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Man. back in the day where you got these big ass catalogs and would look at all of the cool crap you had no way to afford. A family member was into all kinds of stuff like this. They had a wrist watch that you could program phone numbers into and use it as a phone book.. Because you know, phones work off tones. You would just select a name and hold the watch near the receiver and it would dial for you. Cool shit when it was back in the 1990's.

Archive: https://archive.today/T8XnW

From the post: "Hi. My name is Cabel. And I’ve probably got the neatest job in the whole world.

I wear many hats. But here on my personal blog, I get to write about the things I really care about, just for you. And from the fact that you’re reading this blog at all, I think you may be a lot like me."

Paging @stupidbird Man. back in the day where you got these big ass catalogs and would look at all of the cool crap you had no way to afford. A family member was into all kinds of stuff like this. They had a wrist watch that you could program phone numbers into and use it as a phone book.. Because you know, phones work off tones. You would just select a name and hold the watch near the receiver and it would dial for you. Cool shit when it was back in the 1990's. Archive: https://archive.today/T8XnW From the post: "Hi. My name is Cabel. And I’ve probably got the neatest job in the whole world. I wear many hats. But here on my personal blog, I get to write about the things I really care about, just for you. And from the fact that you’re reading this blog at all, I think you may be a lot like me."

(post is archived)

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They had the weirdest cool shit you'd see anywhere. I forgot about JS&A...

The Early Winter 1985 catalog is cool. https://pic8.co/sh/gyuvBE.jpg

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Oh man. I had some of that later generation x-10 stuff. God damn it was flaky and the massive relays they used for appliances "CLACK" "CLACK" every time you turned something on/off.

I had that stuff working with Mr. House for a while but it never really worked quite right. Im glad for a lot of the new hardware/protocols.

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I still use it, it's controlled by a serial controller running custom scripts on a Pi. It's still just as noisy, but I don't mind it. I appreciate that I can hear when a light is being turned on automatically.

The remote is cool, it's ultrasonic instead of IR.

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Its neat but Im just glad to have some of the new stuff with status, power monitoring, etc.. I build some custom modules with ESPHome now too. Really handy.

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Dang, I had forgotten about that catalog! I also liked the J&R Music World catalogs..

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My Dad subscribe to the DAK catalogs through his job. I loved those. Never bought any of the stuff out of them that I can remember but exciting times.

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Don't forget the .

I used to really look forward to them.

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God damn. It was nice when you could go to Radio shack and actually find components that you actually needed. In the old days it was easy but even by the late 90's it was damn near impossible to find half of what you wanted.

This is all because of the culture of throw-away or single-use crap. People used to be expected to repair their stuff. I still do and as a poor kid it's the only way I had some cool stuff when I was young.

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Fast forward to today, circuit boards are not repairable. You need reflow ovens and other specialized tools. You can no longer see part numbers. You don't hand wire anything, you design 6 layer circuit boards and send them out to JLCPCB. You no longer build discrete circuits but rather use overly complicated microcontrollers with WiFi, bluetooth with I2C protocol using parts from china. Essentially, Radio Shack is now Aliexpress.