Category: science kits

08:20 – We’re hoping that today will be the first “normal” day in a long time. No doctor appointments, no unexpected trips over to Barbara’s parents’ place. We’ll see. Barbara and Frances both need a break from the constant turmoil.

As of this morning, we have two BK01 biology kits, three CK01A chemistry kits, and zero FK01 forensic science kits in stock, and we got an order overnight for a biology kit. Fortunately, I spent yesterday building kit subassemblies. At this point, we have everything needed to build 14 more BK01 biology kits, 8 more CK01A chemistry kits, and half a dozen FK01 forensic science kits, which should be enough to carry us into next month.

I’m also issuing purchase orders, and they’re typically considerably larger than the ones I issued in the past. For example, we buy pocket magnifiers and alligator clip leads from one of our wholesalers. The last time I did a PO to them, I ordered 100 pocket magnifiers and 200 each of the black and red alligator clip leads. I issued a new PO to them yesterday, ordering 300 pocket magnifiers and 500 each of the alligator clip leads.

I have no clue how many kits we’re going to sell this year. In the first half of this month, we sold more kits than we sold in the first three months of 2012 combined. Annualizing that yields a very scary number. I guess all we can do is keep building kits as fast as we can, and hope we can keep up with demand.

Speaking of which, Brian Jepson, our O’Reilly/MAKE editor called yesterday just to touch base. During the conversation, I said, “I hope you’re not going to tell me you want another book out of us.” He said, “Whenever you’re ready.” I told him that Barbara really wanted to focus on kits, but I’d mention it to her. When I did that this morning, she said it was up to me. She knows I like doing books. But she also said that her strong preference was to spend our time doing kits rather than a new book. As she said, we’re already covered up just doing kit stuff, so doing a new book would end up costing us a lot of money, not to mention disappointing would-be kit customers when we can’t meet demand. So it looks like we’re not going to do another book any time soon.

12:41 – Well, another order for an FK01 forensic science kit just came in, so our stock status on those just went from zero to minus one. I mailed the woman who ordered the FK01 kit to say we couldn’t ship it until the day after tomorrow and that we’d be happy to refund her payment if she wished. Fortunately, she’d bought one of our other kits some time ago and was very happy with it, so she was willing to wait.

I have everything I need to build another 15 FK01 kits, except I have only five FK01 small parts bags and I’m completely out of Kastle-Meyer reagent and Dragendorff reagent bottles. I made up enough Dragendorff reagent for 30 sets, but I have to make up the Kastle-Meyer reagent this afternoon or tomorrow. That involves refluxing a concentrated solution of potassium hydroxide and phenolphthalein over zinc metal to reduce the phenolphthalein to phenolphthalin, which takes a while. I’ll make up enough of that for 15 or so kits, because the solution is fairly unstable. We use amber glass bottles, add some zinc powder, and store the bottles refrigerated to prevent the solution from oxidizing, but even so it’s unwise to make up more than we expect to ship in a couple months.

Speaking of which, I need to do something about how I ship kits. In the past, we might have kits sitting waiting for pickup only two or three days a week. Nowadays, it’s a rare day that we don’t have kits waiting for pickup. The mailman generally arrives mid- to late-afternoon but when a substitute is doing the route he or she sometimes arrives before 9:00 a.m. I don’t want to leave kits sitting on the front porch, and I can’t hear the doorbell when I’m working in my lab. Colin barks every few minutes at a passing dog or even a person walking down the street. I can hear him barking from my lab, but I’d soon be exhausted if I ran back upstairs every time he barked.

I could drive out to the post office and drop off kits, but that’s several miles round-trip. Also, oddly, if I drop off a Regional Rate box at the counter, they charge an extra $0.75 postage. Talk about adding insult to injury. Driving to the post office is time and money, even before they add the extra $0.75 per box. So I think what I’m going to do is start moving boxes that are ready to ship to my Trooper and go off driving around the neighborhood looking for a mail truck. Then I can just hand the boxes to the letter carrier. That’ll take a lot less time than driving to the post office, and the letter carrier doesn’t charge the extra $0.75/box.

