11:30 – Science kit sales are picking up, as expected. We shipped five kits yesterday, and have three more queued up to ship today, assuming that PayPal releases the hold on two of them. We’re at about 150% of last June’s sales. June is always a slow month, but better than the dead months of February through May. The busy period is the two month stretch from mid-July through mid-September, when we can expect to do 40% to 50% of the year’s sales. We’ll likely have many good days during that period when we ship more kits than we do some weeks during slow periods. I’m still making up solutions, filling bottles, and shipping kits, never-ending tasks this time of year.
Thinking about solar power the other day, it struck me that I already have good inverters, in the form of true sine-wave inverters built into on-line UPSs. I have three of those, totaling about 3500 VA, and 3.5 KW is more than enough to power the stuff I’d want to run with sine-wave power. All I’d really need is few high-output solar panels, a charge controller, and some additional gel or lead-acid deep-charge batteries. I’m not sure what voltage the on-line UPSs convert the 120VAC to for recharging the batteries, but I suspect I could just put the UPSs and battery bank in close proximity to the PV panels and run a heavy-duty extension cord downstairs that wouldn’t normally have anything connected to it. The UPSs wouldn’t be connected to AC power other than for the initial charge, and would therefore run all the time as though the power had failed. I’ll have to do some research, but it seems as though it should work and save me the price of a 3.5 KW true sine-wave inverter.
13:34 – I get really tired of reading really bad prepping advice on websites. I just read one on theprepperjournal.com on water filters, where the author recommended the Platypus. That filter is one of the worst choices you could make. Here’s a detailed Amazon.com review that explains why. The reviewer actually knows what he’s talking about, in contrast to the author of the article, who doesn’t.
I’ll have to do some research,
Dr. Bob if you come across some resources/books that cover the latest panel tech and battery tech, could you post it here? I know the basics and there are various web resources, but it is hard to find a succinct book or article on the latest tech. Especially different batteries and their long term use and safety.
I’m not sure what voltage the on-line UPSs convert the 120VAC to for recharging the batteries, but I suspect I could just put the UPSs and battery bank in close proximity to the PV panels and run a heavy-duty extension cord downstairs that wouldn’t normally have anything connected to it. The UPSs wouldn’t be connected to AC power other than for the initial charge, and would therefore run all the time as though the power had failed. I’ll have to do some research, but it seems as though it should work and save me the price of a 3.5 KW true sine-wave inverter.
I’ll bet that you are going to need some active cooling (a fan).
There are some good projects online involving converting UPSs.
I just looked but couldn’t find my favorite one. I’ll look at my bookmarks later.
The issue I have most often with mine is that they won’t start unless you have AC line voltage to them. Some people get around this with a small inverter on the battery to power the electronics of the UPS so that it will turn on its (big) inverter. Some have a key press combo that will start them in the absence of line voltage.
I usually connect and top up the charge on my 16kva before a hurricane. If we lose power, it switches on, which is when I need it. I can also connect it to my geni to recharge or provide the “starting power.”
Looking at solar to charge it is on my list.
Most of the UPSs that I’ve maintained or torn apart use 12v or 24v battery banks. 12v gives a simple 10:1 transformer that does double duty reducing line for the charge phase, and boosting battery for the discharge (usage) phase. Bigger UPSs use 24v packs. I’ve also seen 120v packs (10 @12v battery per drawer), that then convert to the AC without having to transform too.
UPSs are a great source of useful electronic and electrical components. I’d never throw one away! (And they can be traded in on new ones.)
nick
BTW big industrial strength UPSs are available cheap at surplus sites and auctions. They are often replaced when the batteries need changing, because the cost of completely new one with batteries can be the same or lower than just changing the batteries and disposing of the old batteries. You will be competing with scrappers who are only interested in the scrap (or resale) value of the batteries. There is usually lots of life left in the batteries. There are even online sellers who will sell these used batteries, hopefully listing them as used. I just bought 2 more 8kva units for <$30 and one has all the batteries. They are this unit:
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=&cs=04&sku=A0360938&ST=pla&dgc=ST&cid=262075&lid=4742361&acd=1230980794501410&ven1=XbDRwk5b&ven3=274202859323293584
@nick, here is a resolution on that horrific video that you posted the other day:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/little-monsters/arrest-in-texas-teen-assault-895612
I do not understand why the 13 year old had to attack her classmate, hurting the toddler in the process. And, this was a planned event. Seems to me that the videographer ought to spend some time in Juvi also. Plus that weird kid doing the jumping jacks and whooping while the girl is attacking.
