Allen J. Hall

Very sad news. Howard Knoebel passed away at the age of 85 in Neoga, IL, Nov. 19th. Here’s a picture of Howard I snagged from his website. I hope to have a bit more about him in a future post. In particular some of the fantastic science he accomplished.

One hilarious anecdote is that Howard actually calculated whether or not it is worth your while to pick up a penny on the sidewalk. His calculations show it is not. He basically calculated how much you would make an hour if at every step of the way there was a penny to pick up. It turns out you won’t make minimum wage by doing so. Hence, it does not pay to pick up a penny on the sidewalk. Howard was a bit of a rascal Scientist, I think that’s not too bad a name for his ever present creation and discovery. He always had his hands in something. We were all sure that his tractor with various add-ons would flip over on top of him one day. He also had a hatred towards wood peckers.

You’ll be sorely missed, Howard. I regret not being more in touch than we were. 73 DE N9RZC!

ps- Howard’s website can be found here (for while it is still up): Howard’s RR1 Site

Boston rocked: I’m writing this on a new iPod Touch! Filmetrics was running a drawing for those who brought samples to test! Big thankyou’s go out to Filmetrics and AVS. I will write more about the conference in a series of posts coming soon. I’m hoping everyone had a great week while I was gone.

One thing I find extremely helpful in my research, is the ability to download citations for articles my co-workers send. I like to import them into BibDesk and auto-file the journal articles by first-author. Unfortunately, not everyone has Bibtex export abilities. This isn’t too bad, as BibDesk imports most major citation files. One thing that I do abhorr, is when a major company decides not to offer a citation download option! Science Direct is the fellow who gets my wrath this evening. It’s so bad I’ve been looking for other companies who keep track of journals that have downloads for the ones that Science Direct publishes!

I wonder if you pay their absurd journal prices, if you get citation downloads…

For more on Absurd Journal pricing, see: Knuth and “Trapped…”

Quick one for today.  Social shipping/retailer company ShopATron seems like a great way to sell things with minimal hastle.  Why?  Because you’re not actually selling them- little shops around the country are filling the orders for you.  There’s just one problem- today’s consumer is used to fast and smooth transactions with good and fast communcation between seller and buyer.  If that’s what you want as a consumer, it sounds like ShopATron may not be the way to get it.

After not being able to find a Faber-Castell product for sale in the country (online at least), I contacted Faber-Castell for overseas retailers who spoke English. I was contaced by F-C USA, and they mentioned that I could order the item in question (quite cheaply) via their WebStore. Little did I know their WebStore is really a virtual store with absolutely nothing owned by Faber-Castell USA, but a social shopping sale-point for their retailers via ShopATron. F-C probably likes this because they can farm out the buying love to their retailers and never worry about consumer interactions on the individual level.  That’s good for them, not so good for me: I ordered the item Sunday, and it’s just now “ready for shipping”  on Friday morning!  Meaning, that it has been 1 business week since I purchased the small item (can be in a padded envelope by way of USPS), and it still hasn’t shipped. If it was available local, or through a major etailer, I would have purchased there instead. In the future, I’m going to avoid ShopATron as much as possible, except for the extremely hard to get items that are not available anywhere.

For more good detailed information about the new ShopATron virtual business model, and another purchaser with similar experiences, read here: MiniZRacing.com Interesting to note that the author mentions the “stock” information via ShopATron pages is virtual also- they have little way to know which retailer has which stock on hand, and therefore getting extremely hard to find items may also be a crap-shoot. [We'll see when my items actually ship, and when they actually arrive.]

Sorry for the non-Science post. Hopefully others will find this useful also.

