A Geek Goes Flying

Have been watching the Ninja Foodi Grill XL (DG551) , and its smaller sibling, the Ninja Foodi Grill (EG201), for a minute. The EG201 hit a Black Friday price of $159 and was tempting, but I wasn’t sure about the site; the XL doesn’t seem to dip below $219 much these days (and when it does it’s down to $199) . I liked it at $219, not at $299, so when it returned to that price, with same day delivery, I pounced. I have an old BLACK+DECKER Countertop Convection Toaster Oven (CTO6335S) and a George Foreman 4-Serving Removable Plate Electric Grill and Panini Press (GRP1060B) . Both were ... Fine. The toaster oven had a habit of heating up to the point where the LCD screen turned black and was unreadable, and it was hard to clean and cooked somewhat unevenly. The George Foreman ably served me through two dying dogs (Maynard, lymphoma and chemo; Astrid, old age), where cooking up fatty frozen hamburger patties was clutch in keeping them interested in eating. But it took up a lot of coun...

This has been bugging me for a minute. I remembered a site, 'raging.com,' that was a de-bloated AltaVista service, that took a page from the early Google playbook and offered fast, powerful, text-only searching. Trying to find it circa the 1990s via archive.org found captures of Raging Bull (“Leading the Investor Revolution”), located at www.raging.com , through at least May 11, 2000. And since I also remember visiting that site a lot during those heady dot-com bubble days, I was convinced I was mis-remembering the name of the AltaVista search offering. But, nope, my memory is (at least in this respect) intact, and it wasn’t a fever dream, confirmed when I found this Slashdot comment . As early as May 19, 2000, raging.com brought you to raging search from altavista : raging.com search engine home page By August 15, 2000, it was a redirect to ragingsearch.altavista.com , but still branded “raging.” Looks like that survived until at least early 2005 , but by February 5th of that ...

Much to my surprise, I found myself with six guitars[1] (seven, if you count the battered 10 year old JS34 Dinky I keep at the office, that I bought off a guy from Taft in the alley behind the Virgil ). And my small space was starting to get cluttered. Most of the cheap stands I found on Amazon were too big, or only fit a smaller number of guitars, or had enough 1-star reviews to make me nervous. $130 isn’t a huge splurge, but it’s more than I wanted to spend - but I’m glad I did, on this  String Swing Guitar Stand for 6 Electric or Bass, or 3 Acoustic Guitars for Home or Studio (CC34) . (After being inundated with ads for their stuff on Facebook etc.) (I kinda want to wall hang, too (or, like, shelf-hang, maybe with something like this ?), but I have no idea where I could do that where it would look “right.” I’m planning on wall hanging one guitar out in my living room where I’ll be reminded to pick it up every day.)   The CC34 stand with one acoustic, five electric guitars ...

Hammer’s Slammers Just thinking back to the books I used to devour, mostly from supermarket shelves during our weekly “supplies run” to Dierberg’s (we lived kinda out in the middle of nowhere, and while a groceries run is apparently “only” 15 minutes each way , I remember them being relatively infrequent). From memory, some titles: Deadman Switch , by Timothy Zahn (yes,  that  Timothy Zahn ) Lacey and his Friends , David Drake (lot of David Drake on this list) Hammer’s Slammers , David Drake (apparently several books in this series, at this point) Crisis of Empire , David Drake  Rogue Bolo , Keith Laumer The man who pulled down the sky , John Barnes And of course I had a subscription to Analog , and read my ... IDK, step-aunt? (Grandfather’s new wife’s daughter from a previous marriage.) Copies of OMNI . And of course there were the Big Names. Isaac Asimov’s “ three laws of robotics ” series, and when I’d exhausted those, the Robot City series. All the Foundati...

Decluttering, I found an old HD 8  (mine’s actually an 8th generation, one year newer than that SKU, but they’re both obsolete and discontinued, so whatever) that I’d apparently never even setup (or if I did, I’d factory reset it). It’s like 7 years old but the screen is immaculate and it seems to have a working battery, albeit not the strongest - as you’d expect. Anyway. It’s running Fire OS 7.3.2.9 with a build date of Decemer 5, 2023, 1:59 p.m., so I guess I did have it online at some point, long enough to update the system software. I’m told this software is a fork of Android Pie (a/k/a Android 9.0), which is getting fairly long in the tooth, but I have apps that will work on the much older Android 5 (Lollipop) (from my Nexus 7 restoration project ), so ...  The hardware isn’t anything to write home about either: 8-inch IPS LCD (1280x800); quad-core MediaTek MT8163B CPU; 1.5 GB RAM; 16GB internal storage (~12GB usable after factory reset); VGA front camera, 2MP rear ...

For the Solterra, for my iPhone 16 Pro with the unreliable USB C port, I wanted something that would hold the phone visibly and securely  and charge it with a decent amount of juice, and ideally with cooling. (I was waiting for TackForm to bring the CR07 back, but, alas, support confirmed it’s been discontinued.) The components I currently have, which work together brilliantly: The vent hook module from this: Coolpow for MagSafe Car Mount【Windshield+Vent+Dash】Magnetic Phone Holder  (the phone holder component works well, too, but doesn’t charge). It has a 17 mm ball so interoperates well with other hardware. This Anker 67W 3-Port USB-C Car Charger (the ESR below comes with its own 12V charger, but I know and trust the Anker, which is a little more flexible[1]; if I didn’t already have the Anker, the adapter that comes with the ESR is I’m sure fine...) The ESR OmniLock Qi2.2 Certified 25W MagSafe Car Mount Charger with CryoBoost , which I got when it went on “Black ...

Back in the day ( apparently 1982, and 1984 ), I remember waiting what seemed like forever to enter the Old Glory Theater ( Old Glory Amphitheatre ?) all the way in the back of Six Flags over Mid-America (now Six Flags over St. Louis ), by the Screamin' Eagle , to see The Beach Boys . I was early in my K-12 stint for those shows, which I remember as magical, even if the wait in the hot, humid Missouri summer was interminable. Anyway. Apparently, a bunch of bands played there back in the day , including several I’d love to see today: “Johnny Cash, Olivia Newton John, Kansas, Foreigner, Blue Oyster Cult, Head East, Tears For Fears, Night Ranger, Weird Al, Willie Nelson, Chuck Berry, The Orleans, Paul Revere And The Raiders, Electric Light Orchestra, Charlie Daniels, Toto, Ted Nugent, REO Speedwagon, The Commodores, Salt And Peppa, Randy Travis, Marshall Tucker Band, Garth Brooks, Reba, Oak Ridge Boys, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Kenny Rogers, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, The Monkees, R...