Tag: USD

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Univac Lighter

I recently bought this beauty on eBay. When I arrived I was a bit disapointed to see that the hinge that makes that click-clack sound was not operating properly. I really hate the stupid eBay feedback system which makes minor complaints not worthwhile (nobody wants a negative comment in retaliation for reporting an incomplete or dishonest description, right?). Hmmm, maybe that’s the point. Uh well, still, it was a good deal for $15.

What is super cool is that it appears that zippo lighters come with a warrantee that goes something like this:
“Any Zippo metal product, when returned to our factory will be put in first class condition free of charge, for we have yet to charge a cent for the repair of a Zippo metal product, regardless of age or condition.”.

So, theoretically all I have to do is send the lighter to the factory and they will fix it. I’ll let you know how good a job the’ll do.

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Kings Highway at 16th Street.

I came across this postcard recently and could not pass it up even at $16. It shows Kings Highway from the elevated subway platform of the Brighton line. Unfortunately I could not get the same viewpoint because a huge ugly advertising billboard is blocking the view.

The picture clearly (well, maybe not so clearly) shows the Avalon Movie theater, which history you can learn at http://www.cinematreasures.org . Now that building houses a CVS pharmacy on the ground floor and Touro “College” on the upper, windowless floors.

The water tower, cool streetlights, Cafe Avalon, Modern Beauty Shop, Kings Highway Realty and Mortgage Corp, the soda fountain which name I can’t make out, the cool cars — all gone. Parking is still a problem though.

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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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Hey You. Yes, You. How About Some Tech Support Here?

I finally decided to build a nice SB62G2 based computer for my wife. But I can’t decide the following:
a) What kind of memory to get for it. That number of choices for DDR RAM confuses me to no end and there is no good FAQ in sight.
b) What kind of DVD burner to get (they all look good)
c) Which Pentium 4 is in the sweet spot of price/performance.
d) Which 17 inch flat panel monitor to get (about $500 – $600 range)
e) Which video card for the said flat panel to get.

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Embed With Microsoft

An auction for a special Microsoft shirt:
“The MICROSOFT� WINDOWS� EMBEDDED signature NAME and LOGO”

This reminded me of a t-shirt I’ve seen somewhere that said: “Embed me, link me, treat me like an object”.

Logo apparel is an amazingly effective propaganda tool. My favorite Microsoft shirt says “MS Commerce Server 2000 Surf Naked”. I still wear it even though it’s 3 years old.

I really want to get “Apple T-Shirts: A Yearbook of History at Apple Computer”, but it’s apparently rare and expensive at $180. Dang.

Some pretty cool shirts at http://geekt.org/:
Heh heh, so Outlook’s original code name was Ren. I am still working on that database of Microsoft codenames. Stay tuned.

I think Dave Cutler gave out Zero Bugs shirts also, but Netscape’s shirt is more famous.

How I wish there was a source for logo polo shirts from cool companies. I could go for some Amdahl, Cray, Microsoft, Apple, Xerox PARC shirts.

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100 Inch ……. TV

I was browsing a site that sells weird keyboards and fount this :
“A Perfect Monitor Solution”

Just $285.00
I think various pixel pushers and the nuts who set their screens to ridiculous resolutions could actually get some use this product.

Wow, this reminded me the Soviet “КВÐ?-49” TV set that was sold with a water (or glycerin) filled lens so that you could make out something on it’s tiny screen.

Oh, and a $9.95 kit for making a 100 inch TV. “The picture produced by this lens compares only to the high-end HDTV plasma screens costing over $12,000!! “ and “With every order you will also receive… A FREE 3 DAY, 2 NIGHT VACATION OVER 20 WORLDWIDE LOCATIONS!”

Don’t know about the plasma screen comparison and that vacation, but from what I’ve heard the projection apparatus kind of works.

And I also remembered my high school AP Physics teacher Mr. Lloyd who explained how Fresnel lens works.

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Thought Tally : I’ve Got Bottles Of Grins And Racetrack Wins And Lotions To Ease Your Pains

* I wonder is Tom Doherty of TOR is a relative of Henry L. Doherty of the City Services Corporation.

* Did Steve lose a lot of weight since the infamous “Developers! Developers! Developers!” video?

* Theodore Sturgeons real name was Edward Hamilton Waldo. He heh.

* Salesman of the Century about Ron Popeil and Curve of Binding Energy are totally going into my Amazon wishlist.

* The “Shottle Bop” from Sturgeon’s story Is located on 10th Avenue between 20th and 21st street.

