Tales of Mundanity

Last night the police rang my doorbell (and as I found out, rang all the doorbells on my building). I let them in and they went op to serve a court order to one of my neighbors. They acted like it was no big thing, but asked me twice if I was the guy in question. Odd. Said person was not there, and they had to go get a key from the landlord. Oh well.

Today I figured I'd get some food away from the hideously overpriced Main street and walked up the hill to a reasonably priced Chinese place that had left a menu at my store. I get there and the place is closed. Grumbling, I returned to the store, check the place's hours on the menu and griped to my asst. manager that they seemed to have shut down operations. My asst. Manager, being a native of the area, then informed me that they close down on the last Tuesday of every month. Figures, I picked one day out of 29 that they were closed to try them out.

In web store news, I have just about had it with my present web hosting service. I have been trying to get a SSL certificate for the website so that, you know, people might just *trust* putting in their credit card info. The hosting company seems rather adamant that you use their own built in 'shared' SSL. This gave me an error message ("Certificate not from this website") that did not fill me with confidence. I talked with another hosting service that is a bit more local (Wilmington) along with my web designer to see if this is an option.

Either way, this has slowed the website development to a crawl. Not happy.

I Has a Store Sign

Go me!



It seems a little small for the pole, but it is the correct size for the neighborhood.

Toy Fair!

On monday I went to the New York Toy Fair, where all good toy store owners, Science or otherwise, go to see the latest offerings. I went through the Fair too fast, and really should try to spread this out over a couple of days next time. Ah well. Next year I'll spring for a hotel.

Anyway, I made contacts with lots of companies I remember from my days at Edmund. Made a few orders and saw lots of stuff that is not relevant to my store. The big thing this years seems to be marshmallow shooting guns. It was a fun booth, but I would not want to be near it since they were fond of demonstrating the range of the guns by shooting a marshmallow straight into the air. Where it would come down, who knows?

I did find a good construction toy that would fit into my stores 'scheme'. Its called Uberstix and its got lots of nice kits, is flexible (so the things you make can be played with). One of the kits is actually a miniature working catapult! There's also scale model towers that can be built with huge 1000+ piece kits. Yee-ha! What's really nifty about these things is that they can be used with K'nex and Lego pieces. They actually attach to them. Neat!

I missed finding a battery dealer, and I forgot to go back to check out the metal detector guys (oops). This is why I am annoyed at myself for trying to do this all in one day.

I did make certain to hit all the manufacturers I buy things from. I got to see a few things on my shelves in action (I've been hesitant to rip open packaging just to satisfy my curiosity). My bag was stuffed with catalogs by the time I was done, and after a while that weight started to hurt. I need to think things through next time.

I also saw Steve Spangler, who pretty much discovered the 'Mentos in Coke' thing, and has written several popular books on science. I also saw Bill Nye, who was in a booth that had all of two or three toys with his name on them. Seems like that line isn't going very strong. Oh well.

What was of interest is that a lot of Discovery Store 'exclusives' are now being held out to the general retailers since Discovery closed their Mall stores. Most of them had just a few changes made cosmetically and it showed.

There many toys that I ignored: Dolls, etc. Although it was fun to look in a few booths and see stuffed animals you would not find from other dealers:



Yup. Jellyfish. Stuffed Jellyfish.

I made contact with Giant Microbes, who tell me that I am the model for sales for a retail store. They were very happy to see me and I hope that sales of their stuff is only going to increase. The guy in charge of sales actually wants to come to my store and see what I do to make the level of sales I have. Sweet. While I was there I had a small preview. This one is for math5, enjoy:



After the show I went out to dinner with jadegirl and her husband at a wonderful Ethiopian place. It was good to see her again.

The ride home was a pain. The less said the better.

Near Disaster

I came to open my store this morning. All was well. The heat kicked in when I arrived, 9:45, just as the timer is supposed to do.

I set up the computer. Turned on the lights, and did some online work until 10:00 AM when the store opens and my Asst. Manager arrives. Usually I finish some things up while he sets up all the display products.

And about that time, I start to hear a hissing sound. It seems off. I think at first my asst. has turned on Nature's Fire but its jammed and making a funny noise. But its way too loud. I think it might be part of the music (usually ambient 'spacey' music is played in the store) but I know this piece. It doesn't sound like that. I begin to think a speaker is blown. I walk to the back of the store to try and see if that is the case.

What I see instead, is water spraying out of the back wall and onto the floor. Oh shit. Shit! SHIT! FreakingHELLSHIT!! My yell alerts my assistant and we both run into the basement to try and turn off the water...

But guess what, the valves down in the basement don't do that. We scramble for a few minutes trying various valves, but none turn off the water completely. Fearing that the water is going to flood the entire back of the store I decide the fight it with towels, buckets, anything until we can figure out the permenant solution.

When I get to the spraying pipe, I realise it has its own cut-off valve. I turn it and the water shuts off. Phew.

