🚀 go-pugleaf

JimP <solo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Jun 2018 11:15:49 -0400, Michael Black <mbl...@pubnix.net>
> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, 28 Jun 2018, Mike Spencer wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
>>> 
>>>> On 2018-06-27, Rob Morley <nos...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> On 27 Jun 2018 21:11:20 GMT
>>>>> Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> We have lots of gadgets, just not enough of the right ones.
>>>>>> Where's my jet pack?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Here's your bicycle with electronic gear shifting.  :-)
>>>> 
>>>> Help!  I'm stuck at an intersection and I can't get it out of
>>>> 10th gear until it manages to find a wifi hotspot and download
>>>> the latest update.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Hee hee hee...giggle.  Just so.
>>> 
>>> And as all that stuff is proliferating, the analog stuff is quietly
>>> going away.  I need some parts for my rototiller engine.  It's only 46
>>> years old but the company that made the engine, a major economic
>>> pillar of its community in its day, is so long out of business that
>>> the factory building has been made into a community historic site. And
>>> the tiller company has been sold, borged, merged and sold again, has
>>> no interest in supporting old products.
>>> 
>>> It's getting to be commonplace that when I go to the hardware store,
>>> nobody under 50 has even heard of the thing I want to buy.  The old
>>> guys may remember seeing the product but not for mumble years.
>>> Waterglass?  Cheap fireproof stickum handy if you do stuff with open
>>> flames.  Never heard of it.  Is there an app for that? :-\
>>> 
>> There used to be small stores that had been around "forever" and still run 
>> by the original owner, or a descendant.  There was no liability to keeping 
>> the old stuff around, so you could go there, someone would know about the 
>> old stuff, and it was still around.
>> 
>> But a lot of those places are now closed, the owner dying or the rent 
>> getting too high, and no small  stores taking over the territory, just 
>> those big box stores.  But also there was that US ruling where old stock 
>> couldn't be written off, so keeping the old stuff wasn't just a matter of 
>> having a big enough basement.
>> 
>> All the local electronic parts stores that I went to as a kid starting in 
>> 1971 are gone.  They had old stuff because they'd been around that long. 
>> But the area where a bunch of them were has long been redeveloped, sort of 
>> the same situation as "Radio Row" in New York City.  But also changing 
>> needs made those old stores less viable, fewer people wanting tube era 
>> parts, while the stores never fully adapted to solid state parts.
>> 
>> There is one exception, though when I went there a few years ago, it had 
>> totally been remade and while maybe the parts are behind the counter, on 
>> view was a lot of consumer equipment and accessories.  It used to be an 
>> "electronic supermarket", grab a basket at the door and go down the rows 
>> taking the parts from the bins as you needed.  A lot of surplus too, not 
>> military but consumer.
>> 
>> There used to be a guy who called himself "Mr. Fixit" and they dealt with 
>> the repair of old stuff (oddly, not just appliances and electronics but 
>> furniture and other things), but even they moved out of that field.  For a 
>> while there were places that stayed in their field, but it was like a 
>> consolitation, you'd have to go across town to get to them and everyone 
>> knew about them, but even those remaining places are mostly faded.
>> 
>> Every so often I read about people finding such stores, they'd closed down 
>> but the owner had kept things intact, paying the rent  (or maybe owning) 
>> the property) until he dies and it's a goldmine of old stuff.  So in the 
>> antique radio hobby, people find places like that and come home loaded 
>> when the stuff is finally cleared out.  Or someoen finds a stock of old 
>> toys because they were left in the back of some old store now being 
>> cleared out.
>> 
>> Michael
> 
> American Pickers on History finds these, or gets phone calls, from
> time to time. Grand pa, or great grand pa, died and now there is all
> this old stock, still in the original boxes.
> 

However, Shark Tank in Computerworld had a bit about a widow wanting to
sell some computers her husband had bought several years ago and never took
out of the boxes. She couldn't believe they were only scrap now.

-- 
Pete