Thank goodness

Hyundai isn't keen on umlauts either...

A little different from Mazda's behavior.

Thanks Pat!

Chicken Mischief

Fire

Struck out at Goodwill today but found this lighter at the Antique & Flea next door. I'm pretty sure it's a Coco Joe's but any sticker that may have been on the bottom is long gone.

Not too many chips or dings.. overall in nice condition. The lighter top is stamped JAPAN. So it's likely not some later "Made in China" version.

On top of it all, today was Fishbowl Friday. I chose a purple egg from the fishbowl and got 20% off. :)

Here's a bonus link to someone's insane Coco Joe's collection.

Pressure

Over the holidays I received a Prestige 2 liter stainless steel pressure cooker.

I wanted a small one so I can just cook some vegetables or a small meal for two. I've cooked collards, beans, carrots, potatoes.. it's awesome. 7-14 minutes in here is like 45 minutes to an hour or more. Sometimes it's nice to have crispy vegetables but it also nice to sometimes have a carrot that melts like butter.

I've already decided I'd like to have a 6-8 liter one for doing things a little bit bigger and have set up camelcamelcamel to catch a deal.

Linguini and Bob

I found a tiki print shirt at Goodwill yesterday. The label on it is "Linguini and Bob". I've never seen that one before. Is it vintage?

I did some poking around and the trademark was from 1992 until about 1994-5 where it was abandoned. Turns out it was owned by Viewpoint International Inc. which also owned the Tommy Bahama line of clothing as well as a bunch of other "island style" labels. Viewpoint was subsequently purchased by Oxford Industries Inc. right here in Atlanta. Small world.

So still the question remains... Is it vintage?

I'll miss you G.

The cat that taught me about cats.

BrokeBit :(

I can't get my fitbit to charge at all. Every once in a while I can fiddle with it and get it to light up. Seems like I've had it for four years now. It doesn't hold a charge as long but it worked until today. Nothing. So I took it apart.

See the black wire on the right? It looks like it used to connect to the little solder blob up to the left of the end of it. The black rectangle with the orange/yellow tape on the end is the battery. It's just floating around in the case not really stuck to anything but sort of restrained by the ribbon cable that goes around to the electronics on the other side of the fitbit.

I've never soldered anything this small... but I'll give it a try.


Update:

Success!!!

100 pF

I finally took a few hours and put together my JYE Tech Capacitance Meter Kit. It was a pretty simple build. Some folks on Amazon complained about the instructions but things seemed to go pretty straightforward for me.

 

It basically seems to be a version of this ELM-ChaN circuit. I tested it out on a few old capacitors I can still read the markings on and it seems to work just fine. Now I can check out some of those that I can't read :)

Next step: Mount it in a mint tin or some other small metal enclosure.

Find from Tiki Isle

Found this guy at Goodwill today. It's a candle holder with the remnants of a red-orange candle in the top. Pretty rough black paint (not a glaze) but seems to be in decent condition overall. 

I wasn't able to find a lot of information on Tiki Isle Enterprises in Longwood though I could find some filings from them in 1972. They made a few different candle holders and masks.

The sticker also uses the abbreviation "FLA." instead of "FL" but it also includes a zip code. Zip codes started being used in 1963 and at the same time the state abbreviations were standardized to two letters to make more room for the zip codes. I'm going to guess this one is from the early 1970's.

Modem? What's that?

Modems...

Before the internet was just nuts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_Microcomputer_Products