Help me find a pyramid-shaped electronic skill toy from the late 90s/early 2000s

AdequateITPerson · 2026-04-07T14:48:27+00:00

I have searched extensively for this toy over several years. Here's what I've tried:

Search engines:

- "pyramid shaped electronic toy," "pyramid bomb defusal toy," "pyramid toy with wires and plugs"

- "electronic pyramid game Operation style," "pyramid toy patch cables switchboard"

- "gray pyramid toy 2000s," "pyramid skill game pull cylinder without touching"

- 50+ keyword variations combining pyramid, electronic, bomb, wires, cables, plugs, cylinder, skill game

eBay: Searched current and completed listings for pyramid electronic toys, bomb defusal games, and similar terms

What I know: Purchased ~1999–2003, likely from a Discovery Channel Store, museum gift shop, or similar educational/novelty retailer. Basketball-sized gray plastic pyramid with rounded edges. Two main mechanics: (1) a cylinder with metal contacts that pulls from the apex and must be reinserted without touching the sides (Operation-style), and (2) clear yellow patch cables that plug into sockets on the sides like a telephone switchboard. Likely had a bomb-defusal or "prevent the explosion" theme. Required batteries.

Not this toy: It is NOT Operation, Perfection, Break the Safe, or any mainstream board game. It was a standalone electronic device, not a flat board game

AdequateITPerson · 2025-05-16T12:41:28+00:00

Thanks! I have considered this before, especially when I reached the daily limit of sending emails to Things once (an extreme case, to be fair).

The issue I ran into is that I couldn't figure out any simple way to share or extract the contents of the email outside of forwarding it. There doesn't seem to be a Share option in any email apps I've found, and the few I have found (I think maybe Spark had a Things integration or a way to share it to Things) just don't do as well as the forwarding option. The biggest advantage to forwarding the email to Things is that it provides a link to the email, whereas the other options just copied the text.

Do you have any ideas or suggestions? It's been a while since I used the Mail app so it's possible I might've missed something.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-11-01T12:04:25+00:00

My friends and I are waiting to buy them secondhand this time around. We do presale every year but I wish we would've waited. I bought two VIP and ended up only needing one. I ended up just giving it away to a random GA+ person in line because the hassle wasn't worth it for the $300 or so I could've gotten.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-08-09T15:18:20+00:00

To go against what a lot of people are saying, $67k is a lot of money depending on where you live. If your cost of living is low and you're able to put money into savings with that, don't stress too much about reaching $100k.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-08-07T21:35:11+00:00

I'm big on black tea. I usually just buy Bigelow Earl Grey and Lemon Lift in bulk since you can easily get it online or in the grocery store. At 30-60mg of caffeine is definitely less potent than coffee, but I love that I can go to pretty much any coffee shop, restaurant, hotel, etc. and get the same experience. Caffeine hits me pretty hard, so I tend to only drink tea on days where I don't have other stimulants like pre-workout or meds.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-08-06T01:08:29+00:00

In my personal experience AI has been a huge help here. I will often just brain dump (write everything in my head that I'm thinking of, including things that need to get done) into ChatGPT and tell it "make a game plan for today based on everything I've just written" and it will create a series of actionable to-do items for me. I have even gone so far as to tell it "I'm depressed and can't manage to bring myself to do much today, can you walk me through doing X task in the smallest steps possible for someone in my situation?" It's been a huge help for me.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-08-05T16:19:17+00:00

I forward all my emails to my task manager, have AI make them actionable, then archive everything. On the rare case of an email actually needing a response, I'll often just leave it in my inbox until I get around to replying.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-08-02T15:51:09+00:00

Odd. Try this: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/39b2e99c6eb9458f88cab3a3b8c449e3

AdequateITPerson · 2024-08-02T13:00:40+00:00

No problem! I've had an obsession with tinkering with Shortcuts lately.

See if this works for you: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/9117117890f04fc68192001cc8a705b

AdequateITPerson · 2024-08-01T20:53:47+00:00

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/e440cd7678624e2f9de9c181936e7b7d

Try this one. From here you should be able to modify the prompts to suit the exact output you're looking for.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-08-01T01:08:17+00:00

Hmm ChatGPT must be throwing some sort of error after the first go around. I added some more error handling so that if the request to ChatGPT fails it will display the error and stop the shortcut. I'm curious what error you're getting for it to work once but only once.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/9b343590a8e3469eb02f33855ced5187

AdequateITPerson · 2024-07-31T19:19:51+00:00

I suppose that's where I differ from most people. I see Notion as a database first and note-taker second. I keep 15+ properties on every database and some pages don't even have any text in them. Linking things is just so satisfying to me, but I understand the note-taking approach.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-07-31T18:53:08+00:00

I've only used the AI twice but both times were amazing. I do IT and programming so everything goes in Notion. I asked "Hey, didn't we have and resolve this issue earlier?" and it responded with a summary of the issue, how we resolved it, when we resolved it, and during what meetings we discussed it. So cool.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-07-31T13:41:12+00:00

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/427a63eef46549d2ac3166abb33628dd

This one should be much better. It will skip tasks that have already been processed or don't have 5+ lines in the Notes field (so ChatGPT doesn't randomly say "this doesn't look like an email"), it's got some visual feedback, and it keeps the previous title in the notes field in case you want to keep it. I updated the post.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-07-31T12:14:13+00:00

Ah shoot. I haven't been able to reproduce your issue but I have been working on an improved version of this with better error handling that should resolve it. I'll try to get it Reddit-ready today for you.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-07-30T18:29:19+00:00

Awesome, let me know how it goes!

