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What are tamper-resistant outlets?

Dave Farquhar DIY April 11, 2023April 7, 2023

What are tamper-resistant outlets? Tamper-resistant outlets are a special electrical outlet, sold in North America, designed to prevent injury or death from toddlers or children inserting a foreign metal object into the outlet and causing electrical shock or electrocution. They have an embossed “TR” to distinguish them from earlier types of outlets. You can buy tamper resistant versions of various types of outlets, including standard duplex outlets, and ground fault circuit interrupter outlets (GFCIs).

The Bell and Howell Apple II

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing April 7, 2023April 7, 2023

The Bell and Howell Apple II, also known as the Darth Vader Apple II, was a slightly modified Apple II for the education market manufactured by Apple but distributed and supported by Bell and Howell. It is a curiosity for collectors today, and a potential pitfall.

Marx The Meteor Diesel Freight set 2915

Dave Farquhar Toy trains April 6, 2023May 4, 2023

In 1974, Marx introduced a diesel freight set it called The Meteor, catalog number 2915, that ran on a 6 volt lantern battery and sold through discount stores. If you have one today, it’s worth more than its original retail price, even adjusted for inflation.

The Marx Meteor train set was part of the Great American Railroads series. It had catalog number 2915 and was sold only in 1974 and 1975.

Handling API pagination with Python

Dave Farquhar security April 5, 2023March 25, 2023

A common problem in using Python to gather data via APIs is pagination. Most APIs have a limit on how much data they are willing to send you in a single API call. So they break the data into pages. In this blog post, I’ll go through an example of handling API pagination in Python.

Replace carriage returns with commas in Notepad++

Dave Farquhar Windows April 4, 2023March 25, 2023

There are times when you need comma-separated lists but the data you have is separated by carriage returns instead. In this blog post, I’ll show you how to easily replace carriage returns with commas in Notepad++.

Microsoft Softcard

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing April 3, 2023April 2, 2023

The Microsoft Softcard, released April 2, 1980, was Microsoft’s first hardware product. Not only that, it was a hardware product that made two products from two of its historical rivals work together. For those reasons and more, it is a historically very important product. This hardware product from a software company changed Microsoft’s trajectory dramatically.

Desktop keyboard drawer: Unheraded retro accessory

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing March 31, 2023March 25, 2023

I don’t look for vintage computers in the wild nearly as much anymore as I look for vintage computer accessories. I was very happy to find a vintage desktop keyboard drawer less than 6 miles from home.

Marx train set #25000

Dave Farquhar Toy trains March 30, 2023December 28, 2022

Marx train set #25000 is perhaps the quintessential O gauge 3/16 scale set from Louis Marx & Co., featuring a classic 999 locomotive and tender and a consist of 3/16 scaled tin lithographed freight cars.

Milwaukee tools at Lowe’s

Dave Farquhar DIY March 29, 2023March 29, 2023

Milwaukee is a popular brand of power tools, often used by professionals and one of the biggest rivals of DeWalt. Meanwhile, Lowe’s is the second largest home improvement store chain in North America. It would be natural to expect Lowe’s to carry Milwaukee tools. But the relationship between Lowe’s and Milwaukee is complicated.

Lowe’s sells a brand of cart and dolly called Milwaukee that has no connection to Milwaukee power tools. Lowe’s hasn’t sold Milwaukee power tools since 2007, and Milwaukee’s parent company’s relationship with Home Depot makes it unlikely that situation will change any time soon.

Where to buy steel wool

Dave Farquhar DIY March 28, 2023March 25, 2023

Where to buy steel wool isn’t a difficult question. It’s clear from the Google search results that any hardware store, home improvement store, and even one of the large discount store chains carries steel wool. But finding it in those huge 100,000-square-foot stores is another matter. I’ve even heard people lament that nobody seems to sell plain steel wool anymore, that all they can find are SOS pads that have a cleaner embedded in them. In this blog post, I’ll reveal the secret of where to find steel wool in big box stores.

You can still find plain steel wool today, but the trick is to not look in the cleaning section. It’s usually in the part of the store that sells paint, wood stain, and/or sandpaper.