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Category: science kits

Thursday, 20 September 2012

08:41 – After almost 24 hours without Barbara, Colin and I are surviving. I like to exercise my culinary skills while Barbara’s away, so for dinner I had egg-salad sandwiches with egg salad that I made myself. And Barbara thinks I can’t cook. I made it through only five episodes of Heartland last night, S4E12 through S4E16. That leaves 21 episodes through S6E1 remaining, which I don’t think I’ll get through before Barbara returns on Saturday.

I also did some more work on the Life Science kit. I always order the lab manuals for any curricula I intend to correlate our kits with, and among those are religious “science” curricula from the likes of A Beka, Apologia, Bob Jones University Press, and so on. I always order the current versions, and the BJUP Life Science lab manual showed up Tuesday.

Much of the religious curriculum stuff simply can’t be correlated. For example, one of the “investigations” in the BJUP Life Science curriculum has the students drawing a cross section of Noah’s Ark and then cutting out little human and animal figures to scale and pasting them on the ark drawing. I am not making this up. And then there’s the “investigation” on evolution, which has students filling in a table that lists various phenotypic and behavioral characteristics of dinosaurs and checking the appropriate column for evidence-based versus guess. As we all know, scientists do a lot of guessing, right? Then there’s the “investigation” where students are tasked with reading specific bible verses and describing the animals that are the subjects of those verses. Geez. I can’t wait to get to Earth Science.

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Wednesday, 19 September 2012

09:12 – Barbara just left with her friend Marcy for a trip to the mountains. They’ll be gone for several days, leaving Colin and me to our own devices.

Speaking of Colin, I’ve noticed something interesting. Border Collies seem to support the Libertarian Party overwhelmingly. Since we’ve lived in this house, we’ve had four Border Collies: Kerry, Duncan, Malcolm, and Colin. Every presidential election year, without exception, the BCs pee on every Democrat and Republican campaign sign they encounter, but not one of them has ever peed on a Libertarian campaign sign. Ever. That can’t be a coincidence.

12:58 – I just dropped everything to deal with an inventory emergency. As of this morning, we were down to one chemistry kit in stock. The most time consuming part of assembling a kit is bagging the chemicals, so I just went downstairs and bagged up 15 sets of chemicals. Well, 30 sets, really, because there are two bags per kit, one of regulated chemicals and one of non-regulated. At any rate, I did enough for 15 more chemistry kits. Final assembly and boxing up those 15 kits will take maybe an hour tops.

I made one small procedural change. In the past, I bagged up the regulated chemicals in a quart ziplock and then bagged the non-regulated chemicals in a gallon ziplock, putting the regulated chemicals bag inside the bag that held the non-regulated chemicals. The idea was that that would provide a second level of protection for the regulated chemicals. That’s not required by regulations, and the disadvantage to doing it that way is that I end up with a single chemicals bag. That means I have to have two SKUs for the US and Canadian versions of the chemistry kit. By keeping the regulated and non-regulated chemicals in separate bags, I need maintain only one SKU. By default, a chemistry kit is the US version. When I get an order for a Canadian version, I can simply pull the regulated chemicals bag from the box and replace it with the bag of substitute chemicals that ship with the Canadian version of the kit.

I’ve also changed the bag type. Instead of using ziplock bags, I decided to start using the “Thank You” bags sold by the box of 1,000 at Costco, the type typically used by retailers to bag small purchases. I originally used the ziplock bags because they’re made of heavier plastic and I thought the ziplock would provide a more secure seal than knotting a Thank-You bag and cutting off the excess. The thicker plastic isn’t required by shipping regulations; the only purpose of the bag is to contain the absorbent and prevent liquid from escaping. And, as it turns out, the seal is actually better on a tied-off Thank You bag than on a ziplock. And the thinner bags result in a more flexible subassembly that’s easier to box.

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Tuesday, 18 September 2012

08:09 – Colin and I are preparing for Barbara’s departure tomorrow morning. She’s heading up to the mountains for a few days with her friend Marcy. So, as usual, it’s wild-women-and-parties for Colin and me. Either that, or a Heartland marathon. We’re currently up through episode 12 of series four, so that leaves us with seven episodes in series four, 18 in series five, and one in series six to watch while Barbara’s gone, or roughly 19 hours worth. We may be able to get through those, and maybe even restart on episode 1 of series one. I also need to build more chemistry kits.

