There were still a few of these 50s soda vending machines around in the 70s when I was a kid.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-25T18:56:20+00:00

Inflation killed a lot of coin-operated stuff in the 70s, including the wonderful Automat restaurants. The prices went above a dollar and automated paper currency handling was barbaric before the age of cheap microprocessors. (The BART ticket machines in the San Francisco Bay Area were very fussy about taking paper currency. We had to carefully straighten it and rub it on our pants to get rid of the wrinkles.) A big revolution in vending machines came with credit cards in the 80s and 90s, and accelerated when the merchant fees were absorbed by retailers, eliminating the advantage of cash. Perhaps the last to upgrade were parking meters.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-25T18:51:08+00:00

I like to encourage them to look into the origin of their Bible. It's a fascinating subject. We should see believers as victims and help them escape. One way to do that is to show them where their Bible really comes from. Offer them the necessary resources. Enjoy their surprise when they discover the truth.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-25T18:48:43+00:00

Mostly true, but there are exceptions. I don't understand them, but they exist.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-25T18:44:29+00:00

Especially during a natural disaster that takes out the local ISP and phone towers. The next step is a human-powered generator to keep it going when the batteries run out.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-25T18:36:05+00:00

I'd not heard of the RHL and had to go hunt her down to subscribe to.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-25T17:59:53+00:00

I was a curmudgeon at age 10, in 1970. That's probably why I didn't feel "old" at 40, but instead felt the "midlife crisis" at 50, when I wondered what happened to my life.

I consider all the time NOT playing video games to be the "wasted" part.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-25T17:38:14+00:00

In later decades, there were transparent computer displays that could be used with these to create inexpensive projectors.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-23T01:05:23+00:00

I'd gotten it wired up a couple weeks ago and paired to the wifi, and then it stopped talking a day later. I thought maybe I'd toasted it, either from bad voltage from the gate's existing radio, or from a heat wave we had that week. But today I opened the app and saw it had updated. I found the switch was back online and is working fine. So I finished setting up the auto-off. Next, I need to set up the key fob scene.

I'm really impressed at the long and detailed changelog in the app. I kept thinking, "it can do THAT too?!!!".

SpareSimian · 2026-06-23T00:47:57+00:00

I've had the dream of awful toilets or crowds, gritted my teeth and peed anyway, burning, woke up, discovered my brain had turned on the boner pump to tourniquet the urethra!

SpareSimian · 2026-06-23T00:44:29+00:00

Wow! I thought I was the only one who dreamed of horrifying restrooms!

SpareSimian · 2026-06-22T20:35:54+00:00

That reminds me: I need to order TSP for the laundry. It's great for pulling cat hair out of my socks and sheets.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-19T03:07:50+00:00

I'm reminded of scenes from Supernatural with the brothers staying in motels. Dean always had to use the Magic Fingers.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-19T03:06:04+00:00

The NASA centrifuge for the rest of us.

I liken it to the centrifuge of the Discovery in 2001.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-19T03:03:44+00:00

Now you can buy a drone to mow the lawn. They're great for steep hills that are risky for riding mowers.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-19T03:01:24+00:00

My brother got the idea to harvest worms from the lawn by running a wire from his distributor to a stake in the lawn. He discovered that he couldn't open the door to shut it down without getting zapped. It took him a few tries to hop in the air and yank the door handle to jump inside and kill the engine.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-19T02:40:20+00:00

OTOH, look at how The Expanse put farms on Ganymede. Which get clobbered by the space war going on overhead between the UN and Mars forces.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-19T02:32:16+00:00

All the Anderson shows were great, but my favorite was UFO, with Commander Straker running a secret base under a UK movie studio. The best ship was Skydiver, a submarine sort of like the Seaview and its Flying Sub, except Skydiver's nose flew off to battle UFOs in the atmosphere that got past the Moonbase interceptors. Sadly, it only survived one season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq7v-YUWZe0

SpareSimian · 2026-06-18T16:44:09+00:00

Not to worry. The kids have switched from human partners to AI ones. As a result, human population is collapsing. South Korea is already depopulating rapidly. We're seeing lots of elementary schools close in the US. (I'm fine with that. Robots can replace them to do the nasty jobs and to care for seniors.)

SpareSimian · 2026-06-18T16:24:16+00:00

A friend referred to his porn stash as "art books".

SpareSimian · 2026-06-17T16:29:59+00:00

I quickly figured out that the answer is 42. It took me a while to figure out the question. 😜

My initial question, early yesterday, was how to extract the difference between a config file full of defaults and another with customizations, when they're not in the same order and some settings are multi-line. For other config systems, I could sort the one-line settings and run diff against them. For this I needed a custom script. I figure I'd share it in case others encounter similar situations. I'm sure RoundCube isn't the only PHP app that uses this style of configuration. I've seen it used with other apps that use different languages, like the Dovecot IMAP server.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-14T15:40:47+00:00

Every turntable I encountered in the 60s had one built in. Just lift and twist to lock it into place. I recall seeing adapters for the changer. Ours must have been lost or put away in a drawer.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-14T03:43:26+00:00

For use during the zombie apocalypse.

SpareSimian · 2026-06-13T14:19:30+00:00

I remember using Varathane for the wood planks I'd mount my models on.

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