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InediblePenguin
Sep 27, 2004

I'm strong. And a giant penguin. Please don't eat me. No, really. Don't try.
"have you considered that it's true" lmao

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TotalLossBrain
Oct 20, 2010

Hier graben!
Murrica is all about quantity first. gently caress quality

FruitNYogurtParfait
Mar 29, 2006

Sion lied. Deadtear died for our sins. #VengeanceForDeadtear
#PunGateNeverForget
#ModLivesMatter

GotLag posted:

Have you considered that maybe it's true?

For example, Starbucks opened about 80 stores in Australia, and currently have less than 30. They pulled out entirely from my city of 1.5 million people.

It's not the coffee, they need to brand themselves with a stupid rear end name in the aus tradition. They'd be a smash hit if they went by Starro's or No Islanders Allowed

InediblePenguin
Sep 27, 2004

I'm strong. And a giant penguin. Please don't eat me. No, really. Don't try.
unironic coffee arguments itt

Armacham
Mar 3, 2007

Then brothers in war, to the skirmish must we hence! Shall we hence?

FruitNYogurtParfait posted:

It's not the coffee, they need to brand themselves with a stupid rear end name in the aus tradition. They'd be a smash hit if they went by Starro's or No Islanders Allowed

gently caress off We're Full (of caffeine)

Snow Cone Capone
Jul 31, 2003


Funny thing is when I worked at a gas station/convenience store in college, the coffee was easily the best-maintained part of the operation. We ground it fresh and had like 6 kinds, and the "empty, clean out properly and remake pots" rules were strictly adhered to even on the overnight shift. I legit think we put the Starbucks across the street out of business because they were gone by Junior year.

Iron Crowned
May 6, 2003

by Hand Knit

Kelp Me! posted:

Funny thing is when I worked at a gas station/convenience store in college, the coffee was easily the best-maintained part of the operation. We ground it fresh and had like 6 kinds, and the "empty, clean out properly and remake pots" rules were strictly adhered to even on the overnight shift. I legit think we put the Starbucks across the street out of business because they were gone by Junior year.

None of this indicates that the coffee was actually good

TotalLossBrain
Oct 20, 2010

Hier graben!
I'm pretty sure he implied the gas station being in the US, so that settles it.

Code Jockey
Jan 24, 2006

69420 basic bytes free

Armacham posted:

gently caress off We're Full (of caffeine)

lmao

I'm in Seattle, land of both coffee snobs and on the opposite end, Starbucks, but when it's 2 AM and I'm sobering up, nothing in the world is better than coffee from a crappy diner

keep it coming, waitress, it's been a night

Snow Cone Capone
Jul 31, 2003


It was pretty good coffee, can't remember the brand though. I liked it but then again I'm an American so what do I know :allears:

InediblePenguin
Sep 27, 2004

I'm strong. And a giant penguin. Please don't eat me. No, really. Don't try.
every coffee argument in every venue looks exactly the same, I'm sure we've all had or witnessed this coffee argument before, can we consider the entire coffee argument an obsolete and failed technology and move on back to looking at electronic pocket dictionaries or something

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO
Feb 28, 1985


Pham Nuwen posted:

Let me tell you about American beer, man... Budweiser, right? Right?

US craft beer is great now.
But it is funny considering how long British beer was mocked for being warm and tasting weird, and it's now the same thing.

Anyway

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO has a new favorite as of 22:05 on Jun 16, 2017

Snow Cone Capone
Jul 31, 2003


Oh man there's only one thing I love more than talking about coffee in the tech relics thread and that's talking about beer in the tech relics thread

GRINDCORE MEGGIDO
Feb 28, 1985


Outdated attitudes: failed technology

(I want more tech too)

Guy Axlerod
Dec 29, 2008
We had an electronic spelling checker in my 4th grade class. Mostly we'd search for ??????????????????? and it would take a long time to return electrocardiography, the longest word it knew. Or search for swears or sex* and giggle at words like sexy and sexpot.

Crescent Wrench
Sep 30, 2005

The truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination.
Grimey Drawer

Pham Nuwen posted:

Let me tell you about American beer, man... Budweiser, right? Right?

Someone once tried to tell me American beer is always twist-off and never requires a bottle opener. :confused:

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Fruit Soup Riot posted:

Someone once tried to tell me American beer is always twist-off and never requires a bottle opener. :confused:

Work on your hand strength enough and every bottle is twist-off. Make bottle openers obsolete, at least for yourself.

FilthyImp
Sep 30, 2002

Anime Deviant

Guy Axlerod posted:

We had an electronic spelling checker in my 4th grade class. Mostly we'd search for ??????????????????? and it would take a long time to return electrocardiography, the longest word it knew. Or search for swears or sex* and giggle at words like sexy and sexpot.

