08:23 – Among all the regular weekend tasks yesterday, Barbara spent a few hours doing kit stuff, including building 48 small-parts bags for chemistry kits and labeling a bunch of bottles. I timed her, and found she can label 300 bottles/hour. That translates to about nine hours’ work for her to label containers for 60 chemistry kits. Both of us working together should be able to fill, cap, and seal those 60 kits worth of containers in another nine to 12 hours.
Of course, there’s a lot more to building kits than just labeling and filling containers and building small-parts bags. Everything from making up chemicals to figuring out what needs to be ordered and ordering it to receiving and shelving orders as they arrive to taping up boxes for the kits to assembling the kits to processing orders and printing postage labels. Still, at this point, I estimate that if Barbara and I were both working full-time on kits we could produce 50 to 60 kits a week. Call it 2,500 to 3,000 kits a year. Even if she continues to work full-time and helps me on the weekends, some evenings, and an occasional vacation day, we should be able to crank out at least 20 kits a week or 1,000/year. That’ll do for now.
I would look into 2 to 3 teens showing up after school for 3 – 4 hours per day to help you out. The paperwork will be horrendous but you need help. If Barbara can not help you for an extended period of time, are you hosed?
Plus you may not be able to work out of your home then. Your city laws, state laws and homeowners insurance may force you to offsite the work. And you may need fall down insurance and worker’s comp in case one of those workers XXXXX teens falls down the stairs and breaks a leg. Used to be, their parents insurance would cover anything. Now we get a form from the insurance company for each ER visit, “did this happen on someone’s property and can we sue them for our costs?”.
Are you in a HOA? They may already be getting nervous by all the mail and UPS truck stops at your home.
True about the insurance companies. I have to carry a rider for my camera equipment as my homeowners will not cover the equipment. Too much and too valuable. I also have a one million dollar liability policy that covers anyone that is injured while I am working, say tripping over a lens cap, or claiming loss of vision because of the strobe flashes (yes that has happened, but not to me). I also carry one million dollar performance policy so that if I get sued over images the insurance kicks in, such lawsuit possibly happening because Aunt Bessie did not smile in any of the pictures because she is a royal bitch.
And even then I don’t know if that is enough. I do refuse to do any pictures of any female that is under 18 years of old unless my wife is present along with one of the female’s parent. Even then I don’t know if that is enough and I am considering a video camera operating during the entire session.
Gee, Ray; you seem a little paranoid.
What can possibly be the cause of such wild paranoia? I haven’t a clue.
Damn. I may need to mount a webcam on my truck so that when the usual moronic sons of bitches cut me off, cut in front of me, tailgate me, swerve all over the interstate at high speed while yakking on cell phones, and suchlike, do not become dismayed and subsequently somehow traumatized by my own dismayed and possibly annoyed facial expressions and sue me.
Another cam mounted on my shoulder so that when I go to take a whizz, the gent next to me doesn’t sue me for causing him feelings of inadequacy and inferiority.
What about your sports photos Ray?
Ray, I’d say Yes on the video camera running at all times. You might also have a voice recorder running at all times. Storage is cheap, so you can keep the recording on chip or on hard drive for as long as you need it to feel safe from possible lawsuits.
In my copious free time (that’s a joke) I’m looking into cheap-and-unobtrusive-but-not-concealed, always-on surveillance. What little I’ve found is ridiculously expensive. It doesn’t seem like it should be that difficult. Maybe there is some complexity that I’m missing, but I’ve worked in closely-enough related projects and I can’t think of what could be driving up the cost except the all-the-consumer-will-bear factor.
OFD, another of the things I’ve been noodling around with but haven’t done anything about (on account of lack of money; if I ever win the lottery I’ll plow some money into it, but don’t hold your breath because I’ve never bought myself a lottery ticket) is an all-around camera system for the automobile. This’ll be mainly for defense against arrests and tickets and lawsuits. I have no idea if there’s enough market to be worth developing the product (or if someone is selling it now; I didn’t find anything when I looked a couple years ago), but market research would be part of I’d need the lottery winnings for.
I took a brief look into surveillance technology with the same parameters in mind and decided it warnt worth the cost and hassle. We come and go at all hours, quite possibly armed, and the dog barks at anything he’s not sure of, plus we have lights and radios and suchlike on timers when we’re not here and we live in a tight little village ‘hood where we all know when each other is coming and going and who belongs and who don’t. Plus the county sheriff HQ is about two miles up the road, the FD about a mile, and there are regular patrols past here.
To top it all off, we’re about 150 feet in back of the town hall and maybe 150 yards from the Federal post office.
We x-posted.
http://www.tmart.com/Car-Camera-Recorders/
http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/product/car+camera+recorder+pro+dvr+w+5+channel+input.do
http://www.spytechs.com/Car-Cameras/default.htm
Whoops, I put in three links! Sorry!
What about your sports photos Ray?
There should be no problem as the pictures are taken at an event that is open to the public with lots of people. The biggest danger is to me, having been run over by more than one football player, smashed against a fence a couple of times by charging ball carriers, smacked with basketballs on the side of the court, been the cushion for an out of bounds player.
Gee, Ray; you seem a little paranoid.
What can possibly be the cause of such wild paranoia? I haven’t a clue.
