08:55 – It’s still early July, and the rate of kit orders is starting to scare me. We’re already shipping them faster than we can build new ones, and the rate of orders is accelerating. We’ve had four kit orders so far today, and it’s not even 9:00 a.m. From everything I’ve been told, the order rate in August and September is likely to be at least three or four times what it is now.
I remember laughing to myself when I read the USPS page about scheduling pickups. It said they didn’t need an exact package count, but they needed to get some idea so they’d know whether or not they needed to send out a separate truck. At this point, that may not turn out to be funny. Those 30 chemistry kits in final assembly and 60 more chemistry kit currently a-building may not last long. I was planning to do 30 more biology kits next, but we may do 60 more instead. And we’re down to less than 200 shipping boxes, so I need to re-order those from USPS.
You seem to be about to get really successful in this enterprise; you may now find that you indeed need to sign on at least some temporary help.
You may also have to start borrowing that line from Dr. Pournelle: “I’m dancing just as fast as I can.”
Oh, everything is going pretty much according to plan. We started doing this one year ago. Going in, I figured the last half of 2011 was the “getting our feet wet” phase. Calendar year 2012 is what I planned for our first break-even year, when we “learn the ropes”. Calendar year 2013, we should start making a reasonable profit.
I told Barbara that my eventual goal is to have us both working our butts off six months a year and taking it easy the other six. She said that may work out for her, but she knows me. I’ll be working my butt off 12 months a year.
My package is taking an interesting journey: picked up on the 5th at Winston/Salem to Greensboro by the 6th and now in international sorting in Miami on the 8th. Seems an odd direction when shipping to Canada, but perhaps they sub-contract French-Canadian Snowbirds to bring it back? 😀
You should see some of the wacky airline routes that Mrs. OFD has to take sometimes on her job flying around the country. Crazy. Though someone will invariably pop up to inform me that it is not crazy after all, but the height of rationality, sanity and economic sense. No doubt.
69 here right now with blue skies and sun, a gorgeous northern Vermont July day!
Bill wrote:
“…now in international sorting in Miami on the 8th. Seems an odd direction when shipping to Canada, but perhaps they sub-contract French-Canadian Snowbirds to bring it back? :D”
Perhaps they’re economising and sending via Cuba.
That is interesting. I figured it’d be in Canada by now. The only notice I’ve gotten is that I paid the postage. That’s normal for USPS. Ordinarily, I get a message after the package is delivered, but no tracking while it’s in transit. I think I can go look that stuff up on the USPS website. I’ve never bothered, but I guess I will in this case.
What worries me is what happens when USPS hands it to Canada Post. I hope CP sends me progress information or at least a delivery confirmation, but I have no idea if they will.
I’m sure the 4th holiday has delayed it somehow, even though you didn’t ship until after. I bet they have a lot of people calling in “sick” after all that beer and BBQ! Being at the international sorting center leads me to think it will be in Canada shortly, even by Monday.
Where it will disappear into the abyss of Canada Post, who claim email tracking, but it’s always at least one day (if not two!) out of date. Eventually their tracking site will allow that a tracking number similar to mine is in existence “somewhere”, and once that happens, delivery is typically imminent. A minimum of another week, and heaven help us if Canada Customs decides to open the box! That’s where it could get interesting.
Will youse guys send us pics of your new orange jumpsuits at Gitmo?
Only if they don’t make my butt look fat!
Saw a cartoon the other day of a couple significantly older than me and the woman was just finishing getting dressed and asking the man “Do I look fat?”
His answer was “Do I look stupid?”
Another one was of a similarly older couple with the female donning a thong-style diaper and professing herself to be getting sexier while the male, leaning on a cane, had a thought balloon that said “O please Lord Jesus, take me now!”
Last week’s big Euro “bailout” meeting where everyone thought Germany had given in is looking like a sham (as expected.) See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303962304577511013474397138.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
In particular, the bailout funds (if any ever get distributed) will be to banks directly (as promised) but must be guaranteed by the host country (!) and that guarantee does not need to be counted as part of the country’s debt (!). Meaning again, as expected, the latest bailout move isn’t progress, it’s just more deck-chair rearrangement as the ship sinks.
IMHO, what will eventually happen when the whole European toilet overflows, the Euro won’t break up.. that just takes too much arrangement and agreement. Instead what will happen is a sudden Sunday night announcement of a massive overnight devaluation of the Euro, similar to the 1980s Plaza accord. That devaluation may be 20% or more. This is practical to pull off. And surprisingly all countries may accept it.. the printing presses will give them 1 or 2 trillion Euro to lend out wildly. The national debt of all troubled countries will effectively be reduced by the devaluation percentage. Same for Spanish and Irish underwater mortgages. Banks holding mortgages will be bribed with that printing press. Even Germany won’t mind TOO much since the devaluation would strengthen its core export business. Who loses? Everyone outside of Europe (especially the UK) will have strengthened currency, making imports more expensive and hurting their economies. But the biggest losers are the citizens of Europe who hold their savings in Euro.. the devaluation effectively is harsh but silent flat asset tax on them.
