Posted on Leave a comment

Shipping label feature fixed!!

It seems to have fixed itself, which is somewhat unsettling to me, I like to know as much as I can about the technologies I rely on.  At least its working again.  I have been very busy writing code and learning new things about serverless technologies the past couple of weeks, and will continue on this path for as long as it takes.  Estimated time before v1 launch is still at least a month away.  Now that I can print labels here again the preferred method of ordering is going to be to use this site, the fees etsy collects are rather high, more than %10 plus a small listing fee of 20 cents per listing per month.

Unfortunately the super cheap USPS shipping option for $5 has been far too slow lately.   Shipping to Texas has taken as long as 2 weeks when using ‘Ground Advantage’ from USPS, on several separate occasions as well so I don’t think it will get better.  As of today shipping via USPS for only $5 has been discontinued permanently and is being replaced with ‘USPS Priority’ which is $10.

Posted on Leave a comment

New bottles on the way, moving to plastic & foil sealed type

The following picture is of  a bottle of poppers I have used my new induction sealing machine on to melt the foil liner to the plastic.  Its been sitting with the lid off upside down for 3 days.  The only thing that is slightly concerning is the bubble that has formed.  But I also sealed one other bottle at the same time at this one but left the lid on, and no bubble formed, so I think they will be fine.  I ordered 100 of them anyways a few hours ago from a distributor in the US and they were in stock, so should be here soon, I hope.

 

I also have been trying out flame sealing glass ampules, I was only able to get the small ones to seal, and with a low success rate, 4 out of 10 I was able to seal well enough, and only one looked pretty.  Attached is a picture for kicks, I may try again with the ampules if there is any interest in them.  Its not easy to seal these!  And the large ones I couldn’t get a single one  done right.

Posted on Leave a comment

Bottles with the blue caps are no good…

I really thought I tested the blue capped bottles that were designed for cryogenics well enough but the rubber liner melts… Glad I only bought 50 of them I guess…  I got a sample of some higher quality cone lined caps that I am testing right now, I hope they work because I have 300+ glass bottles still.  Also got an induction sealing machine but it only came with two bottles, testing that out also.  Seals up fine but time will tell if those kind of bottles will hold up or not.

The black capped bottles are still okay though!

Posted on 4 Comments

Upcoming giveaway

Hello again,

I will be giving away small sample bottles again coming soon, awaiting on delivery of some foil stick on seals, the day after they arrive I will ship the samples out.  I only ask that the shipping costs and a small handling fee are paid (to cover the cost of gel ice packs and thermal mailers all orders now ship with).  For 7$ I will send 1 or 2 small bottles (5ml) of product to try out.  These are the old bottles the ones I very first started out with, I still have several hundred of them and need to get rid of them.  I will do my best on packaging them and hope that they are not handled too roughly as the orgional bottles are much thinner than the ones I use for regular orders.  As long as they are not stepped on or thrown against a hard floor they should be ok.  They will be vacuum sealed and then in a zip lock baggie so leaks ought to be minimal to nonexistent.

Thanks, D

Posted on Leave a comment

Bad news – caps are junk!

Turns out the cone lined caps that I though were so great are not so great after all.  They work great at first, but after some time in contact with the amly they become brittle and crack easily.  Of course I’m just finding this out now- way after the return period has passed.  So I have something like 400 of these that I can’t use.  Guess I’ll add them to the collection with the other couple hundred of the orgional thin glass bottles I still have…  At least the glass bottles ought to be usable still, as long as one of the other ten kinds of lids that are available for them hold up under pressure!  I should know next week, the company that sells them in bulk is sending me a sample pack to try out.

In the meantime I bought some vials on amazon designed for cryogenics, these ought to work just fine.  I am considering raising prices to cover these expenses, the lids, the ice packs, the thermal mailers, the new lab glassware, with all these unforeseen expenses and low sales volume I am not making any money at all right now.  I really don’t want to raise prices anymore than they already are, but if I don’t I will go bankrupt.  And I really need a new pair of shoes (I’m not kidding I’ve been wearing nothing but my Nike Jordan sandals for over 6 months now.  What am I, Jesus?  No of course not.

Posted on 2 Comments

Results of heat tests

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)

Posted on 1 Comment

Server upgrades, may have caused severe glitches about an hour ago (6am central time)

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.

Posted on 1 Comment

Awaiting new glassware, current batch ships out monday afternoon

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!  🙂