Oh yeah, you know the drill by now: Why I don't look forward to daylight savings time.



But look on the right! Now with Hello Kitty clock!

In other news: Today is the store's opening anniversary. That's right, Spectrum Scientifics has been open for two years now.

So on Thursday I got to meet up with an old friend of mine from years ago. We had pizza and beer at the Manayunk Brewpub. It was good to catch up with an old friend who I have not seen in 12 years. He was born in Roxborough but lives in California now. We stayed chatting until we realized our conversation might get in the way of the baseball game.

The next day was when Alysten and I were due to take Cello and Zot to the vet. Cello was difficult to get into her carry box, but Zot turned into a hissing, spitting nightmare mirror image of her usual playful, friendly self. She squirmed, clawed, and shreiked so loud my ears were ringing and I had claw cuts on my hand. The thing is, while Cello kept up a steady loud meow in the box, Zot pretty much calmed down once she was in there. They both behaved fine at the vet. Go figure.

Whenever I am arriving at some place, if I see a car of the same model and color I will try to park as close to it as I can.



I've only managed to do it about 1/2 dozen times in my life but I think it is much fun. my favorite was parking in a lot right next to a duplicate red Imprezza that the owner had placed well away from much of the other parking. I hope they saw the joke.

I don't have a twitter account (although the store does) but my mind today was thinking in terms of those little one-shot comment some call 'tweets'. This would be today's set, had I actually bothered (and could add them from among other places, my bike)

Funny bike noises are not funny.

XT8 Optical Tube and an XT12 base. Not gonna work guys! Return tag plz.

Clear seems to be doing its job.

Internet order for microscope! yayz!

Gaussian gun kit needs a video. Sent James home to edit it.

Magnet construction toys and wood puzzles. I will have them

I need to order some lab stuff to fill out an order, but what to get?

Slow afternoon is slow

A lot of labware to make some ice cream. Go for it.

Methyl Blue: You are better off getting it at the Pet store aquarium

Heading out!

West River Drive trail is pain: Tree roots beat asphalt into pokey submission!

Ow! And this is the section they repaired!?!?

On Schuylkyl river trail.

Who put this train here?

They are not suppose to put trains here blocking the trail!

Stupid train!

Gmail is asking me to 'type the letters in the box' for the 5th time.

Honestly, I don't the difference between POP and IMAP.

Heading home at last!

Drivers solve the confusion over new bike lane on spruce by driving over all the lines

Terror behind walls people who drive & park in my neighborhood make me stabby!

You don't have to drive that slow to look for a parking space. No, really.

Home!

This evening I met up with old friends from The Franklin Institute..some of whom I have known since the 80's. They showed up at the store and we went to the Manayunk Brewpub afterwards. It was an awesome time. I heard about what has happened to some other folks, met my old boss (who I have not seen in over a decade) and all around had fun with beer and food. A pretty good way to spend an evening when fencing practice is cancelled.

Sums up something, just not sure what:

My weekend starts on Friday since I have a 'retail' schedule. I spent a good part of the day doing some shopping, something I haven't done in a long time. I found out that at least Lowes does not have a part I wanted to find in plastic. Grumble. I may just have to order it online and be done with it. Afterwards I went to Target and picked a few things, like new sweat pants and something to organize the store a little bit - here's hoping.

Friday evening alysten and I went to 'Terror Behind the Walls', the haunted house they turn the Eastern State Prison into during the holiday season. It was kind of fun, but wasn't really scary. I seemed to be in front and the 'cat scare' people who jump out at you do not seem to target the front guy. A lot of the 'scares' are panels opening and people yelling *BOO* or somesuch. Pretty labor intensive place. In either case since we, or at least alysten, are members  we got the tickets for free. This is Eastern State's way of apologizing for the traffic mess in the neighborhood that will be happening over the next month or so. 

Saturday was River Wars and overall I had a good time. It was all ship melees and I actually did pretty well, contrary to my usual poor performance in melees. I did screw up somewhat in one final melee, but the reaction I got was a bit over the top in relationship to what I had done. You would have thought I pulled off someone's mask. 

That evening fun was had at Oaken Glen in New Jersey. I noticed that I had overstrained some muscles in my left thigh that were making me very uncomfortable and it made even playing the drums on Rock Band kind of hurtful (stoopid foot pedal). I woke up much the same way this morning, but the strain seemed to heal up during the day. Since it was raining I did not bike to the store, which was a bit on the slow side. *sigh*. 

So this weekend it was 'kinda rainy'. Despite this, I went to the reenactment at Lancaster. The odd thing is that while I did show up, and was partially uniformed (I was in small clothes) I did not join the battle. I don't really know why, but I didn't.  The battle managed to fit in a brief period of no rain, but before and after it was either pouring or drizzling. Meh.

