09:42 – Our main BK01A biology and CK01A chemistry kits are our biggest sellers by far. Between the two of them, they probably outsell all other kits combined by a ratio of 10:1 or better. But the other kits do sell, and we build them in smaller numbers to make sure they’re fresh. The dangers of that are, first, that we can get a bulk order for one of the smaller selling kits, and second, that with these kits shipping gradually, I may not notice that it’s time to build more. That’s the case right now with our FK01A forensic kits and our CK01B smaller chemistry kits, of which we’re down to only half a dozen each. The CK01B kits aren’t a problem, because they’re a subset of the full CK01A kits. We always have bottled chemicals in stock for chemistry kits, so it’s just a matter of making up CK01B chemical bags. The FKK01A forensic kits are more of a problem because they have a large number of chemicals in them, most of which are specific to the kit. So I need to make up solutions for and bottle a lot of these chemicals for the next batch. We’ll work on that this week.
My Fire HD7 is usable again. The problem was that both the Amazon Silk browser and Firefox were essentially unusable on it. Last night, I decided to install Opera mobile, which installs and runs without a problem. It’s now setup to let me browse my favorite websites and check my mail, which is all I use the Fire for. I waited so long to install Opera because it’s not my favorite browser, because I expected getting an adblocker running on it would be problematic, and because it got rotten reviews in the Amazon appstore. As it turns out, it solves all my problems with the Fire and I can now continue using it. Opera Mobile even has a built-in adblocker. It’s not nearly as good as uBlock Origin or Adblock Plus running on my desktop systems, but it’s decent for a mobile adblocker.
I need to work on a detailed shopping list before we make our next trip down to Winston for a Costco run. I agree with Barbara’s general plan, which is to continue buying stuff we actually eat that whenever possible is also suitable for long-term storage. We’ll still buy fresh and frozen foods like meats, butter, and so on, but other than that we’ll focus on canned goods, dry staples, etc. That, and non-food items, like boosting our toilet paper stores to a one-year supply.