08:22 – Barbara took her dad to the doctor yesterday morning for a follow-up appointment. We didn’t get any phone calls overnight, so apparently Dutch settled in successfully for his first night at home. Barbara is leaving work early this afternoon to take her mother to a doctor’s appointment. Her mom has yet another appointment tomorrow, but Frances is taking her to that one.
We’re now up to about five dozen assorted biology and chemistry kits in finished-goods inventory. I’m building a batch of forensic kits today, using the finished subassemblies we have in stock. Next on the schedule is a batch of 30 life science kits, followed by 60 more biology kits and 60 more chemistry kits. After that, it’ll be lather, rinse, repeat for the rest of this year. May is historically a pretty slow month, about like April. But things start to pick up in June, before the crazy time starts in July and August. June should be about three times the May’s volume, and July and August each three or four times June’s volume. So, for the next six months or so, my life will be spent making up chemicals, filling bottles, issuing purchase orders, building subassemblies and kits, and processing orders and shipping kits. Not that I mind. I like to stay busy, and I like making stuff.
14:28 – I just called Katie Dugan, my vendor rep at American Educational Products, to check price and availability on some items for a purchase order I’m putting together. Every January, AMEP offers four coupons for things like free shipping on any order over $750, a 10% discount on any order over $300, and so on. So, intending to use one of the free shipping coupons, I gave Katie the item numbers and quantities to verify: 30 dozen each 10 mL graduated cylinders and 100 mL graduated cylinders, 30 dozen 250 mL glass beakers, and so on.
I’d also intended to order some chemicals from Katie, mostly the same ones I’d ordered from her late last year. Stuff like 2.5 liters of 30% ammonia, several 500 mL bottles each of n-butanol and glacial acetic acid, and so on. AMEP doesn’t actually carry chemicals, but their sister company, eNasco, does. And the last time I ordered chemicals from Katie, they were actually shipped from eNasco. The problem is, eNasco is retail-oriented, and they apparently have no one on staff who has any clue about hazardous shipping regulations. So for my prior order, eNasco had essentially shipped everything as hazardous, with each bottle as a separate shipment. That means they had to pay a separate hazardous shipping fee for each bottle. What they should have done was combine all of the bottles in one box. If they’d done that, they’d have had to pay only one hazardous shipping surcharge instead of a dozen or more. Needless to say, eNasco billed AMEP for the shipping charges, which probably totaled several hundred dollars rather than the $27 it should have cost them. I apologized to Katie and told her that I’d never have ordered from them if I’d realized how much “free” shipping was going to end up costing them. And I suggested that eNasco really, really needs someone on staff who understands at least the basics of hazardous shipping regulations. That’s non-trivial. In fact, it’s almost a full-time job. Different requirements apply to different chemicals. For example, for shipping under the Limited Quantity Exemption (which is completely different from the Small Quantity Exemption, which in turn is completely different from the ORM-D exemption, which is being eliminated anyway), you may be able to put 5 liters of one chemical in a single package, but only 500 mL of a different chemical. There are also restrictions on which combinations of chemicals are allowed to share a box. As Katie said, they learned an expensive lesson.
Good news all around, excellent!
Got more nooz off the Plantation grapevine just now via email; the massacre continues; one of the noobs I just trained to replace me got the ax this morning and one day’s notice to vacate the premises. Good guy, too, and fellow vet, who got to spend his enlistment in Germany as a radio operator. And a daughter in college, just like us. Fun times!
Yep. I’ve said it before, but I really don’t see any acceptable alternative to a basic income.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income#Advocacy_by_Libertarians
I’m not happy about the idea, but I’m afraid the alternative is eventual revolution and chaos. More people are coming to realize what I’ve argued for twenty years or more, that we’re in the early stages of the post-employment society. I think most of us will be alive to see employment rates of 25% or less, and that will eventually fall to probably 5% or less. There just won’t be anything for the majority of people to do in terms of useful work. Low-skill workers were the first ones hammered by automation, and moderate-skill workers (factory workers and so on) are now under the hammer. Even highly-skilled workers–physicians, attorneys, engineers, professors, and so on–are starting to feel the effects.
The good news is that as we shift over to completely automated manufacturing, manufactured goods become essentially free and there’ll be more than enough for everyone. The bad news is that very few people will have anything to occupy their time other than watching sports and reality TV.
Just addressing my narrow and recent case of a moderate-skill drone; there are multiple RHEL clusters sitting down there in four raised-floor secured data centers and maybe 75% of the work maintaining them can be done remotely. The other percent needs somebody on-site daily to tend them; I thought I was that guy, ha, ha. Now team lead will have to give up working from home and going skiing all winter every winter like he’s been doing and the whole enchilada will be on him. I have no idea how that will pan out, as older machines get sun-setted out one door and new ones come in another. Maybe they’ll just bring on temp contractor drones to fill in as times get busy, but they have to get security clearances, learn the infrastructure on the sites, etc., etc. Oh well, not my worry; clearly the upper-level PHB manglers think the work is akin to flipping hamburgers and any imbecile high-school kid can come in off the street and be up to speed in two weeks; they’ve said as much outright.
On the larger stage that is our employment market here in this country, I don’t think there is enough money in the till to support the system that Bob talks about here; I think it’s being robbed continually and RUTHLESSLY by the powers-that-be and it won’t be there as the system grinds to a crashing halt sometime in the next few years. And when that happens we will see lots of pain and possibly revolution, chaos and another civil war.
Right now I need to find something that puts bread on the table that a nearly 60-year-old revenant can handle while also preparing for the chaos.
Why did they take on the n00b just so they could sack him?
