Between 485 & 705 SQ/FT Bob Heine's Auto Emporium

[Bob Heine]

Same here, Bob. It's amazing how different the tone on the Jalopy Journal is from the Garage Journal, as both are Ryan's forums. I have an account there for learning (aka lurking) but don't post anything anymore. Newbies with the audacity to ask a question that was already answered back in 2007 are treated like lepers in a buffet line. Fiberglass? You're probably a registered *** offender.
My impression is that the majority of the HAMB membership is a bunch of xenophobic old goats who are determined to ensure their hobby dies before they do.
There is some good hot rod information there, but way too much negativity to make it worth the time trying to separate the wheat from the chaff.

As always, YMMV.

Scott, the kindest members of the HAMB responded to questions with: "Do you know how to use the 'Search' button?"

Yo

You really need a bagphone, Bob. Your progeny, friends, and even random acquaintances would be beyond impressed.

Scott, a friend of mine in the Corvette club had one of those. I remember how amazing it was that a mobile phone that was once a huge cabinet in the trunk of a car could be made portable. Because he had the Bag Phone, a very young member of the club installed a tan Princess phone in his Vette and proudly drove around with the handset stuck to the side of his face.

He wasn't that far off at the time because since 1964, a mobile phone looked a lot like his.

You had to do it, didn't you? I had one of those damned things for work. I HATED it!!!

Dan, when we moved to Australia in 1989 the cell phone was more popular than in the US. It wasn't unusual to see a Mercedes or BMW with two cell phone antennas on the boot. When we returned to the states in 1991 IBM was giving the highest ranking members of the OS/2 team a company cell phone but they were the newer Motorola Brick models (costing around $4,000). Never forget the day the organization Karen angrily called a member of the team to demand to know why he wasn't present at the status meeting that was about to start. The sound of his phone ringing at the back of the conference room as he entered resulted in the most blushed face I had seen to that point in my life.

Sorry, Bob, they can't let passengers down below -- they might find out the chef is Casey f'n Ryback!




Patrice Oneal on Steven Seagal movies:

@Squankum, I loved Steven's early films. He even inspired me to name my collection of garage clothes Garagio.

Years ago I tuned my radio to the public radio station and heard an ad for Viking cruises. My ears perked up! Is this some kind of new extreme tourism? A bunch of folks rowing an open sailboat across the north sea? Going ashore and beating up Irish monks?

Alas, no. Just small luxury cruise ships.

Well, the earliest Viking cruises were long low boats that could navigate the rivers in Europe. I also thought passengers would be given horned helmets to wear for the duration of the cruise. At my 49th high school reunion (organized by the previous class) I was gifted a Viking helmet by a classmate who got a job in Manhattan at the ******* Club as a bunny (thus her headwear).

 

[Bob Heine]

My dad had one for work also, but his was mounted in his truck and had that fancy phone holder mounted in the floor. When someone called and the truck was turned off, the horn/alarm would start blowing. Everyone in the neighborhood knew when he got a phone call at random hours of the night. Lucky me, I didn't hear it when I removed my hearing aids at night. My grandparents lived behind us on the adjacent street, and they were able to hear the horn blowing. So, I know everyone on that block heard it too. When someone called, he had to go to his truck to answer the call since he wasn't able to remove the phone from the truck. That was cutting edge back in the oil field at that time! Oh, and it was Analog and so signal was a lot better in the field but wasn't 100% clear. It was so weird how that phone could get a signal in the middle of nowhere, but a new modern digital phone can't get a signal in that same area now.

Cody, that "mobile" phone came out in the late 1940s and was the standard for a long time:

"The first trunk-mounted phone was a Bell System Motorola "Deluxe" radiotelephone installed in a taxicab in Delaware in 1948, a system that weighed around 80 pounds and took up nearly the entire trunk. It was part of the Mobile Telephone Service (MTS), the first commercial mobile phone service in the United States, which debuted in 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri."

When someone at IBM suggested I have one of those Bricks, I said nothing. My hours at the office totaled 16-18 every day of the week so it seemed like a silly idea. The few hours I was home late at night was in bed sleeping. The idea of someone needing to talk to me at 3:00 in the morning was beyond stupid. The last month of the OS/2 Warp version I never left the office except to shower and change clothes and that didn't happen every day. I put an air mattress and blanket on the floor and slept between meetings, which were constant, with a midnight, 3AM and 5AM daily update.

I was the only one in the organization who could create the transparencies for the big wig presentations using a pre-release version of Lotus SmartSuite for OS/2 so the laboratory manager could brag about the charts being easily created using OS/2 (he probably bragged that his one-armed assistant made them all by himself -- I busted his chops a lot). Everyone else was using The Microsoft Office for Windows" product. Because of that experience I still have IBM Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition (Version 9.8.X released in 2004) running on every computer in the house. That version was designed to run on Windows 95/98/ME/2000/NT4/XP. It's one of the rare software packages that still runs on Windows 11. Microsoft Office 2000 stopped working on Windows Vista and newer versions of the operating system.

 

[Squankum]

Cody, that "mobile" phone came out in the late 1940s and was the standard for a long time:

"The first trunk-mounted phone was a Bell System Motorola "Deluxe" radiotelephone installed in a taxicab in Delaware in 1948, a system that weighed around 80 pounds and took up nearly the entire trunk. It was part of the Mobile Telephone Service (MTS), the first commercial mobile phone service in the United States, which debuted in 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri."

When someone at IBM suggested I have one of those Bricks, I said nothing. My hours at the office totaled 16-18 every day of the week so it seemed like a silly idea. The few hours I was home late at night was in bed sleeping. The idea of someone needing to talk to me at 3:00 in the morning was beyond stupid. The last month of the OS/2 Warp version I never left the office except to shower and change clothes and that didn't happen every day. I put an air mattress and blanket on the floor and slept between meetings, which were constant, with a midnight, 3AM and 5AM daily update.