I was watching am episode of The Computer Chronicles on YT and the hot Christmas gift for, like, 88 was a module that sat on your parallel port and loudly buzzed when you typed in a misspelled word in your word processor program.

It didnt offer a correct spelling or anything. J
Just kind of bitched at you like it was looking over your shoulder.

Man, memory limitations back them were so trippy

Code Jockey
Jan 24, 2006

69420 basic bytes free
Making Dr. sbaitso say cusses and sex words owned

SCheeseman
Apr 23, 2003

Don't make a parity error happen :ohdear:

Guy Axlerod
Dec 29, 2008

FilthyImp posted:

I was watching am episode of The Computer Chronicles on YT and the hot Christmas gift for, like, 88 was a module that sat on your parallel port and loudly buzzed when you typed in a misspelled word in your word processor program.

It didnt offer a correct spelling or anything. J
Just kind of bitched at you like it was looking over your shoulder.

Man, memory limitations back them were so trippy

My Mom had a typewriter with this function. It would beep when you typed a word it didn't know. Being a typewriter, a correction isn't really an option.

It also had a memory so you could print multiple copies of a thing on demand, like your resume or family christmas letter.

RC and Moon Pie
May 5, 2011

Guy Axlerod posted:

My Mom had a typewriter with this function. It would beep when you typed a word it didn't know. Being a typewriter, a correction isn't really an option.

It also had a memory so you could print multiple copies of a thing on demand, like your resume or family christmas letter.

My folks had a Smith-Corona that was similar. It beeped at on you on words it didn't know and had a bit of a memory. You could type a line into the memory before telling it to print on paper. Fixing errors was awful, though.

I used that thing for a year in high school because the Mac printer we had was horrible and my parents didn't want to spend money to replace it. They soon replaced the Mac with an Wal-Mart special AST that we expanded to have 2 GIGS of space.

FilthyImp
Sep 30, 2002

Anime Deviant

Guy Axlerod posted:

It also had a memory so you could print multiple copies of a thing on demand, like your resume or family christmas letter.
Ah! Word processor typewriters. They were awesome for the brief sliver of time they were out. My relative is an accountant in Mexico and I amazed her office when I got their smart typewriter to run the demo.

My parents had one with the little beige carrycase. It was amazing being able to type up a paper, proof it on the little LCD screen and then hit PRINT to watch it run at prospeed. That noise was hypnotic.

Rap Game Goku
Apr 2, 2008

Word to your moms, I came to drop spirit bombs


FilthyImp posted:

Ah! Word processor typewriters. They were awesome for the brief sliver of time they were out. My relative is an accountant in Mexico and I amazed her office when I got their smart typewriter to run the demo.

My parents had one with the little beige carrycase. It was amazing being able to type up a paper, proof it on the little LCD screen and then hit PRINT to watch it run at prospeed. That noise was hypnotic.

I learned to type on one. It even had a breakout orange and black monitor that was like 7". So you could type and proofread before printing. Pretty sure they've come up in this thread before.

Horace
Apr 17, 2007

Gone Skiin'

FilthyImp posted:

I was watching am episode of The Computer Chronicles on YT and the hot Christmas gift for, like, 88 was a module that sat on your parallel port and loudly buzzed when you typed in a misspelled word in your word processor program.

It didnt offer a correct spelling or anything. J
Just kind of bitched at you like it was looking over your shoulder.

Man, memory limitations back them were so trippy

I assume, in true Computer Chronicles style, that this device cost as much as a new car.

edit: I found it, it was $200 (in 1986)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ce3XUTt3W0&t=423s

Horace has a new favorite as of 00:13 on Jun 18, 2017

Spy_Guy
Feb 19, 2013

FilthyImp posted:

Ah! Word processor typewriters. They were awesome for the brief sliver of time they were out. My relative is an accountant in Mexico and I amazed her office when I got their smart typewriter to run the demo.

My parents had one with the little beige carrycase. It was amazing being able to type up a paper, proof it on the little LCD screen and then hit PRINT to watch it run at prospeed. That noise was hypnotic.

My parents bought a typewriter like this just a month before they got their first PC through work. Brand new, full of features and instantly rendered obsolete. :(

It had a templating feature, printing at prospeed as well. Can be seen in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYuBFXWvuwQ
This one has a corrective ribbon, too.

mostlygray
Nov 1, 2012

BURY ME AS I LIVED, A FREE MAN ON THE CLUTCH

Konstantin posted:

Reminds me of old school plat books, which are still in use in the rural midwest. If you need to visit some random farm out in the middle of nowhere, these books are often your only option. A comprehensive listing of who owns what land, where it is, and how to get to it. Google is getting better, and rural communities are trying to get these people actual addresses, rather than rural route codes, but it's an uphill battle.