Meanwhile, events on the world stage are looking grimmer and grimmer. I’m not exactly expecting Israel to attack Iran next month, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it happened. Greece is on the brink of a literal civil war, and Spain is very close to fragmenting, with secession sentiment running rampant in the Catalonia and Basque provinces. Spain and Italy are both demanding that Germany pay their bills, but both refuse to accept Germany’s terms. Things are very close to the breaking point. And the US is led by what history will probably regard as its worst president ever. Geez.

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Monday, 17 September 2012

08:03 – I got quite a bit done on the Life Science kit yesterday, including a rough TOC for the manual and a pretty good idea of what will be in the kit. Obviously, there’ll be changes to the TOC and the kit as I actually write the manual, but at least I have a jumping-off point. The main thing I have to remember is that I’ll be writing for 7th graders rather than high-schoolers.

As it’s currently configured, the kit is completely non-regulated for shipping purposes, and I intend to keep it that way. That means I’ll be able to ship these kits to Canada. More importantly, it minimizes the hazards for 13 year old students. There are sharp objects such as a scalpel, teasing needles, and so on, but none of the chemicals are particularly hazardous to handle. That means making some compromises in terms of what we can and can’t do in lab sessions, but the trade-off is worthwhile.

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Sunday, 16 September 2012

09:59 – As I’ve mentioned, I want to create one new kit by the end of this year, and at least one more for 2013. My natural tendency is to focus next on the more advanced science courses typically taught in grades 11 and 12: physics, and various advanced/AP-level sciences. But, after considerable thought, I’ve decided to go in the other direction. We have biology and chemistry covered. Those are typically grades 9 and 10. So I decided to focus our efforts for the coming year on grades 7 and 8, to fill out our kit offerings bottom-up.

So we’ll be doing kits for Life Science (typically grade 7 or 8) and Physical Science (typically grade 8 or 9). Life Science is an introduction to biology, and Physical Science is an introduction to chemistry and physics. We’ll probably also do a kit for Earth/Space Science (typically grade 8 or 9). Most homeschoolers will do two of three courses in grades 7 and 8, and some will do all three in grades 7, 8, and 9. The problem with that is that 9th grade is normally the start of high-school level science courses, usually either high-school chemistry or high-school biology. The other problem is that I have to be very careful about the CPSIA. In other words, these kits will be designed and intended for only students who are at least 13 years old. Otherwise, the regulatory burdens would be impossible.

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Saturday, 15 September 2012

10:17 – Barbara is off to meet her parents and sister at her parents’ house, where they’ll be cleaning out stuff, deciding what to move over to their new quarters, what to donate to charity, and what to discard. That’s a pretty massive project, so they won’t finish today, but they have to get it done before they can start getting the house ready to go on the market.

Meanwhile, I’m doing my usual Saturday tasks, starting with the laundry. The seasonal burst in science kit sales is starting to taper off, which gives us some breathing room. If the past is any indication, we’ll have another, smaller peak in sales at the end of this year and the beginning of next, as people buy kits for Christmas and the second semester. Then it’ll quiet down again until April, when people start ordering kits for summer session. And then around the first of July the craziness will start again, as people start ordering kits for the autumn semester.

During this slower period, we can go from building kits almost constantly to building batches once a month or so. Basically, we’ll build batches of 30 and start a new batch when we get down to a dozen or so. I’ll take advantage of that time to do things I haven’t had time to do since early summer, including designing a couple of new kits and writing the manuals for them. I’d like to have at least two new kits available for 2013. I may also take an occasional day off. Then, next March and April we’ll place large orders for components and start building inventory again for the crazy season.

13:37 – Wow. Will people never learn that when you’d prefer something be ignored, making a big deal about it isn’t the best way to accomplish your goal? So the British royal family threatens to sue the French newspaper that published images of Kate somebody or other, Duchess of something or other, topless. Big deal. If they’d just said “no comment”, no one would have paid any attention. The images are so blurry and indistinct that it’s difficult to say anything more than that they appear to be images of a dark haired woman with her boobs exposed. Incredibly, the spokesman for the royal family for all intents and purposes confirmed that the images were real and that Kate somebody or other, Duchess of something or other, was in fact the subject of those images. So now the world knows that the probable future Queen, if indeed the position still exists by then, has boobs. I was certainly shocked to learn that.