Bob, I remember some TV ad for AT&T in the 2000's showing a middle-aged white man fishing on a serene mountain lake -- but still getting phone calls! Important phone calls for important man with important job! And all I could think was "this new technology will ruin vacations.... you'll never be free from work! MWUHAHAH!" Can't the man fish in peace?

That reminds me, my job, it was not important, it was very old fashioned in that we showed up for 5 days a week, and when we went home at night, we weren't at work, and ditto weekends, ditto vacations. But a few years ago I did get a cell phone call on vacation.

I was hiking down a steep hillside in a very popular national park, about a mile from the road, when the call came. (Or maybe my phone got service and alerted me to a voicemail message.)




The call was from my supervisor. In my absence, the bigwigs had decreed A Grand Reorganization, as our outfit was known to do every 4-6 years (I consider it alchemy, same ingredients, new hats and arm bands, but gold never happened.) Boss needed to know which cubicle I wanted to sit in, since, my having the most years of service, I got first pick, and after that, other people could then choose their cubicle, down the seniority totem pole.

After this stupid matter was dealt with in about one minute, we resumed our nice walk. Fun thing about this national park very popular with Americans and travelers from other lands, too, if you walk half a mile from the paved road, you almost have the place to yourself.*


__________
* Pending brown bear veto.

 

[Squankum]

@Squankum, I loved Steven's early films. He even inspired me to name my collection of garage clothes Garagio.

I'll have to put on my Dudley cap and say "Steven Seagal didn't pick up that trash bag. That means he's a litterer."

 

[Mr.zippy]

Bob, I just read somewhere that you were the replacement for the Dos Equis "most interesting man in the world". I will look forward to seeing the commercials! 🫣

 

[Jgaz]

A Grand Reorganization

We called them “tree kickings”.
Same tree, same monkeys, only thing that changed is someone kicked the tree and now the monkeys are on a different branch!

I like “alchemy”

 

[Bob Heine]

Cheryl made Chicken shis-ka-bobs on the smoker tonight.

Rick, I dropped something off on your thread....

CNC_RICK and my shop...

OK... I'm here as CNC_Rick... I've especially picked on JBMATTH and asked for help to get here... as it turns out, Bob Heine shows up to help me on the JB post... Bob and Andy (OIF) in my mind are brothers, true enough... I have been a member for a few years, have read through Thomas and...

www.garagejournal.com

 

[CNC_RICK]

Bob, I did respond on my own thread... Imagine that! My thread has been largely untouched since I started it, in 2020... Thanks for that and the anniversary wishes. I thought of one more thing that I'd like to bring up about our smoker... Cheryl has a brand new bbq pizza oven that hasn't been used yet. It doesn't fit in a full sized Weber kettle. Since this smoker is about the size of a small semi trailer... (My exaggerations), I bet that oven would fit in this one. I just have to ask her what to buy for charcoal. I can imagine that a pizza oven, up to something like 900° is going to cook a thick crust pizza in a hurry. I really like to ask her questions and supply charcoal and everything she needs for the smoker.

 

[CNC_RICK]

Thinking that way... I'll bet outdoor pizza ovens are made of masonry construction for a reason. To handle the heat. Brick construction on the outside, possibly firebrick on the inside where things become important. Saying that, we could ruin our steel smoker, with powder coated finish and ceramic coated grills. I may need to re- think that and make a "real" pizza oven outside.

 

[CNC_RICK]

Hey Bob... Cheryl took me out for our anniversary at the Phoenix restaurant in Baldwin. It used to be called the Orchard, years ago, and really started out as an apple orchard. She asked me what I was going to order. I says, I'm going to get the 12" Supreme pizza. She starts laughing and making a gesture that she is going to bang her forehead on the table.... She says that I can have anything I wanted and I order a pizza at a fancy restaurant... Lol. I told her that this is a brick oven pizza, I can't get one of them very often. It was tasty! She order something with flat noodles in white sauce with strips of steak on top. I've had their BBQ ribs before, and they are really good. They smoke them with apple wood. (Poor trees from the orchard..). No, I don't know if they use those trees. But when it was an orchard, you could go there and buy apples, there was a small shopping area to buy apple peelers, ingredients to make apple sauce. Pretty much anything to do with an apple was sold there. Mom and Dad would come down and have to go there about once per year and buy a gunny sack of apples from them.

 

[Bob Heine]

Bob
Great job in the new door.

Now as for the “Yes dear, you were right and it's all my fault. I'll never do it again.", it is worst than having ones boys pressed in a vise ! So we all feel your pain!

@gman007, I didn't mean to ghost you. I guess I just clicked 'Quote' twice. My boys are so squashed I barely feel it any more. I'm convinced it's the secret to a long marriage. Every battle lost is a win in the war but every battle won should be quietly forgotten.

Bob, I remember some TV ad for AT&T in the 2000's showing a middle-aged white man fishing on a serene mountain lake -- but still getting phone calls! Important phone calls for important man with important job! And all I could think was "this new technology will ruin vacations.... you'll never be free from work! MWUHAHAH!" Can't the man fish in peace?

That reminds me, my job, it was not important, it was very old fashioned in that we showed up for 5 days a week, and when we went home at night, we weren't at work, and ditto weekends, ditto vacations. But a few years ago I did get a cell phone call on vacation.

I was hiking down a steep hillside in a very popular national park, about a mile from the road, when the call came. (Or maybe my phone got service and alerted me to a voicemail message.)




The call was from my supervisor. In my absence, the bigwigs had decreed A Grand Reorganization, as our outfit was known to do every 4-6 years (I consider it alchemy, same ingredients, new hats and arm bands, but gold never happened.) Boss needed to know which cubicle I wanted to sit in, since, my having the most years of service, I got first pick, and after that, other people could then choose their cubicle, down the seniority totem pole.

After this stupid matter was dealt with in about one minute, we resumed our nice walk. Fun thing about this national park very popular with Americans and travelers from other lands, too, if you walk half a mile from the paved road, you almost have the place to yourself.*


__________
* Pending brown bear veto.

@Squankum, I don't recognize the spot in your photo even though I visited a lot of National Parks in my youth but there were only 29 in 1959, the last year we did a road trip (to Mexico). Today there are 63.