Plat books and Kings Atlas' work best. GPS is unreliable. GPS is great off road but there is a lot you have to know when driving rural roads. The fire numbers aren't that helpful, the plat is better.

GOTTA STAY FAI
Mar 24, 2005

~no glitter in the gutter~
~no twilight galaxy~
College Slice
I miss plat books, having grown up in the Midwest. In Texas, you either have to go to the Texas General Land Office, who might not even have data for your county, or to the county courthouse, who may only let you look at their version of a plat book, and don't produce copies to sell. Best way to find out who owns something in rural Texas is to ask around, which is weird, considering you could buy a yearly subscription to the county plat book back in my hometown. Hell, the local County Farm Bureau back in Illinois practically handed the things out, and had separate ones marked with stuff like tributaries and annual rainfall accumulation totals for each section.

Here, it's:

"Hey I'd like to know who owns the lot next to our house so we can try to buy it"

"How should I know? Check the book."

"...all it says is what division we're in, not who owns anything. Seriously, how do I figure this out"

*shrug*

One of the few reasons I miss the Midwest :unsmith:

Collateral Damage
Jun 13, 2009

Speaking of typewriters, who remembers standalone word processors from the 90s?

Only registered members can see post attachments!

Trabant
Nov 26, 2011

All systems nominal.
I was too young to use them, but I do remember my dad having a tiny business re-inking typewritter/processor ribbons in the early 90s in ex-Yugoslavia. New ribbons were either prohibitively expensive or just unavailable, and he somehow got a machine that would wind the ribbon through a pair of rollers that applied new ink. He'd place classifieds for the service and do the whole thing through the mail. I'd "help" and occasionally run the machine.

We made something like a few deutsche marks (local currency was worthless) per month. But hey, at least we weren't living in the warzone.

Snow Cone Capone
Jul 31, 2003


I grew up with one of these in the basement/my dad's workspace:



I don't know a drat thing about plotters, and can't remember the model, but I remember instead of ink cartridges it actually had little pen marker things, and it would switch them out for each color. It was like watching a mechanical spirograph or something when it was printing poo poo out.

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.
I'm glad that most of you will never have to know the misery of trying to type out a 15 page paper on a non-correcting typewriter. That first family typewriter was a Smith-Corona (Coronamatic?) and I had to use manual correction tape or Wite-Out and it was terrible. Sometimes you'd lay down a small blob of Wite-Out and if you didn't wait long enough to type on it you'd produce a grey mushy splat and there was no way to make it look any better short of redoing the entire page. The registration with a manual piece of correction tape was poor so you'd double or triple-strike trying to remove a single letter (or series of letters) and it always looked like poo poo, not to mention sometimes hitting your finger if you weren't careful.

In the eighties we moved up to a Brother correcting typewriter that had a little built-in reel of correction tape, and the ability to remember the current line of characters so you could just hit the correction button and it would back space and attempt to remove the letters. Registration could still be off a little and then you'd have to use Wite-Out.

As clunky as the C64 with a 9 pin dot matrix printer seems now at the time it was a godsend to be able to work in something like Paperclip Writer and get a bargain-basement print preview and the ability to check spelling before printing. No more goddamn Wite-out! By the end of college I had a lovely 24 pin printer and Word Perfect 5.1 on a 286, and could even take a floppy to the university graphics center and LASERPRINT my document! :hellyeah:

Collateral Damage
Jun 13, 2009

My dad had an electronic typewriter where you typed out each line on a single row LCD and could edit it before committing and having it print out the whole row at once. You couldn't store anything or edit more than one line at a time.

Don't remember the brand, but he might still have it stashed away in the basement.

InediblePenguin
Sep 27, 2004

I'm strong. And a giant penguin. Please don't eat me. No, really. Don't try.
My mom had the single-row-LCD typewriter too. Hers was a Smith-Corona and it had interchangeable font sets. We didn't get a computer for a long time because of being poor, so for a while in middle school my classmates were turning in printed-out computer reports and I was laboriously typing mine on the typewriter and having to swap out the font cartridges every time I needed italics.

I collect typewriters but I don't still use them because they're a huge pain in the loving rear end.

For the record, though, if you have a typewriter that has a ribbon in it but not ink, and you'd like to be able to use your typewriter, the thing I find easiest to do is to go to the office supply store and get a reel of ribbon for printing calculators, which is still available, and use your electric drill to reel the ribbon OFF the calculator spools and onto the spools that the ribbon in your typewriter uses. Slight pain in the rear end but you will not find packaged usable ink ribbons for a 1930s manual typewriter in the year 2017 and I've found respooling calculator ribbon to be easier than attempting to re-ink the typewriter ribbon, perhaps because I don't have access to Trabant's dad's machine for it.