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Friday, 14 September 2012

08:17 – A month or so ago, one of the commenters here made a brilliant suggestion about using wash bottles to fill chemical bottles with the chemicals that fume obnoxiously, such as 6 M solutions of acetic acid, ammonia, and hydrochloric acid. So the last time I ordered from one of our wholesalers I included a box of a dozen 500 mL unitary wash bottles.

Most wash bottles have their caps pierced by soft tubing that extends loosely down into the bottle. These unitary bottles have a standard cap. The tubing is built into the bottle, extending down the inside surface of the bottle to the bottom. That makes them a lot easier to refill and use than standard wash bottles. So yesterday when I noticed that we were running short of bottles of 6 M ammonia, I decided to give it a try. It works perfectly. I no longer have to work under a fume hood, which makes filling bottles a lot more convenient.

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Wednesday, 12 September 2012

10:46 – Autumn weather has finally arrived in Winston-Salem. For the few days, our highs have been around 80 (~27C) and our lows in the mid-50’s (~13C). I’m sure the heat will return briefly during Indian Summer, but the worst of it is probably over for the year.

I just shipped another chemistry kit to a Canadian customer. Every time I do that, I keep my fingers crossed, so to speak. I trust USPS to get the package to Canada. It’s not that I don’t trust Canada, exactly. It’s just that I don’t trust any bureaucracy, and every package we ship to Canada has to go through USPS, Canadian customs, and then to Canada Post. That’s a lot of opportunities for problems. Still, I’ve never had a package to Canada lost or returned, so I guess I should just relax.

Yesterday, I made up three dozen small parts bags for the new batch of chemistry kits. Today, I’ll make up a bunch of the chemical bags. The chemicals themselves are already bottled, so it’s just a matter of making up the bottle sets and bagging them.

15:06 – A lot of TV series release DVD’s around this time of year. Sometimes, it’s quite a wait for the discs, but I stick them in our disc queue anyway, mainly to keep track of them. Sometimes, Netflix streaming doesn’t get series that are out on DVD for a year or more. Other times, it’s only a couple of weeks from DVD release to streaming release. I just went over to rearrange our disc queue, and noticed that three series I had at the top of our disc queue are now available streaming: Revenge (with Emily VanCamp), Doc Martin S5, and Grey’s Anatomy S8. I don’t watch Grey’s Anatomy–all of the doctors are accurately nick-named McAsshole, McDork, and so on, and the lead character is a world-class whiner–but I do want to watch the other two. Particularly Emily, whom I adore. So I just deleted all three series from our disc queue, which I’m sure makes Netflix happy. It costs them a lot less to deliver streaming episodes than to pay postage for discs. Every time I talk to Netflix support, I beg them to increase the price of streaming from their current ridiculously low $8/month rate. I tell them that boosting the price even just to $20 or $30 a month would lose them few customers and give them the money they need to get more titles available streaming. Even though it’s currently more profitable than streaming, Netflix really doesn’t want to be in the business of mailing DVDs back and forth. And I really think it’d help them reach their goal of 100% streaming if they’d increase prices to boost their revenues.

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Tuesday, 11 September 2012

08:48 – A date that will live in infamy. Too bad we still haven’t destroyed the regimes responsible.

12:36 – It’s time to get started on a new batch of chemistry kits. As of now, we’re down to half a dozen in stock, and we’ve been selling considerably more than that in an average week. Sometimes, we sell that many in one day. So far today, we’ve sold two chemistry kits, but the day isn’t over. Fortunately, we have everything in stock we need to make up another batch of 30, although we need to assemble the individual components into subassemblies first.

Biology kits are on hold until the replacement toner cartridges arrive. Fortunately, we have more than a dozen of those in stock, which on average is a week’s supply. So far this year, we’ve avoided backordering kits, although we did have to ship next-day instead of same-day in a couple of instances. Fortunately, forensic science kits are still in good supply.

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Saturday, 8 September 2012

09:15 – I misspoke yesterday. Barbara’s parents are actually moving into their actual apartment today, rather than the guest apartment. She left a few minutes ago for her parents’ house to start hauling some of their boxed up stuff over to the new apartment. The movers are coming later today to move the furniture and other large items. I’ll probably head over there tomorrow morning after everything is in place and they’re settled in to get the TV, stereo, and other electronics connected and working.