I bought my first cell phone while working for AOL and mostly used it to call home to let Liane know I arrived safely at an airport. Because they didn't let you make calls while flying, for one of the years I worked for AOL my time became precious enough to pay for Airfone service. I was able to call in to meetings while traveling between Florida and DC so I didn't have to get to AOL until Monday afternoon and could leave mid-day on Fridays. Because I was a Sole Proprietor business selling my services, that kind of stuff was tax deductible.

I'll have to put on my Dudley cap and say "Steven Seagal didn't pick up that trash bag. That means he's a litterer."

Lady Byrd Johnson was spinning in her grave. Before you waste time Googling her:

"Lady Bird Johnson's anti-litter campaign was a key component of her broader "beautification" initiative, which led to the landmark Highway Beautification Act of 1965. Her efforts helped to raise public awareness about environmental issues and set a precedent for government involvement in conservation."

Bob, I just read somewhere that you were the replacement for the Dos Equis "most interesting man in the world". I will look forward to seeing the commercials! 🫣

Fred, the Uno Equis water company (founded by Montezuma) did offer me a job but it involves a toilet so no free beer and very small residuals.

We called them “tree kickings”.
Same tree, same monkeys, only thing that changed is someone kicked the tree and now the monkeys are on a different branch!

I like “alchemy”

@Jgaz, my "tree kicker" made me move to a whole other tree. I was in a technical writing department and ended up in the blueprint/microfilm/printing department. My tree was three miles from the other monkeys and they didn't bother to include my name on the feces being thrown.

Bob, I did respond on my own thread... Imagine that! My thread has been largely untouched since I started it, in 2020... Thanks for that and the anniversary wishes. I thought of one more thing that I'd like to bring up about our smoker... Cheryl has a brand new bbq pizza oven that hasn't been used yet. It doesn't fit in a full sized Weber kettle. Since this smoker is about the size of a small semi trailer... (My exaggerations), I bet that oven would fit in this one. I just have to ask her what to buy for charcoal. I can imagine that a pizza oven, up to something like 900° is going to cook a thick crust pizza in a hurry. I really like to ask her questions and supply charcoal and everything she needs for the smoker.

Rick, if you don't post something (on or off topic) on your thread it slowly disappears from the list of active threads.

My understanding of pizza ovens used to cook Chicago Style Deep Dish and New York Style Sicilian pizzas (both are thick) are cooked at much lower temperature, in the 425-500°F range. I'm not positive on the Chicago process but a New York Style Sicilian is cooked twice. The dough is pushed down and out until it covers the bottom and sides of the rectangular pan and then it goes into the oven for a few minutes to bake. Then it is removed, sauce is added and then cheese and toppings. The Chicago Style Deep Dish has the cheese on the bottom with tomato sauce and toppings on top. Ordering either of these in a decent pizza joint means you'll wait quite a while before it shows up at your table.

Thinking that way... I'll bet outdoor pizza ovens are made of masonry construction for a reason. To handle the heat. Brick construction on the outside, possibly firebrick on the inside where things become important. Saying that, we could ruin our steel smoker, with powder coated finish and ceramic coated grills. I may need to re- think that and make a "real" pizza oven outside.

You are right. That cured powder coating on your smoker will burn off when the surface reaches 500-550°F.

Hey Bob... Cheryl took me out for our anniversary at the Phoenix restaurant in Baldwin. It used to be called the Orchard, years ago, and really started out as an apple orchard. She asked me what I was going to order. I says, I'm going to get the 12" Supreme pizza. She starts laughing and making a gesture that she is going to bang her forehead on the table.... She says that I can have anything I wanted and I order a pizza at a fancy restaurant... Lol. I told her that this is a brick oven pizza, I can't get one of them very often. It was tasty! She order something with flat noodles in white sauce with strips of steak on top. I've had their BBQ ribs before, and they are really good. They smoke them with apple wood. (Poor trees from the orchard..). No, I don't know if they use those trees. But when it was an orchard, you could go there and buy apples, there was a small shopping area to buy apple peelers, ingredients to make apple sauce. Pretty much anything to do with an apple was sold there. Mom and Dad would come down and have to go there about once per year and buy a gunny sack of apples from them.

Last meal we ate in a restaurant was almost four years ago when our son and his wife took us to the Ichiyami Buffet & Sushi near our home. The Sushi bar is just one section of the restaurant.

In the background another section starts with a seafood buffet with raw oysters, green lipped mussels and steamed shrimp. Crab legs and a few other items are offered on the more expensive weekend menu. Next to that is a large buffet with hot Chinese dishes, a fresh salad buffet and a Korean barbecue section. For the less adventurous they offer chicken tenders and barbecue ribs. Somewhere in there is a dessert bar but I never make it to that.

We stopped eating out when my blood pressure spiked after every restaurant meal. Seems every dish starts on a bed of salt and then gets extra salt on it before it makes it to the table. Even the nearly salt-less buffet is a rare occasion because we eat so little. If I take in more than 2,000 calories in a day I put on weight. Some of the drugs I take mean fat shows up in new places even with that limited calorie intake.

 

[gman007]

@gman007, I didn't mean to ghost you. I guess I just clicked 'Quote' twice. My boys are so squashed I barely feel it any more. I'm convinced it's the secret to a long marriage. Every battle lost is a win in the war but every battle won should be quietly forgotten.

Bob
You will be the last person on this God’s green earth to ghost anyone. You are always too kind and it is just not in your nature to ignore anyone no matter what.

You are absolutely right about the secret to a long marriage. As the cliche saying goes happy wife happy life.

 

[rharman]

Bob
You will be the last person on this God’s green earth to ghost anyone. You are always too kind and it is just not in your nature to ignore anyone no matter what.

You are absolutely right about the secret to a long marriage. As the cliche saying goes happy wife happy life.

Happy spouse, happy house. It's a 2-way street.

