08:28 – Thanks to the kindness of a reader, I now have a legal copy of Windows 7 Home Premium. I attempted to install it on the new Atom system in the den yesterday afternoon, and the system behaved exactly as it had when I attempted to install several flavors of Linux. What’s worse is that it’s behaving exactly as the old Atom system was behaving. With the old system, I thought at first that the problem was the video drivers in the new releases of Linux. I then concluded that it was a hardware problem. I then replaced the system, which behaved the same way. I then attempted to install Windows 7, which behaved the same way. I now conclude that the problem is either the display, although I’ve never seen a display behave like this, or perhaps the cable, although I’ve used both analog and digital cables. The next step is to connect the old system to the TV and see if it works. If so, I’ll replace the display and cables and end up with two functional Atom systems, one for Barbara’s office and one for the den.
As we approach the end of September, kit sales are definitely getting more sporadic. Some days, we ship three or four kits, other days one or two, and some days none at all. The next couple of months are likely to be slow, averaging one or two kits a day. Things will pick up again in early December, as people start ordering kits for Christmas and the beginning of the second semester. Then around mid-January they’ll drop off again and remain slow through about April, when they’ll start to pick up again. We’ll ship a lot of kits in June and then be covered up with orders again in July and August and into September.
I want to have two more kits available for 2013, which means I need to take advantage of these slower periods to get the kits and associated manuals complete. My goal is to complete the Life Science (grade 7) kit and documentation in October and November and be ready to start shipping kits in early December. That gives me mid-January through April to do the Physical Science (grade 8) kit and documentation and have them ready for summer shipments.
Ideally, I’d like to have a third middle-school kit–Earth and Space Science–also available next year, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I simply won’t have time to write the documentation and design and produce the kits and still get everything else done.
11:54 – Wow. If the riots in Spain were bad, the ones now going on in Greece are catastrophic. Various reports put the figures at 50,000 to 100,000 Athenians rioting in support of the general strike. I’m actually surprised that the Greek government has been able to field as many riot police as they have. The sympathies of most of those police officers must be with the rioters. And those police are facing desperate people armed with Molotov cocktails. It may not happen this time, but with Greece facing almost daily protests and riots, sooner or later the cops are going to respond with lethal force. Greece is already effectively ungovernable. Once the government starts shooting protesters, there’s no way back. And the Greek people have not yet begun to experience the level of suffering that they’re inevitably going to face. They’re throwing firebombs now. What are they going to do when the money completely runs out? We’re looking at the beginning of what is likely to become a bloody civil war.