It’s been pointed out to me that July 4th is holiday, like it is every year. As is appropriate, I will be grilling delicious meats, drinking fine adult beverages from my trusty stein, and playing games with family & friends because I’m pretty sure that is what the Founding Fathers really wanted for themselves. Sure, there was some tax stuff, wanting respect for existing self-rule, and other fine Enlightenment philosophies but let’s focus on the important things. This does mean travel out of town…on Friday. You may have noticed that the previous window was set to end July 2nd.
Welllllll, since I’ve shipped all the current orders on the docket for this production window so far and heeding the wisdom of the calendar, I am going to shift the open production window to end July 16th now. This way I don’t run the risk of leaving someone sad waiting for ultracoffee over the holiday weekend. I still have some runs finishing up this week and some leftovers from previous runs on hand. You may get a lucky shipment this week.
For those of you in the old country that was on the receiving end of a certain Declaration, I have some good news. May be adding an additional BBotE Ambassadorship in your neck of the woods in the near future. More details as they develop.
And now, a MAGNIFICENT presentation of a patriotic tune.
I’m putting this here to, potentially, stop questions.
I, honestly, remember near to nothing about the medevac we had in late 2003. Hypothyrodism due to protracted exposure to cold and dark takes a lot of forms and mine was memory loss and appalling Yoda like grammar. I remember very little about September 2003 and near to none of October other than excruciating frostbite at the very end.
I remember two people leaving. One due to a serious medical issue and one who wanted out before he got lynched.
I remember a plane basically didn’t stop moving for fear it would freeze up and never move again.
I remember a BBQ that needed a continuous propane torch to keep burning because it was too cold to go otherwise. That probably has nothing to do with the medevac flight.
I know there is another one happening now in the 2016 winter season, in the dead of austral winter. September was bad enough, but at least the continent was warming up at that point. Late June, right after Midwinter really, is as bad as it gets. Wish them well, everyone. This is dangerous as all fuck and they wouldn’t even attempt if it wasn’t dire.
A while back, the fine folks at Drinktanks ran a Kickstarter to create their double walled steel growler, with vacuum insulation, plus a handle and the ability to run a pressurized tap on it to use it as a tiny keg. As someone that had to figure out how to attach a handles to a dewar without destroying the vacuum, I had some searching questions for them as to their game plan. I can report that I’ve been using my two 64oz growlers from them quite happily to transport cold beer for a couple years now.
The Drinktank Juggernaut on the left and their normal 64oz growler on the right.
More recently, I received the 128oz version of their growler, the Juggernaut, and I’m quite pleased with it. In terms of volume, it’s just a hair shy of being able to fill the most ridiculously large of the Steins of Science I make. For the record, I have made a grand total of four of the 4300ml steins in six years, one of which was for me. As I continually warn people, it’s BIG, ridiculously so. Empty, it weighs 15lbs; fill it with beer and it weighs ~25lbs. I goddamn crippled myself for days in the wake of trying to drink an entire 4300ml stein worth of Anchor Steam Christmas Ale. I am not in good enough shape to do that many arm curls at that weight.
So, I’m making an official recommendation:
DON’T buy at 4300ml Stein of Science and repeat my poor life choices. DO purchase a Juggernaut to store your beer and get a more reasonably sized stein to drink from. Heck, get two and share with friends. You’ll keep your beer cold at all stages of the game and you won’t hurt yourself with too much accidental exercise while drinking.
I’m not going to discontinue the listing for the 4300ml, but I don’t really expect to ever make one again either.
First, the bad news: for the most part, all the slots for the production window closing June 4th are gone.
GOOD NEWS: Most of the production slots for the June 18th window are now up for ordering.
Other than Melbourne, Australia and Washington, DC, I haven’t been doing a lot of BBotE Ambassador resupplies lately. Well, that changes as of this week as I’m proud to announce that:
Washington, DC has recently received a resupply. Go drop Eric a line if you’d like some.
Portland, OR has been mumbling about resupply, though summer vacation plans have made things a little higgledy-piggledy. Drop Jess a line if you want to put your name in the hat to trigger a case order.
The new BBotE Ambassador of Chicago, Kyle, will be receiving his resupply case next Monday, so feel free to hit him up.
FILTHY FOR THE BEAN – art by Jen Miller
And continuing the tradition of finding Australians who are Filthy For The Bean, I am pleased to welcome Ryan to the posse as the BBotE Ambassador of Brisbane. While Queensland is region of Australia well conquered by the Steins of Science, with several people asking why I haven’t been nominated their Emperor/Savior of Beer, Ryan wants to give BBotE a try there. This is mainly on the grounds that he is a very short on sleep IT professional and needs to support his own habit. He received his case today, so get in touch if you need a bottle of your own.