 

[Bob Heine]

Bob
You will be the last person on this God’s green earth to ghost anyone. You are always too kind and it is just not in your nature to ignore anyone no matter what.

You are absolutely right about the secret to a long marriage. As the cliche saying goes happy wife happy life.

@gman007, thank you for the kind words.

Happy spouse, happy house. It's a 2-way street.

Roger and @gman007, some of my desire to make Liane happy is because of a conversation I was not party to while I was in intensive care after my run-in with the train.

Our two little children were the apple of my parents eyes and because of my brother's suicide, would likely be the only grandchildren they would ever have. Liane did not get along very well with my father and mother so they feared she would leave me for an able-bodied man and take the children with her to her new life. You would think two well-educated people could broach the subject directly but my father decided to do a side-swipe. He asked Liane: "Will you stay with Bob because he may not be able to perform his husbandly duties?" Without missing a beat, Liane yelled back: "The train didn't run over his *****!" She waited until I was out of the hospital before telling me the story but it made me realize how much we love each other: "for better or for worse."

 

[CNC_RICK]

Again, thank you, Bob for your writings. The pizza saga continues! In my favor ( flavor??) We took my Mom out to lunch, last Sunday, then bought groceries for her. Guess where we "did" lunch? None other than the Pizza Ranch. The food was awesome, buffet style. Chicken and mashed taters were available, too. Unlimited sodas. They even had pizza style desserts... Something with ice cream and blueberries... I was so full, I didn't partake in dessert.

I suspected that the BBQ isn't up to the task for pizza oven tasks of very high temps. Cheryl wants to try one at a much lower temp... Something less than 500°... She wants to try one of her own, homemade pizzas... Cripes, those are tasty! She puts corn meal powder on the steel pan, for keeping the crust from sticking to a steel pan. ( In a kitchen oven) Wow, is that good, when she does that. I love her homemade sauce. This new pizza oven for the BBQ comes with a pizza stone. Cheryl thinks that she can put it (stone) onto the grates, get things up to temp before the pizza touches things. Sounds like a good plan to me. I can see what you mean with a thick crust pizza in an oven like that... The top and bottom burn to a crisp and raw dough in the center... That's why you suggested a much lower temperature for something with a bit thicker crust. We're gonna give it a try...

 

[CNC_RICK]

I'm not into Asian food much, but our family has a favorite place to go, and the food is quite good. It is in Oak Park Heights, top of the hill from downtown Stillwater. The Granddaughters love to go there and they call it the duck place. Only that there is a neighboring business that has a duck on their sign... Kind of a plaza shopping center. I like to eat crab legs at the place. I started out just eating the meat, sticking out of the (shoulder?). Then my son's girlfriend, Brittney showed me how to take one prong of a dinner fork and rip the shell away... There's so much more meat inside! Who knew? Ha. It's buffet style and plenty of things to pick from. I mostly stick to things I can recognize. Always ice cream for dessert.

 

[CNC_RICK]

I like going to Red Lobster, too. From what I've heard, many have gone out. There's still one in Minnesota. Love the place. I always get the "surf and turf". A chunk of steak and the insides of a good sized lobster. Why they feel the need to put the empty shell on my plate, next to the insides, is beyond me, but it is pretty tasty. I'm ok with that.

When me and the boss ( the boss and I) went to Chicago the first time... We went to the Olive Garden Restaurant along the way. My boss made sure he took a seat, with his back against the wall and he was facing the front door... I didn't ask why... The food was very good.

 

[Squankum]

I like going to Red Lobster, too. From what I've heard, many have gone out. There's still one in Minnesota. Love the place. I always get the "surf and turf". A chunk of steak and the insides of a good sized lobster. Why they feel the need to put the empty shell on my plate, next to the insides, is beyond me,

So people don't start rumors that it's not really lobster anymore, but synthetic Real Lobster (TM). Like the rumors that started when Kentucky Fried Chicken changed their name to "KFC."

I realize stupid urban legends like this seem so picayune and stupid in today's environment of mass-produced stupid, but to the company that might face the blow back, it's a few percentage points of downturn they'd rather not suffer.

And now for a nice story about working at Golden Corral, by Roy Wood, Jr.:

(Some bad words.)

 

[Bob Heine]

Again, thank you, Bob for your writings. The pizza saga continues! In my favor ( flavor??) We took my Mom out to lunch, last Sunday, then bought groceries for her. Guess where we "did" lunch? None other than the Pizza Ranch. The food was awesome, buffet style. Chicken and mashed taters were available, too. Unlimited sodas. They even had pizza style desserts... Something with ice cream and blueberries... I was so full, I didn't partake in dessert.

I suspected that the BBQ isn't up to the task for pizza oven tasks of very high temps. Cheryl wants to try one at a much lower temp... Something less than 500°... She wants to try one of her own, homemade pizzas... Cripes, those are tasty! She puts corn meal powder on the steel pan, for keeping the crust from sticking to a steel pan. ( In a kitchen oven) Wow, is that good, when she does that. I love her homemade sauce. This new pizza oven for the BBQ comes with a pizza stone. Cheryl thinks that she can put it (stone) onto the grates, get things up to temp before the pizza touches things. Sounds like a good plan to me. I can see what you mean with a thick crust pizza in an oven like that... The top and bottom burn to a crisp and raw dough in the center... That's why you suggested a much lower temperature for something with a bit thicker crust. We're gonna give it a try...

Rick, we're on the other side of your life. Our kids are in their 60s and grandchildren are in or close to their 30s. One of our great granddaughters just turned 16. We're the parents old people come to visit. Eating out is just a memory for us. We might share an appetizer and we've had enough to eat. If it's a fancy place where food is decoration, we might each have an appetizer. Tonight I baked two potatoes that I oiled and salted and gave them an hour at 425°F. Small pat of butter, some freshly cooked and crumbled bacon and some sour cream and we were full. Because my last blood test indicated I'm slightly anemic, I also had a slice of calves liver with onions and red wine sauce. Liane had some frozen yogurt and I had a can of Diet Pepsi (my daily indulgence).