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Dick Trauma posted:

Sometimes you'd lay down a small blob of Wite-Out and if you didn't wait long enough to type on it you'd produce a grey mushy splat and there was no way to make it look any better short of redoing the entire page.

And on the more modern typewriters that have those little clear plastic bits with lines on them to show what line of text you're on etc., if you're not careful you'd end up smearing the white-out all over the underside of that thing.

I used my mom's electric typewriter to make notecards for presentations when I was 10 or so. It worked but it sucked. That said, I recently got an early Selectric (the kind that look all curvy and cool, not the later brick-shaped Selectric II and III models) for $6 at an estate sale, cleaned it, lubed it, and found the sole typewriter store in town which sold me a new ribbon for $11. It's pretty cool.

Code Jockey
Jan 24, 2006

69420 basic bytes free

Kelp Me! posted:

I grew up with one of these in the basement/my dad's workspace:



I don't know a drat thing about plotters, and can't remember the model, but I remember instead of ink cartridges it actually had little pen marker things, and it would switch them out for each color. It was like watching a mechanical spirograph or something when it was printing poo poo out.

We had a pen plotter in my drafting class in high school (99-2000)! It owned watching it draw out huge floor plans and parts drawings in multiple colors.

Frobbe
Jan 19, 2007

Calm Down

InediblePenguin posted:

My mom had the single-row-LCD typewriter too. Hers was a Smith-Corona and it had interchangeable font sets. We didn't get a computer for a long time because of being poor, so for a while in middle school my classmates were turning in printed-out computer reports and I was laboriously typing mine on the typewriter and having to swap out the font cartridges every time I needed italics.

I collect typewriters but I don't still use them because they're a huge pain in the loving rear end.

For the record, though, if you have a typewriter that has a ribbon in it but not ink, and you'd like to be able to use your typewriter, the thing I find easiest to do is to go to the office supply store and get a reel of ribbon for printing calculators, which is still available, and use your electric drill to reel the ribbon OFF the calculator spools and onto the spools that the ribbon in your typewriter uses. Slight pain in the rear end but you will not find packaged usable ink ribbons for a 1930s manual typewriter in the year 2017 and I've found respooling calculator ribbon to be easier than attempting to re-ink the typewriter ribbon, perhaps because I don't have access to Trabant's dad's machine for it.

I got neatly packed ribbons for my 1935 Olivetti studio 42 from eBay! Black/red too! Although I do wish they had that classy purple for my model.

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Pham Nuwen posted:

And on the more modern typewriters that have those little clear plastic bits with lines on them to show what line of text you're on etc., if you're not careful you'd end up smearing the white-out all over the underside of that thing.

I used my mom's electric typewriter to make notecards for presentations when I was 10 or so. It worked but it sucked. That said, I recently got an early Selectric (the kind that look all curvy and cool, not the later brick-shaped Selectric II and III models) for $6 at an estate sale, cleaned it, lubed it, and found the sole typewriter store in town which sold me a new ribbon for $11. It's pretty cool.

Oh yes! The Brother had one of those nice guides and as you said eventually it was slathered with Wite Out on the underside.

And as for the Selectric I... :allears:

The clickiest keyboard of all time but to get such lovely type, and no arms getting mashed together from going too quickly... I loved getting a chance to use one. I worked at a non-profit back in the early 2000s and part of my job was to keep their little stash of Selectrics Is running since no one wanted to use either the Selectric IIs, or the massive Xerox 6002s they had lying about.

EDIT: These giant buggers. There were three of them stacked up in a closet at my last job in case someone had an emergency need to type on carbon paper.

Dick Trauma has a new favorite as of 22:23 on Jun 20, 2017

Pham Nuwen
Oct 30, 2010



Dick Trauma posted:

Oh yes! The Brother had one of those nice guides and as you said eventually it was slathered with Wite Out on the underside.

And as for the Selectric I... :allears:

The clickiest keyboard of all time but to get such lovely type, and no arms getting mashed together from going too quickly... I loved getting a chance to use one. I worked at a non-profit back in the early 2000s and part of my job was to keep their little stash of Selectrics Is running since no one wanted to use either the Selectric IIs, or the massive Xerox 6002s they had lying about.

EDIT: These giant buggers. There were three of them stacked up in a closet at my last job in case someone had an emergency need to type on carbon paper.



The best thing about the Selectric is that the moving parts are relatively small. Typical electric typewriters are moving this huge heavy platen back and forth and it tends to wiggle the whole machine around if it's on a smooth tabletop.

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Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.
I think it would've been easier to get old fogies to switch to PC word processing if the case had a little aromatherapy pod that emitted the scent of warm machine oil.

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