Geek

I’m on Delta flight 3374 flying from Detroit to Greenville, S.C. This is the final leg of today’s flight. The flight attendant on this Embraer 145 is Cynthia. She is very nice and has made me feel most welcome. I find that many flight attendants in the Delta fleet do their job well. That’s why I tend to stay loyal to the airline.

I’m excited to be back in Greenville to work with the rest of the team this week. There will be a lot of collaboration and productivity this week. I’m ready to immerse myself in work and get stuff done. It’s been a challenge learning what I need to know for my new job, but I believe it is going well and I’m happy with my personal progress.

If the weather cooperates, I’m going to fly with an instructor out of Greenville Downtown airport on Wednesday evening. I’m looking to log some time in a Cessna 172 and this is the perfect opportunity to give it a try. I’m still trying to decide as to what kind of airplane I think Earl and I should buy, hopefully next spring, and flying the C172 will help me narrow down my choices.

Earl has been traveling since Wednesday and he’ll be back home this evening. I just started my travels today and I won’t be home until late Friday night. We don’t do the “power couple” a thing a lot when it comes to travel, but sometimes it’s necessary and we just do it because it needs to be done. Thank the stars for today’s technology with Skype and FaceTime and the like, it makes being apart that much easier for us. It’s not like being home together, of course, but at least it’s the next best thing to being there.

I’ve been slowing upgrading all of the light bulbs in our home to LED lighting. I’m doing this during light bulb replacements; I’m not running around ripping out perfectly functioning light bulbs just to put an LED in its place. That would be kind of crazy. Kind of.

I try to be mindful of the energy we use around here. Not only does using too much energy impact the household budget in a negative way (and we don’t want that when there’s pretty things to buy), but I think it’s important to balance our use of natural resources, etc. during our time on this planet. It’s not really a balancing act, but using more efficient lighting and heating/cooling methods helps me feel less guilty about driving around in a Jeep Wrangler or flying an airplane.

I tried to embrace the CFI (compact fluorescent) light bulbs a while back but honestly I hated them. They were slow to warm up, they gave off a weird colored light and, I don’t know, they didn’t feel right. Plus, it seemed like they burned out faster than incandescent bulbs. Luckily, the CFIs have been burning out quicker and I’m rapidly getting rid of them.

During this switch to LEDs, I’m also ramping back one notch on the perceived wattage of the bulb. For example, I replace a 75W incandescent bulb with an LED that appears to give off 60W. This helps keep the costs down and even better, makes Earl think he’s getting older because everything is dim. Don’t tell him.

The only LED lights that I don’t really like are LED Christmas Tree lights. The coloring looks funky to me. As technology moves forward perhaps they’ll get the coloring closer to the classic bulbs in a year or two.

They say history repeats itself, that things go in cycles and circles, or something along those lines, but not the lines of a parallelogram. Cycles repeat. Even on final spin.

I’m in a silly mood and I’m blathering a little. The truth of the matter is, now that I’m teetering on that unnecessary label of “late 40s”, I’m starting to see history repeating itself. I saw a car that was the same color as the shade of orange as a relative’s 1970-something Pinto back in the day. Hairstyles are always repeating some earlier decade. And now the online experience is coming full circle.

Back in the 1990s you couldn’t go a week without receiving some sort of America Online marketing package, whether it was by mail, a free handout at the store or someone was chucking them off a float in your favorite gay pride parade. America Online was the onramp to the Information Superhighway for many and AOL did their best to keep everyone hooked by being inclusive. They provided a connection, lots of information, they provided chat rooms and discussion boards, communication tools such as Instant Messenger and it was always a charge of excitement when your computer exclaimed, “You’ve got mail!”. Yes, America Only WAS the Internet as far as many people were concerned back in the day. The broadband came to town and people realized that they didn’t really need America Online to get online and that there was a whole world wide web outside of the AOL walls. And people sought it out. Folks built web sites and blogged and technology picked up speed and moved forward. Life was grand.

Many years later, Facebook came to town. What started on a college campus soon took over the world and anyone that was anyone was on Facebook. You could easily find people, see photos, exchange messages, plan events, do pretty much everything you could do inside the walls of AOL back in the day, except with more glitz and glam and a heck of a lot faster. Like AOL, Facebook does its best to become an essential part of your online existence: they want you to use their Facebook Messenger, share anything and everything with friends, join groups and discussions with others with a common interest, look up restaurants and boutiques through location aware magic, share photos, videos, get your news, etc.