Cheryl is on the right track. I think pre-heating the regular oven with the pizza stone on the middle rack will yield the best results. I think cooking the dough for a few minutes before putting sauce, cheese and toppings on it is worth trying but I'm no expert when it comes to pizza. Years ago I called our order in and drove right over to the pizza joint to see the process. The guy who owned the place had been making pizza in New York for 40 years and got bored in retirement so he knew how to make a perfect New York pizza (Neapolitan and Sicilian style pizza). He said the secret was in the flour and water. He had a New York supplier for the flour as well as bottled New York City water. New York City gets its water from rain and spring-fed reservoirs in the Adirondacks.

I'm not into Asian food much, but our family has a favorite place to go, and the food is quite good. It is in Oak Park Heights, top of the hill from downtown Stillwater. The Granddaughters love to go there and they call it the duck place. Only that there is a neighboring business that has a duck on their sign... Kind of a plaza shopping center. I like to eat crab legs at the place. I started out just eating the meat, sticking out of the (shoulder?). Then my son's girlfriend, Brittney showed me how to take one prong of a dinner fork and rip the shell away... There's so much more meat inside! Who knew? Ha. It's buffet style and plenty of things to pick from. I mostly stick to things I can recognize. Always ice cream for dessert.

Rick, when we lived in Wappingers Falls, NY we often took the kids into Manhattan to visit the museums or see a show. The Plaza Hotel had special weekend family rates because they catered to business people during the week. Because our home overlooked the Hudson and we spent a few years boating on it, those Manhattan visits included visits to The Clearwater, docked at the South Street Seaport, next to the Fulton Fish Market (the Market moved to the Bronx in 2005). It wasn't a great neighborhood so we walked the mile to Chinatown and enjoyed some great Chinese meals. Nothing like the Chun King I had grown up eating at home.

Our two years in Sydney, Australia had a similar vibe, with the Sydney Fish Market being a short drive to Chinatown. Saturday meant a Dim Sum lunch (lots of small servings of Chinese specialties) and then go buy seafood for our Sunday meal at home. The Dim Sum cost us about $30 but because we were full when we got to the Fish Market, we rarely spent more than $100. Kinda like going to Costco and having a hot dog before shopping.

I like going to Red Lobster, too. From what I've heard, many have gone out. There's still one in Minnesota. Love the place. I always get the "surf and turf". A chunk of steak and the insides of a good sized lobster. Why they feel the need to put the empty shell on my plate, next to the insides, is beyond me, but it is pretty tasty. I'm ok with that.

When me and the boss ( the boss and I) went to Chicago the first time... We went to the Olive Garden Restaurant along the way. My boss made sure he took a seat, with his back against the wall and he was facing the front door... I didn't ask why... The food was very good.

Because our daughter worked at the Red Lobster near our first Florida home (bicycle ride to the restaurant) we rarely ate there so she wouldn't be embarrassed by my reptilian eating habits. We often bought a large spiny lobster (no big claws) and I'd cook the tail on the barbecue, cutting it up into medallions (like a filet mignon).

My job at AOL in Northern Virginia meant I spent a lot of time in motels and restaurants. A few years of sitting down, placing an order, waiting for the food and then paying a bunch of money got old fast. When AOL got tired of auditing my invoices, they offered to pay me more per hour if I paid my travel, lodging and food expenses. I agreed to the deal and suddenly the Comfort Inn manager's nightly buffet became very attractive, as did the dirt cheap Delta Express flights.

We have eaten at the Olive Garden several times with friends. When our daughter worked for Red Lobster, they were both owned by
General Mills. They sold their restaurant division, including Red Lobster and Olive Garden, by spinning it off into a new company called
Darden Restaurants in 1995. I always felt like the unlimited bread sticks, soup and salad were meant to fill you up so you had little room for the entre. That stuff showed up right away but the entre seemed to take forever.

So people don't start rumors that it's not really lobster anymore, but synthetic Real Lobster (TM). Like the rumors that started when Kentucky Fried Chicken changed their name to "KFC."

I realize stupid urban legends like this seem so picayune and stupid in today's environment of mass-produced stupid, but to the company that might face the blow back, it's a few percentage points of downturn they'd rather not suffer.

And now for a nice story about working at Golden Corral, by Roy Wood, Jr.:

(Some bad words.)

@Squankum, I really like Roy Wood, Jr. He really nailed the whole restaurant server thing but somehow I've never made it to the Golden Corral. As to the synthetic lobster, I think it's quite possible it is like the "artificial crab" made from deboned, minced and washed Alaskan pollock, resultng in a paste known as surimi. Other ingredients are then added to the fish paste, including starches (for binding and freezing), egg whites (for texture and color), sugar (for sweetness and freezing), salt, vegetable oil, and natural and/or artificial crab flavoring. Some varieties also contain a small amount of real crab meat. The surimi mixture is then heated, pressed, and rolled into long, thin strips that are layered and shaped to resemble the leg meat of a crab. Apply red or orange food coloring to the exterior of the "leg" to further mimic the appearance of cooked crab.

 

[Craptain]

.As to the synthetic lobster, I think it's quite possible it is like the "artificial crab" made from deboned, minced and washed Alaskan pollock, resultng in a paste known as surimi. Other ingredients are then added to the fish paste, including starches (for binding and freezing), egg whites (for texture and color), sugar (for sweetness and freezing), salt, vegetable oil, and natural and/or artificial crab flavoring. Some varieties also contain a small amount of real crab meat. The surimi mixture is then heated, pressed, and rolled into long, thin strips that are layered and shaped to resemble the leg meat of a crab. Apply red or orange food coloring to the exterior of the "leg" to further mimic the appearance of cooked crab.

Just one correction to "Surimi"
Once the fish is filleted ALL the rest is processed into Surimi. It's the most disgusting stuff I can imagine and knowing what it is and how it's made makes it certain that I never eat fake seafood products of any kind.

