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Weekend Update...

From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.

Some various things to report upon, in no particular order:

1. I put my MKS-80 up on the ’Bay. ’Tis here. Pool not included. That bad boy is done sold.

2. My lovely and talented missus is packing the Full Of Techno shirts as I write this. All the US orders will ship bright and early Monday morning; I would be shocked if they weren’t in your greedy little hands starting Wednesday. The non-US ones will probably go out Monday evening or Tuesday morning at the latest.

EDIT: All USA orders have shipped. Foreign orders will all be out Tuesday morning.

3. DronestationX, the iPad version of Dronestation, is nearing completion. I’ve added a few features, and given it a UI much more suited to the iPad’s form factor. I’ll be submitting it to Apple at some point this week, and at some point after that it will either be approved or not.

4. In Phoenix, 5” long flying cockroaches fall from the sky. We were having a dinner party when the first one showed up, and one of our guests was all like “you’ll probably never see another one again. They’re really rare.” Well, I guess we’re just lucky then, because our back yard is starting to bear a striking resemblance to Klandathu. It’s really, really unpleasant.

10 comments

  1. boobs

    re: #4 - but you'll take big flying roaches to passive aggressive neck bearded hipsters any day right... ;)

    enjoy the pool!

  2. Chris Randall

    Well, I'd be with boobs on that one, but I can always clothesline a passive-aggressive neck-bearded hipster as he blows by on his fixie. Not so for these things. If my wife wasn't so anti-gunplay-in-the-back-yard, I seriously would have shot the first one.

    -CR

  3. boobs

    lmao.. what about a pellet gun? BB gun?

    growing up, my friend's mom used to make him kill frogs in the yard. he used a crossman bb gun. she hated frogs.. one night she sent him off on his duty and he bailed and went to do his own thing. later he got home only to hear his step father shooting frogs in the yard w/a 22... bitching and moaning in between pop pop pops.

    these were loud big ass swamp frogs btw.. 22 still major overkill though.

  4. bongo_x

    I thought you meant actual giant flying cockroaches. Those are mostly in Tucson. Serious cockroaches. Maybe 2”.

    I think that’s a Palo Verde Beatle.

    bb

  5. Chris Randall

    That is a Palo Verde beetle. It definitely goes on the list with the banana slug and coconut crab as one of the nastiest things I've ever encountered. Hugo pointed out that it is only about 1% as nasty as a weta, and it doesn't tear bloody chunks out of you like those giant hornets in Japan, but it's still nightmare-worthy. The one I snapped a photo of is actually the smallest one we've seen of the five so far.

    -CR

  6. boobs

    you're gonna need one of those proton plasma packs like in ghost busters. drop them mutha's right out of the sky.

  7. bassling

    Weta eh? Maybe that's what this is http://shotwildlife.blogspot.com/2010/04/mystery-bug.html Hadn't heard of them in Australia though.

    That's the biggest nasty I've seen since http://athene.riv.csu.edu.au/~jarichar/SHAKES/

  8. ungeheier

    @CR

    You must be lucky. I've been in the Phx area for about 8 years total and i've NEVER seen one of those before. My wife was talking to me about them just about 3 weeks ago but said they were blind or something (second hand info from a co-worker). Maybe they don't have them over on the 'west side' where I've lived(?)

  9. aKido

    Oh so that's why it's so easy in your country to be allowed to own and carry guns...

    _aKido

  10. Chris Randall

    @bassling: This is apparently a weta: http://yfrog.com/043rvzj Hard to tell if it's the same disgusting creature as you linked to.

    -CR

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