An update is well past due. I’m sorry it took so long to add this note ( I should have thought of a post edit earlier):

ShopATron fills a niche. It helps companies (like Faber-Castell) serve individual consumers products that they would otherwise not sell to individuals. And for this, I thank Faber-Castell for selling to individuals when they may otherwise not. So, I’m somewhat heavy hearted that my post frustrated Faber-Castell, when in reality it is not a reflection on Faber-Castell at all. Merely a comment on ShopATron itself. Given the option- which would I rather- not being able to get an item I needed at all, or being able to get an item slightly slower than the fastest shippers online? I definitely pick the latter- In fact, I’d even be purchasing if it would take a month or two to ship. The question is really a matter of when to expect shipment. I think most internet consumers are fine with waiting for something, as long as they know it may take some time. I know I certainly am willing to wait for something I really want. [And I really wanted Faber-Castell's product- it's fantastic. I'm working on a post about it (work gets in the way sometimes), with some updates with a photo of the very well used perfect pencil.]

BTW, ShopATron is not the only fellow to have the problem of disclosing when something will be shipping. One of the biggest - Amazon itself, often has serious problems determining true leave-the-door times. I once waited over half a year- yes, half a year (it was maddening) for a book that I really wanted. In the end, I had to contact the Author, who luckily had a few books left, one of which he was willing to sell me directly (thank God for kind people!). Oh, and of course I couldn’t get a single human response from Amazon regarding the book, so we cancelled the order since every 2 weeks we’d get a “will ship in 2-4 weeks” notice for a handfull of months!

So, in the end, Faber-Castell and ShopATron shipped my item within 1 week. In fact, to Faber-Castell’s credit, the item was shipped 2-day DHL, if I remember correctly. So, it took 5 days to ship, but arrived in 2 days! So, that is quite fast, and finding it was in a 2-day envelope definitely came as a surprise after hearing it shipped only 2 days ago [at the time of the writing, I thought I was in for a week's wait again]. In the future, knowing an approximate time-frame about when to worry about the shipment would be appreciated, but that’s the only frustration I can point to. [The item I bought, the perfect pencil is completely awesome- so I really appreciate being able to purchase it online.]

I hope that updates everyone on the shipping issues I had with ShopATron, the pro’s and con’s, and my final feelings about the matter. I was happy to receive the item with fair promptness, I only wish I knew when i was to expect it to arrive or at least when it was going to ship (since it was 5 days before I heard from the company once purchased). This is all in the past, however, since I carry the perfect pencil in my pocket every single day and love it to death! Thanks Faber-Castell for an awesome product and being able to buy it online since I couldn’t buy it locally!

Tropical storm Gustav is making it’s way past Jamaica today (floods abound). I’ll be sending up prayers for everyone to stay safe while Gustav is passing. The Jamaican Radio Station Power 106 may have more live news (the link for Winamp can be used in iTunes).

6-12″ of rain and possibly 25″ of rain are expected. Gustav may at anytime turn into a Hurricane, and is expected to do so today. (paraphrased from Power106 recent weather news)

The Go-Jamaica.com Blog has frequent updates on the current storm’s damage. The Jamaican Gleaner (no stories up yet as of 1:59 PM).

Update (2:19 PM) - Jamaican Power says that currently approx. 47% of their customers are without power.

Update (11:01 PM) - (from Power 106) Lots of downed trees, streets out, and people in shelters. Looks like the Banana crop has been severely damaged yet again. Major source of damage is Flooding and Mud Slides. Two main bridges down. At least 2-3 days to restore traffic to St. Thomas parish. 31 people are on roof-tops due to mud-slides (12 feet of mud)- air lifts will be required for them. Have been deaths- car with four passengers washed away. Recovered one body, and search for the rest. Number of people drowned. Double-figure death toll may be possible. Eastern Rural section of St. Andrew, Gordon Town area (road collapsed past Newcastle) most hardest hit. Paraphrased from an interview by Gary Spalding- Earlier this morning with the Prime Minister on Power 106.

Those of you who know the Rockett group well, have likely seen this video. It’s completely hilarious. Anyone who’s ever been in Graduate School will love it…

Here’s a great Chemistry PSA that reminds me of a teacher I had at Grand River Collegiate Institute in Ontario. I’ll have to dig up his name. He described all the different types of bonding pretty much in terms of relationships. It was simplistic but genius. If I remember his name, or dig out the old year book, I’ll update this post with it.

For now, the hat-tip goes to Dr. Mike at Getting Things Done In Academia.