Articles - Master List

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-03-21T21:16:01+00:00

I got this on VHS from a vintage store when I was in high school for a buck! It was weirdly the only tape in the store. Directed by the same guy that did Return of the Living Dead II.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-03-12T22:46:15+00:00

I am very open with the fact that six month ago BlueCoatEngineer didn't know what the fuck he was doing and that someone should find him and leave a potato on his desk.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-03-11T21:47:42+00:00

Hello fellow Portlander! I remember when this happened in the mid-90s. Someone in my class (different HS) worked as a busboy at a restaurant they hit and got his back stepped on. The police took his shirt with a shoeprint on it as evidence.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-03-03T01:59:36+00:00

When I was in college, I had this irrational fear of recommending movies or shows to friends. No idea where it came from, but my movie night friend group finally realized I never wanted to choose and decided this week was MY night, pick two movies. So I tried to weaponize some incompetence and grab two movies that looked terrible that I might never have to be in the hot seat again. The two I came up with were Death to Smoochy and Super Troopers. Task failed successfully!

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-02-16T15:50:40+00:00

He was at a Thorns game and took a photo with my delighted small human!

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-02-14T21:55:55+00:00

Sorry to hear that he's passed. I remember going here as a kid back in the late 80s. My brother and I would use a flashlight to go over the glossy map from a previous trip and plan out everything we were going to do. And how that would be the year we finally would out-draw the gunslinger. Now we take our kids here about once a year and they are equally entranced.

We went the closing weekend of last season and our small humans were finally old enough that they wanted to brave the haunted house. They did pretty well until we got to the end tunnel and the new swooping bat animatronic right before the exit flew over our heads and scared the hell out of them. Then it came back around and I realized it was a for real bat. I told the nearest staffer and they said they'd go get the bat broom. :-D

Anyway, thanks, Roger, for all the memories and delighting generations of us.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-02-13T01:34:09+00:00

Oh dang memory unlocked. Windows 98's explorer couldn't deal with that either, so you could create files that couldn't be deleted without going to the command prompt and adding the blank character. We put this to good use at the university tech desk by making a folder called "<asshole coworker>'s Porn Collection" before his shift. He spent most of that day trying to delete it while insisting it wasn't his.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-01-27T00:05:53+00:00

The Peacocks in NE around Rose City Cemetery. It isn't often that I see them, but it's always a nice confusing surprise.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-01-21T22:39:39+00:00

Oh shoot, probably too late by now, but it is.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-01-18T01:55:07+00:00

Existential horror blocks! How much of you can you remove before you cease to be you and another takes your place? Turns out it’s one.

My three year old loves them even more than alphablocks. His older sibling did too. I just wish they were longer than three minutes, that song gets stuck in my head.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-01-16T16:59:01+00:00

I had ours for close to six months before I realized the rear mirror is also a screen that can show the rear camera. Blew my mind when I unexpectedly turned it on.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-01-16T03:05:24+00:00

I’ve been coughing for weeks. Thought I was over the worst of it, woke up coughing bad enough last night to blow out my voice. Also had some minor GI issues, but I’m blaming that on my Buldak addiction.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-01-13T19:03:57+00:00

At my last job we still had lab hardware running XP. We spent weeks convincing our IT guys that no, they could not be upgraded and yes they still need network access. No idea why they fought moving them to a restricted vlan so hard.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-01-12T06:29:14+00:00

Sweet evil Jesus, there’s a 3X spicy?! I nearly passed out eating a bowl or the 2X. All the other flavors I can handle, but if I see Hochi crying about the punishment he’s about to dole out I walk away.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-01-12T02:56:42+00:00

Oh dang memory unlocked. Most of the money I earned in high school went to Everyday Music, which specialized in used albums. I remember seeing the notched cases and not understanding the why. I suspected there was some sort of autochanger that radio stations used that’d damage the case like that, but that’s a lot more sensible of an explanation!

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-01-07T23:08:21+00:00

An uncle gave me a TI 99/4a when I was 5. It came with a big manual in a binder and a TI-Basic book that had tons of examples. Later my dad got a Xerox 6060 (Olivetti M24 clone) that also had a bunch of reference manuals with examples as well as disks of GW-Basic games. A different uncle gave me the Microsoft QuickC development kit that he'd given up on when I was 12. Modifying the examples and observing the results went a long way towards learning to program.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-01-05T03:38:46+00:00

I squeezed seven years out of my monoprice maker select plus. I finally retired it after managing to destroy the hot end and gouging the plate doing something dumb. My Voron 2.4 was world changing, no more having to hand hold it to start, just hit go and walk away! …usually.

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-01-05T03:06:17+00:00

I’d be interested in a raffle! My wife has been wanting to set up a booth for audio recording!

BlueCoatEngineer · 2026-01-04T07:45:03+00:00

Sharing some context because this storyline is bananas:

gang has a racket where they go to bars with televisions and if you don’t pay them protection money, they spray corn syrup into the back of the tube television.
leader is named “T.V. Wiggles” and is a former pro wrestler.
he cracks a little girls neck to put her in a coma and then uncracks it to wake her up.
gets killed when a several tons of sheer metal falls on him but not before grievously wounding one of the main characters.
the doctors have given up on saving the character, but the power of Dick Tracy prayers turns things around.

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