Weyco And Smell The Smoke

From The Daily Free Press:
“… Okemos-based Weyco Inc., instituted a no-smoking policy in 2003, purportedly to save on the cost of health care benefits for its employees. The policy forbids employees from smoking both in the workplace, and at home. Weyco offered help to employees trying to quit and has said that 14 of its estimated 20 employees who smoked kicked the habit before the policy went into effect.”

Somehow I imagine the “help” that this company provided exactly as described in Stephen King’s short story “Quitters Inc.” that later became a part of the movie “Cat’s Eye“:

First offense – your wife gets some electric shock treatment. Second offense – you get one. Third offense – you get it together. Fourth – your kid gets beaten. And so forth.

And after you stop smoking you get the bill for 5000.50.

Quitters Inc is conviniently located right next to the United Nations at 237 East 46th Street, by the way. Don’t forget to ask them about their weight loss plan.

I bet once Weyco is done with the smokers they’ll go after the fat people.

Twonky

Here’s something that my dream reminded me of. “Cat’s eye ” tube.

When I was little, my dad used to have this huge vacuum tube radio. I think, actually this is it:

I think that’s what a Twonky would look like.

I am not sure of the model though, but there it is as I remember it. That was probably the device that introduced me to “radio buttons”. It’s tuning scale was a bit misleading – it was marked with names of different cities that you could supposedly get on the short-wave band. Prague, London, Paris, New York. Riiight.
It had one very interesting detail – a “cat’s eye” tuning tube.

“Cat’s eye” is a really amazing device. Basically it’s a tiny little CRT in a vacuum tube. It usually served as a tuning indicator. When you would turn a tuning knob, the pattern displayed on the tube would change. Here’s a more detailed article.

There were several names these tubes were known under. “Cat’s eye”, “magic eye”, “electronic eye” and just plain “tuning tube”. They were (and still are) a bit pricey, so they usually were included only on high end radios.

Here are just a few examples of such tubes from this amazing collection:

Besides being amazingly pretty, IMHO they are actually very user friendly. It’s just that in modern solid state device there is little need for actual “tuning”, but they would make wonderful sound level indicators. It’s a great visual feedback mechanism.

I am probably saying this just because I am into this whole glowing vacuum tube aesthetic though. Also these tubes make amazing blinkenlights.