Alright, folks, that’s it for now. If you want to contact any of the BBotE Ambassadors, their contact info is under the link along with their local prices.
PLEASE NOTE: there is a very good reason there are no pictures associated with this story.
As some of you may know, I teach a radiation safety course at a local community college. A while back, we were discussing bioassay techniques (read: ways determine if there’s been an uptake of radioactive material in the body, where, how, and how much) in my radiation safety class.
My fellow instructor, after explaining how fecal dosimetry techniques work, declared that no one, not the subject providing the sample, not the dosimetrist who has to process it, certainly not the rest of the lab staff, nor even the lab building’s neighbors, likes it when you have to do fecal samples.
I begged to disagree with him before the class. I clearly remembered an occasion that a world renowned health physicist and internal dosimetrist loudly declared in my presence “I LOVE FECAL SAMPLES!“
I stared at him very hard. He saw me staring. There was then a several beat pause…
He then corrected himself, declaring somewhat less loudly, “I love the numbers I get from fecal samples.”
Once again, I love making sure lessons hit home and stick for life with memorable vignettes like this to hang the information on. I’m proud to declare all our students aced that part of the exam. I’m just sad no one took video of my “Rubbin’ My Ass On Uranium” dance to demonstrate proper dosimeter badge usage.
Once upon a time, the radiation safety officer (RSO), let’s call him Bob, had been out performing the inventory of source material* and ran across a bit of excitement.
In this particular lab, they had approximately 10 grams of uranyl acetate, a very common contrast stain for electron microscopes. The poor unfortunate grad student who was trying to wrangle things for the RSO presented the uranyl acetate to Bob for him weigh and verify, but Bob ignored him. Bob was looking over the grad student’s shoulder at the fume hood behind him. Bob took a picture of it for us all to enjoy later, evacuated the lab, and told the grad student to get the department chair down here RIGHT NOW while Bob called the chemical safety folks to come up and help.
Picric Acid Sat. Sol. 3/18/69 ☺ – You see, the ☺ means it must be safe.
Flash forward to the staff meeting as Bob presents his pictures. I may have let out a pained yelp of terror when this one came up on the screen. I apologize for the lack of detail for this picture, but the brown bottle has a handwritten label that reads “PICRIC ACID, SAT. SOL., 3/18/69, *happy face*”
Bob: “So, does anyone see any problems with this picture?” Me: “YES! There’s a four fucking liter bottle of picric acid!” Bob: “Note that the bottle says ‘Sat. Sol.’ How would we know if it weren’t safe?” Me: “Well, I suppose if it wasn’t safe they would’ve labeled it with a frowny face instead of a happy one.” Bob: [gives me a glare] “Right, no more four day weekends for you. You get sarcastic if we give you too much time off. I was referring to the crystalline sediment in the bottom of the bottle that shows this is clearly a supersaturated solution now.” Me: [emits another yelp of terror] Co-Worker 1: “Jeez, they haven’t cleaned their lab in 40 years if that’s been lying around since it got labeled.” Co-Worker 2: “No…the building they’re in now has only existed for 17 years. They had to move it here from somewhere else first…*trails off into contemplative horror*“
Supersaturated picric acid is a shock & light sensitive bomb, similar to unstable crystallized ether. There have been an awful lot of lab explosions over the decades due to forgotten picric bottles which is why it is pretty much banned in anything other than microquantities. A 4L bottle is a job that even the bomb squad is reluctant to touch.
As a nice bonus, if you look closely you’ll notice that there’s a bottle of 70% percholoric acid next to it, which is another potential bomb. At the very least, a POWERFUL oxidizer to help promote the coming firestorm when everything goes sideways.
The happy ending is that everything worked out nicely and nothing had to be detonated with a sniper rifle from a safe distance. This time.
* Source material is defined as naturally occurring or depleted uranium or thorium materials which could, potentially, be refined and enriched. In practice, this normally translates to “anything we feel like nailing you for not having on your inventory already” as this is stuff any member of the public can buy, but as license holder you have a responsibility to keep track of it.
Adding this slice of life from almost a decade ago at LLNL to the permanent record of Funranium Labs as a reference point for Test Subject Vision Scientist (subcategory: Male)
[SCENE: Early April 2008, Lawrence Livermore Nat’l Lab. The transition to the new managing private consortium, primarily run by Bechtel, has proven to be very uncomfortable and isn’t improving. All the people involved in this story, and even the departments, have moved on or are dead.]
The only thing I hate almost as much as group projects are All Hands meetings.
There is nothing more fun than a one hour meeting that runs a half hour over where no useful information is conveyed despite actual insightful, searching questions from the audience. It was very much a meeting because management felt it necessary to Say Something, except that everything anyone wanted to know they couldn’t say.