14:17 – Just call me Baldrick, because I have come up with a truly Cunning Plan. Last Sunday, Barbara and I did a Costco run and dinner with Mary and Paul. I mentioned the stability problem with Kastle-Meyer reagent to Paul, and he suggested nitrogen-packing the bottles. The problem with that is that there’s no convenient source of pure nitrogen other than bottles, which are relatively expensive and dangerous to have around. (In college, I once saw the results of a full-size compressed gas bottle that had fallen over and broken off the valve. Instant rocket. The bottle crashed through two concrete-block walls and severely damaged a third.)

So I focused my Gigantic Brain™ on the problem, and came up with Cunning Plan A. Oxygen concentrators like the one Barbara’s dad has extract nearly all of the oxygen from ordinary air, leaving only nitrogen with tiny percentages of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and noble gases. Used concentrators are readily available and inexpensive. There’s a big market for them from people who need oxygen for stuff like micro-welding of jewelry and so on. I though that perhaps I could simply reverse the functioning of a used oxygen concentrator to collect the nitrogen and discard the oxygen. I was actually about to start searching google for used oxygen concentrators.

Then I was struck by Cunning Plan B, a great improvement over CP A. Barbara buys six-packs of Dust-Off canned “air” at Costco. The contents of the can are actually 100.0% 1,1-difluoroethane, which is a refrigerant and is essentially inert. It’s also denser than air. So, I’m going to fill the Kastle-Meyer reagent bottles normally, add a few grains of zinc dust to stabilize them against any oxygen that happens to remain, and then flush the bottles with canned air before capping them. Since I’ll also store them refrigerated at near 0C, their shelf life unopened should be at least a year and probably much more. There just won’t be anything in that bottle to sustain oxidation. I’ll put a few dated bottles aside and open and test one every six months or so to get a better idea of actual shelf life.

07:43 – Barbara stopped at her parents’ apartment after work yesterday and laid down the law to both of them about their behavior. Let’s hope it sunk in. We didn’t get any phone calls overnight, so perhaps it did. Barbara’s taking her dad to the doctor today for a follow-up visit, and will check on things over there.

Inventory on all our science kits is perilously low, so I’ll spend today building more subassemblies and a few more kits.

10:21 – The good news is that Barbara’s dad is doing pretty well, better than anyone expected. He still can’t walk very far and is pretty much limited to their apartment, but he’s doing better both physically and mentally. The bad news is that Barbara’s mom is very fragile mentally. She’s getting very little sleep, because she’s terrified that Dutch will die. She’s also hovering over Dutch constantly, pestering him, which upsets him. And, to top it off, she’s afraid to be alone in the apartment at any time, and she’s afraid to be in the apartment at night, even with Dutch there. Or perhaps especially with Dutch there. What she really wants is for Barbara or Frances to be there 24X7, which obviously isn’t going to happen. Barbara and Frances both have lives, jobs, and families.

Frances called us this morning just before 0700, while Barbara was in the shower. She and her husband, Al, were over at Dutch and Sankie’s apartment because Sankie had panicked. Barbara thought about heading over there this morning, but decided to wait and go over this afternoon. This simply can’t go on. The stress on Barbara and Frances is incredible. About the only good thing about the situation is that they got their parents moved to the retirement village. If they were still in their house the whole situation would be completely unmanageable. Even so, Barbara’s mom is under such severe stress that I’m afraid she’s not far from a complete breakdown. That would be disastrous.

16:20 – I’ve been busy today. Among other things, like cutting POs, I shipped three BK01 biology kits, two SK01 slide sets, and one FK01 forensic science kit. We also received a check from a university for four FK01 forensic science kits, so I got those ready to ship out tomorrow. That takes our inventory down to a handful of biology and chemistry kits, and zero forensic science kits, so I know what I’ll be working on the rest of this week.

Shipping the forensic science kit today was a bit strange. For US shipments, I print a postage label on a half-sheet (8.5×5.5″) sticky label. For Canadian shipments and in the past for APO/FPO shipments, I’ve had to fill out several screens on the USPS shipping web site. Then, instead of a half-sheet postage label, I get four half sheets. The first one is the actual postage label, and the others are various customs declarations. I print those on ordinary paper and then insert them into a plastic sleeve with a sticky back. Presumably, various people along the way pull out and keep one or another of the half sheets. But for the APO/FPO shipment today, I got a single screen that I’d never seen before. When I printed the postage label, it was just one half sheet, but it looked completely different than the US half-sheets. I commented on it to the mailman, who said he’d seen those before. I told him as long as it’d be delivered I didn’t care what it looked like, and he just commented that it looked easier for me.