Why reading this board. Naturally.
Actually I communicate with several other photographers and the stuff they have to deal with simply amazes me. A few have been sued for some really stupid stuff. No judgements against them but they had legal fees. It amazes me the people that contract for wedding images then bitch about not getting enough images because the participants were late. One guy got sued because he did not get sunset images of the couple when the couple showed up after the sun had gone down. Unfortunately it was in the contract and such a product was not delivered. His lawyer just advised him to refund their entire fee as he ran the risk of getting a judge that would side with the couple even though the couple made such images impossible.
Paranoid, perhaps. But there are some real fools in the world and they sit behind a bench.
No doubt at all about that; and I’ve seen several of your similar anecdotes here before along those lines; simply amazing. Of a piece with burglars who sue the building owners when they fall through a skylight.
A genuine judge would throw these rascals out of his or her court immediately and then their lawyers would be tarred, feathered and rode outta town on a rail.
Ray wrote:
“One guy got sued because he did not get sunset images of the couple when the couple showed up after the sun had gone down. ”
When my sister married in 1972 she ordered colour photos. The bimbo at the agency wrote B&W. My sister went ballistic when she discovered the error after the wedding when the photos were delivered. Options she considered were re-shooting the wedding, ordering a hit on the agency receptionist and begging, borrowing or stealing guests’ photos. My colour slides were stolen, literally, never to be seen again. She rationalised this as follows:
“You didn’t pay for the film and developing, mum and dad did.
Therefore the slides aren’t yours.
Therefore I can take them without recompense.”
Oh, I assure everyone that Ray is not paranoid at all. I videotape the questioning of people involved in all kinds of lawsuits, and some are just unbelievable. Most relate to medical, because there is more money at stake there.
One case involved a surgery where the patient woke up in the middle of it. Two things about that one: the patient suffered no pain, because they were using nerve blocking; and testimony from other doctors, nurses, and anesthesiologists indicated it is not unusual for a patient to wake up during surgery—it happens in about 15 to 20% of all surgery cases.
The person claimed they were frightened nearly to death because when they awoke they did not know where they were and claimed the anesthesiologist was swearing. They supposedly now suffer from almost daily nightmares about the incident. Other people present in the room at that time deny there was any swearing. Following normal procedures, everyone stepped back while the anesthesiologist put the patient back under—less than 2 minutes,—and things proceeded with a favorable and normal outcome.
A local photographer who is a family friend (once the paperboy of close family) is giving up photography and moving into property ownership and management. The complaints he has received have increased to the point that he says the money is just not worth the hassle. He has been sued (never successfully) several times, and says he would really be upset by the legal fees, if they were not going to his best friend from childhood. He misses doing photography (his first camera cost more than his first car, he said), but the work is just too risky in our sue-happy society. Similar to Ray, he does not do girls under 18 without BOTH parents being present, and he has had a secret webcam rolling in his studio for nearly a decade now.
As to dash cams photographing one’s driving, that is super common in Russia. Watch this recent one from Moscow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yu_XCEFCQM
A Russian-built TU-204 (equivalent to a Boeing 757)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNvrHkvYtQA
could not stop after landing, crashed through the ground dispatch cottage, and then had a brush with the highway carrying traffic into the airport. Captured on one of the many, many dash cams Russians seem to be crazy about. Four dead as a result.
Notice that the sky has light at 04:30 in the morning on 29 December. People in the US complain about changing clocks, but the fact is that time changes do not benefit them, but it does help those who live in the far north. In Berlin, summers were light and birds chirping at 03:30. If we stayed on one or the other time all year round that could have been an hour earlier and winters would have been pitch dark by 15:30. As it was, it was dark in winter at 16:30. This is even farther north than Berlin.
Why so many dash cams in Russia?
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/why-are-there-so-many-russian-dash-cam-videos-on-the-internet-2013019/
Those Russians drive way too fast for road conditions.
Ping Dave B!
Is there an easy way to tell what Race and faction (Alliance/Horde) a character is? I have one that I think is a Night Elf but could be a Blood Elf.
The easiest way to tell what race a toon is is to look up the toon by name at http://wowarmory.com
You can see for example that all 3 toons named Abneed are gnomes including my level 90 Mage are Gnomes.
For night elves and blood elves, in my limited experience, blood elves have normal human hair color, where night elves would have a hair color that a human can only get from a bottle.
Them dash cams I linked to seem a bit pricey; I may just take appropriate aggressive defensive operations in future.
Unless we can find a VC to fund a less expensive yet innovative and efficient alternative.
Thanks Dave, that site’s really cool…
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/saurfang/Karthaga/simple
I’ll just point out your toon would be much more well equiped if she took up mining and blacksmithing. (Or mining and jewelcrafting.) Or better yet, find a friendly person in your who is a blacksmith or jewelcrafter.
Here’s one of my newer characters:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/tanaris/Tsaiming/simple
Thanks Dave, I have to run to work now, I’ll look later. Yeah, there’s so much I don’t know. I know about occupations but just haven’t got across it yet.
Or better yet, find a friendly person in your GUILD who is a blacksmith or jewelcrafter.
I’d actually like to learn some crafts, but I’ll ask around in my guilds.