Tag: Radio Shack

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Something Is SKUwey Here


I found this some time ago in a sporting goods store. I wonder why the programmer made the tag printing machine print an error message on the tag itself. Probably to preserve the order of tags which are probably batched in relation to pallets of items.

A few days ago I was talking to a Radio Shack employee. It turns out they can print out a manual for most things they sell by just punching in it’s SKU number into a computer. I asked her if she knew what SKU (pronounced “skyoo”) stood for. She didn’t know. Can’t blame her -it took me a few months of writing an e-commerce application and hearing the word daily to inquire about it’s meaning. SKU is an abbreviation for Stock Keeping Unit.

By the way, in Radio Shack I was looking for a cheap lcd tv that I could use to hook up to the camera that is trained at entrance of my apartment building (it is hooked up to a coax cable that runs through the building). They had a tiny one for about $200, but I’d like a slightly bigger and cheaper one. B&W is ok. Any suggestions? I also need to find an affordable lcd tv for the bathroom. Come on, it’s the future now. We’ve been promised tv monitors and cameras everywhere. I am not asking for usable video phones, flying cars and robots bigger than a vacuum cleaner.

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Studly Matters

Brooklyn College officials like to put their full titles into the from field of the email. For instance, I used to get emails from “Alice Newcomb-Doyle, Public Relations” [..@brooklyn.cuny.edu] because I am on some email list. Well, now the name has changed into something funny – “Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Stud,” [..@brooklyn.cuny.edu]. I guess there is a character limit.

This is doubly funny, because before checking email I was playing with a stud finder device that I recently purchased from Radio Shack.

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Untitled

Ok, I’ve made an extravagant purchase. But I wanted it so, so much!

What was the object of my desire? It was a book of photographs called “Cray at Chippewa Falls”.It was an album by Lee Fridlander that was commissioned by Cray Research. The book was given to employees and was sold in Cray company store to visitors, but there were only about 5000 copies made.

The photographs are of unspeakable beauty. Friedlander starts with outskirts of Chippewa Falls – the waterfall, forest, fields. Then the photographs depict a typical small town – a railroad track, broken down pickup truck, suburban houses. Then the center of the town: a barber shop, Radio Shack, some fast food stores. Nothing extraordinary (except for Friedlander’s photographic talent). But then the magic begins. The book is full of photographs depicting highly concentrated men and women among chip making equipment, chassis of supercomputers with garlands of wires, computer terminals. Everybody is filled with a sense of purpose and pride – they are making the most advanced thinking machines in the world!

Seymour Cray, the Superman of Supercomputers

That’s Cray 1 in the background. Notice a nice little leather covered bench around the chassi. It was meant as a place where technicians could sit and warm themselves after spending a long time in an air conditioning room. In reality, few technicians would sit there for the fear of breaking the multimillion dollar machine.

Aaaaa! I am swallowed by a supercomputer!

That’s a lot of wires. But if they put their heads together…

Even though I paid $250 for this album (and it is worth every penny), the copyright of course does not belong to me. But I am pretty sure that showing you these photos falles under “fair use”.
From http://www.louisville.edu/~ddking01/mmgdl01.htm :
“Under these guidelines a photograph or illustration may be used in its entirety but no more than 5 images by an artist or photographer may be reproduced or otherwise incorporated as part of an educational multimedia project”
So if anybody asks – this is an educational multimedia project.