One year ago today: June 1, 2018, book repair workshop.
Five years ago today: June 1, 2014, Ann Coulter says . . .
Nine years ago today: June 1, 2010, noisy news.
Random years ago today: June 1, 2007, that is NOT progress.
Sure, I’m not keen on heading back downtown in Nashville after the homeless slashed my tires last April. But that was a Saturday night. I’ve found an informal meeting of Arduino enthusiasts at a Starbucks at noon tomorrow. Such groups tend to have very little but enthusiasm. Like most places, the majority are followers, so yahoos like me can provide a little variation. One thing that impresses me is the key copying machines at Wal*Mart. Have you used them? Scan your key, make a duplicate. And for $3 for you basic copy, I’d like to own a machine myself.
I’ve owned vending machines, and it is all about location. The units also get a lot of bad press from bozos. (One dork at Wired says he hates key machines because the don’t provide “those small, everyday human interactions”. He must be one lonely, lonely man.) Anyway, I thought I’d price out a machine for the hell of it. Par for the course, it is almost impossible to find out what these contraptions sell for. Even eBay is stumped by anything I search for. You get page after page of key blanks and manual cutters. If you specify vending machine, you are wasting your time
I’ll make a prediction. See the machine in the photo? Some millennial will “improve” it by adding a retina scan that takes your photo and stores a copy of every key you cut in a central database that matches up the addresses of all your lock-worthy assets. When he becomes disgruntled and gets fired, he’ll take a copy of the key file and begin helping himself to your belongings. Calling the police won’t help, because they are all busy with celebrity busts. They’ll just tell you they are not equipped to deal with this type of crime unless they are given a much, much larger budget.
Conceptually, the key cutting mechanism is a marriage of capabilities. The laser scanner selects a matching blank and two ordinary stepper motors guide the cutter with a precision better than human. The scanner can detect “Do Not Duplicate” keys. The only data I can get on a Minute Key model is that you must become a “VIP”, an Amway-like membership based on how many keys you cut. They claim no record of the key or the cut is kept, but that your standard worthless claim of this decade. It’s a cheesy operation anyway, saying they’ll plant a tree for every two blanks a VIP buys. I wonder if anyone has ever really checked if that’s true. How long before the machine keeps your original if your bio doesn’t match? And the squad car is already on the way.
I can’t find any reference to whether the machines are on-line. I’d prefer they don’t be but it is only a matter of time until somebody puts the operation on the cloud. I was wondering if they made a smaller desktop model that cut only house keys, but again, no information. This type of arrangement represents the worst in American marketing practice. They’ve got the algorithm so manipulated that no matter how you keyword the search, it pretends you are asking for the price to have a single key cut. I’ll eventually find out [the price] and post it in this blog.
LotaBurger, Deming NM
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Here’s a snapshot of the panels for the six-pack carrier. It is pretty flimsy, but the only difficult cut for me would be the slot for the bottom panel. I’m not equipped to make this cut, which requires a router table to do right. Otherwise, doesn’t it resemble a birdhouse? I broke down and bought an electric drill specifically for use around here. I miss having my workshed and I’m formulating an alternative scenario for the upcoming season. I know, I’ve got a ton of unfinished projects already, but I thrive best when I have enough going on that I’ve always got something to do. Some may laugh, but consider the alternative. For that matter, consider what they are doing with their own time.
Yep, Google is losing the lead. Uber is banning bad riders—which can mean anything from not tipping, spurning sexual advances from the driver, not chatting, and sitting behind the driver in an otherwise empty car. Yep, it’s all catching up with the one-big-happy-family the liberals thought they had going. Even taking trips that are “too short” and slamming the door can get you blacklisted. SpaceX’s first array of satellites is successful, hopefully another nail in the coffin of the current Internet. Few things would please me more than to see the entire crop of American Internet "businesses" fail. And not be allowed back until they grow some decency.
