08:21 – I rethought my idea of making up items in batches of 120 to 180, because that raises the possibility of having an unbalanced inventory. When it comes time to make up more kits, we might end up with far too many of one item and none of another item. We decided that 30 kits was a convenient batch size, so yesterday we labeled containers for 30 more chemistry kits, which is about 1,500 bottles and packets. Once those are filled, we’ll have sufficient materials to give us about 60 chemistry kits and 60 biology kits in inventory, or at least the items we need to assemble them quickly. At that point, we’ll do a batch of 30 forensics kits, and then alternate among the three kits to continue building inventory through the summer.
Sunday, 3 June 2012
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55 here this morning and sunny with blue skies; go figger; the weather liars had foretold a solid week of showers.
I see the Egyptians are righteously pissed off because they’re not gonna hang our former ally, Hosni Mubarak. He’ll just die in prison, not good enough, I guess. I remember the day and the video footage from when Sadat was assassinated; Hosni was right next to him in that reviewing stand and barely escaped. I’m sure the new rulers will be so much better for the country and for us.
And the Heroine of Tripoli is touring the Arctic today to examine the impact of climate change.
Heroine of Tripoli? Heroine of the world! Everywhere she goes there’s strife, but then it turns to nothing.
(I’d wanted to put in a link to the original 1996 claim, but I wasn’t able to find an original article. It was before most news companies put their content online, I guess.)
Yeah, she’s a real piece of work, alright. And we’re apparently stuck with her and Larry for the rest of their, and our, lives, swanning around the world and running their mouths about everything under the sun. I note that we rarely ever hear of anything about either Bush. And once Nosferatu II leaves office, I’m pretty sure he and Mooch will do that same gig, raking in dozens of millions from their apparent hordes of admirers and worshipers.
What a country!
We had remarkably nice temperatures the last week—it barely got into the 60’s until yesterday. And a good soaking rain a couple days ago, which will help the crops immeasurably. Looks like the dry spell farmers were complaining about last weekend at Sunday brunch, should be satisfied, because more rain is on the way for tomorrow.
Meanwhile it rained heavily on the Queen’s party. Just when the royal barge got to the Tower Bridge where the party was to begin, the heavens cut loose. Apparently, they knew the rain was coming, but it is impossible to speed up 1,000 boats on the Thames. Lizzie has put on a lot of weight since I last saw her on TV, and looks like the spitting image of her mother, now. Reminds me I have to speed up my weight loss, so I’ll look more svelte like her husband.
Here’s a guy who knows way too much about himself.
http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/
The copious info he keeps, shows he sleeps between 3:00am and 11:00am. Guess he can get away with that because he owns the company.
Zombies or Heinlein’s crazy years ?
http://www.chron.com/news/article/After-gory-incidents-online-zombie-talk-grows-3605629.php
Both. Can I buy a drum of rifled deer slugs for a 12 gauge ? Many drums of 30 slugs each ?
Lizzie (also the name by which Mrs. OFD goes by most of the time, or other times, Mary Liz, kind of ironic, being Irish-American, and having the first two names of both Elizabeth Regina II and the late Queen Mum Mary.) Svelte hubbie consort is known among the Brit “Tigers” as “Phil the Greek.”
Mr. Wolfram indeed knows too much about himself and apparently considers that the rest of the world should know it, too. Not me, no time to read all that, and to what possible end?
Mrs. OFD works this week out in lovely Ventura, Kalifornia while Mr. OFD will be the one mostly responsible for 3,300 RH servers in upstate NY and northern Vermont, as others apparently are taking more vay-cay, personal and other time off. Both parties are coping with nasty throat/cough crap but shall soldier on nevertheless, though we can’t hold a candle to Mr. RBT the Maniac Workaholic. Does he ever get sick? Need a personal day? A ‘mental health’ day?
I have seen one or two in my life with the tenacious nature of our host, but not many. His “to do” list gets its very life threatened every day. With Colin looking after his physical health, I don’t worry too much. Three pee breaks a day ought to be enough to stay in shape.