While I have been a Facebook user for many years, I’ve tried to enjoy everything on the Internet, not just the offerings of Facebook. I’ve kept my blog going, I Google things on an hourly basis, I read all sorts of news feeds, I tweet. My love/hate relationship with Facebook runs deep, but it isn’t my entire Internet experience. I know there’s a heck of a lot more outside the walls of Facebook.

But just like the days of AOL, people are becoming Facebook centric.

I am the web developer for a scholarship program called “Miss Mohawk Valley”. It sounds like a beauty pageant because it is a beauty pageant, in fact, the winner of “Miss Mohawk Valley” competes in “Miss New York” and can end up as “Miss America” if the cards and points are all in her favor. My friend Laurie was the Executive Producer for years and I enjoyed maintaining the website. When there was a change in leadership a couple of months ago, I agreed to continue the website, but there doesn’t seem to be an interest in it.

The current Miss Mohawk Valley does everything on Facebook.

Now, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with this approach, everyone that’s anyone in the intended audience is probably on Facebook, but as an old geezer in the tech world, it seems a little dangerous to hand all that information over to a single entity. It resides on their servers, in their framework and on their dime. People getting to the Miss Mohawk Valley page are giving up information in all sorts of ways through Facebook’s ad-opportunity snooping mechanisms and, lack of tin-foil hat aside, this would make me nervous. This is one of the reasons that I go through the exercise of maintaining my blog on my own server with my own copy of software, etc. It’s mine and I want to make sure that it’s mine and I want to be sure that it’s available to everyone, not just folks with a Facebook account.

As more and more friends and the like tap me on Facebook for friend requests and such, I can’t help but wonder if everyone is jumping back into that AOL-like walled garden again. While I can play in the garden, I certainly don’t want to live there.

And I hope the walls don’t close completely someday.

I was excited when Apple announced the release of “Apple Music”, the revamping of their iTunes store to include streaming music and some other goodies. As an Apple dude, I had dreams of a beautiful interface that would be easy to use and work seamlessly across my Apple devices.

And what a dream it was.

I have been a monthly Spotify subscriber for the past couple of years. I’ve always maintained at least two music services on my devices: iTunes and the “Music” app to manage my personal collection and Spotify to listen to new music and more importantly, discover some tracks I would enjoy. By having all of this available in one app, life would be that much easier because after all, “it just works”.

Except it doesn’t.

I tried rebuilding my Spotify playlist entitled “Morning Ramp-up Two” in the new Apple Music. I used my iPhone to do this.

In Spotify you find the song and you tap on a “+” sign to add it to an existing playlist or create a new playlist. In Apple Music, the best I can tell, you have to create the playlist first and then find the song you want through the search of “My Music” or “Apple Music”. When you find the song you then have to tap at least FIVE times before the track is added to the playlist in question. And there is no confirmation that the addition has actually happened. I discovered this by tapping on the “add” button several times with no response. Upon giving up, I discovered that I had tapped the “add” button of Lenka’s “You Will Be Mine” at least 15 times because the track had been added to that playlist 15 times in a row.

No “you have a duplicate entry on your playlist warning.”
No “you have added this track to your playlist.”
No “track added, search for another?” prompt.

Nothing.

This morning I tried to play the “Morning Ramp-Up Two” playlist on my iPad. Apple Music just sat there. It showed the playlist, it offered a play button but mashing my finger on the little icon did nothing.

Or so I thought.

Actually, mashing my finger on the playlist made the “data is flowing” icon up in status bar spin but it seized up Apple Music. I couldn’t slide it around, I couldn’t back out, I could shrink it down, nothing.

I had to reboot my iPad.

Because insanity is defined by someone performing the same action and expecting a different result, I went insane when I went through the same exercise of trying to play “Morning Ramp-Up Two” not once, but twice. Both additional times brought the same result.

I’m nuts.

I ended up closing Apple Music and going with Spotify where everything worked effortlessly and easily. The way Apple products are suppose to work.

To add salt to the wound, my iPhone keeps losing its Wi-Fi connection to the Wi-Fi router here in the house, which, surprisingly enough, is a five month old Apple Airport Extreme.

Because, after all, it just works.

