Halloween Glowing Bottles Prop

I wanted to try creating some glowing "potion" bottles for halloween to put in our front yard.

Because it contains Quinine, Tonic water naturally fluoresces.  So, all I needed was some bottles, some tonic water, a UV light, and a way to shine the light into the bottles in a non-obvious ways.  I started with some $7 UV lights that are meant to be used inside of a computer case.

These needed to be run on 12v so I used a small 12v power converter.  The lights were meant to be plugged into an IDE HDD power cable and run on 12v. I had to convert from the power supply terminal to the HDD terminal.  A little solder and shrink tube and the adapter was made.

We mounted the lights inside a black cardboard box with a hole in the top. This allows the light to shine up into the bottom of the bottles.

We then decorated the bottles and tested out the effect.

Here's how it looks outside at night.

Installing A Whole House Fan

The temperature at our house can change over 30 degrees between night and day.  Warm days in the 90's with cool evenings in the 60's means it's great to cool off the house at night.

The large delta in temperature makes our area perfect for a whole house fan.  These are powerful fans that pull air in at night cooling off the house and the attic.  You then turn them off on the morning and close up the house to contain the cool evening air.  

Our house is over 2600 square feet so we needed a large fan.  We decided to go with a 6400 Cubic Feet Per Minute (CFM) Quiet Cool Fan from Whole House Fans.   I roughly estimate the volume of our house to be around 22,000 cubic feet which means the entire house volume in about 4 minutes.  Of course, it takes quite a bit longer to cool off the house.  You have to suck all the heat out of the furniture walls, and electronics in the house. 

The fan came in a large box and was VERY heavy.  We had to pull the pieces into the attic one at a time. 

 

 Once the hole was done, we were able to install the plenum between the joists.

The fans hang from the rafters and connect with large hoses.  Since the fans are isolated from the ceiling joists, the fan runs quietly.  This is important since we like to run it through the night.

There are other kinds of fans that are cheaper.  Though they are also quite loud and didn't have the CFM needed for our house.  The Quiet Cool fan has been a great way to cool down the house for the hot summer days.  It was an expensive fan, so not so sure it will pay for itself. Though, I'd rather have fresh cool evening air than stuffy A/C.

Common Civil War Pistols

Every year, SCVi Charter School has a Living History event where they re-enact a civil war battle  (See Facebook Event).  Here are some common civil war pistols that would have been carried into a battle of this type.  Civil War Officers carried many different kinds of revolvers. They types purchased by the Union U.S. Military are marked in the table with **.  Though, others were privately purchased.

Replicas of some of these will be at the event for further inspection. (Marked in table with ***)

Pistol	Description	Year Introduced	Shots	Caliber	Total Number Made	Typical Barrel Length
Colt "1851" Navy **  ***	36 caliber was standard for "Navy" model guns	1850	6	36	257,348	7.5 inches
Colt "Baby Dragoon"	Pocket sized version of the earlier "Dragoon" pistol.	1848	5	31	15,000	3 -6 inches
Colt "1849" Pocket	Although not issued by the military was often purchased by soldiers and carried into the conflict.	1850	5	31	336,000	3 -6 inches
Colt 1860 Army ** ***	Standard side arm of the U.S. Army from 1860-1873	1860	6	44	200,500 (127,156 to the US Govt.)	8 inches
Colt 1861 Navy ***	36 caliber version of 1860 army with smaller grips.	1861	6	36	38,843	7.5 inches
Colt 1862 Police	Half fluted cylinder, round barrel, creeping style loading lever.	1861	5	36	28,000	4.5, 5,5, or 6.5 inches
Colt 1862 Pocket Navy	Octagonal barrel, roll engraved cylinder (Stagecoach hold up scene), hinged loading lever.	1861	5	36	19,000	4.5, 5,5, or 6.5 inches
Remington "1858" New Model Army ** ***	Supplemental issue to the  Colt 1860 until the 1864 Colt Fire where it became much more prevalent.	1861	6	44	122,000	8 Inches
Whitney Revolver **	The US Army acquired 10,587 of the revolvers between 1861 and 1864 and the US Navy purchased an additional 6,226 between 1863 and 1865.	1857	6	36	33,000	7 5/8 Inches
Star Model 1863 Revolver  **	Starr revolvers were the third-most popular handguns purchased for use by Federal military forces. About 25,000 were purchased under contract by the U.S. government.  The Starrs were the only American-made revolver produced during the Civil War that were available in both single- and double-action models.	1863	6	36	32,000	8 Inches

** Issued by Union Military to Officers.
*** Replicas will be at the event.

Resources:

• Gettysburg Reenactment Safety Guidelines
• Colt: An American Legend 
• Wikipedia : Remington New Model Army
• Wikipedia : Colt 1851 Navy Revolver
• Wikipedia : Colt 1860 Army Revolver
• National Rifle Association Museum : 1861 to 1865

On Delivering Excellent Services

I had  co-worker come to me the other day asking for help. She had been tasked with writing an article for her division on how to "Deliver Excellent Service."   I love the way management phrases can sound cool but say nothing.  What exactly needs to be excellent to make the service excellent? The Coffee? The paint on the walls?  The way people dress?  The time to complete a task?  Everything?  If you always get folks what they want on time, is that excellent?  What specifically do you do try and be excellent?  How do you measure it? 

It seems a good start would be to both determine what it means to be excellent, and then come up with a plan on how to achieve these goals. Though,  this will be highly dependent on the kind of service being provided. Are there some more general behaviors that might be helpful for most anyone in a customer driven, support driven, or a service driven role?  Here's a few that I have used.

1. Exceed your customers expectations
• If you take your car in for new tires and an oil change,  and found that they have washed our car and given you an air freshener; your expectations have been exceeded. You'll probably never go anywhere else again.
• This requires understanding what your customers really want. 
2. Ensure that your team members are the most knowledgeable, motivated, and service driven people in the business. 
• Knowledgeable (Mastery) - Invest in training through classes, conferences, and 20% time. Keep a team of curious "A" players who constantly want to learn and grow.
• Motivated (Autonomy) - Give folks autonomy to choose their hours and tasks. Autonomy is very motivating.
• Service Driven (Purpose) - Maintain a mindset that it's a privilege to be asked by folks to help them.  Have folks focus on how they can be more service driven.  (Excellence Attitude)
3. The team succeeds or fails as a team.
•  Individual focused rewards such as bonuses or commissions drive individual competition which break apart the team. You need the team to cooperate so incentives must be split evenly across the whole team.   (Think Fire department, not Car Dealership)
• Focus the team on the problem and let them choose ways to be excellent. The team is empowered to accomplish goal sin the way that works best for them.