Self-checkouts have never been a very good idea, IMO. I object, because it is making ME do something for nothing; something that somebody else formerly got paid to do for me. But now, my blabbermouth retail contact, tells me they are the source of very serious pilfering. Who’dathunk, eh? When the Tiny Town Walmart remodeled—what was it? last year? or 2 years ago?—they redid the checkout lanes and made all the conveyor belts in the store about half as long as the old ones, so it is now impossible to get more than 1 person’s items on the belt at a time and many times it will not even hold one person’s whole carriage;—and they opened 12 self-checkout lanes, cutting the total number of manned lanes from over 20 to less than half of that. Grocery stores around here quickly followed Walmart’s lead by installing their self-checkouts.
Well, I guess these self-checkouts are a real sieve for profits. In fact, not only do they lose the profit on the item, they also lose the wholesale price they paid for everything that gets pilfered, plus all the costs of getting it into the store and on the shelves.
A couple weeks ago, my friend told me that the companies don’t really know what to do. They invested so much money in the hardware and personnel changes to accomplish this, that they are like deer in headlights: frozen from taking action.
Apparently, there is a physical movement that the thieves are accomplished at, where you swing the items one after another across the scanner, making sure that your fingers cover the barcode on the bottom of the item. People accomplished at this, can get a good half their items through without being scanned or getting caught, but—like a magician—you cannot telegraph to the watchful clerk who must follow 4 people at once, that you are looking for the barcode to cover it. Ever wonder why there are now 2 barcodes on many items? one on the bottom and another on the side? According to my friend, it is an attempt to make it more difficult for the thieves to get the items past the self-scanner without registering.
So, she told me that most stores are shutting down the self-scanners at night. Sure enough, I made a quick run this evening to get a couple items from both Walmart and another grocery store, and all self-checkouts at both stores were closed, and it was only 20:30 (both stores are open 24/7).
Obviously, this cannot go on. You know who is paying for the pilfering—it’s you and me in increased prices throughout the store, while the thieves get away with a month’s worth of free groceries at our expense. It will be interesting to see how they remedy this. The other Walmart near me, up in Muncie, has removed all of their self-checkout lanes, and replaced them with manned ones. So far, that has not yet happened in Tiny Town, where there is more pilfering and theft in its store than in college-town Muncie.
I know it is possible to use those radio-frequency inventory stickers at checkout. In fact, you do not even have to scan one item at a time; just wave a wand over the whole shopping carriage and it instantly logs everything at once. Only problem is that I understand those RF sticker tags are not as flexible as barcodes in the information they provide to the accounting process.
One strange thing I have noticed—a regional difference,—whereas out East, grocery stores had big displays pointed so the customer could see the list and price of everything as it scanned, here in the Midwest, they hide all of that from you, including any indication of the ascending total. Only the clerk gets to see it, and in most stores, you have to lean over the counter to see the total, if you don’t believe the clerk, or are not paying with a card of some type that you slide yourself through a stripe reader. By law, Indiana requires all merchants to provide a receipt with every retail purchase of any kind, so there are few problems—except that one must check the cash register tape after you depart the line. Oh, also a frequent problem at the Tiny Town McDonalds, which often does not put a receipt in my drive-through purchase sacks. That’s okay, I hold up the line for literally a couple minutes when they do that, while I make them go get one from the cash register clerk. I refuse to move the car until they get me the receipt—none of this “pull ahead sir, and we’ll bring it to you.” It is not an option for me to not get a receipt, as I mix my business and personal money, so my tax guy requires that I keep receipts for both, in case of an audit.
My (possible) future father-in-law sez:
“…though we can’t hold a candle to Mr. RBT the Maniac Workaholic. ”
He said in the past that writers “retire” by being found dead at their desks.
Personally, I’d rather have a life. That’s when I leave work each day I LEAVE it. I haven’t been on the on-call roster for over 15 years.
I remember in the Seventies the checkout chick would type the price of each item, which could be error prone. I liked it when they moved to scanning by the checkout person (note the change in terminology? Most of them are male now.) It was less error prone and faster, but they still made mistakes. I buy stuff in bulk when it’s on special, and sometimes they scanned an item too many times. Other times the computer held a higher price than the displayed price, and I’d have to get that fixed. It used to be that if you bought 20 bottles of coke and they overcharged you then *all* the bottles were free. Now only the first bottle is free, and they merely correct the price on the others.