My brand new work MacBook Pro Retina is having some sort of seizure with using the built in Mail.app to do, well, email, so I had to resort to downloading Microsoft Outlook from the company website and running with that. And to top it all off, the beautiful, brand new 27-inch Apple Thunderbolt Display that work provided does not connect properly to my MacBook Pro Retina, I had to buy an adapter. Because, you know, technology standards. And to top it off, this is the second display I’ve had from Apple that has some sort of glitch embedded into the screen, this is a small piece of dirt that lives in the glass, appearing behind anything the appears on the screen with some weird 3D effect.

I feel bad that I insisted on using all Apple equipment for my newest career move.

Waiting for my brand new work Apple MacBook Pro Retina to reboot for the third time this afternoon so that I could get to the terminal prompt got me to thinking as to why we pay so much money for what is suppose to be a premium experience. Use of Apple products USED to be a premium experience, but it’s not anymore. While it’s fun to go into an Apple store and browse, it can be a hit or miss experience as to whether the shopping experience will be a premium excursion. The clerk that helped me try on various Apple Watches really couldn’t have cared less if I was actually there or not. The whole mantra of “it just works” no longer holds true. My biggest fear is that Apple still offers the premium experience and their latest mediocre at best offerings are what people now expect as the premium experience.

I expect more. I want more.

I just fear that I’m not going to find it anywhere.

So I’m back on Spotify and I’ve put Apple Music on the back burner, with a reminder to myself to cancel payment before the three-month trial is up. Sorry Apple, I’m one of your biggest fans but this just ain’t cutting it lately.

One Friday in June, between my work trip to Greenville, S.C. and my work trip to Little Rock, Ark., this finally arrived in the mail:

‘Tis true, I have an Apple Watch on my wrist. Technically it’s my third Apple Watch. I ordered one at 0305 ET on the night that they became available and then canceled the order a few days later, after trying one out at an Apple store and not being able to justify a “use case” in my head for it. A week later I had a change of heart and ordered one again and then ended up canceling it. Several apps were then announced for the Apple Watch and then I could justify a use case to have one, mostly for weather alerts and other important pilot information, so I ordered again and it finally arrived.

The Apple ordering center must love me.

It’s been three weeks and I’m still getting used to it. A lot of the reviews talked about how awful the battery life is but I haven’t experienced anything like that as of yet, at the end of the day I usually still have at least 60% of battery life left, so I end up charging my watch every two days. I don’t know why people obsess about charging their watch every day, most people I know end up charging their phone every day so why wouldn’t this be any different? It just sits on my nightstand charging next to my iPhone 6, which is also charging at the same time.

One thing I have noticed is that the battery life on my iPhone 6 is not as robust as it used to be. I blame constant communication between the iPhone and the Watch for the battery drain, as an Apple Watch can’t do much without an iPhone. In fact, I don’t think it can do anything at all.

Some things that I love about the Apple Watch:

1. ApplePay on my wrist. I have wholeheartedly adopted ApplePay on my iPhone (where it is accepted) and the first time I used it from my Apple Watch I was absolutely delighted. I was in Little Rock getting a bottled water from the hotel vending machine which accepted ApplePay. I just touched my wrist to the reader and it was instantaneous. ApplePay on the iPhone is easy-peasy, on the Apple Watch it’s even easier. Love it.

2. I like monitoring my heart rate. I don’t know why I do it, but if I feel some sort of oddity in my chest or something, it’s comforting to be able to check my heart rate immediately. I don’t often feel a flutter and according to the lack of change in my heart rate, it’s probably gas.

3. I like being able to glance at text messages and emails from folks that I have designed as “VIP”s. I had to tweak the selection of pre-programmed text messages so that they applied to my usage scenario, but the texting experience has been nearly flawless. Siri’s voice recognition works MUCH better on the Apple Watch than it does on my iPhone 6, which I find confusing since she is working from the watch through the iPhone 6 to figure things out in the first place, so I don’t know why she’s better at it on the watch but she apparently is.

Things I’m not comfortable with yet:

1. I find the interface to be a little confusing. I’ve never had “Hey Siri!” work on my watch yet and I can’t never remember what button combination is required to pull her up.

2. I am somehow taking lots of screenshots of my watch face as evidenced by the screenshots showing up in my iCloud Photo Stream. I think I must have a fat wrist or something.

3. The “Mirror my iPhone” settings in the Apple Watch app on my iPhone seems useless. For example, I had ApplePay set up to Mirror my iPhone but it didn’t do any such thing, I still had to add my credit and debit cards to my Apple Watch separately from my iPhone settings, even though it’s set to “Mirror my iPhone”.

