Floating Anvil

[yogi]

How do you make an anvil float? You put it in a tub of mercury, of course ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5U63IGmy6Q

[Kellemora]

Now that was cool!

[yogi]

Agreed. My first though was to wonder where he got all that mercury to play with.

[Kellemora]

Actually Mercury is quite cheap sorta if you buy it in bulk, but also quite expensive to buy in small amounts.
100 grams in bulk only costs about $1.75 if you are buying like 10 kilos, but you can turn around and sell that in 100 gram amounts for 50 bucks easily.

I used to buy small vials of Mercury from our electronics store when I was a magician. It was 1/4th the price of what the magic shop sold it for. And if you remember Gilbert Chemistry Sets, you got a vial of Mercury in it, and could buy more at most hobby shops that carried the Gilbert line.

I'll admit, he sure did have a lot of it. But there is also a good possibility he didn't buy it, just borrowed it from a company who makes Mercury Switches. After all, it looked like he had it in gallon jugs that did not say Mercury on them, that I could see. So he may have filled those jugs from 30 or 55 gallon drums owned by someone else.

When we added the Fish Factory to our Hydroculture building, we had large vats of liquid nitrogen used to flash freeze the fish fillet packages. Workers were always cobbing some to play with, me included, hi hi.

[yogi]

I do remember the Gilbert chemistry sets. Some of the tings in there I replenished at the local pharmacy. All they wanted to know is what I was going to use it for. My reply of "chemistry experiments" was good enough for them. Now and days I doubt that you can get a vile of sulfur or mercury at CVS. They would call the cops who would interrogate you for hours. LOL

I guess like any other raw material mercury can be had in bulk quantities. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would be readily available given it's toxicity to humans. But then, it's a lot like asbestos. You have to eat a lot of it to suffer any measurable consequences.

[Kellemora]

One of the reasons I don't make the AZ-NO3 with the additives anymore is you have to have a licensed lab to buy close to half of the ingredients it took to make those additives.
It was also a royal pain to make as well. Usually, the smallest size you could buy of one of those ingredients was either in a pint or a quart. And if you considered I only used 1 to 2 drops in gallon of water to make it as I used it, again by drops in the final mixture, and most of them expire, it was cost prohibitive.

I was very lucky though, as I found a company who used many of the same ingredients I did for something else, and sold them almost all of those ingredients for half of what they paid for them, but even so, a tad more than I paid for them, so I actually came out ahead on that deal. Plus I could buy a pre-blended product from them that had all but about three or four of the ingredients I needed or wanted in my additive, and those particular ingredients were found in things I could pick up OTC from the drug store. I didn't necessarily like the price they charged for their blended product, but in the big scheme of things, it came out a whole lot cheaper for me to go that route.

Reminds me sorta of when I was in Boot Camp and a group of Boy Scouts came to visit our Fort.
They saw those Nickel Coke Machines and bought out every single bottle, filling their backpacks.
We also had ice cream cones for a nickel and one kid bought at least ten ice cream cones for himself.
Now it was like 85 degrees outside, and although he kept licking on each one as fast as he could, they all melted down super fast, making a mess on the benches and the concrete slabs under them.

I sorta did the same thing with one of the ingredients I used a lot of. The store had a big sale, like 70% off, so I bought out their entire inventory, save about 3 boxes in case someone else wanted some.
Now although they technically don't expire, since they were packaged in cardboard containers, the majority of them turned hard as a rock. Plus humidity caused a few of them to almost turn into like glass, making them totally useless.
At first I used like a mortar in pistil to break them back up into a sand like texture. Then I found I could use a certain type of screen and just slide the blocks back and forth across this screen, sorta like dragon skin used for auto body work.
But once they turned clearish, nothing would break them back up anymore.
Even so, I still was able to use most of it up, which saved me a lot of money, especially after the price kept going up after that. I almost had sticker shock the next time I went to purchase that ingredient. What was normally priced around 89 cents, that I got for 20 cents, was now over 2.10 for the same size box.

[yogi]

If there is a lesson to be learned from your experiences, it has to be that small businesses cannot rely on the economy of scale. It's a law of economics and not some manufacturer being greedy. Making that first batch of the special ingredient you need is costly. Since you were one of the few people buying it, you were burdened with nearly the full cost of production. I don't know of a a way around the problem of limited supply. That's the price you must pay when you deal with a specialty product.

[Kellemora]

Believe me, I know first hand.
When I invented my planting system, in order to go into production, besides all the design drawings and patent fees, plus engineering drawings to have the molds made, getting time on the machines was also very expensive.

You may remember me saying about the Liner used in my planting system.
I brought two pots home and set them on the kitchen counter and asked my wife is she could tell the difference between them. She couldn't of course because they were identical, came out of the same mold.
After some study she finally asked what was the difference between the two pots.
I said simple. This one marked #2 only cost me 5 bucks, but this one marked #1 cost 140 thousand dollars.

[yogi]

Q.E.D.

