10:04 – Barbara stayed with her dad last night, and will be back sometime this morning. Before she headed over there last night, I talked to her about ending the dad-sitting duties she and Frances have been doing every night since he hurt himself a week ago. Staying over there every other night is very wearing on Barbara, physically and emotionally, and must be the same for Frances. I told Barbara that I thought she and Frances needed to pace themselves, because no one knows when the next real crisis will occur.
We’re in pretty good shape on science kit inventory now. We have, either as completed kits or as subassemblies ready to build, about six dozen each of the chemistry and biology kits. We introduced the biology kits last April, and I just checked the sales ratio of biology:chemistry kits over that full period as well as the last six months and the last three months. It’s remarkably consistent, with biology kit unit sales holding at about 55% of chemistry kit unit sales. In other words, we sell about 1.8 chemistry kits for each biology kit. That means that if we want a total of 350 more biology and chemistry kits ready to ship as of 1 July we need 125 biology kits and 225 chemistry kits. That in turn means that over the next four months or so, we need to label and fill something like 15,000 containers, or roughly 125 per day. That’s doable, but we’ll be busy between now and the end of the year.
Good advice there!
Congrats also on the book status!
30 here today and a dusting of snow overnight. And I buried our adolescent cat after I got home yesterday; he got hit on the curve in the road near us, Wednesday night, probably when around thirty or forty vehicles were racing to a fire somewhere and then back again, bumper to bumper, much faster than the speed limit and road conditions. Hard to see a small black animal. And couldn’t have been a major working fire or anything because they all came right back. Mrs. OFD very upset; he was a real character and much loved here. Dog and two other cats are clearly also upset.
Just frosting on the cake for me at the end of a sorta shitty week, at work and also getting a nice pink citation from a local huckleberry cop. And finding a major hole in our finances again. The fun just never stops!
OFD:
My heartfelt condolences.
Robert
Sorry to hear that, Dave. It’s never easy to lose a pet.
Are you Jim Gaffigan’s long lost brother?
Can I make a slight criticism on the USPS? All these years, I have been believing “The Miracle on 34th Street” supposition that the USPS was the pinnacle of human efficiency. Well, my suppositions have been dashed now.
We moved a couple of weeks ago within the same zip code, 77479, and the same physical post office. We have been served by this post office for our various homes for the last 23+ years. And served very well indeed.
I turned in the change of address for our home last week and have not gotten any mail for over a week now that was not directly addressed to the new home. The wife informs me that the post office, in their infinite wisdom, forwards all mail to our old home back to the Houston main post office, 77001, for addressing to our new home. Then they send it back to the 77479 post office for delivery to our new home.
Have you heard anything so stupid? Apparently all our mail comes to 77479, goes back to the 77001 monstrosity and then comes back to 77479. Does not sound very efficient to me. But, what do I know.
Sorry to hear about the cat. We just lost our 17 year tabby to a brain tumor. The vet thought it was an infection and then went oh no. He put her to sleep rather than let her wake-up. He was kind for the cat and us.
Outdoor cats reputedly live way shorter lives. I just put a dog door ( http://www.amazon.com/Ideal-Pet-Products-Ruff-Weather-Telescoping/dp/B0017JWARY/ ) in the new house into the backyard that the dog and cat can go in and out of. And other varmints too, we have had other cats come in for a visit. I’ve heard of coons and snakes visiting also. But I had to remove the second flap for now as both the dog and male cat found it difficult to push two flaps open.
BTW Bob, I do not know if you are printing any manuals for your kits. If you are, I would like to recommend http://www.lulu.com . We print our five 300 to 500 page software manuals ( http://www.lulu.com/shop/winsim-inc/design-ii-for-windows-tutorials-and-samples-version-110/paperback/product-20376434.html;jsessionid=60EDBAF5D07D672A73DF9179786CE237 ) and are very happy with lulu as they stand behind their work product.
Oh, I can improve on that USPS story. The last winter my aunt and uncle spent in Florida, the post office got the forwarding zip for all their mail incorrect (it was correct on the form my uncle filled out). Instead of going to Daytona, it went to Port St. Lucie. After 2 weeks of getting no mail, my uncle started inquiries. After 4 weeks, the post office in Tiny Town claimed all mail was being forwarded. After 2 months and more phone calls, the Tiny Town post office finally figured out that the problem was an incorrect zip code on the forwarding stickers they put on the mail. After 10 weeks, forwarded mail started arriving correctly. However, they were only staying for 12 weeks. Mysteriously, all the mail forwarded previously to the 10 weeks, was never delivered. To this day, the incorrectly forwarded mail has not been located by USPS. They have no idea what happened to it after it arrived in Port St. Lucie.