@lynn
I think, this is a turf dispute. The media says it can’t be racial, as they are both minorities, but it looks like black on tan violence to me.
I think the standing girls are demanding that she get up from the table in a “that’s our table b!tch” thing. That’s based on what I can hear and body language.
There was also a mention of some previous dispute between the girls in one of the articles. That certainly would explain the initial animosity and why the incident got videoed.
The guy doing the weird dance? That’s the “monkey dance” from one of the violence experts I linked before. Unfortunate that he is black and therefore it sounds racial, but it is just the internal monkey jumping up and down in excitement. It’s celebratory. You see it alot in video of group violence. Same with a particular sort of lean or sway as you move around and circle in and out near the victim, often with one hand to chin, and accompanied by saying “day-um”. Sort of a snake-like sway in close, then sway back away.
There are lots of videos on youtube. Search for ‘pre-attack indicators’ will get you a bunch. Note how often a single punch drops the victim. ‘Course, maybe that result is why the vids get posted. It does show that it happens a lot. And hitting your head when you fall is what usually kills people when there is a fatality in “the knockout game” or “polar bear hunting.”
As to why? The attackers appear to be from a culture that glorifies violence, generally has lower IQ and poor impulse control (due to many factors that may not be racial in origin, like the young age of the birth mother, poor pre-natal nutrition, poor early childhood nutrition, attachment disorders due to lack of parental involvement in child rearing, drug and alcohol use pre- and post- natally, and others) and may well be inculcated with a ‘street’ culture that sees violence as a legitimate tool, and ‘face’ or ‘respect’ as critical for a successful life.
Spend some time on the sites I linked, especially Mac’s site. They are subject matter experts on violence. See especially Mac’s “Types of violence.” This looks like territorial
or behavioral Correction violence, meant to put a group member in her place, or to drive off a non-group member.
They are NOT like us. They live in a world where violence is swift and common. Everyone else in the video knew what was coming, and the victim probably did too, but didn’t know how to avoid it.
nick
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/violencetypes.htm
Added- if this is their behaviour at 13 and 14, what do you think they are like at 23 and 24, having been exposed to and having participate in this sort of thing for a decade and a half?
nick
“…Everyone else in the video knew what was coming, and the victim probably did too, but didn’t know how to avoid it.”
With a small child? Get up and just walk away?
“That’s the “monkey dance” from one of the violence experts I linked before. Unfortunate that he is black and therefore it sounds racial, but it is just the internal monkey jumping up and down in excitement. It’s celebratory. You see it alot in video of group violence.”
Also known as a “chimp-out” among various circles, and yes, although white and Hispanic yoots do this caper, too, it is still most often seen among Western blacks, mostly male, but the females also like to play it.
Nice day earlier, but rain showers now.
As probably y’all know by now, the cops shot the second escapee over in the Adirondack countryside near the Canadian border; his condition has been upgraded from critical, apparently. Two rounds through center body mass didn’t do the trick, whereas three through the noggin DID, for the other piece of shit. And two prison staff members have taken their place in the cellblock.
In other news, our son took it upon himself to drive the moving truck cross-country from Maffachufetts to the East Bay in Kalifornia and should be approaching Salt Lake City tonight, thirteen hours a day of driving alone. Either wife or I or both of us could have helped him do this but nope. And wife now has to drive Great-Grandma down to a funeral later this week in tropical Glens Falls, NY, and then all the way back up to northern New Brunswick, and fly from there to Montreal where I’ll pick her up next week and then she flies out for a gig in Michigan, a week with me in PA, and then a third week in, whaddya know, the East Bay in Kalifornia. We be the Travelin’ DunceBerry’s or sumthin here…
“How much ammunition is ‘enough’?”
http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2012/03/how-much-ammunition-is-enough.html
” Your insurance company may also impose restrictions on ammunition quantity and/or storage method(s), usually as (a) condition(s) of your policy. Check the small print carefully, because if you violate your policy’s conditions, your coverage may be rendered null and void.”
