The Best Garage Shelves I Ever Built Using Only 2x4s

I recently built a large shelving system for tubs in my garage using only 2x4s. Here is a link to my YouTube video showing exactly how it’s done, followed by a written summary of the process. This is the sturdiest and simplest method I have come up with for adding storage to your garage. If you can cut a 2×4 and use a drill, you can build these. Watch this video on YouTube It’s no secret that I love shelves. I love building them and I love putting stuff on them. When we moved into this house six years ago,… (read more)

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A Fun Old (New) Stereo: The Looptone 9-in-1 Stereo

I own maybe fifty albums on vinyl and less than a dozen cassette tapes. I don’t buy new releases on vinyl — everything I have is either belonged to my parents, is from my own childhood, or was purchased to tickle some nostalgic sense. I don’t think I paid more than a dollar or two for any of them. Most of them pop, hiss and crackle and I like it that way. I’m less nostalgic about cassette tapes. I digitized all my childhood radio recordings years ago and only have a handful of tapes from local bands that never made… (read more)

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The Great Work Disposal Event

For two weeks, my section at work has organized and is currently running an “electronics recycling and disposal event”. Our team has done roughly a dozen of these events this year across the country, but this is the first one we’ve done here in Oklahoma City. It’s also the first one I’ve directly been involved with one and, holy cow. It’s hard work. It can be challenging to dispose of government inventory. It’s a bit complicated, but we can’t just throw outdated equipment away. All equipment is barcoded and not all items are disposed of in the same way. There’s… (read more)

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The Hand that Keeps on Giving

I found this plastic severed hand at a garage sale a few months ago. I think I paid a quarter for it and even before we were back in the car I had already got my money’s worth. I tapped Susan on the shoulder with it multiple times, walked around with with it hanging out of my sleeve and tried shaking people’s hands, and approached several people while holding it and asked them if they needed a hand with anything. Twenty-five cents well spent. The next day, I hid the hand underneath Susan’s pillow in an attempt to scare her.… (read more)

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Last Call: The Goodwill Outlet Center

Upon entering our local Goodwill’s Outlet Center I was overcome by a wave of desperation. At first I assumed those feelings were emanating from other customers, digging feverishly through the mountains of stuff. The longer we were there I began to wonder if the vibes weren’t radiating from the stuff itself. Everything has a lifespan. Goods are purchased from stores by consumers and kept until they outlive their usefulness, at which point they’re either recycled, discarded, or enter the secondhand market. A big part of that secondhand market are donation centers. Last year, Goodwill alone received approximately 5.7 billion pounds… (read more)

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My Retro is Retro!

People occasionally ask me how long I’ve been into “retro” gaming and I never have a good answer for them because I’ve been playing a lot of these retro games since before they were retro. Here’s an interesting thing I ran across today that reminded me of that fact. I was interviewed for an article titled “Classic Video Games Make Comeback” by a reported from the Associated Press. The interview took place over the phone and a day or two after that, they sent a photographer out to the house to take pictures of me with some of my gaming… (read more)

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A Tale of Two Story Arcs: Fallout vs. The Acolyte

Over the past few weeks I’ve binged the first season of two shows: Fallout, loosely based on the video game of the same name, and The Acolyte, the latest live action Star Wars series. The first season of Fallout, which aired on Amazon Prime, had an estimated budged of $150 million, while The Acolyte had a budget of roughly $180 million. Fallout currently has a 90% audience approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes while The Acolyte has an abysmal 31% approval rating. What did Fallout do so right that The Acolyte failed out? A lot, actually. In science fiction stories authors… (read more)

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The Case of the Changing Blog

I rarely re-read or revisit old blog posts on this site. Generally speaking I write them, give them a quick once over, and send them on their way. The only time I look up old posts is to either verify a date or find a link to send to someone. That’s what I was doing over the weekend when I dug up a blog post from four years ago and was surprised to find spam links embedded throughout the post — links I did not put there. The game, as they say, was afoot. Discovering your website’s been hacked in… (read more)

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A Rough Weekend for Celebrity Deaths

They say death comes in threes, which means this past weekend we either got one extra, or there are two more to come. This past weekend we lost four great celebrities. Shannon Doherty passed away at the age of 53 on July 13 from breast cancer. Doherty rose to fame as Brenda on the hit show 90210, and found a second home as Prue on the television series Charmed. For Gen Xers, Doherty will be remembered either as Rene, Brody’s girlfriend from Kevin Smith’s Mallrats, or as Heather Duke, one of the many Heathers from the 1988 film, Heathers. Shelley… (read more)

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Boatfest 2024 | Another Successful Retrocomputing Gathering!

In the middle of Boatfest — a gathering in West Virginia that has everything to do with retrocomputing and nothing at all to do with boats — I heard some commotion coming from the rear of the room. When I arrived there I found John “BoatOfCar” Shawler and Amigo Aaron, hosts of the popular Amigos Podcast, playing football. They were playing on an original Magnavox Odyssey, the first commercial home video game console released back in 1972. The game is so primitive that it requires a third person to serve as the referee, and the field itself is depicted by… (read more)

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