Tony's Stuff

Washable, reusable, and, although a bit expensive, the ad copy suggested that one roll would replace sixty paper towel rolls. I excitedly ran to show my wife, my finger poised over the Add To Cart button. Our paper towel problems would soon be behind us! Apparently, this idea was akin to suggesting that we replace our paper towels with my underwear. My wife saw no value in bamboo towels. I retreated, defeated. https://medium.com/family-and-love/bamboo-towels-who-knew-19fc7216cc57?sk=5cbe1087018352fcc89b44349a826248

I already know the answer to the question posed in the title. The seller wants us to browse through the products offered and hopefully begin buying products we are not buying now. I understand that, and I do not expect that desire to change. But they could make it easier for us while improving sales at the same time.   https://medium.com/tonys-tech-corner/why-do-we-have-to-clip-digital-coupons-300144aaa388?sk=5210a0b26dd658c2786af266c7d749d6

In 1983, I started the business that would consume more than three decades of my life. I had started businesses before this. I had a part-time rare coin business with my brother in law and had been in a partnership with a friend running a wholesale/retail hobby ceramics shop. Those businesses were deliberate and planned; starting them was a decision reached after serious consideration and planning. Beginning this business was more from desperation than planning. https://medium.com/@pcunix/killing-my-business-was-the-hardest-decision-i-ever-made-9783ebd43cd2?sk=9991e0f12b98ba9611d32a788412675d

Two photos attracted my interest because the notations on the backs mentioned “Katherine.” One showed Katherine walking with my father and  I immediately realized who this had to be: my grandparents took in a foster child named Katherine Clasby when she was twelve years old. The genealogical information I have mentions her without explaining any circumstances that required fostering. Given that Katherine and even her children remained in touch with my grandmother and my aunt for all of her life, it seems that she became part of our family. https://medium.com/@pcunix/finding-friends-and-strangers-in-old-family-photos-e73e5b355dde?sk=0bb42f77fa4e62037a857b0f1afb01ea

Barney chose us.  He belonged to a family up the street, not our next door neighbors. He would curl up on the back steps or porch and try to enter the house when the door opened. Our mother would take him back to his home and that pattern repeated. After some back and forth, with the cat insisting that our house was where he wanted to live, it was agreed that we would assume custody. That’s why we named him Barnacle — he stuck to us. https://medium.com/@pcunix/a-few-pets-i-knew-d3f4a6dc034b?source=friends_link&sk=ad67e38a8b623a090d527349a4002d34

Late in 2019, my cousin sent me two photos she had found in her albums. The images showed her father (my mother’s brother) and my father sailing an iceboat on Lake Massapoag in Sharon, MA. These interested me as mementos of my family history, but also because they triggered a memory, which was that my father intended to build an iceboat in the mid-1950s. https://medium.com/@pcunix/our-familys-iceboat-mysteries-fa51af7125c2?sk=d3d14a184a56847e160f076764f3d918

When the rumors that Apple might switch Macs away from Intel CPU’s to ARM first arrived, almost every pundit I read opined that Apple would only be able to do that on the low end; that high-end professional machines would not switch because “ARM is slower than Intel.” If you google “Why is ARM slower than Intel”, you’ll find reams of text explaining why this is true, has always been true, and forever will be true. Unless Apple made a major error in their 2020 Keynote address, it seems that they plan to drop Intel processors from all Macs, not just the low-end consumer machines. https://medium.com/tonys-tech-corner/so-you-think-arm-based-macs-will-be-slow-ef1001fb7dc7?source=friends_link&sk=1d229c100b18f96097b276f122d27dc8