08:55 – Front page article in the paper this morning about a traffic accident back in May, where a police car ran a red light and rammed a car proceeding through the intersection on green, killing the driver. The cop wasn’t on a call, wasn’t using drugs or alcohol, nor was he texting, using his patrol car’s computer, or otherwise distracted. He simply didn’t notice the red light. That’s pretty hard to understand, considering there were two lights for the through lanes and a third for the left-turn lane, all red. It was 10:00 at night at a major intersection, so there was no excuse for not seeing the lights. A second patrol car was sitting in the left-turn lane, and its dashcam recorded the collision. The report said the involved patrol car was speeding, but it wasn’t really. The cop was moving at 42 MPH in a 35 MPH zone, which is a normal free-market speed for that road.
The cop was sentenced to 200 hours of community service. Anyone who wasn’t a cop or politician would very likely have been sentenced to jail time for manslaughter, because in today’s way of thinking someone always has to be at fault. In absolute terms, I think that cop received a fair sentence. It was unfair in the sense that anyone should have received that same sentence, but the cop got a pass because he was a cop.
We’re building a couple dozen more science kits today to get our finished-goods inventory built up before the move. By the end of next week, I want to have as many finished kits ready to roll as possible so that we can just label and ship boxes without having to build them on-the-fly. At that point, we’ll be ready to haul half of each type up to the new house once we’ve closed on it the first of next month and be in a position to ship from either Winston-Salem or Sparta. Then we can start building more subassemblies up in Sparta and shift final assembly up there.
We had about 1.25″ of rain overnight, but today is to be sunny with a high in the 70’s. By the weekend, we’ll have highs in the 40’s and lows in the 20’s, so winter will actually be arriving here in Winston. We hope to be living in Sparta by mid-December, just in time for real winter in the NC mountains.