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Category: science kits

Wednesday, 14 September 2016

09:33 – We’re working on science kits today. We’re down to four of the full CK01A chemistry kits in inventory, so yesterday we made up 28 of the CK01A regulated chemical bags and 13 of the unregulated chemical bags, which in both cases was all we could make up because of limiting quantities on the two chemical bottles that we were short of. So we’ll build 13 more CK01A kits today, and then get to work on making up more of the chemical bottles we’re short of. After that, we’ll make up a good-size batch of forensic kits, followed by biology kits.

Large bulk orders are way down this year compared to prior years, when we had a fair number of orders for batches of 20 or 30 kits. Fortunately, small bulk orders are way up this year, with quite a few people ordering four, six, or eight kits at a time, presumably for use by home-school co-ops.

I just read an article in The Atlantic about large numbers of Democrats from Western Pennsylvania who are going to vote for Trump. These are folks who’ve been registered Democrat since they were old enough to vote. Their parents were also registered Democrat, as were their grandparents, and great grandparents. They’ve never voted for a Republican in their lives, but they’re jumping ship this time and voting for Trump (and for the Republican candidate for Senate). I think they’re realizing, even if they’re not consciously aware of it, that Trump is what would until very recently have been a Democrat. Clinton is what would until recently have been considered a fever-swamp Socialist or, more accurately, Fascist.

Even without all her crookedness and health issues, Hillary is not a candidate for mainstream America merely because of her politics. I think the momentum is shifting strongly in favor of Trump, and that’s likely to accelerate with the October Surprise when Assange releases her emails and other damaging data. Or perhaps Clinton will do the right thing and just drop dead.

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Friday, 9 September 2016

11:06 – Barbara is off to the gym and supermarket. More kit stuff this afternoon.

Two months until election day. I’m not really expecting any widespread violence, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it occurred. I sure wouldn’t want to be in a city of any size on that day or the day after, particularly if Trump wins the election. It looks as though North Carolina is going to be in play. I’m not much on voting for the lesser of two evils, but in this case Trump is analogous to a common cold, while Clinton is ebola. So I’m going to vote in the national elections this year, and I’m going to vote for Trump. I suspect Barbara will do the same. I just wonder if the Libertarians will draw enough votes to prevent either Trump or Clinton from gaining a majority. Ordinarily, I’d expect that if the election went to the House they’d vote straight party-line, but with the dynamics this year it’s hard to say what would happen. Other than whoever was awarded the election would not be recognized as legitimate by his or her opponents. This could end up a real mess.

Speaking of time passing, I see that our average first low in the 40’s (<10C) is a week from now, and our average first low in the 30's (<4C) is a month from now. Autumn is definitely imminent here in Sparta. All the cattle ranchers are bringing in the autumn crop of hay. Lori, our USPS carrier, has been working on her hay for the last couple days. She said this morning that her brother brought over his roller yesterday, so all her hay is now rolled. She's leaving it out for now because it was still a bit green, but another couple days in the sun should dry it sufficiently that it'll be safe for her to put it in the barn without worrying about burning down the barn.



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Thursday, 8 September 2016

09:46 – More kit work today. This time of year, the trick is to maintain sufficient finished goods inventory to allow us to ship in a timely manner, but not build up inventory so far that we end up with a lot of unsold kits in stock when the rush slacks off.

From some of the comments yesterday, I see that I need to write a brief explanation of chemical leavening agents. Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, sodium hydrogen carbonate, or NaHCO3) is the basis of all common chemical leavening agents. In the presence of an acid or heat, baking soda evolves carbon dioxide gas, which forms the bubbles familiar to anyone who’s baked or made pancakes. In combination with a solid edible acid, baking soda becomes baking powder.

