09:06 – ESR long ago predicted that Android would kick Apple’s iPhone ass. I saw some recent figures yesterday that illustrate just how right Eric was. Apple’s worldwide market share of smart phones is about one unit of every seven sold. Android pretty much gets the other six. Blackberry is rapidly becoming an asterisk, and is now trying to sell the company. For what it’s worth, which isn’t much.
I got a couple dozen chemistry kits built yesterday, which gives me a bit of a breather. Today I need to cut purchase orders for stuff we’ve run short/out of. I actually did the first one last night. We’re completely out of the 650 mg sodium bicarbonate tablets that are included in both chemistry kits. The last time I ordered those, a year ago, I paid about $12 for a bottle of 1,000. The place I bought them from last year no longer carries the 650 mg tablets, only 325 mg tablets in bottles of 100 rather than 1,000. So I checked around and found that the price had gone up significantly and there were few sources offering the 650 mg bottles of 1,000. Amazon stocks them at about $18/bottle, a 50% increase in one year. They had only four bottles in stock, so I ordered all of them. A bottle is about 40 kits worth, so we’re covered for another 150+ kits once those arrive. A quick look at my inventory sheet tells me that the only other chemistry kit components we’re critically short of are purple Sharpies and 9V batteries, so I’ll get a gross of each of those on order as well.
This weekend, Barbara will continue labeling bottles for a new batch of 60 biology kits, and get started on labeling bottles for a new batch of 60 chemistry kits. I’m also expecting an order from a state distance-learning virtual school for 40 custom AP chemistry kits. That may or may not happen, but I suspect it will. If it does, I’ve told them we can ship within 30 days after receipt of order/payment, so things are likely to get even busier around here.
09:11 – Wow. I just checked Amazon, which now says it has nine bottles of the sodium bicarbonate tablets in stock at $19.99/bottle, versus the $17.79/bottle I paid less than 12 hours ago. Geez.