Month: June 2023

Edit: SOME of the heat issues have been solved, and leaks are now non-existent.  Given your package DOES NOT sit out in the sun for more than 4 hours, it will arrive unscathed and just as potent as it was when I put it into the mailbox.  If however your package is exposed to high temperatures (above 100 degrees Fahrenheit) it will cause the vacuum sealed package to inflate like a balloon, if it inflates too much it may pop and/or the liquid may leak and potency is lost very quickly at this point.  SO KEEP IT OUT OF THE SUN AND HEAT.

I managed to do some rather extensive testing last week, with a combination of electrical tape, baking soda, and vacuum sealing, I have managed to make the product survive a minimum of 4 hours in direct sunlight on the hood of a car.  The bag puffed out nearly to the point where it might pop, but no liquid leaked out at all!  There was a very slight dampness under some of the electrical tape from condensation I believe because there was no smell to it.  But I marked the fluid level with a paint marker and it did not go down at all!  Also the popper seemed significantly stronger than it was before the heat test, no scientific measurements were taken so this really could have just been due to my excitement that it didn’t leak at all.  I’m not even sure how one could go about measuring the effects strength in a scientific way… I guess one could record the length of time effects last but other than that I don’t know.

Interesting fact: the strength of hallucinogenic compounds given to lab rats used to be ranked by how many violent head twitches per minute the mice expressed after getting dosed up.  (source)

The site was running on the cheapest instance type and was getting overloaded several times throughout the day this past week.  So an upgrade was definitely overdue.  Unfortunately it really was not much of an upgrade, just changing the instance type of a still single server will only go so far, to get real performance at the lowest costs possible I will need to figure out how to move from lightsail to a more ‘real’ type of configuration.  I’m going to have to choose to go serverless or start learning how to wrangle ec2 instances.  Dealing with ec2 and the like is becoming a thing of the past and I already have some experience with serverless structures, but not with serverless wordpress sites!  I’m not even sure if its possible to run wordpress serverless… I don’t think it is.  I’m not even sure if it can have multiple application servers. At best it can proabbly only support a database server, one app server, maybe a memcached server, and a cdn.  Ok well I don’t have to choose serverless or not then because its not an option afaik. I would have to rewrite the entire codebase, which would take a rather long time I think if I was to try and reproduce every single feature the site currently uses.

Well hopefully lightsail holds up for a while longer, there are a few more larger instance types that the current one anyways but they are getting kind of expensive.  Started out at only 5$ a month.  Its going to be at least 25$ a month now.

I’m afraid I broke a crucial piece of glassware, separating funnel.  Current batch is complete and will be shipped out Monday afternoon, but must wait until I get the new piece of glassware before I can continue manufacturing more product.  I hope it arrives soon but could take a week or so as its coming from china.  Will keep everyone updated.

EDIT: I found a workaround so I can continue production without any degradation to product.  The new glassware (whenever it gets here..) will make things a lot faster and easier to do larger batches at one time is all.  Thank you all for your patience and support during the early phase of this business!  Things will only get better from here on out!  🙂

I’m very happy to announce that worldwide shipping  via FedEx is now available to all customers!  I have also decreased the flat rate USPS shipping costs for all items.  Old cost for 1-3 bottles was $7, its now $5.  Old cost for small box (1-10 bottles) was $15, its now $10.  Old cost for medium USPS box was $20, its now $15.  USPS large box was $25 now its $20.  All changes are effective immediately.

Hello all,

Its getting warmer out, this is bad news when it comes to shipping poppers, as they degrade rapidly in higher temperatures and are prone to leakage.  The high temps cause the popper liquid to expand, so full bottles can leak out to nearly half empty.  To combat this I will be (temporally at least) splitting each popper into two bottles but each bottle will only be halfway full.  I may try and require all shipments be in boxes and every box labeled with a ‘this side up’ sticker but I highly doubt that mail carriers will follow it strictly (or at all…) during shipping.  This would be the only way to really prevent leaking altogether.

Also I expect some materials to arrive shortly that will extend the life of the poppers, this coupled with the half full double bottles I hope will allow the product to arrive at its destination as potent as possible.  If you have any issues with your order, please do not hesitate to contact me at donwillcow at gmail dot com and I will have your order replaced ASAP.

Thank you for your business, we appreciate it (and you) very much!

Yours truly,

Don W.