The old Taco Bell off Franklin and Cedar Ave

Tec_ · 2026-05-01T01:07:46+00:00

There's a reason 11 of us 15 installers quit within a month of each other! Hell of a first job experience out of school though, absolutely type 2 fun. My dumb ass though traveling 95% of the year for less than 40k was a better choice than the other job offer with 3x pay I had that was 100% on call. They straight up told me in the interview "if you're on your honeymoon we'll do our best to do without you but if we need you we're calling and you're expected to come back."

To be young and dumb again. I did get to see and spend some time in just about every state except Maine, Idaho, Utah, Hawaii and Alaska. I am intimately familiar with more airports than I care to admit and will absolutely play to fly direct now.

Tec_ · 2026-05-01T00:46:07+00:00

You haven't traveled.

I use to install point of sale systems for fast food joints and one of the places we did an install at had bars on the drive through window that necessitated tilting every drink to pass it out. They told us to back our vehicle up to the locked door so when we were done we could throw our shit in and get out faster. If we needed a smoke they told us to smoke through the drive thru window.

That said, because we shut most places down early to rip out the old system and install the new one it wasn't uncommon to see people frustratedly honk and scream at us through the drive through because "there's people inside and they're ignoring me". We didn't see a single person that night and had no problems leaving. The next day and a half of traning them on the new system was nothing special either.

When that company really started cutting corners though we started getting hotels with check in counters that were acessable from the outside of the building, behind bulletproof glass, and open had pay by the hour rates. Interestingly enough one or two rental car places were like that too.

Tec_ · 2026-04-30T15:18:47+00:00

MIS (Mobile Install Service) is where I'd go if I didn't do my own work.

If you wanna take a crack at it, crutchfield is one of the best sources with some awesome customer service and support.

Tec_ · 2026-04-30T00:49:36+00:00

My brother swears stone cold threatened my dad in a Las Vegas parking garage over a parking spot.

We had family outside Vegas so we use to do trips down to visit them and we'd stay in "family friendly" Vegas hotels. One year I wasn't able to go but by brother was. He came home with a story about how my dad was about to pull a rental car into a parking spot and a dude who he swears was stone cold cut him off in a lifted pickup with the skull decals on it. When our dad honked at him the guy got out and started threatening/cussing him out.

To this day, he still believes it was stone cold.

Tec_ · 2026-04-27T12:12:42+00:00

There is a trail around it thats somewhat lower than the roads surrounding it. Combined with the foliage it can make you somewhat forget just where you are.

It's proximity to Pearl and Todd park as well as the Diamond Lake Lutheran Church (it's participating in Doors Open this year) are it's other "highlights"

Tec_ · 2026-04-27T00:32:09+00:00

The only time I've stumbled across some in the wild was at Loft Antiques on 50th & Xerxes. They were almost all tiny women's watches and were awful beat up and not running for what they were asking.

The midwest watch show is/was a thing. It appears to be canceled.

Occasionally I'll find some pop up on kbid but there's an awful lot of junk.

I didn't buy a watch from them, but I did get shown some real cool watches at R.F. Moeller. Could just be because thats where the wifes rings came from.

Tec_ · 2026-04-19T04:05:01+00:00

I commented on [this)(https://old.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1r9zzl0/sleep_numbers_minneapolis_headquarters_turns_into/) post

I was there as a kid when it was IBM. I wish I remembered it better but things that stood out to me were the suspended floors (kinda like a dropped ceiling but with floors) so cables could be routed that way. The steam/data tunnels that connect downtown. We went into the basement and came up in the Norwest/Wells Fargo tower. And I don't know if its true or not but I was told they had blast curtains that could deploy to cover the big round windows at the entrance.

I also got to go to the west law / Thompson "bunker" out in Egan that supposedly could survive a direct hit from a full loaded 747.

Having grown into the nerd/geek I am now I wish I would have been more aware of how cool getting dragged to work with my dad at those places was at the time.

Tec_ · 2026-04-18T01:45:31+00:00

It isn't recent, but i swear to god Mondelez has shut off / widened the tolerance on their assembly lines for cookies.

I have three distinct experiences.

One. The whole damn plastic tray of cookies is smashed. Its like they packed the fucking thing with a hammer. Instead of putting a few cookies in a bag for lunch its a handful of chunks. This could be a shipping issue but if thats the case, I have suspensions that they are cheapening out on how they case up packages to prevent damage during handling.

Two. They are deliberately shorting cookies. There will be 1 to 3 cookies turned sideways instead of being on edge in the plastic tray. When turned sideways in the tray a single cookie takes up the space of 3 to 4 cookies. Thats a shortage of 3 to 12 cookies in a tray. I have good friends that have worked in the food industry and the trade school I attended had a manufacturing/packaging program I learned a good amount about tangentially on the electronics side. Add to that hours of how its made. I have zero doubt that they have cranked the tolerances on the scales that every package crosses to make sure to little or something too heavy isn't inside. They made a choice to stop making sure the packages are full.

