Outfitter Under the Stars
Outfitter Under the Stars
A lot of modern literature leaves out that Vampires suffer from Arithmomania: a compulsion to count things. In this respect the most accurate TV portrayal of vampires isn’t The Vampire Diaries, but Sesame Street. Traditionally for defense one would carry a pocketful of seeds, like mustard seeds to scatter in front of the vampire, which would slow them down because they’d feel the need to count them all. Our original products were things like mustard and collard seeds, traditional crossbows with wooden bolts, silver crosses, garlic, etc. But then we got forward-looking and started app development. Our big one is the app that will count things for you. You snap a picture and the edge detection algorithm gives you a guaranteed accurate count. Of course we track our users and what they count. Industrial users are easy to weed out. We take special interest in users that count everything, and are mostly active at night. We then entered into a data sharing agreement with the FBI and Interpol. We correlate our nocturnal power users with suspected mass murder incidents. Did you know that the FBI estimates that at any given time in the US there are 50-300 mass murderers? Probably only about 10-25% of those are vampires by our estimates. To be clear, we don’t actually hunt those with bloodlust, we’re just the outfitters. There’s always a range of hunters from semi-pro to professional who need our supplies. We try to discourage the rank amateurs, as we prefer repeat customers. We resell wooden bullets that were designed for crowd control, and offer an increased charge behind them. A quieter option is our pneumatic-driven wooden harpoon: the Van Helsing. You do have to carry SCUBA tanks on your back to drive them, but they’re quite effective I’m told. Other big sellers are our semi-automatic and pump-action crossbows. The advent of full-spectrum LEDs had led to our new Cyclops 10 million candlepower flashlights with extra UV boost. Our users report they’re nearly as effective as native sunlight. Heck, they’ll even turn a plain-blood a bit crispy. Carry these and a six-pack of our garlic-infused flashbangs and you’ll be all set and we’ll turn a tidy profit. I hope you can tell from the above descriptions that new technologies have swung the balance of power markedly toward the vampire hunters. We were safely behind the scenes as anonymous arms supplier to the adventurous. At least we were until the day we got the email that simply read “We know who you are.”
Food Service Fits and Starts
Food Service Fits and Starts
The Price was Right Years ago, a group of friends and I went out for pizza every Friday night after work to the same restaurant. We were regulars and became favorites of the manager, Price. He was a good manager, skilled in his craft. One night he told us about food service managers he had no use for: the mom-and-pop shops. These were people who had no experience in food service management: didn’t know proper operating margins, organization, training, supplies, regulations, etc. Often these mom-and-pop operations start with a lot of their friends saying “You make such wonderful XYZ, you should open a restaurant.” Where I live, XYZ seems to be mosty BBQ. What are the most common where you live? The vast majority of these mom-and-pop shops fail quickly. BBQ to Gone My wife and I went to one such nearby mom-and-pop BBQ place a couple of years ago. The food was good, but there were some rough edges. I went to their Facebook page and listed how they could improve their customer experience. They liked my post, then implemented none of my suggestions. They reorganized their service model from table service to ordering at the counter, which introduced even more rough edges. They were gone inside a year. Another new local BBQ place sprouted on the other side of town recently. The food was, again, pretty good. But you could tell that nobody behind the counter had ever had any commercial food service experience. There was a new teenage boy on staff, probably his first day. He was being trained by the “watch what I do” method. There were no stations or duties. Everybody just pitched in and did that they perceived needed to be done. I doubt they’ll make it till next summer. I grieve for these families and the amount of effort, time, money and frustration they expend on a failed enterprise. Welcome to the Cottage But there is arising a new mode that doesn’t put as much of a family’s resources at risk: The cottage foods movement. This is a carve-out of most states’ food service licensing regulations that allow people to cook certain types of foods at home and sell direct to the consumer. There is of course some regulation, commonly: completing a food handling online course, labeling requirements, can’t cross state lines, etc. The requirements vary from state to state, but the regulations are only a fraction those for traditional food service. Here’s a typical one. Their fare would be fresh sourdough bread, apple cider donuts, kettle corn balls, etc. It’s often seasonal, as the kitchen owner will rent a table at a local Fall festival and sell to the hungry fair-goers. Supporting this cottage industry are a number of Facebook groups, generally organized by state due to the regulatory landscape. It seems to me that there may be a business opportunity here. If someone with food service experience could partner with those adept at developing and supporting online vertical software, they could have thousands of easily-reachable prospects. Such an online offering might include:
How Much Gold Does It Take to Make a Goldrush?
How Much Gold Does It Take To Make a Goldrush?
In touring the Dahlonega Gold Museum, they told us that during the Dahlonega Gold Rush (the first major gold rush in the U.S.) three million ounces of gold were mined. But how much is that, really? First, let’s get it to kilograms to work with it more. Precious metals are almost measured in Troy ounces, so if we go to Google.com and type in “3,000,000 troy ounces in kilograms” it tells us “93,310.4304 kilograms.” (or the hard way, 32.150747 troy ounces per kilogram) We take another unit conversion turn and find it’s about 102 short (English) tons. Ok, about 100 tons of gold makes a Gold Rush, but how large a cube would that be? According to the Internet, the density of gold is 19.32 grams per cubic centimeter, so: Dropping down to grams: 93,310,430.4 grams x 1 cm3 / 19.32 grams = 4829732.9 cubic centimeters. How long on a side is that? We take the cube root and get 169 centimeters, or 1.69 meters, or about 5 feet, 6 1/2 inches. So all the gold taken from the Dahlonega Gold Rush would form a cube about 5 1/2 feet on a side, that weighs 100 tons. If you’re interested, more information about Gold Rushes. Enjoy!