Weather Bureau says this year’s Midwest heat wave and lack of rain, is knocking down just about every Dust Bowl record of the 1930’s—both in temperature peaks and the length of the dry spell. Indianapolis has broken just about every record on the books.
Was talking to some farmers at lunch, and they have written off their corn crop—it is dead in the fields. They will be relying on their crop insurance to tide them over into next year. Insurance carriers are going to take a real hit around here.
Monday is supposed to bring some temperature relief, but no rain. We got some overcast as the front moves through, and my air-conditioning just went off for the first time since last Thursday. It was 106°F around here for several days in a row, easily beating records last set in 1934.
A family friend who moved to Florida several years back was telling us that the prime reason they moved there was because Florida is cooler in the summer than the Midwest is.
We have a new pet ! Fred the gator showed up about 3 weeks ago in the south pond on our business property. He is about 3.5 feet long and snorted at me when I got about 5 ft away from him while taking pictures. There is a picture at https://www.facebook.com/WinSimInc .
I was putting dont feed the gator signs (Amazon is great !) last week next to the pond. As I was hammering the posts into the ground, Fred swam up and checked them out. Pet at your own risk !
Chuck wrote:
“A family friend who moved to Florida several years back was telling us that the prime reason they moved there was because Florida is cooler in the summer than the Midwest is.”
I’ll bet the beaches look nicer too… 🙂
Is Fred a regular ol’ gator or a caiman?
He/she looks fairly calm but easily provoked. Don’t show him/her any pics of BGriggs and RBT in their new orange jumpsuits, and for the love of the FSM, do NOT, under any circumstances show him/her any candid shots of Field Marshall Rodham, greg’s lifelong love interest down in Oz.
Insurance carriers are going to take a real hit around here.
No we will all take the hit. All food prices will including stuff that is already on the store shelves. Just like orange juice when a freeze is announced in Florida the stock crew is busy marking up the prices before the news program ends.
We also have the federal government insisting on alcohol for our fuel thereby consuming more of our food crop to make our cars less efficient.
OFD wrote:
“…greg’s lifelong love interest down in Oz.”
Showing Fred those sorts of pictures will get you in to trouble with the (R)SPCA. My only love interest is Princess… Tell her there are plenty of Irish pubs here for her to work in, and a world class university where she can get her PhD in Chinese.
What Ray said; it is not the insurance parasites who take these hits; it is us Mundanes; ditto when healthcare costs shoot up, or the price of fossil fuels that the buggers will pile on later this summer and fall. The war on the Western middle class continues apace…
I will so inform Princess, sir, but she’s probably already lost to her mom’s alma mater for the duration. I will mention transfer possibilities, however, as I don’t know if the school offers a doctorate in Chinese. I must inform you, however, that HILLARY! will be crushed, sir. Crushed.
Hillary’ll be okay. What with William Jefferson and William of Kelowna both lusting after her… 🙂
It is too late already, my business health insurance costs have almost doubled for the 15 people that I buy insurance for each month in the last 3 years. We were $3,800/month and now we are $7,000/month. All that I have added is one now 29 year old guy (guys at that age are almost free). This is for BCBS with very high deductibles.
I’m sure that Fred is a regular old american gator. We have a gator preserve about 10 miles from the office with about 25,000 gators so I’m sure that he has roamed from there. He really likes my one acre pond which is about 4-5 ft deep and all the fish. I have yet to see him eat a bird but there are plenty of birds there for him to go for also.
they have written off their corn crop—it is dead in the fields
Reminds me of when I was more in contact with my father’s side of the family. Lots of farmers there, some good, some not-so-good. Too many of them made far more money in bad years than in good, because crop insurance paid more than their crops would ever have been worth. The best were the programs where they were paid pleasant sums not to plant any crops. Stupid agricultural subsidies.
Lynn writes: “my business health insurance costs have almost doubled for the 15 people that I buy insurance for each month in the last 3 years” Ain’t government regulation wunnerful? Here where I live, when the government decided to intervene in the health insurance market, the only noticeable effect was that the cost of my health insurance doubled from one year to the next. That was about 10 years ago, and it has probably gone up another 50% or so since then. If your costs have gone up in anticipation of Obamacare, just wait – when it is really implemented, they’ll go up again…and again.
But don’t be sad. Just think of all the burger-flippers who will be getting nice, secure jobs as health insurance clerks, or perhaps as bureaucrats in the government apparatus that monitors health insurance clerks. The health-care will be no better, but hey, Obama & Pelosi meant well, and that’s what really counts…
Greg is getting more and more delusional…
Yeah, it’s the bad online company I keep… 🙂