The doom and gloom about employment and the need for Basic Income is wrong for the reasons I (and Pournelle) have outlined before. The system will adapt if we let it.
I was told, and the two noobs were told, that they’d got in just under the wire through some corporate grant via another internal organization there and they’d be OK. So I went outta my way to make sure they had the tools they needed to do the gig and now they’re getting sacked, too. Both very skilled and adept, experienced, reliable IT pros, with many talents and shoved back out onto the street again after hardly any time in the saddle. At least I got the two years and learned a lot and managed to get this house. And worked with good people.
Count yer blessings, I always say. Or try to.
“The system will adapt if we let it.” Huh? What are you smoking down there, homie? Is that more of the Total Free Market scam we keep hearing about? The Invisible Hand? Everything will shake out just fine and dandy but we gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet? Just let The Market do its thing….uh huh.
Well, again I ask: Cui bono? Not me or those hapless noobs today. Hell, not even the corporation in question; they’re cutting off their nose to spite their face in the insane bean-counter rush to endlessly increasing profits. As my team lead remarked the other day; they’re sucking themselves up their own asshole and he doesn’t wanna be around when it finally happens.
This isn’t gonna work, fellas; we can’t keep dumping smart, capable people out on the street by the millions and paying them to sit home and watch the Red Sox and “Survivor” and expect that to pan out OK. And when all the money has been snaked from the till by the usual suspects and store shelves go empty and cops don’t get paid and the lights go out, there ain’t gonna BE any system to adapt.
If you think hazardous shipping is tough, just wait until you get to collect sales tax for 9,600 different entities in the USA:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/04/national_internet_sales_tax_why_i_love_the_marketplace_fairness_act_and.html
This is craziness! I know that there is a one million dollar exemption but that will be rolled down quickly as more and more states start loving the new tax money. And just wait until their auditors show up at your business and demand entrance to examine your books. I had a California sales tax auditor show up at my business here in Texas and swear that we had a Kali presence so that he had the right to audit us (we did not). The idiot refused to leave and then fled when I called the cops. Kali sent us demand letters for five years which I promptly threw away.
“Kali sent us demand letters for five years which I promptly threw away.”
Do you mean this Kali? I’m sure there’s a resemblance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kali_by_Raja_Ravi_Varma.jpg
Good for you Lynn. This stuff is nearly enough to make me think that anarchism is a worthwhile philosophy.
OFD, having just snorted some first rate coke, wrote the following:
‘“The system will adapt if we let it.” Huh? What are you smoking down there, homie? Is that more of the Total Free Market scam we keep hearing about?’
You’re sounding like a neo-Luddite Dave. Just because our host’s anarchism and theories about the top 1% monopolizing the work is woo doesn’t make the opposite true. I don’t buy for a moment the idea that only the cognitive elite will have work and the rest of us will be living on charity. Many of the bottom 99% are still pretty motivated and able, and can do all sorts of work for the others. Work will be shared around, and it’s in no one’s interest for so many people to be unproductive while the elite live in their gated communities, afraid to leave them. There will be many service jobs created so that the elite can work more efficiently and have leisure time. Like many things, this reminds me of chemical equilibrium.
“Kali sent us demand letters for five years which I promptly threw away.”
Do you mean this Kali? I’m sure there’s a resemblance.
Um, Kalifornia. And yes, there is a certain resemblance.
Please e-mail me and provide phone number so I can talk to you. thanks, algerd Monstavicius M.D.
Back in the day, when I owned a small business here, the State of Florida sent me a form demanding a ‘racial’ breakdown of my employees. I checked the Other box, said that 100% of my employees were of the Human race, signed it and mailed it back in. That generated a months long series of screeds from whatever over-funded bureaucracy was demanding such information. I carefully and thoughtfully responded to each one by throwing it away until the letters stopped coming. Then I filed away the name of the person who kept signing the missives in the “People to be lined up against the wall and shot when the revolution comes” file, right underneath a couple of names from the good folks at the state Department of Revenue.
Then I filed away the name of the person who kept signing the missives in the “People to be lined up against the wall and shot when the revolution comes” file, right underneath a couple of names from the good folks at the state Department of Revenue.
Ah, that list will be long. I paid my business franchise tax today to the Great State of Texas. The tax was 0.575% of my gross revenue in Texas, I may have a few names to add to your list. It was not a lot of money in the long run but all these taxes mount up after a while. And you are telling me that I need to start collecting sales tax for the other 49 states plus DC? Screw all these people, especially the ones giving my hard earned money to non-citizens and terrorists.
While I do not believe that the Great Revolution will accompany the Great Default, if it happens, me and mine will go underground. Typically, too many innocent people get shortened in those circumstances.
Meanwhile, life is good. Sitting here sharing the best large red delicious apple with my dog. I get the skin and she gets the meat. I wish I could figure out how to get her to eat the skin also. BTW, bought that apple at Mr. Walton’s place. I miss him and his old truck.
“Meanwhile, life is good. Sitting here sharing the best large red delicious apple with my dog.”
Lynn, I was hoping you’d have enough initiative to have started on your Texas “list” and be feeding that human refuse to your dog.
Seriously. Wouldn’t it be more easier to keep a list of people who shouldn’t be shot at the first opportunity?
Things could pan out that we may not need to make up our lists just yet; there could be mass die-off; our megalopolis cities and surrounding areas are not sustainable in the long run. And I note that much of the propaganda from the Left talks about how we should all move to the cities and make them “livable” again and “sustainable” and this is the wave of the future and we better get on board. Of course masses of people are easier to control in urban areas, too. Lock ’em up like rats in a cage.
We should have two lists: one for the local bastards we know and love, and another one for the national level; I suspect our national list will overlap quite a bit.