After then All Hands meeting I went to go visit a former co-worker who now works in the Department That Doesn’t Get Out Much Because They’re Too Busy Thinking Terrorist Thoughts. She asked how things were going out in the Lab at large where people get to see sunlight. After due consideration I described it, speaking very fast and panicky, “Ohgodohgodwe’reallgonnadietheskyisfallingit’scoldoutsideilostmypantsandthere’sabearthatwantstoeatme!!!”
She blinked a few times and then she began laughing in way that I felt justified in grabbing the spill clean up kit just in case, which only made her laugh more. They’re a little short of entertainment in there.
This morning I was shocked to hear someone else describe a situation as “No Pants-Bear” Bad. I’ve gotten a stern finger waggling whilst sniggering by my manager for creating a new term that is spreading through the Laboratory like curium-244 contamination. I now give it to you to enjoy and share with the rest of the world.
I think I promised that I would write up this rant roughly five years ago. Recent announcements of the coming changes to our printed currency has finally triggered me to share one of my favorite old man grumbles with you, a grumble I’ve had since I was 12 years old. The TL;DR version:
I HATE THAT WE DEPICT HISTORICAL PERSONAGES AT ALL ON OUR MONEY
There, I said it. If I had my druthers we wouldn’t have Washington on anything, much less the rest of the questionably dignified dead presidents. In fact, Washington on money was the specific thing they were trying to avoid with the original Coinage Act of 1792. At that time, America was a little touchy about anything that, per the writers of the period, “smacked of Monarchy” or, more rudely, “We waged war to get one George off our coins, damned if we’re going to put another one on.” In the course of the Constitutional Convention, America was arguing about it’s very structure and it got down to seemingly minor things, such as what should our coinage look like? It seems minor until you remember that for as long as anyone in the western world could remember, coins had depicted the current or at least a relatively recent monarch (please ignore the coinage of any Muslim state or iconoclast Byzantium for this argument).
The initial proposal intended to put Washington on all the coins but this was argued back quite forcefully, with Washington’s approval, to a figurative representation of Liberty. And that’s the way our coins stayed until 1909. We had all manner of different representations of Liberty and a few unspecific representations of Native Americans, on the basis that the tribes were the embodiment of freedom and liberty… as long as you ignored the Indian Wars and reservation system entirely. We never depicted an actual person on our coins until the 20th century. Even the Confederacy held to this same minting guidance, not that they had an opportunity to make many coins down in New Orleans with their very limited supplies of bullion. Our paper currency was another matter, with our first post-Andrew Jackson federal bank note in 1862 depicting Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon Chase, but that’s a separate rant on Jackson being a worse person than most people think in addition to the horrible corruption of the banking system left in his wake.
As an aside, I hate the “In God We Trust” argument about this having always been on our coins, required by law. The only words that have been required since the beginning were “LIBERTY”, “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”, and something to tell you what the denomination of the coin is. That’s it. To bring it back to ol’ Chase again, he had to get Congress to pass a new Mint Act to permit the coins to actually say anything other than these three things. He started with the brand new two cent piece to see how “In God We Trust” was received and then added it to the rest of the coins from there. Once you start a change, it’s hard to undo it which is why people were so resistant to changing anything on coins in the first place.
Which brings us to 1909*.
To help stave off counterfeiters, the US Mint had been changing the designs of the coins roughly once per 25 years, often more frequently, but the penny had been one of those coins that was hard to change. History had shown Americans to be VERY PROTECTIVE of their pennies and they didn’t like it when people wanted to change them, putting the penny on something closer to a 30-50 year cycle. In 1904, Teddy Roosevelt embarked on a beautification campaign of American currency, arguing that a world class power deserved a beautiful world class money. He got easy agreement to update everything, except the penny. The Indian Head Cent was very popular and no one wanted it to change.
The 1909 VDB Lincoln Cent Obverse. The VDB refers to the engraver’s initials, which they’d forgotten in early mintings but added later.
That is until 1909, the centennial year of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. The case was made that The Great Emancipator deserved special recognition, that the most important president since Washington should be immortalized on our coinage in addition to a bunch of fresh statues and buildings in his honor. But that original restriction of the Coinage Act of 1792 remained: you could only depict a figurative representation of Liberty. For Lincoln we made an exception and Congress amended the act to specifically allow Lincoln to be put on the penny.
By 1948, every goddamn coin in the United States depicted a person, with the Walking Liberty falling to Benjamin Franklin on the half dollar. And now, 107 years later we still have Lincoln’s face on the penny. There have been many efforts to change the penny over the decades, with the back of the coin changing four times now, but the idea of replacing Lincoln’s face on the front with something else is a non-starter. Hell, even the argument that we lose money making pennies cannot stand against the tradition of pennies and the face of Lincoln. We are now trapped by the people we honor.