Sorry to hear about the cat, Dave. I nearly hit a black cat on the way home from work in Indy yesterday. Cats can move pretty fast, and I will never figure out why cats think they can run full speed towards a fast moving car (I was going a good 50mph) and not consider it danger. Most cats avoid strange humans like the plague, but will gladly run in front of a fast-moving car. Anyway, this little bugger came out of nowhere on my right, and got close enough that I could still see him (he did not get close enough to cross into my blind area) just about to collide with the right front of the car, then he spun on a dime and made U-turn tracks back up the bank, to just a few yards where he came from. Close call. I have run over (and killed) at least 2 cats in my million miles of driving (300,000 on 3 of my 8 cars alone—I’m now on #9 and have put 40,000 on it since returning 3 years ago). All cats were hit at highway speeds of 65+mph, so I’m pretty sure death was instantaneous. I have a couple deer whistles on this car. Have never encountered a single deer with those whistles, but nearly hit a couple dogs on a 65mph state road highway a few weeks ago, and the cat episode yesterday, so I am guessing those whistles do not work on cats or dogs.
Dang cold out today—couple degrees below freezing in Tiny Town with 25mph wind. We had little or no wind in Berlin, year-round, so I keep telling everybody that temps above freezing are really not cold when there is no wind. But today’s more than stiff breezes cut right to the bone. Wind is an undesirable winter condition on the American continent; then in summer heat of 90+F, when you could die for a breeze, it stays dead calm. DEAD calm. Weather bureau says winter temps will leave us here for good this season late next week. The groundhog has sure been wrong this year, with our coldest and snowiest weather occurring after Phil declared it would be an early spring.
Decided I have not listened to Lee Michaels nearly enough in the last couple decades, so I pulled all the albums I have of his (all of them) and started through them today. Wow. The Hammond B3 was a tinkertoy in the hands of guys like Booker T. Jones, Jimmy McGriff, and Jimmy Smith. It was a power tool under the hands of Michaels and Deep Purple’s Jon Lord. Lord was the first to put the B3 through a Marshall guitar amp, getting a raw sound that he called “The Beast”, and that pretty much started heavy metal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mW9b_KRedQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3U2V2F1sr8
What would it sound like if Bach composed for today’s instruments? Well, Jon Lord’s favorite composer was Bach. Lord finished an unfinished Bach symphony using electric instruments, and this was the result (5 minutes in before the transistion occurs). Performed in München, Deutschland, 1974.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj1o5xcgNGI
Mr. OFD my condolence on your cat. I can never keep tears away when one of our pets passes.
Apparently all our mail comes to 77479, goes back to the 77001 monstrosity and then comes back to 77479
Oh not stupid at all. The Houston post office is probably the closest post office that has the necessary machines to process the new address changes. The items are loaded into a machine, read by humans if needed, new address looked up, new address label printed, and the necessary electronic or physical change of address sent back to the sender.
We get many of our address changes for members of the organization where I work vial electronic download. Others come in a change of address post card.
What is stupid in my opinion is that if I send my water bill payment to the local city (pop less than 5K), the mail goes to Knoxville and then is sent back to my post office for delivery to the city. I guess Knoxville is the mail sort facility. My post office just bags all the mail they receive from patrons and send it to Knoxville.
Thanks, all, for the condolences; as MrAtoz says, and as hard and tough as some of us might think we are, I can’t keep from tearing up, either, when one of ours goes; the adolescent cat the other night and last year our former golden retriever.
All Hail Johann Sebastian Bach!
I like the more traditional Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, but also this version by Apollo 100 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_100):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S8jd8WhxoI
Sorry to hear about your cat Dave, I’m sure he was like family to you.
Thanks; he was.
Condolonences for the kitty; they are family, and it’s hard to lose them.
We gave up on cat doors – it’s just not worth the hassle of having the neighbor’s stupid cat come in for visits. I have never seen such a dumb animal. When we try to chase it out, even out of a clearly open door, it runs to some dark corner, hides and pees. It is apparently incapable of understanding that is isn’t welcome here, and kept coming back no matter what we tried. Once we didn’t know it was in the house when we left for vacation; it was locked in a back room. We came back to a week of kitty-accidents. So our cat just has to tell us when she wants in or out, which she does quite vocally.