Work today was slow. The Eagles game and Phillies games assured the streets were fairly bare. I'm surprised I made what I did. For more fun I managed to fall off a ladder while changing a light bulb. It was bad (I have a nice sore shin) but could have been much worse. 

The bike ride home had an 'incident'. Or at least a very close one. With apologies to my oldest brother I am going to ask: Why is it always the Beemer?

My telescope supplier has managed to fuck me over twice. I sold a telescope to a customer late in July. They had trouble assembling it because the tube was mismarked and they had the wrong one. It was hard, from the call, to tell exactly what the problem was. We agreed to take the return or replace the item, but asked them to call the company to see if  it was an easy fix or a missing part they could take care of.

So they sold the person a replacement telescope, and the return was made today. I had to take the return, had the sale taken out from under me, and the returned telescope is useless. In these slow August days I just had 3 days worth of sales yanked out from under me, stolen, really. My salesman at Orion was notably not returning my calls this afternoon. 

It is enough to give me very strong pause about this whole operation. My sales are fragile, the growth is weak and non-existent in some areas. Shit like this happens and I almost want to give up. I keep thinking it just isn't going to work. I've given the impression of having a store that everyone loves but nobody actually buys from.  I can't live on people walking out the door having not bought anything but saying 'This place is great!'. That doesn't pay the rent. 

My car was inspected today. Despite being almost 10 years old it passed no problem.

But the inspectors removed the front plate from the car, the California plate that I've had on since I got back...5-1/2 years ago.

They just put it in the car, so I could always put it back on.

But somehow it now feels....violated.

 

Don't mind me folks, just doing some theme changes.

 

So Alysten and I arrived (with ld_lorenzo) in the evening of Friday after a bit of a white-knuckled rain driving. Camp was set up quickly and there were no real issues to speak of. 

The next day I went to fight in the seige of La Rochelle. I did will on the defense, taking down a lot of suicide chargers trying to break through the kill-pocket. On offense in the next round I was less effective. Our team ended up losing. Oh well.

That afternoon was cannon training. It has been a while since I set off or even loaded any larger pieces. Mostly I worked with Morning Glory, the small, but not tiny mortar.

The next day was Rapier Champions. After a poor start the East Champions raced back but it wasn't enough. East lost 14-16.

The following day was the Toruga melee, which was OK except for me taking a very hard shot from a running fencer

Rapier Field Battle, and despite being outnumbered we actually won. I made no kills but was part of the center holding action that kept us from being overwhelmed. The battle was good for mostly being clean instead of the 'We grossly outnumber you but still have to cheat-fest' that last year seemed to be. 

At some point during all this I got as a B-day gift a new pair of swifty boots from Wendy. yay! I think they do need new insoles despite one person telling me not add them. Time may tell. 

Several times during the War, Wendy and I worked the guns that signaled the start and finished of the various fights. When we fired off the guns to start the woods battle there were a pair of Army Apache helicopters flying overhead. They then did some manuevers and made a mock attack run on us. Then did the same to the food court as well. I must discount accounts that they were '20-30' feet overhead at points. Think of how low that is guys, that is easily in the 'rip up tents with propwash' region.  They were pretty low at points, though. 

I entered the EK Rapier Tourney, but didn't do well. I also entered the 5-man melee and while we had a weak 1-5 record I did pretty well personally and I think we had more fun than most other teams (except Team Random in the next list which was determined to have the mostest fun of all).

The Woods Rapier battle was the last fight I was in and it was a long, hard fought melee, but for me the fact that it was incident free was the best part. Few complaints overall. However, we were slightly outnumbered and lost. 

The next day we left in the afternoon and was home at 11PM. Ahhh, real bed and indoor plumbing. Oh, and my kitties! yay!

Tired now. 

Just a few thoughts before I head out. I have not updated in a while:

Mom:  Happy Birthday! Sorry we had to miss out on the dinner party. Just so you know it was your 2nd youngest son's fault for not telling us about the dinner until Monday. Wendy says we will be taking you out for dinner at some point when we get back.

Pennsic Packing:  I'm pretty much getting the easy end here as all I need to do is shove things into a box or two and then move all the boxes into a car. Oh, I need to get the car, too. The little Golf isn't much for carrying me and Wendy's stuff to Pennsic, let alone Lorenzo. 

Pennsic Pre-Check:  I've gone over most of my equipment, and the bad news is that my RBG Musket is not operating properly. :( It just doesn't want to hold the bands in place. I must be doing something wrong but unless I can fix it on-site (where I can get more eyeballs on it to troubleshoot) its going to be a busted musket.

The Store:  Had a really good day yesterday. Things have been improving a bit, sales-wise the past couple of weeks. BTW, those of you who are staying behind are obligated to go to Manayunk and give my manager a hard time....nah. He's good. But go anyway and pick up a few things!

Finally, a somewhat belated anniversery: My other cat, Brother, turned 10 years old earlier this month. He's officially in the double-digits. He's a strong as a cat can be - and he's still pretty much the same: A merely adequete cat. 