Overall I’m pleased with my Apple Watch and I’m happy that I made the purchase. I’m looking forward to doing more of the aviation stuff with it as I fly more and more this summer.

One thing that I’m surprised about is how many people have commented that I actually have an Apple Watch. A couple of people have stopped me to ask me about it and to have a look at it and I actually enjoy talking about it and giving my honest opinion.

I don’t think the Apple Watch is ready for everyone yet, anymore than the first iteration of the iPhone was ready for the masses back in the day, but I think the Apple is on the right path and that we are going to see some great things develop with the Watch over the next few years.

So today at work I blazed through an entire workday of writing code and doing magical things with databases. I’m writing a web application that is going to greatly enhance the work lives of the members of our team; at least, that is my goal and why I’m getting paid the big bucks. I found that I have a certain style when designing an application and luckily that style seems to be user friendly. I have yet to receive any serious complaints about the applications I design

My new company provided me with a 27-inch Apple Thunderbolt display to pair up with the provided 13-inch MacBook Pro Retina (something I negotiated when accepting the position). I didn’t think that the 27-inch display would make that much of a difference when compared to the 24-inch display I had from my old company, but I was wrong. Though my workflow is similar to my previous job, I feel like I have a whole lot more room in those extra three diagonal inches in the monitor.

As I was headed back to work after lunch I noticed in that in the corner of our “tool room” was a cheap Logitech keyboard that used to be attached to one of the Linux servers in our basement, because after all, every home needs a basement with multiple Linux servers. I remembered typing on that keyboard and enjoying the experience, so I decided to hook it up to my work Mac setup and give it a whirl for coding this afternoon.

It enhanced my typing experience.

Now, I type on a computer keyboard for a living. I type on computer keyboards for fun. While I love my Macs, I can’t say that I’m a huge fan of the keyboards they build into their MacBooks and the external keyboards they provide. Truth be told, my favorite keyboard is the old IBM Model M. Apple is all about making everything as thin as possible, and the key travel has been shrinking over the years. The last time I was in an Apple store I tried out the newest design of keyboards built into the new MacBooks and I have to say I wasn’t impressed. It may be because I grew up on computers built in the 1980s, but I want a keyboard that’s going to click and clack and I want the keys to travel down to a stop with a satisfying thunk. I want to feel my letters as they appear on the screen.

I’m rather heavy handed with my typing.

When I type in front of someone for the first time, there’s a chance that I’ll receive a comment about how fast I type. I’ve tested as high as 115-120 words per minute, though I don’t think I type that fast anymore, because after all, I’m not as young and spry as I used to be. I have my mother to thank for my typing speed; when I was eight or so years old I was goofing around with her old Royal manual typewriter and she told me that if I was going to play around with a typewriter, I was going to use the correct fingers so she taught me how to type while I was still in elementary school. By fifth or sixth grade I could type faster than the secretary in the principal’s office (when armed with an electric typewriter). By all accounts I should have probably become a professional secretary of the male persuasion, but I don’t think I would have enjoyed bouncing on the boss’ knee.

I think I’ve gone off on a tangent.

Back to keyboards in today’s world. I’m not a fan of what the tech companies are offering as standard equipment today. The cheap Logitech keyboard I started using today gives a pleasant but not excellent experience. I like the travel of the keys, there is some satisfaction in the clunk and I confirmed with one of the online typing tests that I can type faster on that than I can on a standard issue Mac keyboard, but I’m still feeling a little restless about the whole keyboard experience.

I think I’m going to purchase one of these: the Das Keyboard 4 Professional for Mac. I’ve read some positive reviews from some keyboard snobs such as myself and I feel encouraged, but for that kind of cash I think I need to do a little more research.

If any of my gentle readers have used such a beast as the Das Keyboard for Mac, or have another keyboard they would recommend based on my blathering above, I would love to hear from you in the comments.

In the meanwhile, type on, fellow typists and remember to bounce gently on the knee.

It’s not secret that I am fascinated by “connected clocks”, or clocks that are synchronized by some method, whether it’s wired, wireless or smoke signals. I have a collection of old slave clocks wired throughout the house. They were all made by The Standard Electric Time Company and were commonly found in schools, factories and other industrial buildings. The clocks in the house advance once a minute with an audible click-click. They are controlled by an old computer in the basement running Linux and a program I wrote years ago in BASIC. My collection of clocks span manufactured years of 1920 to 1955. I’ve been fascinated by connected clocks since my first day of kindergarten in Mrs. Mosher’s room, Room 5 at Lura Sharp Elementary School.