 

[Bob Heine]

Just one correction to "Surimi"
Once the fish is filleted ALL the rest is processed into Surimi. It's the most disgusting stuff I can imagine and knowing what it is and how it's made makes it certain that I never eat fake seafood products of any kind.

Andrew, that may explain my GERD because I've consumed way too much fake crab. I thought it was the unprocessed fish bones I swallowed when eating the little perch and bluegills my grandmother cooked for me as a child when I caught them at the lake. I even suspected the sardine and onion sandwiches (held together on the day old bread by mayonnaise). We tended to eat those on the last weekend of those "three weekend pay periods" when I started at IBM.

 

[Bob Heine]

I think I finished two projects and made progress on a third.

First project was the Dell OptiPlex 7050 SFF (Small Form Factor) PC. TurboTax notified me their 2025 product would only run on Windows 11 because Microsoft ended security update support in October 14, 2025. Microsoft's Health Check app tells me none of my computers are capable of running Windows 11 because the processor is outdated. Searching for a PC that has Windows 11 already installed, I found this refurbished Dell 7050 on Amazon ($272).

While it came with a keyboard and mouse, it didn't come with a DVD drive so I can only download and install software from the Internet. Almost all the software I own came on CDs or DVDs so this is a big deal. Expecting to have to acquire a USB DVD drove, I opened up the PC and discovered the front panel has a pop-out piece to allow a DVD drive to be installed. Of course it had to be a special Dell DVD drive but I found one on Amazon ($33). I downloaded the manual for the Dell 7050 and discovered its memory could be upgraded from 32 to 64GB so two compatible 16GB memory cards from Amazon ($67) showed up.

While I'm inside the case, I discover the 2.5" drive cassette has room for a second drive so I install a second 1TB drive I had in a portable case. Because the system didn't come with the cable to power two 2.5" SATA drives, I had to dig through my cable collection and found a power cable splitter.

The computer came with a 1TB M.2 PCie SSD so it now has 3TB of storage. But wait, there's a PCI-e x16 expansion slot on the motherboard so I added another 1TB M.2 PCie SSD mounted on an adapter.

I also fitted the PCI-e x4 slot with a USB card. It provide two Type A and two Type C jacks on the rear of the PC and an internal Type C jack so I can add a Type C port to the front panel.

So far, most of the process has required no tools (except for a couple of tiny screws to attach the heatsink to that PCI-e X16 SSD adapter).

 

[gman007]

I think I finished two projects and made progress on a third.

First project was the Dell OptiPlex 7050 SFF (Small Form Factor) PC. TurboTax notified me their 2025 product would only run on Windows 11 because Microsoft ended security update support in October 14, 2025. Microsoft's Health Check app tells me none of my computers are capable of running Windows 11 because the processor is outdated. Searching for a PC that has Windows 11 already installed, I found this refurbished Dell 7050 on Amazon ($272).

While it came with a keyboard and mouse, it didn't come with a DVD drive so I can only download and install software from the Internet. Almost all the software I own came on CDs or DVDs so this is a big deal. Expecting to have to acquire a USB DVD drove, I opened up the PC and discovered the front panel has a pop-out piece to allow a DVD drive to be installed. Of course it had to be a special Dell DVD drive but I found one on Amazon ($33). I downloaded the manual for the Dell 7050 and discovered its memory could be upgraded from 32 to 64GB so two compatible 16GB memory cards from Amazon ($67) showed up.

While I'm inside the case, I discover the 2.5" drive cassette has room for a second drive so I install a second 1TB drive I had in a portable case. Because the system didn't come with the cable to power two 2.5" SATA drives, I had to dig through my cable collection and found a power cable splitter.

The computer came with a 1TB M.2 PCie SSD so it now has 3TB of storage. But wait, there's a PCI-e x16 expansion slot on the motherboard so I added another 1TB M.2 PCie SSD mounted on an adapter.
View attachment 2427412
I also fitted the PCI-e x4 slot with a USB card. It provide two Type A and two Type C jacks on the rear of the PC and an internal Type C jack so I can add a Type C port to the front panel.
View attachment 2427420

View attachment 2427422
So far, most of the process has required no tools (except for a couple of tiny screws to attach the heatsink to that PCI-e X16 SSD adapter).

At this rate of improvement, your dell will soon be so souped-up that you are next going to stat bitcoin mining .

Just watch out for the power consumption for the dell as well increased AC power consumption due to the excess heat generation .

Finally when you strike it rich , plz do not forget your little friends here.

But seriously, great job on the improvements!

 

[Bob Heine]

Reading the manual, I come across an optional SD card reader. I am constantly loading pictures from my camera's SD card so it would be nice to have a card reader in the front panel. Especially because there's no way to add a 5-1/4" multi-function module like my full size desktops. Once again I found one on Amazon ($26).

Because it plugs into the motherboard and mounts to the frame, it should have been a piece of cake. Unfortunately the part Amazon sent had absolutely no resemblance to what their site showed. Took the 3 mile drive to our nearest Whole Foods and sent it back. Found the correct one on eBay for the same price so I thought it would be smooth sailing.

Looking at the back of the cover, unlike the DVD drive, there was so pop-out for the card reader. No problem, I just went on eBay and searched for a new front cover that had the correct slot on it. Found one and ordered it, even though it was labeled an OptiPlex 5040. Big smile when it arrived so I installed the card reader and new cover right away. Something wasn't quite right because I couldn't plug a USB cable into two of the openings. Upon closer inspection, the four USB openings are closer to the DVD slot.



Well, I have Dremel tools so I cut two holes on the 5040 panel to allow access to the two lower USB ports on the 7050 panel. But now the two holes on the 5040 panel have no sockets. Another round of marking holes but this time on the metal panel on the frame, which thankfully can be removed, and cutting a hole for that cable shown in the last post. I may go back and fix that last port with a Type A 3.0 USB port -- it's already marked. To avoid confusion a few years (or days) from now, I made a label to cover the OptiPlex 5040 with a 7050 label.