08:29 – Barbara’s dad is doing better than expected. Barbara and her sister are taking shifts so one of them is there with him at all times. It’s not that Dutch needs help constantly. The problem is that he’s still too weak to get up from his reclining chair or the toilet, so someone needs to be there to help him on a moment’s notice. When I talked to Barbara last night, she said he was improving fast, so we’re hoping he’ll soon no longer need 24-hour coverage.

I’m putting together a small batch of forensic science kits today. Our current stock status on those is minus one.

10:06 – Barbara’s dad was released from the hospital yesterday afternoon. Barbara picked him up and took him home, where they met the guy who was delivering and installing the oxygen concentrator. Meanwhile, Barbara’s sister, Frances, was taking their mom to a doctor’s appointment. Fortunately, it turned out there’s nothing seriously wrong with their mom, other than just age.

Dutch, on the other hand, isn’t in good shape. He’s still too weak to walk more than a few steps or to use the bathroom. So Barbara and Frances are covering it in shifts for now. Frances covered last night and this morning. Barbara is heading over there after lunch to relieve Frances. Barbara will probably stay overnight tonight and then through lunch time tomorrow.

The oxygen concentrator is pretty cool. In addition to providing oxygen directly, it can also fill two small oxygen cylinders that are used on a portable oxygen mask for when Dutch needs to leave the apartment. Finally, as backup in case of power failure, Dutch has a large oxygen tank.

Dutch won’t be on oxygen all the time, just most of the time. And I suggested to Barbara that when Dutch isn’t using the oxygen concentrator, they should have their mom use it. She’s had lung/breathing issues since Barbara was a baby and is currently borderline COPD, so a bit of supplemental oxygen won’t hurt her a bit and may help a lot.

Work on building a new batch of science kits continues, now with some urgency. We’re down to two or three CK01A chemistry kits and maybe four biology kits. Today, we’re assembling batches of small parts bags for both of those so that we can build another batch of each. Forensic kit inventory is now critical. As of now, we actually have four FK01 forensic kits ready to ship, but all four of those are spoken for. I got email yesterday saying that the check was in the mail for those four kits, and this morning we got another order for a forensic kit.

Chemistry kits outsell biology kits maybe 2:1 and forensic kits maybe 6:1. Other than small parts bags, we have everything needed to build another 15 each of the kits. So this weekend I’ll build 15 each of the chemistry kits and maybe half a dozen forensics kits. Once that’s done, I’ll get started on bottling chemicals for another 60 each of the chemistry and biology kits.

11:59 – Barbara just headed over to her parents’ place, where she’ll spend the next 24 hours or so. She ran a few errands this morning, including buying groceries. She picked up a box of powdered and cinnamon doughnuts for me, 1.5 pounds (two-thirds of a kilo). I plan to have them for dinner and an evening snack. Looking at the nutrition label, it appears that they provide a fully-balanced meal.

Colin has no idea what’s going on, except that Barbara isn’t home as much as he thinks she should be. I’ll try to take him on more walks, play more ball with him, and give him more treats to make up for that, but it’ll go only so far in soothing his offended Border Collie sensibilities. BC’s have a strong sense of order, and they don’t like it when things change. This evening, I’ll just read and watch Heartland reruns. Right now, I need to get to work on kit stuff.

07:41 – Barbara’s dad may be released from the hospital today. He isn’t fully recovered by any means, but at this point there may not be much the hospital can do for him that couldn’t be done by the home-health nurses at home. I’m concerned that Barbara’s mom may not be able to deal with his behavior, which Barbara has described as “uncooperative”, “grumpy” and “nasty”. Barbara said she’d laid down the law to him, telling him that he’d better cooperate or they’ll pack him off to a nursing home. Maybe that’ll convince him to behave, or so we hope. I asked Barbara yesterday if she thought her dad’s behavior was caused by mental decline or simply frustration at being hospitalized. She said the latter, so perhaps being home will help.

Work on science kits continues.