We started yesterday on a new batch of 30 biology kits, printing labels and labeling bottles and envelopes. Labeling, filling, and sealing containers is the bulk of the work. After that, it’s just final assembly of all the subassemblies.

Our phone service cutover happened sometime yesterday. The PhonePower adapter showed up in the mail mid-afternoon, just in time. It comes with a little folded pamphlet with installation instructions. I was delighted to see that their recommended setup put the terminal adapter between the cable modem and our router, figuring that would solve all of the problems I had with PhonePower last time. Alas, that was not to be. I connected the TA between the cable modem and router, only to find that the router couldn’t get to the Internet. Oh, well.

So I connected things using their alternative procedure, which puts the router between the modem and the TA. I also made sure to configure the router to put the IP address of the TA in the DMZ, which in theory is the same as a virtual direct connection to the cable modem. At first, everything appeared to work properly. I had dialtone and was able to dial. But all I could get when I dialed was a re-order tone (fast busy).

By that time it was late evening, so I just left things as they were and went to bed, hoping that everything would clear up overnight. That was not to be. This morning, I still had dialtone, but nothing else. So I power reset the TA, hoping that would allow it to reinitialize properly. That didn’t work, so I guess I’ll try resetting the whole network again to see if I can get service.

15:04 – I just got back from helping Barbara’s parents move to their new digs. Their TV and component audio system is now set up and working, along with two corded phones, an answering machine, and a cordless phone. The place is very nice. The dining room and other common areas are similar to those in a decent hotel. Their apartment is also nice, with a large living area, small kitchenette, two good-size bedrooms, and two full baths. The staff is friendly and helpful, and there are activities galore. I suspect Barbara’s parents are going to be a lot happier there than they were in their house. They’ll certainly be much less isolated. There are lots of elderly people around, and all of them seem friendly. The facility has a bus that makes regularly-scheduled runs to the supermarket, drugstore, Target/Wal*Mart, doctors’ offices, and so on. There’s maid service, and the dining room serves three full meals a day, with the main meal at noon. Barbara, Frances, and I had dinner there, and the food is quite good.

I left around 13:45 to come home. Colin is not used to having us both gone, but he was a good dog while I was gone. I arrived home just in time to walk him before a severe thunderstorm rolled in. That was fortunate, because unlike any of our other young BCs, Colin is afraid of thunder. All of the others have ignored thunderstorms, even quite loud ones, until they got to be eight or nine years old, when they suddenly decided that thunder was terrifying. Colin has been afraid of it since he was a pup.

I still haven’t gotten the PhonePower VoIP service working yet, and I’m about ready to give up on it for today.

15:59 – Our PhonePower VoIP service is now working properly. Fortunately, I decided to try just one more thing. The firmware in our D-Link DIR-615 router was about five years old. I visited the D-Link page and downloaded the most recent firmware, which is only about 4.5 years old. I held my breath, afraid I’d brick the router, and installed the firmware upgrade. That gave me what I needed: the ability to disable SIP in the Application Level Gateway. I disabled SIP, rebooted the router, and everything now works properly.

What a relief. It would have been embarrassing to have to call PhonePower tech support. When I created my account with them, one of the questions had a drop-down list where you could quantify how much you understood about this stuff. There were five choices. The first choice was basically for people who are completely ignorant. I first chose the final choice, which was basically “I know more about this stuff than you guys do.” I then reconsidered. That sounded a bit arrogant, although I have written books for O’Reilly about networking and TCP/IP and I did used to have primary technical responsibility for a digital phone network with 70 switches and several thousand stations. So I changed my selection to the fourth choice, which simply indicated that I knew quite a lot about this stuff. But having chosen even #4, it would have been mortifying for me to have to call tech support for help.

Now if only I could figure out how to delete voicemails on my cell phone. I need a teenager to help me, I guess. I’ve also been thinking about sending my first ever SMS.

16:08 – We really are living in a rain forest. That thunderstorm that just blew through here dumped another 3.2 inches (8.1 cm) of rain on us, and it’s still raining. That’s close to half a meter of rain in the last five weeks, or about 10 cm per week.

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