EDIT: As a follow up to answer someone’s question as to what the point of all that was, the purpose was to highlight something historians and archaeologists have always known: a culture’s money says a lot about it. Sometimes it tells the only story we’ll ever know about a culture when the distance in time becomes centuries and those stories also raise questions of their own. Questions like “What happened that they stopped worshiping Liberty and put these people on instead? Who were they? Or are they aspects of Liberty too, because we still see that word there?” This is one of those cases where I rather liked the original intent and the solid 70 years before the first modification of the Coinage Act of 1792. And to quote My Lovely Assistant “It suggests we worship the Founding Fathers like the gods they weren’t.”
These are the things I think about when bored.
The Columbian Expo Half Dollar ReverseThe Columbian Exposition Half Dollar Obverse
*: Or 1892 if you want to be super picky and include the very first commemorative coins. Special half dollars and quarters were struck as a fundraiser for the Columbian Exposition, but they were never intended for circulation and more like a collector’s item instead. Technically, Christopher Columbus is the first historical personage depicted on a coin the US Mint struck, followed shortly after by Queen Isabella for the same Expo.
FURTHER EDIT: As I had people argue with me that “obverse is where the face goes, idiot” I would like to clarify. That would be true on non-American coins and would be true all the way back to the first Lydian coins more or less. The face tells you who’s reign you’re in and thus the rough date it was minted. But America didn’t have kings, thus our obverse was defined by wherever we stamped the date and the word LIBERTY. Part of the olive branch in making the Columbian Expo coin was that Columbus’ head would not be put on the front of the coin with the date. It also doesn’t say LIBERTY, so it was never meant to be a “real” coin to the point that they had to make the qualifying statement “COLUMBIAN HALF DOLLAR”.
The obverse-is-wherever-the-date-is rule went out the window with the Presidential Dollar Coin Program. The Mint Act was amended to more or less remove all the restrictions of the original 1792 act in the interest of artistic freedom. You’ll notice the dollar coin’s date is on the rim now.
The other day I was trading tales with the former BBotE Ambassador of NYC, @EditrixW, and after sharing my new favorite Beatles cover song from Mongolia we drifted by COMPLETELY REASONABLE CONNECTIONS to the reason why my Lovely Assistant and I haven’t played Scrabble in quite some time. You see, we used to play it in a way I like to call Klingon Scrabble; you aren’t playing for the actual points but rather for honor. You can claim honor with such things as, but by no means limited to:
Longest word
Most words made at the same time
Dirtiest word
Bingos are still impressive
Most swear words
Most ridiculous acronym which you can explain
Really, you managed to play “HITLER” on the board more than once?
AND “STALIN”?!?!
And because both my Lovely Assistant and I hold science degrees, a PhD in her case, some latitude has been made to allow scientific terms because they also hold honor and are generally pretty hard to play. Also many scientific terms are proper nouns, so we had to kinda give up on that rule too but took it on a case by case basis. A complete list of the words played by each player should be written down for use to create a story, which is also a source of honor. Now that you’ve got the setup, let me now tell the tale of the last game of Scrabble we played which more or less went as follows.
SCENE: a late Sunday afternoon sitting at the dinner table, playing Scrabble.
Lovely Assistant: [plays the word “EXAM”, claims a triple word score]
Me: [looks hard at the letters on my rack, has a staggering realization, starts giggling]
LA: (very suspiciously) What?
Me: I got a bingo! [lays down the rest of my tiles after the M in “EXAM”]
LA: [making a Face™] “EXAMONGOLIA” is not a word.
Me: Sure it is! It’s 1018 Mongolias.
LA: There is only one Mongolia and it is a proper noun.
Me: In the infinite multiverse, there is a similarly infinite number of Mongolias.
LA: No. You can’t just add unit prefixes to things. Mongolia isn’t a unit.
Me: It is too. Mongolia is the unit of hordeosity.
LA: [makes the Face™ again] Hordeosity isn’t a word either.
Me: When you have a group of people, you have to look at them to assess their likelihood/capability of going on a rampage. This is how horde-y they are. Their hordeosity.
EXAMONGOLIA – 21 Points For Straight Letter Value Isn’t Bad (it is totally a word)
LA: [looks at me quietly with the Face™ that says she is working really hard to remember precisely WHY she loves me]
Me: Obviously, the Mongolia is one of those ridiculous basic units that’s hard to use like the Farad, Tesla, and Becquerel.
LA: Nope. We’re done here.
To end this story, she would like me to remind all of you that examongolia is totally not word. I, in turn, encourage you to contact theInternational Bureau of Weights and Measures to get this new fundamental unit recognized.