Ten or so years ago they got rid of 1 cent and 2 cent coins here. They’re still legal tender but the banks took them out of circulation fast, so you never see them. Stores used to round total prices *down* to the nearest 5 cents, because no one can pay $16.26 by cash. Now, with little mention, they round it to the nearest 5c. I don;t care, partly because I usually pay by credit card, which is exact, but it’s annoying.
Now most of the checkouts are self serve and I loathe them. If I have a full trolly there’s no where to put the scanned items, it’s error prone and if you aren’t very quick you lose your chance to print a receipt, and have to ask the clerk who is supervising the lanes to do so manually, which takes time.
Before the introduction of self serve supermarkets were a good source of employment for teenage uni students. I think they cut the pay of these students so no one wanted to do the job and were then “forced” to introduce self serve.
The 800 pound gorilla of the Australian supermarket scene is Woolworths, with Coles in second place. There prices have been going up faster than inflation methinks, so I don’t shop there unless I have to. I get my booze at independent retailers who have very much cheaper prices.
I forgot to mention that the Greens are in coalition with the Labor Party here in the local ACT government, so they demanded as the price of their support that supermarkets not be allowed to give away free bags. You have to pay 10-15 cents for thin ones, or $1 or so for sturdy ones. It’s just a racket. I’m putting the Greens last on my preference list at the next election.
The other thing about the Seventies that I intended to mention but forgot was that I was basically accused by a store detective of shoplifting. I was about 15 at the time, and had a pair of my father’s shoes which I was going to take to the bootmaker to be repaired after I went to K-Mart. Apparently a store detective saw me carrying these old, beat-up shoes and started following me. I got to the door, where I showed them to the guard on duty, and he let me through. Some other chap said something which I didn’t catch, the guard said “that’s okay Fred”, I went out into the car park. This guy stopped me and asked about the shoes. Anyone could tell at a glance that they were well worn, so I hadn’t just lifted them, but he insisted on an explanation, even though the door guard had told him it was okay. I wish I’d made a complaint now, I was pretty incensed.
Chuck the fast food fanatic wrote:
“…Tiny Town McDonalds…”
I gave up on McDonalds about 20 years ago. Their mushy, soft, white bread burgers just tasted so bad. I like takeaway food but the buns/rolls have to have some texture and toughness to be appealing to me.
Self-checkout? I wondered about this when we visited the States earlier this year. First, about the pilferage – it becomes just too easy. Second, the fact that there was a person stationed there full-time, for (iirc) four checkout stations. Unless the stations are all occupied, (which they never were), is it really more efficient? A practiced clerk is surely must faster than your average customer, and doesn’t have to be careful of the very sensitive interaction between the scanner and the scales under the shopping bag. Add to this the undersized stations – even if I wasn’t buying much, there wasn’t really enough space.
As I understand the issue with RFIDs, there are several factors, but information content is not one of them. First, it is a cost factor: they may only be a few pennies each, but that is a few pennies added to the cost of everything. Second, until all manufacturers start using them, you have pay your personal to tag the products; you have to do this in a way that prevents people from swapping the tags to give themselves a bottle of wine for the price of a pack of gum. Thirdly, at least in Europe, there are serious privacy concerns. If you buy a piece of clothing that has an embedded RFID in it, this can be activated and scanned anytime later, when you are wearing the clothing. Once RFID tags become ubiquitous, you would be able to track individual people quite reliably.
I use self checks all the time. I quite like them. They’re fast and easy to use. Theft is no easier than it was before, as thieves rarely use any checkout line. I use the hand baskets and shop daily, so big carts and undersized scanners don’t bother me.