[Kellemora]

You would never believe how much money it took to get Wonder Plants up and running.
Wish I had that money now, hi hi.

[yogi]

They say more than half the new businesses started fail during the first year. It has to do with an unexpected high cost of starting up. I've not run a business of my own but I do know I'd need a lot more money than I can tap into to do it. They also say you need money to make money. I guess that's why I always worked for somebody else.

[Kellemora]

I've started several businesses with little to no money.
Or in some cases, financed the small amount I needed to get going, knowing a few sales would take care of debt service.

My AZ-NO3 product was first made by mixing my formula in a 5 gallon bucket, dunking the bottle in the bucket until full, tiling it to empty some for the required air space in the bottle, the cap put on, and then it was rinsed clean in the sink.
I printed the labels on an ink jet printer, and laminated them with clear tape like used on shipping cartons.
As I sold more, I bought a little fish aquarium pump and used a U shaped tube to help fill the bottles without dunking. They still had to be washed.
Later on down the road, I added a filler head that shut off when the bottle was filled.
Then added more filler heads so I could do four bottles at once.
Now I used an electronic filling machine, and self-adhesive laser printed labels.
As business grew, I could afford to add better equipment and blending systems.
Now I even have a labeling machine as well.
So it is possible to start with next to nothing and grow from there.

[yogi]

I think it helps that you had a family experienced in business. That kept you out of the 50% failure bracket. You also have good business sense. I"m also not sure those failures for new businesses are all due to financial problems. You got to know how to use the resources you have. It's also true that you may not need a lot of cash to get things started. That depends on what you are trying to do, of course. If you want to run a restaurant, for example, you won't be able to open the doors on a few hundred dollars in the bank. Probably the most significant part of a successful business is the willingness to take risks. Being timid rarely results in big time successes.

[Kellemora]

The first restaurant I simply took over for the owner when he retired. I did have to put 25k down and paid him so much a month after that based only on a percentage of sales, until I reached another 25k or he died. I had reached the 25k and don't doubt that old guy is still alive today. Hmm, he would be well over 125 years old, so I guess he's gone.

The second restaurant I was in an after-the-fact partnership to buy into a franchise. Because I was only 1/3 a partner, it only cost me 1/3 of the franchise fee. But then out of my own pocket I added a second restaurant right next door, not part of the franchise. However, we used the same kitchen, and it was treated like additional dining area at the time we set it up. It cost me a little over 15k to renovate and add the equipment for that new side, but it technically was all mine.
The franchise changed their sauce formula and almost everybody hated it. There were a few who liked the new formula though. We tried doctoring the sauce to make it taste better, and the home office got wind of this and threatened to pull our franchise. However, we lucked out, and some guy who wanted into the business offered to buy us out, both buildings, and the franchise, so we jumped on it! He stayed in business as a franchise store until the franchise itself went belly up. I don't know if he stayed in the business or not, because it was many miles from my house after I moved further north. It was still a good ways from my house when I owned it, but when you accept a franchise, you have to take where they pick and the location we wanted was already spoken for.

[yogi]

I'm certain the number of business scenarios is limited only by man's imagination. There are any number of ways to get started. The stats I've read, however, seem to indicate that half the people starting a new business don't know enough or have the resources to make it a success. Your buying into an existing restaurant wasn't starting fresh. It might have been an new venture for you personally, but the business was there and thriving before you became interested in it. You didn't have to do a lot of things a fresh start would require.

You mentioned that the fellow you bought the business from would be 125 years old today. That made me think of my dad who passed away when I was in my early twenties and before being married. He would have been 111 if he survived until this year. As luck would have it he passed on when he was only 56. Mom went on to be 88. I'm shooting for 93. It was nice knowing you just in case I don't make it.

[Kellemora]

According to my doctors, I'm already on borrowed time.
I've looked at many of the charts, most are close to the same with only minor variances.
How long will you live after being diagnosed with Stage 1, 2, 3, or 4 COPD.
Unlike Cancer where 4 is the worst, COPD is numbered in reverse, 1 is the worst.
But most folks usually use 4 as the worst so folks understand, it is bad.
Basically, from the time I was diagnosed, I should have only lived about 5 years.
I'm currently on year 8.
At my current stage, which is now going downhill fast, I was expected 3 to 6 months.
That was 9 months ago.
But if you read the FINE PRINT at the bottom of these charts, they say that is based on 40 to 70%.
To me, that means it is not even a good guess.

A mortality table is only an average anyhow. So if they say the average life expectancy for humanoids is 74 years, that means with so many living to 100, there will be only so many living to 50. Which one are we? Just over 50 or just under 100? Nobody knows!

[yogi]

I'm suspicious of those mortality tables too, especially when insurance companies and taxing bodies use them. There is a difference between average and mean. If the average end of life age is 74 that means some die at birth and others live to 148. We know that high end number is not likely. However, given the entire spectrum of possible death ages we might note that 40% - 70% of the population dies at age 74. That means most of the deaths occur within one standard deviation of age 74. I don't know why there would be such a wide spread. Seems like somebody didn't do their homework when they came up with that number. It might be hard to know the age most people die globally, but it should be easy enough to track it down per country, state, city, or whatever. That mathematical mean number would be different depending on the geography and other living conditions. I guess that in your case there is a 30% uncertainty (70 minus 40) and it would not be unreasonable to expect you to live 30% longer than those mean figures would suggest.