As mentioned in the previous post, I fled the mainland for a week to escape Super Bowl madness in the SF Bay Area to the lovely Big Island of Hawaii. As my Lovely Assistant had never been to that island before, we split our time between Hilo and Kailua so she could experience both sides. Given my druthers, I will happily spend any and all time possible in Hilo. It reminds me of Santa Cruz, CA before the 1989 Loma Prieta quake forced the urban renewal that stomped the a lot of the kindness out of the town too. To be fair, I haven’t crunched a syringe underfoot in well over a decade in downtown Santa Cruz but then my desire to go wander around downtown for fun is gone too.
As I read back over this, that’s probably not be the tourism recommendation the Hilo Chamber of Commerce is looking for. It’s a quiet and beautiful town that hasn’t been destroyed by a tsunami in well over 50 years, so high fives. No really, they changed their urban planning in the 1960s to create a flood plain for typical tsunamis (yes, Hawaii gets enough to have “typical” ones) to exhaust themselves in a serene park. To be fair, that park used to be a fishing village separate from Hilo proper, but after the second time you get wiped out within a generation you start reconsidering your real estate development options.
Years ago, I mentioned that I did work as an undergrad that involved pulverizing a lot of volcanic rocks. To be more specific, I was doing isotope geochemistry on volcanic rocks trying to answer an important geological question: Does what goes down come back up? TL;DR answer is yes, but it’s complicated. if you’d like to know more you’re welcome to read this paper, which became someone else’s PhD outlined by my undergrad thesis, that resulted from me playing with a lot powerful acids and reducing rocks to tiny samples that I then vaporized on a mass spectrometer. Trust me, this is actually relevant to coffee.
That fundamental question was tested by looking for something that had a very distinct isotopic mix, subducting under another plate, with a resulting volcanic arc. If you take the Pacific Ocean, away you can see the chain of dead volcanoes extending across the plate from the vicinity of Midway all the way to Izu-Bonin volcanic arc. These are big mountains, the kind that are large enough to deform the oceanic crust around them, which makes big troughs on either side that collect sediments, which are mostly landslides from the seamounts and chert from dead abyssal plankton. The Western Seamounts basalt, when mixed with the chert, makes a quite particular isotopic profile that, funny enough, isotopically looks an awful lot like the volcanic island directly above the where they subduct, AKA the island of Guam. As you move north or south from Guam, that isotopic signal fades away.
Which lead me to an odd thought: hey, Guam is in the Coffee Belt and has the right volcanic soil, I wonder if 100% Guamian coffee tastes close to Kona coffee? The mode of volcanism is different but the chemistry is similar. Or, at the very least, I could answer the question of what would coffee grown on the slopes of the submerged mountains I did my thesis on; Guam is as close as I can get. This, unfortunately, is an academic question as Guamian coffee appears to damn near impossible to get outside of Guam as pure varietal as there is very little under cultivation there anymore.
Speaking of Kona coffee, I drank a great deal of it. I also made a point to sample as much Ka’u, Puna, Hilo and Hamakua coffee as I could get my hands on just to compare the very different flavors from what is, more or less, very similar volcanic soils. In particular, I would like to give appreciation to the work of Hilo Shark’s Coffee, which you can hang out at for hours in downtown Hilo. Their coffee, chocolate, and vanilla is coming from their farm on the Hilo coast up the road a bit. When you order a hot chocolate and the whipped cream is sprinkled with nibs rather than dusted with cocoa powder, that’s a damn good sign. The small bar I bought is some of the best bittersweet dark chocolate I’ve had. While sitting savoring our coffee and cocoa, I remarked to my Lovely Assistant that if they had a tea plantation I might have a hard time getting her to leave. She immediately began searching and found one a few miles away from the Sharky Farm so, umm, if Hilo needs a PhD chemist who’s a also decent programmer I think you’ll have little difficulty convincing her to move there.
WELCOME TO THE WAIPIO VALLEY OUTLOOK – Please look, but don’t touch or enter
There was one unfortunate thing that happened while there which was a fresh outbreak of dengue fever. The Waipio Valley is beautiful but difficult to get to at the best of times, which also makes treatment for re-eradication of disease difficult. Unfortunately, sick visitors and workers regularly bring dengue back to Hawaii and it sets up residence to make a disease reservoir anew in Waipio. I was ambivalent about finding this sign: while I’m glad this sign exists for me to take a picture of for my collection of interesting safety signs, it’s telling that it happens enough that they have this sign ready to go. As a friend who is now responding to this outbreak said, “It could be worse. They didn’t just leave the sign up at the overlook and add an extra sign & lights of WHEN LIGHTS ARE FLASHING.”
The Waipio Valley in its lush and drizzly glory
But that doesn’t do justice to Waipio. Really, it is gorgeous there. I’ll leave you today with this picture from the overlook.