There are two types of baking powder, single-acting and double-acting. Single-acting baking powder contains a stoichiometric equivalent (or an excess) of the solid acid. When water is added to the dough, the baking soda and acid immediately react to form carbon dioxide bubbles. All of the baking soda is consumed in that process. Double-acting baking power contains an excess of baking soda. Part of that is consumed when water is added to the dough, forming bubbles, but part remains in the dough. When that remaining baking soda is exposed to heat in the oven, each two molecules of baking soda react to form one molecule of sodium carbonate, one molecule of water, and one molecule of carbon dioxide gas. That release of carbon dioxide because of oven heat is the second action of double-acting baking powder.

Almost any solid edible acid can be used to make baking powder. I mentioned citric acid because it’s as good as any other acid, it’s cheap (I paid about $2/pound for a five-pound bag of it), and as a very common food additive it’s very readily available in food-grade form. But you can use other solid edible acids such as cream of tartar, aluminum sulfates, and so on. The aluminum-based acids are popular in commercial baking powders, but concern about aluminum consumption has caused manufacturers to shift away from aluminum-based baking powders to those that use organic acids like cream of tartar or citric acid.

In fact, the acid doesn’t even have to be in powder form, which is why many recipes use only baking soda rather than baking powder. Liquid acids in the recipe–such as vinegar, sour cream, buttermilk, lemon juice, etc.–also react with baking soda to form carbon dioxide gas. If you use just enough baking soda to neutralize those liquid acids, you end up with the equivalent of single-acting baking powder, albeit partially liquid; if you use an excess of baking soda, you end up with the equivalent of double-acting baking powder.

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Wednesday, 7 September 2016

09:54 – Barbara is off to the gym and bank. Later today we’ll be doing more kit stuff. We’re down to half a dozen forensic kits in stock, so building more of those will be first priority. That means we need to make up chemical bags for them, which means I need to make up several of the chemicals and get them bottled first.

Email from Jen, who decided to take advantage of the Augason Farms Labor Day sale to stock up on more powdered eggs. She ordered another dozen #10 cans, about 72 dozen worth, to add to the 30+ cans she already had in their pantry. That gives her something like 250 dozen worth. As Jen said, at about $3/dozen, the powdered whole eggs are three times the price of fresh, but they don’t keep chickens and she has no intention of doing so. A lot of people store powdered eggs only for baking purposes, but Jen has scrambled eggs on their LTS breakfast menu. She’s tried making scrambled eggs from the powder, and says it works just fine. None of them could tell much if any difference between scrambled eggs from fresh and from powder. With more than 40 cans in stock, they’ll be able to have scrambled eggs once or twice a week for the six of them for a year, and still have plenty for baking. It’ll make a nice break from pancakes and oatmeal.

Speaking of baking, Jen said they had one #10 can of baking powder in their LTS pantry, but she decided to back that up using my method of storing the ingredients separately. So she added a 13-pound bag of baking soda from Sam’s and a 5-pound container of citric acid she ordered on Amazon. Both of those ingredients have essentially unlimited shelf lives, while baking powder, once opened, can have a shelf life of only six months to a year, or even less. The problem is that any moisture, even atmospheric water vapor, reacts with the baking powder to activate it and render it useless. One can instead mix the baking soda and citric acid to make up baking powder on-the-fly, either single- or double-acting depending on the proportions you use.

I’ve started re-reading Eric Flint’s 1632 (Ring of Fire) series, which I last read probably 12 or 15 years ago. It’s about a contemporary small West Virginia town that is physically and temporally displaced from 2000 West Virginia to 1632 central Germany, plopped down right in the middle of the 30 Years War. It wasn’t written as a PA/prepper series, but that’s what it is. The first volume is free for the download on Amazon.com. I think the series is up to 16 or 17 titles now. I have the first half dozen already, and may grab the others eventually.

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Tuesday, 6 September

11:05 – It’s back to work for us. At the moment, Barbara is filling sodium dithionite bottles for forensic kits. That stuff has an obnoxious odor, although fortunately not a strong one. It smells like something died. It’s used as a reducing bleach in forensic fiber analysis, and also for bleaching wood pulp in paper mills, which is probably a good part of why they smell so terrible.

