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Ah Radio Shack. Definitely a different era.
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Thinking, Picknar said, “in order to build a communicator we’ll need equipment. Any idea where we could get things like that?” Knox said, “most of the Radio Shacks closed years ago. But also, nothing they had was nearly as powerful as the phones in our pockets. Maybe our friend Zack can help. He actually specializes in that kind of thing.” Smiling, Rodrigo said, “oh, he’d be perfect. Knox, why don’t you go nab him, and in the meantime Picknar and Thoos and I will go get them some non-soiled outfits.” Knox said, “fine. by the way, do either of you have a cat or dog or anything?” Picknar asked “what’s a cat?” Thoos asked, “what’s a dog?” Walking away from them, Knox, who isn’t a pet person, said, “if your imaginary planet doesn’t have little beasts like that around, at least that’s something in its favor.
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“What clothes should we get first?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On you. They’re incontinence underwear.”
“We don’t know where they’re under! It’s your planet!”
I remember the shock of sheer joy I felt the first time I went into the Fry’s Electronics that used to be near us. It was like a Best Buy and a Radio Shack had a baby! They had ENTIRE AISLES OF RESISTORS, just like vintage ’70s Radio Shacks!
RS wasn’t great. I remember a clerk’s “can I help you?”, asking about a 1k resistor and the reply was “uh, do you have a catalog number?”
Very limited selection.
If you get clear back to the 80s when electronics was a major hobby then if the clerks couldn’t help you, the manager certainly could.
These days though, most “electronics” projects start with a cheap microcontroller and need very few discrete components, so the knowledge just isn’t there. They probably could have hung on if they’d kept their good selection and focused on the repairs market. Sell components, and rent soldering stations for a few dollars, or have a guy in the back who will just fix it for you for a few more. Something like that.
But instead they tried to compete with Best Buy in the consumer electronics area and they just weren’t great at that.
IMHO compactness was an advantage of Radio Shack, if they did happen to have what you needed, compared to the “big box” stores. In and out in minutes.
Entire aisles of resistors? I’m salivating at the thought.
Fry’s was fantastic, and every store was a wonderland (especially the one decorated like Alice in Wonderland…). The aisle across from the resistors had every type of discrete chip you might want, from oscillators, to microprocessors.
I miss them so much.
Why would Knox need to know if there are pets on the alien world?
Maybe worried about care for such pets?
He still thinks they are loonies (“imaginary planet”), so he’s asking about them having pets at home, on Earth.
Also, no, Knox. A world without cats and dogs is indistinguishable from Hell.
If they’d never been here we wouldn’t miss them. Makes me wonder about the amazing stuff we’ve never had and don’t know about…
All of the aboves
Pets rule!
May have been thinking about pets starving in this world, though if so the aliens wouldn’t have known about them.
I take it someone has allergies?
Heh. I called it Rat Snack. It was just OK. Lafayette Radio Electronics was superior in most ways, especially for actual radio parts. But, Lafayette went Out long before Radio Shack did. Actually, RS expanded to fill the void LRE left behind. Not that Radio Shack ever had what these guys need by way of long range signals…. 73, w2ck
My esteem for Knox ????
Ugh…emoji didn’t work. Supposed to be down graph.
In the UK Radio Shack was called Tandy, and it was bought out and turned into mobile phone shops in the 1990s or thereabouts. Maplin took their place on the UK high street and did well for a while, but they too could not adapt to changing market conditions and went bust a handful of years ago. I miss being able to cycle into town to buy a couple of resistors and an unusual size backup battery.