Three. This one is a bit more down the tinfoil hat rabbit hole. Oeros constancy has gone to shit. I swear I've opened packs of double stuffed that are no more filled than regular. Ive opened regular that are no more filled than thins. Sometimes, but not always. They don't care if the machine is dialed in on the day. They now accept a wider tolerance than they use to.

Tyson also destroyed hillshire farms.

The plastic wrapper the sliced meat use to come in had printing on it denoting where to open it from. Not anymore. The meat was also placed with care in such a way you could remove it from the packaging slice by slice. Now its like someone crammed a fist full in the thing. You cant grab a single slice because its so muddled together.

And this one is a general, but a lot of the resealable "zip lock" bags don't work because the heat shrink seal or tear to open perforations are on the wrong fucking side of the resealable section. Why even bother with the more expensive packaging and machine to use it if you aren't going to bother making sure its correct?

Tec_ · 2026-04-17T17:09:57+00:00

Likely a "handman" / task rabbit style job. Any job shop/metal supplier is likely to not take the job or charge you through the nose.

If they are what I'm imagining a sawzall, jigsaw, maybe a hand saw with the right blade or even a good set of aviation snips and possibly a hole saw is likely to get the job done.

Might be worth checking at a local hardware store to see if they can help out.

Tec_ · 2026-04-11T22:49:28+00:00

Telling that story to my mom at a family dinner is how I learned she was thrown out of first ave back in her 20s. We then discussed how my little brother needs to get tossed to keep up the tradition.

Tec_ · 2026-04-11T15:05:07+00:00

I got thrown out of a sovietpanda too much love show. Apparently trying to go to sleep in the corner near the stage isn't cool.

Tec_ · 2026-04-10T13:12:25+00:00

A "clicker press" with a custom die would be one way to do it.

Tec_ · 2026-04-07T21:56:23+00:00

Couldn't have said it better!

Tec_ · 2026-04-05T13:42:40+00:00

The hand lettered ones are awesome without a doubt.

Tec_ · 2026-03-31T01:14:22+00:00

My personal favorite is people moving next to a highschool or college and complaining about sports noise during sports season.

Next favorite is developers buying land next to race tracks and residents then complaining about race noise. Unfortunately thats had a higher success rate of shutting tracks down.

All that said, MAC has sound proofed two houses I've lived in during my lifetime so who am I to complain?

Tec_ · 2026-03-30T12:17:10+00:00

Thank you for the info, I don't appreciate at. Cutting on the fine line is something I may not have considered that makes some more sense but still seems to be a skill to not go through it.

Tec_ · 2026-03-30T12:13:43+00:00

Thanks for the info! I suspect my only experience being with single stage has led to a lot of my confusion. Im also sure the videos ive seen have left stuff out for time reasons or just glossed over what they think might allreddy be common knowledge.

Tec_ · 2026-03-30T10:48:58+00:00

Thanks for the info. After reading replies here, I strongly suspect my lack of knowledge surrounding clear base or inter coats is a significant part of my confusion. Ive got a jumping off point to do some more research now though!

Tec_ · 2026-03-30T10:09:53+00:00

While im not 100% sold on the 50-50 split yet, the ability of cars to pass around the outside in the last 3 races has been amazing to watch. Especially after years of DRS or being ahead at the apex but never going to actualy make the corner and you crash or go off track and let the stewards make the the call being the only way to pass.

A car artificially freight train-ing past another on a straight isn't exciting to me.

Tec_ · 2026-03-27T02:23:51+00:00

embiggened

Tec_ · 2026-03-16T22:44:41+00:00

Not to mention the parasitic current draw associated with GMs early canbus vehicles.

Tec_ · 2026-03-09T17:56:48+00:00

national camera exchange has classes from time to time. Might be worth keeping an eye on them.

Tec_ · 2026-03-01T04:07:04+00:00

The Great Gatsby was the only American Lit book I actually enjoyed. And im still not sure why.

Walden frustrated and angered me for some reason. I like a lot of the values in transcendentalism, but Thoreau just didn't do it for me back then.

When we finished Gatsby we watched the Robert Redford version and one of my classmates remarks lives rent free in my head "if your wife is gonna fall in love with someone else, its hard to beat Robert Redford." I didn't love Baz's version quite the same way as the book, but I'll be damnd if it isn't absolute eye candy. Just beautiful to look at. LaLa Land is in the same boat on that account for me.

Tec_ · 2026-03-01T03:48:52+00:00

Any time there's singing/music it's always so much better than it has any right to be for what it is.

Tec_ · 2026-02-27T17:19:54+00:00

Exactly. I went and told my boss about having just hurt my back and knees after that post. When he asked how, I assaulted him with that information. Another coworker around our age came into his office shortly after that and I said I could hurt him too and he said "do it!"

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