In the local grocery, the person manning the self checks also attends the cigs (must be locked away behind closed doors. No, I’m not kidding) and the flower wrapping, so it doesn’t take away from the “real” cashiers. All of whom are female, I suspect the reason the men run the tills in Australia is all the Aussie girls have come to NA for some real men, instead of cashiers.
bgrigg says “I use the hand baskets and shop daily”
Trusting soul, aren’t you? With major chains using Just-In-Time stocking and delivery strategies, and a maximum of three days of stock in-store at normal usage (not just on-shelf, but altogether, out the back as well). Just about ANY supply-chain interruption (fuel, weather, roads, warehouse – so many potential points-of-failure), and the grigg household could get mighty hungry mighty fast. Particularly since panic-buyers clear the shelves like locusts when something goes wrong.
I actually like the self scanners. They can be annoying at times, like when a line forms during heavy traffic periods. I find it to be convenient to be able to not have to wait in line behind two or three people with a cart full of groceries when I just want a few items. It’s a minor annoyance to have to find the little 4 digit number on produce, or worse look it up, but I still find the self scan gets me out of the store faster.
As to the small area for the stuff you’re buying, I look at that as a feature. People with a cart full of groceries only overlook the 15 items or less sign once.
Don Armstrong wrote: “Trusting soul, aren’t you?”
Yup! But don’t take my comment about shopping daily to mean that I’m only buying one day’s worth of food at a time. What I shop for daily is things like eggs, butter, cream, milk and vegetables. The stuff that you run out of no matter how well you plan (especially with teenagers in the house!). I still manage to do a major shopping trip twice a month and have an almost full freezer to tap. And by that I mean a stand alone freezer, not just the little one that comes with the fridge.
I figure if (when?) the SHTF, it will HTF really freaking hard, and there won’t be any power either. Freezer food won’t last any longer than the grocery store, in that case. Unless you’ve got a supply of canned meat and MREs, we’re all in deep doodoo.
We plan for both commercial shipping interruptions/stoppages and the power outages here, the latter because it goes out regularly if a cloud passes the horizon and a few drops fall. But that’s usually just a few minutes or maybe an hour or two. The plan should be for rolling and continuous brownouts and blackouts lasting for weeks, months, even years, with some becoming permanent. The buggers have already been running test scenarios.
So the food, leaving aside everything else right now, should consist of current perishables, frozen stuff, and then the freeze-dried and canned goods, and it would be good to have the means to actually cook the food, too. Also not a bad idea to get into the regular seasons of growing at least some stuff, and linking up with local CSAs for both produce and meats. Grow and store only the food you and your family will actually eat, though.
We got us a month’s worth for four people right now and working on three months, six months, a year. Don’t forget water and a means of purifying it.
Don’t forget about all of your neighbors. They will be hungry also. You will either need to have enough food for all of them or the means to hold them off. It is quite the quandary.
Read _Dies_The_fire_ by S. M. Stirling:
http://www.amazon.com/Dies-Fire-A-Novel-Change/dp/0451460413/
It is quite the story about a group of people surviving many, many, many repeated invasions of city dwellers in Oregon after society dies. In the book, about 90% of the city dwellers die in six months of starvation. Think bicycles and long bows.
Particularly since panic-buyers clear the shelves like locusts when something goes wrong.
Around just mentioning snow on the local news empties the shelves of bread and milk. I think it is a conspiracy and the stores pay the news stations to send out the warnings so the stores can clear their inventory.
I seriously doubt that even massive State intervention with troops and police, equipment and supplies, etc., etc. would even come close to dealing with the simple logistical nightmare that a large-magnitude collapse would entail; hell, the medical issues alone would immediately swamp all available resources. This would mos def be the situation in the cities, suburbs and exurbs right away, and most people fleeing wouldn’t make it very far. I would predict mass die-off and the setting back of rural areas to the year 1900 or thereabouts, maybe even further back.
With our current preparations we might last a couple of months, but let’s face it; we’re in our late fifties and at the northern end of Megalopolis, with a short growing season. We’re also not far enough away from the major highways that run through or past here. Our best bet would be to stave off any immediate threats while making additional preparations to head further north and probably east, away from large metro areas like Montreal and Quebec Ville. Our chances, even with my ex-mil-spec and cop background would be slim no matter how we cut it, but we would certainly make a good showing at our Exit.