Colin is still basking in his Best Dog Ever laurels. This morning when I called him, he actually stopped what he was doing and came on the run.

I decided not to order any Augason Farms stuff yesterday. If there’d been free shipping with a $50 order, or even $100, I’d probably have ordered a few cans each of powdered eggs and butter powder. But I really didn’t want to order $200 of stuff, at least until I get a better handle on our current food inventory levels.

Speaking of which, when I put in an Amazon Prime order the other day, I opted for free no-rush shipping in return for a coupon that provides free shipping on one Prime Pantry box. Then I started looking in Prime Pantry for items we use. Originally, PP had some very good deals on stuff, cheaper than I could get it at Costco or Sam’s, even counting the $6 shipping charge. That’s no longer true. Everything in PP costs more, even with my free shipping coupon, than it would at Walmart, let alone Costco or Sam’s Club. For example, a case of 10 cans of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup sells at Sam’s for a buck a can. It was $1.25/can in Prime Pantry. The same was true on the 20 or so other items I checked. Amazon was always at least noticeably higher and often much higher. Amazon is apparently following the old tradition of undercutting competitors’ prices to gain market share and then boosting prices above what competitors charge.

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Monday, 5 September 2016

10:12 – Happy Labor Day.

The big news around here is that Barbara has finally awarded Colin the Best Dog Ever trophy. It took Colin five and a half years, but he finally got this coveted trophy. The previous BDE holder was Duncan, who was the first dog Barbara ever raised from a puppy. Colin is delighted that he’s finally won. For the last year or so, he’s been in a tie with Duncan, but this morning he finally made it over the top.

This is the last day of the Augason Farms Labor Day sale. They have about 20 items on sale, including egg powder and butter powder. Be careful, though. Some of the items, like cheese powder, are actually priced higher even with the sale than Walmart charges. Augason has a $200 minimum for free shipping, so if you need $200 worth of the items they have on sale, now is a good day to order them. Egg powder is now $17.49 per #10 can, which is what I paid for it when I last ordered it a couple or three years ago.

Back to work on science kits. I have several to get ready to ship tomorrow morning.

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Thursday, 1 September 2016

09:20 – This morning is the first in several weeks that we haven’t had a science kit sitting waiting for USPS to pick it up. It’s gotten to the point where Lori, our USPS carrier, just says “See you tomorrow” as she pulls out of our drive every morning. I already have overnight orders to ship tomorrow morning, so this is likely only a momentary lull. With the new school year starting, I suspect we’ll be shipping kits pretty much every day for the rest of this month and into October.

Barbara is cleaning house upstairs today in preparation for our friends arriving Saturday. Colin is crouched under my desk, waiting to pounce when the vacuum cleaner approaches him.

After I read about the new BATFE regulation that defines ammunition as a high explosive, I started checking on-line sites that sell ammo. I didn’t have time to get much of a sample, but it seems that ammo prices have increased 20% or so overnight. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them double or triple pretty quickly, and to see the supply dry up. That’s what Obama intended, of course.

The federal government is fortunate that nearly all of us Normals are peaceful types. As this attack on Normals continues and accelerates, I keep halfway expecting to see reports of targeted assassinations of politicians, judges, and bureaucrats. I mean, if even 0.001% of gun owners decide they’ve had enough, things could get very exciting for our masters, and not in a good way. Literally, just 0.001% could start things rolling. And there are certainly a lot more than 0.001% of gun owners who are perfectly capable of taking down a target at 500 yards or more.


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Tuesday, 30 August 2016

09:21 – We did a lot of work on science kits yesterday. More today.