We go over the 'damage'. The floor is wet, but because I had redone the floor and coated it with oil-based varnish, it is not soaking in. We franticly go to work with sponge mops and soon have the floor surprisingly dry.

But then we look at the merchandise. The water initially made one heck of a spray, but the good news is that it 'aimed' towards the labware and not towards the telescopes. The water went far, reaching three shelves up, but it was almost a direct stream. The glassware is wet, as are some test tube racks, but aside from a few items in cardboard boxes that got some drops on them, it can all be dried and cleaned.

I presume the pipe broke beacuse of the cold weather. It is poorly insulated from the outside (how do brits keep their outdoor pipes from breaking when they freeze?). Next time I must remember to turn off the water. I was extremely lucky in that this pipe broke just after I arrived and not the night before.

So, I am looking at a plumber's bill, instead of contacting my insurance company. But man, seeing water spraying uncontrollably in your store is a way to get adrenaline pumping.

Not Functional Yet, But Much Better Looking

The store's website has taken on it's first more professional incarnation. It is not functional as an eCommerce site yet, but that process will be worked on over the next few weeks. It certainly looks much better than the old website.

www.spectrum-scientifics.com

An Unusual Encounter

I went downtown for a few errands. I went to get some lunch at Liberty Place. No big thing. On the way out, I was walking down the corridor to 17th street when I see Darth Vader approaching. oh-kay. Darth's also got an escort of two women handing out cards, as well as a small squad of stormtroopers and Boba Fett.

Behind this squad, there is another pack. This time it is two more storm trooopers, a scout trooper, and another Boba Fett.

All I could think of was a variation on the Mr. Show line: "Two Boba Fetts? Thet's jest poor plannin'"

The Corner of Inevitable Light Jumping.

I was able to bike to work today as the morning temps were over my low limit (40 degrees)and there was no rain or other bad things. Felt good.

Wether I bike or drive, I almost always end up going West on Spring Garden street to get to Kelly Drive. There is one intersection, Spring Garden and 23rd that has developed a rather dangerous quirk.

23rd and Spring Garden is a three way intersection. It is where Spring Garden St., 23rd St. and Pennsylvania Ave meet. The pattern of lights goes like this: Spring Garden, 23rd st, PA Ave.

But at least 4 times in the past 2 weeks someone, usually in a SUV, doesn't quite grasp that there is an order, or even a third street. So they get up to the red light, watch the cars come off of 23rd st, and then when PA Ave gets the green they charge out into traffic that has the right of way. I have yet to see a collision, but a lot of close calls and honking.

I'd like to say it is some fault of the design, but what these idiots are seeing is the lights for PA Ave. which intersects at a 45 degree angle and they are ignoring the THREE RED LIGHTS facing them. Given how fast these folks jump I'd also say they are watching 23rd street's light turn red instead of seeing if they have the green.

Today I got the joy of seeing an undercover police car flash its lights and pull over one of these fools. Wish I had time to swing by and laugh at them, but it wasn't on my way and I needed to move to build up some warmth.

The Jaunt to Florida

So I went through the entire week without at least a recap of my weekend jaunt to FL. I was going for a science conference, a fun one. I got the airport and was told that I was wait listed for a seat. Shit. Fortunately, by the time I got to the terminal they had a seat ready and boarding pass printed out for me. Joy! Even better, it was an aisle seat on the exit row. Yay! Legroom!

The flight was fast, I got in and realized I didn't have the hotel address, so the Limos couldn't drive me there. Thankfully my cell phone had some charge left and I was able to call. The hotel was listed in their directory, but under a different name. Once I got in to the hotel I hung out with some folks I know, and we had a nice dinner at a Mexican place. I didn't eat much, which is odd because at Mexican food I tend to pig out. We got back to the hotel and there was talk of going on a bar hop, but I didn't go. I went back to my hotel room to find that my blocking bar (the thing that keeps the door being pushed open) had been pushed into place by the curtains. I was locked out! I went to the desk and they called a maintenance guy, whose eyes bugged out when he saw what had happened. He tried to knock it down...he was about 40 lbs. lighter than me so that wasn't happening. Fortunately, there was enough room for his had and he got a screwdriver to remove it.

Saturday was the conference and it was loads of fun. Lot's of good topics and I got to meet people I've chatted with online in person for the first time. That night there was the party and it was rather...boistrous. Hotel Secruity came, then the police. Many of us figured it was a good time to leave. Mind you, we weren't doing any damage, we just had music playing and were talking. You think we were shooting out streetlights.

The party 'continued' at the hotel pool. Some folks even jumped in the pool. I declined, not being drunk enough and figuring 60 degrees is a wee chilly for a dip.I did have a good enough time to lose track of time and was not back in my room until around 6AM. There was supposed to be an open house but I had to sleep through it. Except for one trip for mediocre food at the next-door Dennys I was there most of the day.

The next day was the flight back and everything went smoothly. I think I actually found AirTrans to be a decent airline. At lest my legs didn't feel cramped up and everything was on time. I had figured they were a sooper-low fuck-you budget airline. But they did a good job.