Because I already have two desktops stacked on my left and two desktops under the desk, this computer is on its side on top of the two under the desk. To be able to see the front panel, I added a USB powered LED on the power control panel with its own switch (labeled "Computer") so I can turn it off when not needed.

 

[Finallygotit]

Starting your own server farm, Bob?

 

[Squankum]

I always fely like the unlimited bread sticks, soup and salad were meant to fill you up so you had little room for the entre. That stuff showed up right away but the entre seemed to take forever.

That's how they getcha!

 

[Squankum]

He said the secret was in the flour and water. He had a New York supplier for the flour as well as bottled New York City water. New York City gets its water from rain and spring-fed reservoirs in the Adirondacks.

Well, it's an impressive system of tunnels and aqueducts, but the northern Catskills is as far as it goes.




I must confess that for all of my upstate NY travels as a younger person, I never saw the northern Catskills SW of Albany. Much taller and quieter than I expected! Didn't know the Catskills extended that far north.

 

[Squankum]

Just one correction to "Surimi"
Once the fish is filleted ALL the rest is processed into Surimi. It's the most disgusting stuff I can imagine and knowing what it is and how it's made makes it certain that I never eat fake seafood products of any kind.

I'm not mentioning any name brands here, but we buy larger cans of cat foods for when we feed street cats. One of the flavors is "Captain's Choice", which I interpret as "we don't even know what these fish were, but the captain said to throw 'em in the hold."

 

[gman007]

Starting your own server farm, Bob?

Since you mentioned the word farm, I will elaborate on my previous comment regarding the excessive electricity usage.

Well, Bob should not be surprised if some day soon cops show up at his door step, wanting to see his indoor “farm” and show particular interest in his indoor plants.

 

[rharman]

Starting your own server farm, Bob?

Beat me to it!

If you're concerned about CPU temp, there are a ton of monitor widgets out there. I've used Speccy for years and just check my laptop occasionally. I do like Speccy for all the info it gives me about the system.

Jeesh, @Bob Heine, you're really hot-rodding that thing up. And, you're a memory hog like me - just went from 32g to 64gb prior to my Win11 upgrade last week. I'm a slacker on storage though - went from 512gb to 1tb NVMe at the same time.

Curious.... Do you ever backup your stuff to another media?

Next mod?

 

[CNC_RICK]

Bob, time to switch gears a bit. I think I've done restaurants, food and pizzas enough. Ha. Next up is stereo equipment. I was always broke and a Farmer's son, with a huge desire for HiFi sound. I'm kind of an audiophile on a budget. That doesn't even make sense... audio nut and budget don't belong in the same sentence. I've tried. Mostly, I made a few speaker enclosures, homemade, to save money. The math, the engineering of acoustics, the Golden Ratio of length, width, height is... Interesting. Then you have acoustic suspension, ported, bass reflex... (Maybe ported and bass reflex are the same?). It's been too long. I did get into testing speakers a bit with a sound level meter, hooked up to an oscilloscope while I had an audio generator hooked up to a set of speakers, through an amplifier. That was pretty cool, playing with that stuff.

 

[CNC_RICK]

Speaker "Q" has always bothered me. It's a way to make a test cabinet to test the "Q" to find free air resonance. Then build your cabinet, accordingly. Gotta control that free air resonance on a speaker... Gotta damp that issue. I understand impedance. It's really resistance, but happens at different frequencies. Inductance and capacitance steer your way at something above DC current. It takes trigonometry to figure out resistance at any certain point, but it is always changing. Resistance is only pure at DC. Doggone electronics, anyhow...

 

[Bob Heine]

Starting your own server farm, Bob?

Dan, I wish. Someone hacked my system when I worked for AOL. Luckily, the guy was a piss poor hacker and there was no permanent damage to my files. It did cause me to maintain multiple systems, first to test AOL software on Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Mac OS 7.5.1. I also had an OS/2 laptop and a spare system with backups of all the Windows software on the other two machines. That machine was never connected to my modem. Yes, it was dialup access on the second phone line in our home.

I have a really old HP system in the garage that has enough bays to become a server but I just don't feel the urgency.

Well, it's an impressive system of tunnels and aqueducts, but the northern Catskills is as far as it goes.




I must confess that for all of my upstate NY travels as a younger person, I never saw the northern Catskills SW of Albany. Much taller and quieter than I expected! Didn't know the Catskills extended that far north.

@Squankum, my apologies, you're right about the system being in the Catskills. However, that's just the name of one section of the Appalachian Mountain chain, which stretches from Canada to Georgia and includes:

"Appalachian Highlands of the United States​

Physiographic Provinces of the Appalachian Highlands Division
The second level in the physiographic classification schema for the USGS is "province", the same word as Canada uses to divide its political subdivisions, meaning that the terminology used by the two countries do not match below the region level. The lowest level of classification is "section".

• Piedmont, including the Uplands and Lowlands sections
• Blue Ridge, including the Northern and Southern sections
• Valley and Ridge, including Tennessee, Middle, and Hudson Valley sections
• St. Lawrence Valley, including only the Champlain section[e]
• Appalachian Plateaus, including the Mohawk, Catskill, Southern New York, Allegheny Mountain, Kanawha, Cumberland Plateau, and Cumberland Mountain sections
• New England, including the Seaboard Lowland, New England Upland, White Mountains, Green Mountains, and Taconic Mountains
• Great Smoky Mountains (subrange)
• Blue Ridge Mountains
• Adirondack with no sections

The Appalachian Trail is approximately 2,190 to 2,200 miles long, stretching from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Mount Katahdin, Maine, and passing through 14 states."

Yes, I got an A in Geography in grade school. You learn a lot as a hostage in the back seat of a car with two teachers up front for four 75 day trips across North America.

I'm not mentioning any name brands here, but we buy larger cans of cat foods for when we feed street cats. One of the flavors is "Captain's Choice", which I interpret as "we don't even know what these fish were, but the captain said to throw 'em in the hold."

I think the technical term is "by-catch," which might include turtles, dolphins, sharks, plastic and old tires.

Beat me to it!

