tools and stuff

TRX
May 18, 2012
238:
@9:
- I think private citizen ownership of hand tools will be on the decline, especially tools for repairing cars, appliances and small electronics.
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Quite possibly. I'm several sigmas out on the tool curve; several of my machines require riggers and heavy equipment to move. A large portion of my "stuff" is tools. On the other hand, machining odd bits or building racing engines has kept the bills paid when programming or admin work dried up, so it's a bit more than a hobby.

The neighbors are used to the sound of machine tools running, indifferent to pouring molten aluminum, and the glare of the arc welder reflecting off houses across the street. However, firing up a 700hp racing engine through glasspacks will have every child within earshot hanging off the fence...

On the various machine-shop forums the average age of toolheads seems to be at least 50, maybe higher. The "maker" crowd are decades younger, and while enthusiastic about repurposing old printer parts and bits from the local hardware store, they seldom stay with it long.

I have tools. I have books; rigorous culling keeps them down around 5000 or so. The gun collection isn't really all that large; I could fit them all in my car. I could carry all the clothing I own in a large cardboard box. Two of the computers are technically "tools"; one is dedicated to reprogramming automotive engine control computers, the other runs the desktop milling machine in the computer room. Maybe another box for "stuff"; meds, important papers, phone charger, etc.

I own some furniture, bedding, cooking utensils, kitchen appliances, towels, and the like, but I could walk away and leave them; they're easily replaced from flea markets or Craigslist.

And yes, I wear a wristwatch. They'll pry it off my cold, dead wrist...

TRX
May 18, 2012
240:
@106:
I've wondered why the construction industry still uses the same building materials - habit?
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In the USA, local building codes plus the insurance industry.

Except for a few local areas where concrete block is the norm, the authorities and underwriters really, really want to see walls made of 2x3 or 2x4 studs with 3/8 or 1/2 inch chipboard stapled to it. That's what they know how to specify, how to inspect, how to insure, and they know all the relevant statistics for it. If you live outside a code jurisdiction area you can often build anything you want... but good luck getting it insured, or for selling it, unless the buyer can pay cash, because the finance companies aren't much interested in anything "different" either. It doesn't matter to them that it is common practice somewhere else.

I've run into this personally, and so has a friend, who spent over a year getting code variances and working with the finance and insurance people so he could use interlocking Styrofoam blocks filled with poured concrete, which was definitely unusual, but perfectly okay in other jurisdictions. He was only able to get a temporary exemption on kitchen counter heights; he and his wife are both over six feet tall, and they hated bending over too-low sinks and getting backaches. If they ever sell the house, the counters will have to be ripped out and replaced with "correct" ones...

Hey, it doesn't have to make sense. It's law, not engineering...

TRX
May 18, 2012
241:
@117:
Records: Transmetropolitan got it right about how poor public and business records are going to be in the future. Paper + proprietary formats + data- hoarding = needles rusting away in rotting haystacks.
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...just ask all the people who are arrested and held in jail for days or weeks, on faulty data. In the 1980s the local PD had an extremely crude "criminal database" that apparently felt name and city of residence was a unique identifier; *twice* I was jacked up at gunpoint by a cop who had the computer jockey on the other end of the radio tell him I was a felon with an outstanding warrant. There were four people in my town with the same name, and two of them were habitual felons.

In the private sector, I used to be a system administrator for a medical billing outfit. They also did collections. They'd buy datasets from doctors or clinics going out of business, debt brokers, etc. I'd usually do the data conversions, picking apart the file formats and extracting the data into comma-delimited format they could import into their collections database. But quite often the data was corrupt to start with, which was probably why they were able to buy it cheap. When I tried to point this out they said not to worry, as long as there was a name and a phone number they'd just let the collections people deal with it... that kind of thing is probably why we get threatening phone calls from places we paid off TEN YEARS AGO...

Just last year I did some work for a local business, cleaning up their client database. Fully two thirds of the customers could no longer be found; most entries lacked incidental data like phone numbers or addresses, plus horrendous spelling errors.

I have a PO box I rented 32 years ago. I still get occasional junk mail for the previous boxholder.

Good data rots, but bad data is forever...

TRX
May 18, 2012
242:
@148:
The HathiTrust, a consortium of libraries combining their Google-digitized book collections
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Hey, thanks Matt!

TRX
May 22, 2012
383:
@365:
I'd rather have it in Genuine Ancient Old One Hide if that were available?
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Uh, you *do* realize the slime will eat right through rubber gloves, don't you? And that the vinyl gloves won't reliably protect you for more than ten minutes? Or would this be a gift for someone you don't particularly like?

I believe they use waldos to handle them in the library...

TRX
May 23, 2012
397:
@395:
Back to stuff. What about fads.

Electric can openers started to get popular back in the 70s. They seemed to go out of style about 10 to 20 years ago.
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My mother ironed everything. T-shirts, blue jeans, maybe even socks for all I know.

I have never owned or used an ironing board or iron. Part of it is modern fabrics, part of it is changes in fashion, and part of it is I simply don't care.

I don't know what either device could be repurposed for. They're just obsolete, like the box of eight-track tapes I threw out years ago, or the boxes of 5-1/4 inch floppy discs years before that, or the boxes of old computers and parts before that...

One nice thing about the miniaturization of consumer goods is that DVDs and micro-SD cards take up much less space in the "needs to go but can't bear to throw it out" zone than reel-to-reel tapes and LPs did...

TRX
May 23, 2012
398:
Going back to the root message, and Charlie's comment about good beds and chairs.

How can you recognize one if you see it in the store?

It's not like they'll let you take one home for a few weeks to try it out. If you're like most people, you'll bounce on one the store has set up, make your best guess, and unless you have a very understanding shop or enough money to iterate the process, you're stuck with it.

A good example of this is cars, or even better, motorcycles. Something that feels just fine sitting in the showroom can turn into something Torquemada's Inquisitors would have been envious of after an hour or so. The seats in a friend's Corvette are *great* when you plunk your butt into them; twenty minutes later you realize all the side thigh and side bolsters lock that lock you into position against G-forces also keep you from unkinking your back or hip joints, and they turn into instruments of torture. But reviewers rave about the seats, because they feel great... for no longer than the reviewer sits in them, anyway.

Beds are the same way. I've spent the night on beds that I thought were really nice, until I woke up in agony.

Beds have another problem - females are typically wider across the hips *and* carry their center of mass lower than males; an optimal bed might be noticeably different depending on gender.