A lot of airports have connected clocks of some sort. I’m typing this blog entry at DTW, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. The terminals here at DTW are quite nice and modern. There are clocks everywhere. I don’t know this for certain, but I believe the two terminal buildings were built at different times. Someone obviously made the effort to try to make the airport experience cohesive, the building housing the B and C gates is smaller but similar in design to the building housing the A gates. Remarkably (at least to me), the clocks in what feels like the newer building have the same design as the original, however, they’re not made by the same company.

Terminal A building.

Terminal B building.

Ordinary people would take a passing glance and might notice that the clocks are the same throughout the airport. On closer inspection, one can tell that Terminal A’s clocks are made by Simplex but Terminal B’s clocks are not marked with the name of the manufacturer. I suspect that the latter was made by American Time and Signal, a small company in Dassel, Minn., but I can’t be certain with asking someone.

And I might just do that.

My OCD tendencies demand that clocks all read the same time. As a child I couldn’t stand it if the VCR was a minute off from my alarm clock or something of that nature. Luckily, today’s connected world lends itself to clocks more likely reading the same time.

And even though it’s been over 40 years since I sat in Room 5 in Kindergarten, I find all of these connected clocks to still be quite fascinating.

When Earl and I were in Pensacola Beach, Florida a while back, I dropped two drops of water from a glass on the trackpad on my laptop, a 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina display. I had promptly wiped the water off the trackpad, making sure that it didn’t seep into any of the corners of the trackpad, but to no avail, the trackpad took on a mind of its own and started spazzing out like crazy.

Many fix-it guides on the Internet suggested rubbing a cloth in a vigorous manner all over the trackpad for several minutes. Apparently this dries something out and then the trackpad will start behaving again.  It worked, and I was able to use my computer normally.

Until the humid weather moved in two days ago.

Now, whenever the humidity is high the trackpad loses its mind again. I vigorously wipe the trackpad surface with a cloth and things settle down to normal, but only for 10 minutes or so, then things are start going crazy again.

I decided it was time to be a good Mac boy and I made an appointment with the Genius Bar at the local Apple store. Earl and I are making a quick trek to the mall this evening.

While they’re fixing my trackpad, I’m going to ask them to replace the keyboard as well, as I had some pretzel dust seep into the keyboard a year or so ago and a couple of the keys are still crunchy. I’ve finally fallen in love with that computer, I want to keep it around for as long as I can.

I have mentioned in the last few blog posts that Earl and I are in Pensacola Beach, Florida this week. I have been living the life of a “digital nomad”, something that I have always wanted to be able to do with my career. It’s not something that I can do all the time, but every once in a while it’s nice to be able to work with a change of scenery.

For those stumbling upon this entry via Google, a quick background of what I do for a living: I work for a large, national telecommunications company in the Engineering Development Services group as a Senior Software Engineer. I spend 90% of my day writing code. The company I work for allows many of us to work remotely. The gig pays well, has decent benefits and working remotely is ideal for me. I love it. When I interviewed with this company in 2010, I declared that I hoped it would be my last job interview. I still believe this to be the case.

I thought I’d share what I do as a digital nomad and how I assure that I will be able to remain productive and connected to work even though I could be working anywhere. Much of this is at my own expense, and quite frankly, it’s worth it.

1. When I was given a company smartphone (a Samsung Galaxy SIII), I made sure they included data sharing in the data plan. My smartphone is on AT&T. I rarely use my phone for anything because as an Apple guy, I can’t stand using whatever Samsung has done to SIII.

2. I make sure that I always have a minimum of two but preferably three ways to connect to the Internet at any given time. This involves any hotel or restaurant wi-fi connection, the aforementioned data plan on my company smartphone and my personal iPad on Verizon, which comes with data sharing as well. Public WiFi can be wonky quite often, but I’ve found my Verizon LTE on my iPad to be rock solid 90% of the time. Often if I don’t have Verizon coverage, I can fall back on the AT&T connection.

3. Though it’s a pain at airport security, I carry both my personal and work MacBooks and use each computer as appropriate. However, if my work MacBook should fail for any reason, I can still connect using my personal computer or my iPad and Remote Desktop to my standard issue PC in the cubicle back at home.

4. I have two Dropbox accounts, one for work and one for personal use. I store all of my code for work on Dropbox, so I can get to it anywhere. I also share my coding folder from my work Dropbox to my personal Dropbox, so I can also get to it there if I have to fall back to my personal MacBook. In an absolutely paranoid move, I also have an old Pentium 4 PC back home that I can get to via an SSH connection. I have this computer also syncing with Dropbox, so as a very last resort my files are always somewhere.