The production window closing on January 23rd, which was a long one due to CES 2016, has pretty much sold out and shipped. The next production window will be completely open on Saturday (some slots are already up) but its going to be a short window ending on February 2nd. “Why?” you might ask. Because my Lovely Assistant and I will be heading to the Big Island of Hawaii for a week to get the hell out of the SF Bay Area during the Super Bowl. I hope everyone enjoys the game and general festivities but, honestly, the getting around here is bad enough at the best of times. Adding a couple hundred thousand extra people means it’s time for me to be elsewhere.
As has been previously discussed here, I love me some volcanoes and doing isotope geochemistry on their rocks has informed some of my coffee palate. As my other convenient volcanoes require serious snow and winter gear at the moment, Hawaii is the name of the game. It’s been almost a decade since I’ve been there so I’m excited to see if my golden, transcendent memories of drinking all the coffee at the Kona Pacific Coffee Co-op hold true or it was all just a dream.
So, get you orders in now for the short pre-Hawaii tip production window. The window after that will go until February 27th. Sorry for the weird production windows to start 2016 but the holidays and travel have made things tricky.
As a slice of life from bartending at my friend’s hospitality suite for the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show, by far the weirdest moment was helping another friend, Fr. Gabriel, say mass. You see, the EZPR Suite is the happiest place in Las Vegas during CES as it has a well stocked bar, run by me, and a collection of wonderful people to hang out with, which happens to include a Dominican priest. Travel was badly messed up for everyone coming into Vegas so Fr. Gabriel got in painfully late and missed getting to mass at the cathedral. Its helpful to think of priests and monks as dedicated computers that run a very particular program, mass.exe, and it must be executed at least once per day; doesn’t need to be done in a church proper, doesn’t need a lot of people, but the program must be run.
Fr. Gabriel’s INSTANT ALTAR! Just add wine.
To this end, Fr. Gabriel has a Portable Altar which looks REMARKABLY SIMILAR to my 1960s portable bar from Executair. He was just going to use a closet in the suite, but I had the bright idea that there’s a bunch of wedding chapels in the hotel, usually unused, and maybe they’d be willing to let him use it as a quiet space. As happens a lot in my company, we got told “That’s a new one on me”, “I thought I’d heard everything”, and “No one’s ever asked that one before” a lot.
Please imagine, if you will, a fully decked out Dominican priest saying mass to himself, functioning as celebrant and congregation all in one, with an altar in miniature in the alcove of a casino chapel where they normally put the flowers and gifts. Please also imagine me, a long hair bearded ginger in shorts and Fallout t-shirt, elsewhere in the chapel trying to arrange refrigerator repair by phone at the same time. If there wasn’t a bunch of people gathered around the security monitors asking “What the fuck is going on here?” I’d be very surprised.
I expect there’ll be radio silence from me for a while after this as I vanish into an eggnog + BBotE + slivovitz & Fallout 4 haze until 2016. It’s time to do a round up to close out the year.
There are still a few slots left for the production window ending on December 23rd, mostly sampler packs. I expect to ship pretty much all the outstanding orders by the 22nd, so that gives a chance for priority mail to get you things by Xmas Eve here in the continental US. If you want to make absolutely certain, it’s expensive but go with express.
For local pick up in the San Francisco Bay Area, if you aren’t picky as to BBotE variety your chances to grab last minute gifts directly from me improve dramatically. You will be taking a trip to Berkeley or Oakland to come get them though as I’m somewhat geographically limited in the last days before Xmas. Same thing applies to Steins of Science on hand, though there’s no hope for me to get more dewar supplies before Wednesday.
Speaking of steins, Stein #666 has been claimed by Steinwielder Diederich in Michigan. May he hoist well with all the fine beers to be found in America’s Mitten.
Another short production window for the week after Xmas will start appearing for items soon. I’m headed to the Consumer Electronics Show 2016 from January 4-10th, so clearly there’ll be no production then, though I may be able to bring somethings with me to Las Vegas if you want direct hand off. Regular service will resume after that.
On review, 2015 has been a hell of a time. Bartended for my friend’s hospitality suite at CES 2015, visited the Nevada Test Site (a personal goal), built Legos with Friends, actually served jury duty without them kicking me out immediately, reestablished myself as a Laser Safety Officer in addition to my normal THE DEADLY RADIATIONS fun, celebrated my 40th birthday in style on an aircraft carrier, and countless bullshittings regarding science, things nuclear, and what all with artists, writers, journalists, and above all time with friends. By far my game of the year has been Shadows of Brimstone and I recommend it to anyone who needs that tabletop RPG or minifig combat fix but just can’t quite bring themselves to start up a campaign. Really scratches that itch nicely.
I realize the Commonwealth Wasteland doesn’t look like this – Photo courtesy of National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Field Office
Of course, there’s also Fallout 4. To paraphrase John Muir, the wasteland is calling and I must go.