Uh oh.
They are NOT like us.
Macon Wal-Mart mob wanted to see how much damage it could do
““Due to the lateness of the hour,” he said, “I don’t know that they were going to be going to church the next morning.””
Maybe to church with Reverends Jackwagon and Sharpless?
While Minister Fartinacan takes down the flag and puts up the ISIS one.
And Oburcula and Moochelle dance a jig on the White House lawn while the new AG does the monkey dance in tandem with her predecessor as hip-hop resounds throughout Mordor at deafening volumes and tens of millions of Murkans think it’s cool.
Greece, Russia and the U.S.:
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-care-and-feeding-of-financial-black.html#more
Just lost an hour to this map:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3145042/How-segregated-state-Interactive-map-reveals-worrying-racial-divides-US.html
zoomable, clickable, dragable map of the US with race overlaid. Turn on the map labels with the button in the lower left to see city names, etc.
VERY sharp segregation in most of the country.
Surprising that it really does put some areas literally on the wrong side of the tracks (looking in my parents neighborhood, this is real clear.)
It’s also clear where the apartments are, and the housing projects.
The amount of hispanics and how thoroughly they are disbursed is amazing to me too.
I can look at the towns surrounding where I grew up, and they are mostly black now. I don’t know when it started, but it didn’t take long. In the 80’s blacks were very rare, now those communities are fully black.
It’s funny that a couple of days ago I was wishing for just this sort of visualization tool. And here it is.
nick
“The amount of hispanics and how thoroughly they are disbursed is amazing to me too.”
The writer Roger McGrath, who does articles for Chronicles Magazine, recently did a motorcycle jaunt with a bunch of other people from Washington on down through Oregon and well into mid-Kalifornia, all along the coastal towns. He reports that what were once thriving industrial and seaport places are now mini-Detroits and heavily populated now by Hispanics. Siblings down in MA report similar and Spanish is the de facto second language for the Commonwealth; that must have the Puritans buried in the Old Granary Burying Ground and other such sites spinning in their Calvinist graves.
“In fact, it seems racial tensions are increasing. A study in September found nearly half of Americans in key voting areas think race relations have gotten worse under the nation’s first black president, a new poll shows.”
Gee, what a surprise. Oburcula and Moochelle and their former AG played the race card every chance they got and shoved it down all our throats constantly.
This won’t end well and it will be the moderates and innocents on all sides that suffer the most.
Trump 2016!!!! He can buy my vote!
They are already going after Trump. Look at the reaction to his perfectly factual comments about SOME of the immigrants from Mexico and beyond.
He may have enough money, and enough personal chutzpah to keep saying it, but it will be hard slog. Eventually they will find something that convinces him to stop.
Remember Perot? Doing real well. Changed the discussion. Changed the way serious people had to present info. Then, suddenly, he quit. He stopped trying and started sabotaging himself. Nice family you got there Mr. Perot, wouldn’t want anything to happen to them…..
nick
Trump has people he loves.
I’m old enough to remember the Perot capers and also what was done by the RINO nabobs in that half of the War Party to Pat Buchanan before that. When he made a big showing in NH and started making waves, the attack dawgs were turned loose, big-time.
Meanwhile the other half of the War Party has started in on Bernie, asking questions that he doesn’t get asked back here in the Great Green Mountain State; stuff about immigration, guns, etc. He’s kinda floundered on them so far; all just part of the show.
Like the national border security theater Mrs. OFD witnessed from El Paso last week; ‘yup, we’re standin’ tall on the frontier here, protecting Murka from the hordes tryin’ to swarm across it…we got our barbed wire, chain-link fencing, floodlights, SUVs and APCs all over the place…etc., etc.’
Say, where were all youse guys and the fortified frontier before the “official” estimates of 15 million illegals got here? (and it’s more like twice that number and we all know it).
Can’t elect a new gummint? No problemo, Senor; the gummint will simply elect a new people. And that’s exactly what they’re doing. A couple of pages from the Stalin and Mao playbooks….the Russians are looking at us in amazement that we’re so stupid…
@OFD, you forgot to add the LGBT colors light show on the not-so-White House with a “special” fireworks finale.
“Fireworks” would be just the ticket for that circus down in Mordor.