5. I use Google Voice for my work cell phone number and then forward calls to whatever device I am carrying. Calls are normally forwarded to my personal iPhone because of my dislike of the company Samsung. I normally make my work calls using my personal phone. I used to use Skype for everything, but lately Skype has been dropping landline calls like crazy so I’ve been sticking with cell service and I have no regrets with my decision. In my home office I have a VoIP line that I pay $9.95 a month for through a company called PhonePower. Their service has been outstanding.

6. I carry at least two pairs of headphones with me because others shouldn’t have to hear my calls. I hate Bluetooth fobs hanging in my ear, I do all my conference calls on standard issue Apple headphones that come with iPhones.

7. I tend to thrive in ambient noise environments, but if I find myself being distracted, I listen to instrumental music of varying variety when I write code. A favorite selection is “Music To Code By” by Carl Franklin. I also have a set playlist of a few songs that I listen to at the beginning of every workday, it’s my way of telling my brain, “OK, it’s time to work.” I used to have videos playing when I worked but I find them too distracting.

8. Luckily, the company I work for has company wide instant messaging through Microsoft Lync. I use this to stay connected with coworkers and the like but I’m not afraid to use the “busy” or “do not disturb” status. I make a point of blocking out an hour in the morning as “productivity time” and an hour for lunch each day on my calendar. The morning block allows me to plan my day and weed through email and the lunch block keeps me sane.

With a little forethought and planning, and the right job, becoming a Digital Nomad is a dream come true for me. I love what I do, I like who I work for and I like that I have flexibility to experience changes of scenery when my schedule allows for it. It helps keep life awesome.

I have mentioned this before in the past and there’s a link at the top of my blog that leads to further information on my interest in the subject, but I got my start in computers in the retail realm. While I had a passing interest in the cash registers I saw as a youngster at the grocery store and at Kmart and Sears, I wasn’t really intrigued with how they worked until the opening of the Ames Department Store in my hometown. If memory serves correctly, the store opened in 1977. I remember going during the grand opening and purchasing a red and blue toy airplane. Besides the excitement of buying the airplane, I was quite fascinated with the cash registers they were using at Ames. They looked like the cash register used at the little grocery store in town, but with many more buttons and some extra pieces on the side. Even at nine years old, I noticed the difference.

It turns out that the cash registers at Ames were the first generation of computerized cash registers. I use the term “computerized” loosely, because the machines were entirely mechanical. There were no electronics anywhere in the guts of these cash registers. However, the extra buttons and the additional mechanism I observed were actually used to punch a computer tape. In later years I found out that these tapes were removed on a regular basis and sent somewhere official where they were fed into an IBM (presumably) mainframe computer. Hence, computerized inventory.  All of the items at Ames were marked with a department number; some items also had a three digit SKU number as well. Cashiers could fly along punching in these extra numbers and the store executives were assumedly happy with the inventory information they were receiving.

Legacy technology like this fascinates me. Yes, it took a little longer to get through the checkouts in those days, but to think that all the mechanics in those cash registers could do so many different functions is incredible to me. Unfortunately, while there are many of the grocery store models of these cash registers out and about just waiting to be restored and cherished, I haven’t seen an inventory control model in many years, aside from one picture taken in a landfill, at least until a fellow restorer sent me an eBay listing.

Yesterday, this arrived.

Aside from the three lower buttons in the very left hand column, this cash register is identical to what I remember from Ames in 1977. The owner warned me that it needs a lot of work; he couldn’t get the drawer opened and the motor just buzzes.

Last night I started taking the register apart and figuring out what I had gotten myself into. The cash drawer is now working. I didn’t expect to find any money inside, and I didn’t, but I did find a receipt that indicates where this cash register came from. This register was last used in May 1986 in an Alco Discount Store.  I had never heard of Alco until that moment, a quick Google search showed that they are in the process of going out of business. They’re a discount department store chain some in the midwestern United States.

Getting this cash register working again is going to be a project that I am looking forward to. While the wind is still whipping and the Arctic winds keep blasting our area, it’s good to step away from technology and just tinker around a little bit. Doing so let’s my mind wander a little bit and I find it relaxing.

I’m looking forward to getting this working someday. It’s my way of preserving some of our early computerized heritage.