IMPORTANT HOLIDAY RACCOON WARNING – Well, not really. This was to keep them from stealing radioactive stuff.
So, the shame of not having even started holiday shopping is setting in and it’s getting to the point where glasses of egg nog that are mostly bourbon isn’t blunting that feeling is it? Trust me, I feel your pain as I’ve been spending a lot of my time making BBotE and Steins of Science for the past several weeks. A late Thanksgiving this year compressed an already all too short production/shopping window and I’m feeling it. Judging by emails that are along the lines of “OMGWTFNWOHAARPISIS WHY CAN’T I ORDER ANYTHING ON YOUR SITE, WHY DO YOU HATE FREEDOM, IS THIS A CONSPIRACY?!?!?” other folks have picked up on this too.
Yes, all of the production slots for the window ending December 15th are gone. This is the sad truth.
I am going to open a small and short production window that will close December 23rd (some are already up, and more will open as I clear the backlog approaching the 15th). I will do my best to get everything ordered in this window out the door as fast as possible so that there’s a hope that you can give it as a Christmas gift but, well, 12L/day remains my maximum output. In light of all the calamities that can befall the US Postal Sevice, I can’t guarantee that your BBotE will make it to you in time, particularly if you’re outside of the United States. If you’re worried and really need to get your order ASAP in the US, drop me a line to plead your case for shuffling the order queue, and bite the bullet to pay for express shipping. I’ll see what I can do.
Speaking of overseas, specifically London, I do have the good news to give that your long dormant BBotE Ambassador, Justin, should see resupply by the end of the week, customs permitting. Feel free to drop him a line by email, jfedouloff [at] gmail [dot] com, if you’d like a piece of that.
Worse come to worse, I do have the option of gift certificates for you. Giving a coupon code is perhaps a little less exciting than a bottle of black ichor or shiny scientific hardware for drinking, but it’s better than nothing. Consulting with my sister, she recommends using glitter pens to jazz that code up when writing it in a tastefully irreverent card, but she is a inveterate glitterfiend and suggests that for most everything.
As for Steins of Science and the Stein #666 special offer, well, it’s quite close. The current inventory on hand can be found here if you’d like to get a piece of that action.
As my Birthdaytide Fortnight draws to a close and Berkeley’s holiday lights go up in the trees, I must acknowledge what is coming and say the words that must be said.
My Ceremonial South Pole Hero Shot & Xmas Card 2002
The BBotE production window that closes December 1st is now up. This window is a little longer than normal because Thanksgiving is in there and I expect at least one day of turkey & pie coma.
The last pre-Xmas BBotE production window will close on December 15th. All things being equal, domestic or international, everything shipped by the 15th should end up at their destination by Christmas Eve. I can’t control weather doom snarling the global postal system utterly, but a week is usually quite sufficient even taking weather into account. I will put another pre-order window up after the 15th, but I make absolutely no guarantees about shipments in that window arriving before Xmas. Express mail gets more and more necessary in the last days. I’ll do my best, but that’s all I can do.
As far as steins go, I have a another large shipment of dewars slated to show up right just a bit before Thanksgiving. The “steins on hand” should dramatically increase, so keep an eye out on that page for the fluctuating numbers. Speaking of Steins of Science, Stein #666 hasn’t been claimed yet and there is a pretty sweet deal for who ever that lucky soul is who buys it. The current count is in the 650s, so it won’t be long now.
To reiterate shopping advice from the previous years, here’s a few things you should probably think about if you decide to place an order for a holiday gift from Funranium Labs:
BBotE Is Perishable: When refrigerated, it has a shelf-life of about three months (possibly longer, but I’m only going to quote three). If you’re going to wrap it up and put it under the tree, this a present to put out on Christmas Eve and the promptly put back in the fridge after unwrapping. Alternatively, embrace the idea of the holiday season and decide that give it to the recipient immediately, for all days are special.
Let People Know BBotE Is Coming: I know part of the joy in presents is the surprise of what you get. However, joy is not the emotion most people feel when a bottle of mysterious black liquid shows up on their doorstep, especially if it’s been sitting there for a week outside because they were out of town. Give them a heads up, that something’s coming they’ll want to stick in the fridge. I will also tuck handling instructions in the box for a gift and a note stating who sent it if you ask me to.
The pre-order slot dates date are “Ship No Later Than”, not “Ships After”. I get your orders out as soon as I can, but even in the furthest flung corner of the US with the slowest mail carrier, this means you should have your order in hand by December 18th for that last set of late order slots. If you want to order something NOW to ship later, in effect reserving a spot in a later order queue, you can do so but please leave a note with your order telling me when you want it to ship by.
Yes, I will probably add a extra more slots as I get a handle on how much I can make at the last minute but shipping gets dicey in those last days before Christmas.