We’re down to four containers of ninhyrdrin crystals for forensic kits, so I ordered more ninhydrin late last week. It’s supposed to arrive today, so I’ll have Barbara labeling and filling ninhydrin containers. Same thing on ascorbic acid (vitamin C) tablets, which are included in all our kits. We’re down to five containers of those in stock, so I just ordered 5,000 more 500 mg tablets. We normally maintain at least 2,000 of these in stock, either refrigerated in their original bottles or repackaged for kits. Yet another example of a science kit inventory item that’s also a useful prepping item. I also need to make up another batch of Kastle-Meyer Reagent, which involves refluxing (simmering) a caustic brew to convert the bright magenta phenolphthalein to colorless phenolphthalin.

Barbara and I are re-watching Heartland. We just started season six the other night. There was a story thread about fostering children and the rules for that in Alberta. I decided to check the rules in North Carolina, not that we’re considering fostering/adopting. About the only requirement in North Carolina is that an adoptive parent must be at least 18 years old and, bizarrely, that a fostering parent must be at least 21. So, they’ll give you a kid if you’re at least 18, but they’ll lend you one only if you’re at least 21. Hmmm.

While I was on the North Carolina fostering/adopting website, I also looked at their gallery. I expected it to be almost exclusively black and Hispanic kids, but there were a fair number of white kids as well. Some of those were no doubt orphaned, but I suspect a lot of them came out of nightmarishly abusive homes. The young kids at least have a chance of being adopted. The ones I really feel sorry for are those in their mid-teens, like this one, who have little chance of finding a new family.

And I’m still wondering what emergency the German and Czech governments are telling citizens to prepare for. I doubt they seriously believe that Putin is about to invade, and the only other thing I can think of is that they’re expecting a widespread muslim uprising.

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Monday, 29 August 2016

09:04 – It’s that time of year. We got a bulk order overnight for the CK01B chemistry kits, which we’re low-stock on. So today will be devoted to building a new batch of those, including bottling some chemicals we’re low on. More later, if I have time.

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Sunday, 28 August 2016

10:34 – More kit stuff today. The warm weather is back. Highs are only in the low 80’s F, but the heat chill is up in the low 90’s. Lows are down in the 50’s, which means autumn weather isn’t far away.

Exponential figures are interesting. The other day, someone emailed to ask what I thought the probability was of something really bad happening. I told him I thought the probability was on the very close order of 0.9999 that nothing really bad would happen tomorrow, or any given day. One chance in 10,000 in other words, or a 0.0001 probability per day.

The problem is obvious when you extend that. If the probability is 0.9999 that nothing bad will happen in a day, that means the probability that nothing bad will happen in a year is (0.9999)^365, or just over 0.964. In other words, there’s about a 3.5% chance of something really bad happening in the next year. Extend that out to three years and you have (0.9999)^1095, or about .896. In other words, there’s about a 10.4% chance of something really bad happening in the next three years. Of course, all of that depends on the initial estimate. If the probability is instead 0.99999, one chance in a hundred thousand per day, the exponential figures are much lower. But if it’s instead 0.999, one chance in a thousand, they’re much, much higher.

Based on history, I think it’s ridiculously optimistic to assume 0.99999. Assuming 0.999 may be pessimistic, but not by much. For example, our planet is hit by a Carrington-class CME on average once every 100 years. The last time that happened was in 1859, so we’re well overdue. In 2012, we narrowly avoided being struck by a catastrophic CME. NASA estimated at the time that there was a 12% chance we’d be struck by such a CME before 2022. If their estimate is accurate, that’s a 1.2% chance of a catastrophic CME per year. Then we have an EMP attack, or hackers destroying our electric distribution network. It’s difficult to estimate the probability of that happening, but it must surely be at least as likely as the CME, and would, if anything, be more catastrophic than the CME. Then we have a lethal pandemic, which historically occurs about every 100 years. It’s been just about 100 years since the last one, the Spanish Flu of 1918. With modern air travel, the next pandemic is likely to spread planet-wide in a matter of days, something they didn’t have to deal with in 1918. And those are just the most serious threats. Among them, they make my 0.9999 estimate seem reasonable, or even too optimistic.

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