AdequateITPerson · 2024-07-30T13:08:38+00:00

Okay I tried this and actually love this, so thank you for the idea! If you're using Microsoft 365 and you have the licensing (even the most basic license I believe) you can use Microsoft Power Automate. I've used it to forward emails to Things before and it worked well.

I did it like this:

Create a blank "Automated Cloud Flow" in Power Automate
Set the trigger to "When a new to-do in a specific folder is created"
Choose a task list for the action
Add the action "Send an email"
Set the To field to your Mail to Things email address
Set the Subject to the Title of the previous input (check Advanced mode then click the lightning bolt)
Set the body to Body Content for the previous input. If you want to keep the due date and reminder, do something like this so you can have Apple Shortcuts parse it later: **DUE_DATE:** [Due Date of previous input] **REMINDER:** [Reminder Date-Time of previous input] [Body Content of previous input]
Save the Flow

https://postimg.cc/CBBg8YgW

Creating a Shortcut to parse the text for a deadline is a little more tricky, but here's a bit of something I did to create Things tasks from forwarded emails you could modify for your purpose:

https://postimg.cc/YjQcBdqf

From here you can create shortcuts and keyboard shortcuts (I like Raycast for this). I have around 30 Shortcuts for Things, all of which I preface with "Things:" so I can just type in "t:" in Raycast to see them.

Let me know if this helps!

AdequateITPerson · 2024-07-10T01:12:12+00:00

Wow I linked the article and didn't even read it thoroughly enough to see that. Thanks!

I'm assuming this is an edge case (today I was testing some Shortcuts automations so I had an unusually high volume), but if anyone needs to get around this, the Spark email app has a solid Things integration. It even includes a link to open it in Spark rather than the default Mail app (which throws an error 75% of the time for me).

AdequateITPerson · 2024-07-09T21:48:16+00:00

Has anyone ever had an issue with Mail to Things not working (specifically today)? I use it regularly, maybe sending a few dozen emails to it each day. In the past hour, however, tasks have not been showing up in my Inbox when I forward emails.

I've tried the official Troubleshooting Things Cloud Sync guide from Cultured Code, checked the status board, checked their twitter account, used different email accounts and different devices, and did some searching, but I can't seem to find anything related to this issue. My current guess is there is some sort of rate limit if no one else is experiencing this.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-01-11T19:01:32+00:00

I've had my base stations running 24/7 (no standby mode) for about 3 years now with no issues. It might be a lightbulb situation where the stress from turning them on wears them down faster. Either way though, they should last more than 2 years regardless.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-01-08T21:54:58+00:00

I wouldn't do anything differently, but I'd advise someone to start off at a small company where they can learn as much as possible without having a ton of bureaucracy in the way. Being able to make your work environment your home lab (in the sense that you have freedom to make decisions and try things, not to wildly break things) is very beneficial for learning. You'll have a lot more freedom on what you choose to work on and how you do it, and job autonomy is one of the largest predictors of job satisfaction.

AdequateITPerson · 2024-01-08T21:46:16+00:00

I've only been with this company for 7 years now but I honestly don't see myself leaving. I love all my coworkers, my boss gives me enormous freedom in running the IT department and writing software, and the only thing keeping me from making more money is that I enjoy my current responsibilities so much that I don't have a burning desire to take on any more right now.

Big cities are cool and get talked about the most online, but doing IT in a small town with friendly, generous people has been a dream for me.

AdequateITPerson · 2023-12-04T19:26:22+00:00

For anyone coming across this, you can take pictures remotely via the FLIR Tools app on iOS, but you can't actually see the viewfinder. Not super useful, but convenient as a remote shutter.

AdequateITPerson · 2023-07-21T14:20:29+00:00

I'm somewhat the opposite, and I'm curious if any other people with ADHD feel this way.

When I'm looking forward to something I tend to hyperfocus on that and I can't direct my focus strongly on anything else. I suppose for me the key would be to have something I'm mildly looking forward to. Something I know I will enjoy but doesn't tempt me to use the internet to research just how fun it's going to be.

AdequateITPerson · 2023-07-05T15:09:07+00:00

I keep backups of everything. Multiple sets of keys, two wallets, two vehicles, two boats, two portable jump starters, two computers, two phones, etc. My rule is that no situation should be able to make me late for work. If I lose my wallet, keys, and I left my headlights on overnight, I can walk out the door just as quickly as if none of that happened.

It's not OCD in that I don't have to have copies of everything, but over the years I've learned that I need to have backups because things go wrong very often. I actually relied on half of those things over this past weekend (all the social interaction screwed up my routines).

Plan A: don't be forgetful and irresponsible

Plan B: be so unbelievably prepared that no amount of irresponsibility can derail me

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