International Shipments Of BBotE Go Out Express Mail: Because I don’t want BBotE to get stuck in postal facilities or customs, express is the only way to ship to minimize their time in bureaucratic hell. Expect it to take 3-5 business days to get to you, so time your orders accordingly to make sure things get to you in time.
APO/FPO: If you wish to send something out to someone with an Armed Forces address, there’s good news and bad news. Good news – it’s no more expensive than priority mail. Bad news – I can’t guarantee any date as to when things will arrive. Outside of active war zones, things move somewhat normally; inside war zones and ships at sea, things get iffy. Also, depending on routing, some nations (I’m looking at you, Turkey) have bounced BBotE on the basis that it is, and I quote, “Morally Questionable Material” because, obviously, any liquid from the West must be alcoholic in nature. Amazingly, shipments to Korea and Okinawa seem to arrive faster than they do to other places on the west coast. Go figure. In short, I’ll do my best but you’ve been warned.
Local Pick Up: Resupply shipments will go out to all the BBotE Ambassadors as fast as I can crank them out, so be sure to drop them a line if grabbing a bottle that way is convenient for you. I’m sure they’d like clean and empty refrigerators as their Christmas present.
Turkey, Italy & Brazil: It breaks my heart to say this, I can’t ship to these countries. Italy, I absolutely do not trust your postal system. The level of theft shipping things anywhere south of Rome is, frankly, appalling. If you ask me to ship to Naples, I make absolutely zero guarantee of it arriving. Brazil, your customs causes shipment to languish for so long that the BBotE goes off before it arrives, even if shipped express; steins seem to be fine though. Turkey, well, I discussed those problems in #6.
Steins of Science Have Lead Time Too: The steins are built to order and it sometimes takes a while to get parts in. Generally, things move much faster and ship within a week but you have now been warned of the possibility of delays. For some insight into which stein is the best fit for you, I rambled on that a while back. Dewars that are on hand for me to build steins with RIGHT NOW can be found here.
BBotE Production Is First Come, First Served: My maximum daily production output is 12L per day. Thus, people who request 12pk cases will lock up production for an entire day.
There’s No Kosher Or Halal Certification: While Robert Anton Wilson did confer the papacy upon me, and all the other people in the Porter College Dining Hall at UCSC, this does not permit me to sanctify food. Sorry.
REALLY, I’m not kidding and never have been, the 4300mL Stein of Science is Ridiculously Large: Seriously, BIG. It will should take an entire pre-game, Super Bowl, and wrap up to go through this much beer. Or one cricket match. You may think you are a super drankin’ badass, but consider that you may want to drink more often than once a year, so think about a smaller size. Far be it from me to dissuade you from giving me money, but I’m just saying, dude, it’s big.
As quite a few of you have already noticed the order slots for the production window ending Halloween are now up. Fair warning, there aren’t all that many slots for this window because the coffee engines will be winding down for the next week; I’ll be in Atlanta updating my knowledge of laser safety regulations. Not how most people would choose to enjoy themselves in Atlanta, but I do like collecting fresh tales of scientific/industrial horror and thus the regulatory changes they cause.
Now, on to more exciting things that I suspect people really care about. Since the very beginning of Stein of Science production, I’ve been inscribing a serial number inside the base and almost as long people have been asking if they can get specific numbers. My policy on that is “first come first served” and you just get the next number as I don’t actually inscribe them until I make them. I’m sticking by that policy, but Stein #666 has had me thinking if something special is order. I thought of auctioning it off and donating the excess of the normal cost to charity. I thought of skipping the number entirely as there are just as many people not excited about getting Stein 666 as there are people that want it desperately.
For people that’ve following along for the glorious adventures of Funranium Labs over the years, you may remember that I did a giveaway for Steins #200, #400, and #600 of a complimentary 665ml FMJ Stein of Science #201, #401, and #601 respectively. I’ve decided that I’m going to do that again for Stein #666. If you are the lucky person that orders #666, the Stein of the Beast, you’ll also get #667, the Neighbor of the Beast Who Lives Across the Hall. BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! You will also receive a handsome, rugged, foam lined carrying case to configure as you see fit as your Tactical Drinking Module, a 750ml bottle of Kona blend BBotE with the Tesladyne Gear Logo “REMAIN CALM, TRUST IN SCIENCE”, Ineffable Mustachio’d Goat of Science BBotE sticker and classic Coffee Volcano BBotE sticker, and a 6000SUX sticker, courtesy of Test Subject IT to Porn, to vandalize the gas guzzling car of your choice. BEHOLD!
Stein #667 and Additional Swag
Now, you can go check here to see what stein types are currently on hand. For the record, as of October 16th at 11am the stein count is in the 650s, so it might not be all that long until we hit #666.