I'm pretty sure it boils down to what a lot of people believe: only god knows when your time will come.

[Kellemora]

I remember back when I was doing my thesis on social security, the calculations were done nothing at all like they do mortality table calculations. But then too, I was only doing those from age 16 to 100. So anyone who died as an infant up to early teens was not counted. And not all kids started working at 16 in any appreciable way as far as social security was concerned. I used only 45 years of paying into SS for my thesis, even if they paid in for 47 to 50 years. I also deducted 10% off the rate of inflation for each year, just to make sure I was not building up too high of a stockpile of money. This basically meant if inflation was 3% I only used 2.7% for the increase put into social security each year.
Yes, I was shorting how much money was really put into the system doing it this way, but I also knew I wouldn't end up with a questionable figure when I was finished with my calculations.
Another hard part was getting accurate data on the number of people who died and at what ages. Took me a couple of months to come up with any meaningful data I could use and consider fairly accurate.
You stop paying into SS when you die, so I had to have an accurate adjustment for the amount going into the system.
Also have to calculate the number of folks drawing early SS and those drawing at 65 and how long they drew SS before they died.

I don't have the exact figures at my fingertips anymore. But SS projected a date of when they would break even, I think this date was like 1974 or 1976, and they hit the break even point before that time, 1972.
Their were a few break even points for different things too, which could confuse the issue.
The break even point I was talking about here is the point at which they could never pay out more than they were taking in, even if all the baby boomers lived to be 100, which is impossible.
Other break even points were. When no one would be drawing SS who did not pay into it. Meaning all of those who were put on SS 3 years after it was started in 1935 and they began making SS payments to those retirees. These early payments were a burden on the system, and this money was coming from those who were paying into the system to pay those who didn't. It took a little over 22 years before the last person who never paid into SS expired.
Then it took until 1972 before the system fell into perfect balance, no one was paid who did not pay into the system.
What this means is the older folks who didn't start paying into the system at 18, but were in their 40s to 60s when they began paying into the system, so did not pay in their entire life also finally died off.
At this point in time, SS was in perfect balance. There would never be any shortfall. It was no longer a Ponzi Scheme, hi hi. Everyone who lived, would get back money from what they paid in, some more than they paid in, most less than they paid in, because the baby boomers were fueling the pot, so it had to grow to cover them in their retirement.
My thesis was long history when they reached the next major milestone. The point in time where, even if every baby boomer lived to be 100, it would not deplete the system. Or another way of putting it, everyone was getting back what they put into it, plus interest, to the point the SS could not possibly go broke.

The sad thing about SS is, instead of SS, it would have been a mandated saving program, most of those currently on SS would have earned enough interest they would be getting 3 to 4 times more per month than what they get from SS.
In the beginning, when the government borrowed from SS, they agreed to a certain percentage rate. The government kept defaulting on their interest and kept voting to reduce the amount of interest until it was next to nothing. They did pay off their tab with SS at less than 1% interest. But then turned around and stole all the money right back again from SS. So SS technically has NO Money, and now relies on the government to make the payments to the retirees.
And since our government is not solvent, yes we should worry!

[yogi]

Social Security satisfied a need that could not be met any other way. Over the years people became reliant on the system because it was as successful as it was. That's still the case today. That means there was a time when our government did not have a way to provide a minimum income for people who retired. Thus it was all seen as a god-sent solution. The system grew radically from it's humble beginnings which got the attention of a group of folks who figured the government should not be in the business of supplying a minimum income. Too much like communism, or something. Well, yes, you say the system is/was self-sufficient, but is that true? The outflows seem to be overtaking the income and the whole system may go bankrupt in a few years if something isn't done to avoid it.

The current line of thought is to privatize all that social security provides, including the healthcare aspects. That takes the burden off the government and, in theory, would make a lot of private companies wealthy and willing to provide said services. Being privatized, however, means participation and paying into the system cannot be legislated. A lot of people would simply drop out and spend the money elsewhere. Those who remain would end up paying a lot more than with the forced contributions in place today.

The government is "insolvent" by choice. Back when a certain Mr Clinton was president the budget was balanced. For good or for evil that just shows it is possible. Cutting out benefits to those who need them isn't the solution, in my humble opinion.

[Kellemora]

If you look back over the years at how much more money the government takes in today than it did 25 or 50 years ago.
Can't go back 100 years because the amount they took in barely covered expenses.
But today there is so much bloat and wasteful spending, that does not benefit those paying in one iota.
Something has to give, and probably sooner than later.
The government should have never taken money out of SS coffers!
That was OUR money, not theirs, and the amount of SS we got back would have naturally went up to help balance the income to the outgo.