting on 15 May. But that shipment had so much breakage that they ended up refusing it and keeping only the 41 undamaged boxes that they just sent me. So I should get another 159 dozen in mid-June, and then the pipeline is dry. If I reorder around then, the new batch of slides would show up 60 to 90 days later. Unless, that is, I want to pay for air-freight in. Believe me, I don’t. These slides are glass, and I shudder to think what the air freight charges would be on a case of them coming from China.