* NESFA Clubhouse must be pretty damn cool:

“A big chunk of the purchase price came from money raised by the NESFA Lunar Realty Trust #1, a trust organized under Mass. law which collected around $60,000 towards the purchase price. The NLRT#1 sold bonds worth $100 each and paid interest based on the prime rate. Most of the money was raised locally, but S.C.I.F.I, the organization which had just run the huge and financially quite successful LAcon II, purchased $20,000 with of NLRT#1 bonds. (It’s worth noting that they paid for it with 100 checks for $137 — it’s a long story — plus one more check for $6300.) The NLRT#1 bonds were paid off completely over the next two and a half years.
…
While dismantling the huge dryer for removal, we discovered about a quart of stuff in the bottom: coins, jewelry, marbles, and other pocket stuff. The coins were the biggest portion and amounted to a decent haul. (Of course, it took three people several hours to fish them all out and clean them up…)

Another find of considerable value was a power shaft for the washer which was perhaps 6′ long with lovely ball-bearing axles and a 2′ diameter toothed gear on one end. As it was dismantled, people though it was much too lovely to waste — but what to do with it? Inspiration struck: Send it to LASFS! Don Eastlake quickly organized a carpentry crew and built a shipping crate which features heavy-duty construction and special mounting brackets which allowed the shaft to spin freely within the crate. The finished crate was closed, screwed shut, and put on a truck for delivery to LASFS. Since there was some doubt that LASFS would accept delivery of a huge sealed crate from NESFA, arrangements were made to have a secret agent on site to handle that chore for them…”

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And Then There Were None

I have been hunting for Henry Kuttner’s autograph for a very long time. Henry Kuttner is one of my favorite sci-fi writers of all time (see my article about Kuttner). Kuttner died early and his signatures are very rare, fetching upward of $500. I keep a request for a book signed by Kuttner in hope that some ignorant bookseller might sell a signed copy cheaply. A few days ago abebooks wishlist emailed me a really weird item:

“henry kuttner
His personal baby book
his very first book starts on april 7th 1915 and includes his first photograph, mother’s as well as his nurses’ signature, and documents his first 3 words (please nobody take offense) nigger, nigger, nigger. It was in the possesion of author C.L. Moore but now it could be y
ISBN:
Bookseller Inventory #22224
Price: US$ 2500.00 “

I hope nothing bad happened to Kuttner’s wife and co-author, C.L. Moore. Why would a thing like that end up on the market?

Now, that’s a rather weird choice of first words for a baby. But the year being 1915 and everything, my guess is that little Henry must have been rather fond of the nursery rhyme that Agatha Christie used for her whodunit masterwork. Here’s a write-up from Rosetta Books, and eBook publisher:

.. A note about the title — Christie originally called the novel Ten Little Niggers, a reference to an old nursery rhyme that she places, framed, in the guest rooms of the ten characters in the story. Each dies in the manner described in a verse of the sing-song rhyme — e.g., “Ten little nigger boys went out to dine; One choked his little self and then there nine.” The rhyme ends with the words, “… and then there were none.” The offensive word, which carries an extra dimension of ugliness in American culture, was replaced with “Indians” for American publication. Ironically, “Indian” is now also a politically incorrect term, so the novel has officially been retitled And Then There None. As Charles Osborne points out in his delightful and indispensable study The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie, the shift in the old American title creates a bit of confusion. For Americans think it refers to another nursery rhyme that begins, “One little, two little, three little Indians …” The nature of the original title reflects the time in which the novel it was written and the world in which Christie became an adult and a writer, one shaped largely by the British Empire and the racist thinking of the past. The cosmetic change of title to And Then There Were None is merely that, however. It erases a troubling shadow from an extraordinary, hugely entertaining achievement.

Some somewhat related links:

Straight Dope : In whodunits, it’s “the butler did it.” Who did it first?

A complaint to Canadian Broadcast Standards Council :

This case is, in the experience of the CBSC, unique; it marks the first occasion on which a Regional Council has been asked to review the title, as opposed to the content, of a television program. The broadcast in question is a cooking show entitled Gwai Lo Cooking which is aired by CFMT-TV (Toronto). The source of the complaint is the historic Cantonese expression “gwai lo” which is used as a material component of the show’s title. In its etymological background, “gwai lo” translates as “foreign devil” or “ghostly fellow” and it continues to be used by some Chinese to refer to “pale-skinned” Westerners. In the context of the title in question, “gwai lo” refers to the show’s host, who, although of Caucasian, rather than Oriental, much less Chinese, descent, speaks Cantonese and is able to offer North Amercian and European cooking recipes to the Cantonese-speaking Chinese Canadian community. …

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Deadprogrammer’s Favorite Skyscraper

My favorite skyscraper is a little obscure (like many of my favorite things). Today it’s called the AIG building. When it was built, it was called the City Services Building or Sixty Wall Tower.

