let me tell you I am really behind on my Norton invoices. got these Geek Squad bills stacking up too.

There's been much discussion of the end of AOL's dial-up service. I don't know that this necessarily changes the emotional impact, but from a technical perspective, there is something to keep in mind: for quite some years now, ~20, AOL's dial-up service has just been white-labeled from pretty […]

okay, I'm out of Utah pictures. Well, I'm *far* from out of Utah pictures, but I'm out of the one I shortlisted. So here's a home picture. of a cat.

Hite Crossing Bridge

more Utah. that's the thing, there's a lot of Utah.

Hollow Mountain, at Hanksville, Utah, is a gas station convenience store carved into the hill. I actually find that less interesting than the downright dystopian hills behind with their various eras of communications infrastructure.

Today on Computers Are Bad, some high-grade Albuquerque content, and the first of two parts: The Ascent to Sandia Crest. https://computer.rip/2025-09-28-the-ascent-to-sandia-crest-part-1.html

love a little bridge

"There's a Reason"

for some reason I always get weirdly excited about finding these old Radio Shack/Realistic speakers in place. They came with inexpensive PA and intercom systems that were really popular for a while.

🎵 Utah, with its mountains and valleys 🎵 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXfbS0vXqYo

bagelstar galactica

Comcastic ™️

Some detritus of an old mining operation This particular site, Frisco, Utah, was apparently an active mine in the late 19th century to the early 20th.

I gotta stop posting today and get to important things like weed and sleep. but I was watching this video by @vwestlife in which he briefly mentions Dorsey Laboratories, a pharmaceuticals company that advertised via Flexidisc. With it was a photo of a very […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

now tain I can get into

PO boxes are interesting in a lot of ways, but there's also a fascinating industry of things-that-are-kind-of-like-PO-boxes-but-not-quite. The most obvious example is the Private Mail Box or PMB. These are what you find for rent at FedEx Office and your local corner mailing store. They're […]

maybe mail addressing is just a weird special interest, but I also think that growing up in a city that writes a quadrant before the street name, moving to a town that is inconsistent on whether or not quadrants exist at all, and then ending up in a city that puts the quadrant after the street […]

Albuquerque has a lot of letters and takes a long time to write. The spelling can be a bit treacherous. As a result, we're very fond of our airport code, and people often write ABQ instead. But what about addressing mail? Writing "ABQ NM" is a reasonably common practice, but is it "legal?" The […]

next time you need office supplies, remember that W. B. Mason has livery down like no one else.

Somewhere in Nevada

Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker 🤝 Doug Prishpreed

today I have various bits and bobs arriving in the mail for fixing: one (1) dot matrix printer one (1) old truck two (2) fax machines

a little more visitor's center

regular, everyday light ™️ lightstyles for lifestyles ™️ Enrich ™️

so instead of doing chores let's look at a cave. They have one of those at Great Basin National Park, called Lehman Caves. It's pretty small compared to something like Carlsbad, but also quite spectacular.

doing the thing where I paint my nails and then immediately think of 20 different household chores that I need to do, very carefully and slowly

I find it amusing how whenever the BBB comes up there's a group of people gasping at the revelation that it's not some agency of the federal government. Like, wait until these people find out about the Chamber of Commerce. It'll shake them to their core.

Speaking of Great Basin National Park, would you believe it's got some cool stuff in it?

Neat metal details laid into a shelter near Great Basin National Park

Thanks to a bunch of tedious effort, the map of microwave reflectors now includes more standing examples located via expired and cancelled licenses. https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1y6xe9TFqhoEgBN4cacezvup-n5TX62E

i don't use disk encryption because i have a gun

oh, I posted an article! just a real factual one on T-carrier. https://computer.rip/2025-09-20-T-carrier.html

❕ Tip ❕ Note ❕ Note ❕ Attention

You can see detail of the old bullwheel in this photo. The tramway was mostly gravity powered, since it carried payload in the downhill direction. The mechanics were pretty simple. There was a stationary engine for running it when not sufficiently loaded for […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

Pioche, Nevada is a place that we just happened to stumble upon while driving through. I saw an old industrial tramway over the highway and yelled "OLD INDUSTRIAL TRAMWAY!" with enough alarm to get my husband to stop driving.

Kershaw-Ryan State Park in Nevada is a fascinating spot to stumble upon. Tucked into a narrow canyon in the desert, it's abruptly well-manicured.

why does so much of my life come down to nursing lead acid batteries back to life oh, it's because I'm cheap and all of my batteries are old and/or used

so a funny thing, what with all the "em dash is AI" discourse: the new computer.rip isn't rendering "---" as "—". that's just a bug, I thought the markdown renderer would do it but I guess it doesn't. I probably have to write my own plugin.

I got myself all worked up and depressed writing the EYES ONLY that I just sent out, so to take my mind off things, here's some shale. We were hoping to find trilobites but no luck.

Las Vegas architectural observations

all the iOS people seem kinda split on this whole Aero UI thing huh

[FEED THE CHILDREN]

Mayoral condidate Daniel Chavez is also very light on ideas other than more cops and criminalizing homelessness, but with a charming exception: AN NBA TEAM. That's right, he plans to install an NBA team in downtown Albuquerque, right on Central. You gotta love the vision.

views of wells park (from indoors)

got a new computer at work, which means I'll be spending the next two weeks ordering and returning various USB-C, Thunderbolt, and DisplayLink docks until I figure out a combination that actually works reasonably well. Love the "universal" nature of USB-C, i.e., it universally plugs in and yet […]

UFO??? in MY midsized city?

At the Santa Fe Opera

Today on Computers Are Bad: 1) Computers Are bad has been completely redesigned! 2) It's an article on a thing called the Video Lunchbox that made a big impression in my childhood. https://computer.rip/2025-09-13-the-video-lunchbox.html

Second Street Brewing at the Santa Fe Railyards: railfan from the convenience of your table.