Brother was an adorable little kitten. He was playful and sociable with the older cats he grew up with (SaraBelle and Lyra). I almost named him 'buckethead' for his habit of trying to shove his head under the stream of cat kibble I was pouring for the old cats. Kibble would bounce off his head and make a mess while SaraBelle and Lyra would hiss - keep in mind I had just poured Brother a bowl of kittten kibble mere seconds ago! But in the end he was named 'Brother' in part from a line from a Target commercial selling Hello Kitty items and in part because he was the first male cat I had ever shared a domicile with (the Franchise cats being all female, as well as my own kitties up until then)

Something happened to Brother's personality. He became a 'fraidy cat and a bully. He hides from guests, if you reach to pet him he runs away, and he was big on picking fights with Lyra. These days he tries to do the same with Cello, with differing results but enough to keep her confined to the bedroom most of the time. 

Meh, what can I say about him except that he is my cat. He's gotten a little bit better with age, but hell never be the social butterfly that Zot is. 

    

 

 

I haven't posted in a while. But here is a short   summary of the weekends events.

I went to The Amazing Meeting 7 in Las Vegas.  Wendy and I left on Thursday and had a decent flight. Southwest usually works pretty well. In fact we arrived some 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Fortunately, we are able to catch the earlier shuttle to the hotel. I went almost straight to the reception and met up with a few friends I know. Wendy soon joined me after dropping things off at the hotel room, and then someone made her a silly balloon hat. After that we watched some friends bowl in the hotel's huge bowling alley. 'twas fun.

The next day TAM started up. We watched several good speakers, including the head producer of 'The Big Bang', among others. It was the weaker of the two days, but still excellent. The bad news is that guy TAM centers around, James Randi, is rather ill, but he still seems quite alert and fit overall.

That evening Wendy and I went to the Sarah to ride their short, high-speed, and very overpriced roller-coaster ride. We arrived in the very worst place in the Sahara and had to encounter:

1) The walls of shoe prints
2) An almost flooded elevator
3) One of the creepiest casinos still in existence <- The group we were with had to cling together to avoid being separated.
4) A casino employee trying to excite a elderly pair at he slot machines by using his microphone to do his own version of 'The Humpty Dance'
5) The Temple of NASCAR

 Finally, we met up with the rest of the crew and went on the ride. Can't recommend it, $10 is a lot for such a short ride and rollercoasters that go backwards make me ill.

Afterwards we went to the PepperMill and had dinner. Kind of a waste for me as I was feeling a bit sick. I got some food in me. We had a nice drive down the strip seeing all the casinos and construction. Freaky, impressive, and yet so depressing in many ways.

The next day was a surprise as my friend, Rebecca Watson, who is a host of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast was rather suddenly married on stage before TAM started. Very surprising indeed. 

The guests of the day were excellent. The best was Adam Savage who told a tale of his spate with being a complete failure as an Art Director on a small film project. A couple of panels also were well received, including one that had Penn, Teller (yes, he speaks), Adam Savage, and that producer guy from the TBB.

I should mention that Saturday was also my birthday, I am now 42. Wendy searched high and low to find me cake and came up with a brick-sized piece of fudge cake. Nummy...but I was soooo overfilled.

Due to my poor planning/reading, I did not go to the Skepchick party for the first time in any TAM. *sniff*. Next year I really need to plan better. The event was much more 'closed' than in previous years to prevent the inevitable police incidents of the previous years. Last year was the first summer skepchick party and the suite's air conditioners just failed in the face of almost a hundred attendees.

So instead, Wendy and I went bowling. Afterwards we hung in the bar with other folks from the event and chewed the fat.

The next day was the paper presentations. Two of them were very good, with Dave Green discussing the patent process for pseudo-scientific products (centered around a device designed to 'age' red wine quickly with magnets') and a fellow discussing the creepy alleged recordings of a dying Cosmonaut supposedly recorded a year before Yuri Gagarin made his famous flight. Turns out the thing was rather poorly translated.

After that, Wendy and I caught the Shuttle to the airport and flew home. 

This was a great TAM, as always, but I did not plan it was well as I should have. I could have been involved with the bowling event, the skepchick party, and more. But as it was I still had a good time. 

Apparently I got a blurb in Philadelphia Magazine. Someone there must like my store! An older couple came in asking about the product I had put in the ad, but it wasn't an ad. Just a blurb on page 62 as part of some summer list of things to do. I was at the bottom. The couple left the scrap of the magazine with me, so I can read it:

"$ Or maybe you just need to let go. Spectrum Scientifics sells 40 rocket balloons, plus a hand pump, for $9.95. Blow them up out back, let them loose, and laugh your ass off. 4403 Main Steet, Manayunk, 215-667-8309, spectrum-scientifics.com."

The product they are talking about is this

Just in time for Pennsic!