The soaring art deco tower was built for City Services Corporation, a company willed into being by one Henry L. Doherty. Doherty was a thoroughly Randian character. A self taught engineer, he started off by leaving school in 1882 at the tender age of 12 to go to work for a local gas company and went on to build one the biggest electric, oil and gas companies worth 1.3 billion in 1930. A technophile, Doherty traveled around the country in his personal train car with telephone and wireless equipment to keep in touch with his empire. Even his bed had phone connections, and electric fan, heating pads and electric motors that could move it through remote control swinging doors onto a porch of his penthouse apartment. He was a very good executive and salesman, but always took a title of Chief Engineer. He even applied for an official engineering license (as he didn’t have any academic credentials). He did have 150 patents to his name and had many articles about oil refining and economy published.

The architectural firm of Clinton & Russel, Holton & George was given the task of designing City Services Building, but Doherty and his engineers had a hand in it too. The building’s heating and air conditioning system was designed by City Services engineers, and Doherty himself suggested double-decker elevators, and terraces with aluminum railings. The building was planned as an embodiment of Doherty’s vision.

The tower starts of as a chunky block wide “wedding cake“. The reason for that is New York City zoning laws. NYC building had to have “setbacks” that would allow light to reach the ground. This was required so that the shadow of a skyscraper would not permanently block daylight on the street. But higher than a certain level you could build without setbacks though. And that’s exactly what the architects did in this case: above the “wedding cake” is a tremendous tower.

The building is recursive: there are two columns shaped like it on it’s sides.

When I was reading The Fountainhead”, this is how I imagined the Dana Building. Coruscant City towers look very much like the City Services Building.

Doherty was planning to live in a penthouse apartment on top of the building. But his health gave out, and after spending some time in sanatoriums he died. Instead of the penthouse apartment an observation gallery was built.

City Services building also became the final masterpiece of it’s architects, Clinton & Russel, Holton & George. No major work came their way after senior partners Clinton and Russel died, and then one of the junior partners, Holton died and George retired.

City Services Inc was hit hard by The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935: they were told that no company could sell or produce both oil and gas. They chose oil and became CITGO. The company moved it’s headquarters to Tulsa selling City Services Building to AIG. AIG renovated the building, but closed off the lobby and the amazing observation deck to the public. Now the observation deck serves as an executive lounge. If you have some juice at AIG and could give me a tour… Well, that would make me happy. Well, it could happen.

Much of my information for this article came from a very good, but poorly organized book called Skyscraper Rivals. I could not find any books about Henry L. Doherty except a $350 “Principles and Ideas for Doherty Men”, a compilation of his articles and letters.

Wegee was a big fan of City Services Building, a book “Weegee’s People” chronicles the life inside the tower. When I get it, I’ll write another article about the double decker elevators, the all-female redhead elevator operators and other marvels of the City Services Building.


Henry L. Doherty and the City Services Building (from “Skyscraper Rivals”)


This is how I get to see the AIG building from a train window.


Coruscant City from Star Wars (image from http://www.wizards.com)

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Looking At The Things Flashing By

Lj user saltdog reminded me of something from the not so long gone era of dotcoms. Back then there was a tremendous proliferation of web development companies that called themselves “agencies”. I worked for one back then.

These companies behaved kind of like bacteria in a pool of agar-agar. At first they multiplied. Razorfish, iXL, Scient, Viant, Sapient, Agency.com, Organic, Xpedior, Proxicom. Then they tried to enlarge themselves. Some by what they called “organic growth” which is like when a bacteria that grows more cells. If I remember correctly Razorfish tried doing that. Others engorged themselves by swallowing smaller companies like some corporate amoeba. A prime example of that was iXL. Then there was a type of companies that multiplied by cloning. Scient, Viant and Sapient even had cloned names.

Clients that wanted websites (agar-agar) were plentiful, but coding monkeys (minerals) were the growth limiting factor. The agencies spent much of their profits on advertising to lure in potential employees. One of the more creative ways I’ve seen at Sapient (I think, it could have been some other -nt clone). They rigged their website to detect referrals from ip addresses that belonged to other agencies and present a customized front page that presented top reasons to leave that agency and start working for the clone.

A magazine ad (I think from Silicon Alley Reporter) that stuck in my head and what lj user “saltdog” reminded me of was rather unique. It was just a copy of a ticket. A real ticket given by an MTA cop to some codemonkey at some now defunct agency. It was a little hard to read and probably not very eye catching. In the memo field of the ticket it said something like this: ” MTA police officer [Cop’s name] encountered [Codemonkey’s name] riding between the cars of the [some letter or number] train. When asked about what he was doing [Codemonkey] answered, that he was “looking at the things flashing by” “. The ticket was for $25 or $50 dollars, or something like that. The copy below the ticket invited people who like “looking at the things flashing by” to go work for that agency.

Yeah, that in itself was the epitome of the dot com era. Looking at the things flashing by. Then the amoebas, multicellular scum and clones ran out of agar-agar and began to merge, become swallowed by more evolved corporations and die.