If you're concerned about CPU temp, there are a ton of monitor widgets out there. I've used Speccy for years and just check my laptop occasionally. I do like Speccy for all the info it gives me about the system.

Jeesh, @Bob Heine, you're really hot-rodding that thing up. And, you're a memory hog like me - just went from 32g to 64gb prior to my Win11 upgrade last week. I'm a slacker on storage though - went from 512gb to 1tb NVMe at the same time.

Curious.... Do you ever backup your stuff to another media?

Next mod?

Roger, I rarely have all five systems running at the same time and even when I do, the fans rarely switch into high speed.

I think the biggest bang for the buck was the NVMe on the motherboard I put in my ancient Acer desktop. Win11 seems to be a memory hog like no other operating system I've used. I was doing some photo editing and the system told me I had exceeded the memory capacity OF 64GB.

I used to back up my systems to floppy disks, then CDs and finally DVDs. I have never used them to restore my system so now I have a 2TB portable drive with a USB C 3.1 connection and I use it to transfer files and keep all my systems reasonably in sync.

My mod was a little fancier:

Bob, time to switch gears a bit. I think I've done restaurants, food and pizzas enough. Ha. Next up is stereo equipment. I was always broke and a Farmer's son, with a huge desire for HiFi sound. I'm kind of an audiophile on a budget. That doesn't even make sense... audio nut and budget don't belong in the same sentence. I've tried. Mostly, I made a few speaker enclosures, homemade, to save money. The math, the engineering of acoustics, the Golden Ratio of length, width, height is... Interesting. Then you have acoustic suspension, ported, bass reflex... (Maybe ported and bass reflex are the same?). It's been too long. I did get into testing speakers a bit with a sound level meter, hooked up to an oscilloscope while I had an audio generator hooked up to a set of speakers, through an amplifier. That was pretty cool, playing with that stuff.

Rick, I had dreams of becoming an audiophile when I was in my 20s. Couldn't afford the Marantz stuff I drooled over so I settled for Lafayette. I installed a stereo system in our basement as part of turning an unfinished dungeon into something fun. Walls framed with 2x3 lumber and covered with Masonite wood grain printed paneling. Back then the big deal was Stereo sound so I had a Dual turntable, Concord reel-to-reel tape recorder and flat rectangular Styrofoam speakers that were about an inch thick. I didn't do any calculations, just put a piece of drywall in the back of the stud bay and it worked great. The tape deck would play a couple of hours of music copied from the turntable or FM rock&roll radio stations. The double doors hid the heating system and storage area where I kept the bicycles, lawn mower and Mercruiser outdrive in the winter.

Speaker "Q" has always bothered me. It's a way to make a test cabinet to test the "Q" to find free air resonance. Then build your cabinet, accordingly. Gotta control that free air resonance on a speaker... Gotta damp that issue. I understand impedance. It's really resistance, but happens at different frequencies. Inductance and capacitance steer your way at something above DC current. It takes trigonometry to figure out resistance at any certain point, but it is always changing. Resistance is only pure at DC. Doggone electronics, anyhow...

Rick, I can listen to an expert explain technical topics and turn their description into something a lay person can understand. It always required photos and drawings to illustrate the concepts but my job as a translator meant I had no clue what lay behind the stuff they explained to me. When I was done with my translation it went back to the expert to be sure I didn't describe it wrong.

One engineer I worked with was dying to get his innovative 10 relay counter design published so he would qualify for a cash award from IBM. It couldn't be a patented design or infringe on an existing patent so he got legal clearance to publish his ten page single spaced typewritten description in Electronics. I edited the ten pages down to six paragraphs that didn't fill a single sheet of paper. He was not happy and told me he didn't want to send it in but he really wanted to get the award. My description was published in the next issue without a single change by the magazine editors. It usually took him four months to get one of his long-winded articles published with no resemblance to what he submited. I thought he was going to gift me his first born.

 

[Bob Heine]

I don't know why these posts didn't make the last multi-quote I posted but maybe it'll work this time. Win11 is doing weird stuff like hiding my task bar so it doesn't pop up when I move the cursor to the bottom of the page. I get it back if I hit the 'Win' key but it makes no sense.

That's how they getcha!

@Squankum, when our son was young he always grabbed a roll from the basket as soon as it arrived at the table. Big surprise, he wasn't hungry when the food we paid for arrived. His meal always came home in a bag. He had no idea what the dish he ordered was like when it was hot because we hadn't yet purchased a microwave and turning on the oven to re-heat his meal the next day was a waste of electricity.

Since you mentioned the word farm, I will elaborate on my previous comment regarding the excessive electricity usage.

Well, Bob should not be surprised if some day soon cops show up at his door step, wanting to see his indoor “farm” and show particular interest in his indoor plants.

@gman007, I do my best to foil the cops and DEA by leaving the majority of the systems idling and using neither memory or cpu power. I have several neighbors with 5,000 square foot homes who keep the focus off my little grow house. By the way, the plants are all Liane's so I make her answer the door when uniformed people show up. They see the Basil Forest out in the open and look no further.

 

[rharman]

@Bob Heine - I remembered that picture and it immediately popped into my mind when I went looking for something to post re: your PC hot-rodding!

 

[CNC_RICK]

Bob, great idea and good job, fixing up the basement... And installing your equipment in the walls. I borrowed my Dad's reel-reel tape recorder for a short time. I think it was an Altec-Lansing. Great sound, even if it was just about a 100 lb portable setup. Getting back to your built-ins, shortly after we married, I demonstrated my stereo setup to her.... It didn't really impress her. She politely asked me to remove my stereo from the house and set it up in my shop, instead. It's way too big and loud to be in the house. I looked at my feet and said that I'll do it right away. But see!! Had I built my equipment into the walls, removing that from the house wouldn't have been an option. Ha.

 

[Lyndon]

. (Snip)

Because I already have two desktops stacked on my left and two desktops under the desk, this computer is on its side on top of the two under the desk. To be able to see the front panel, I added a USB powered LED on the power control panel with its own switch (labeled "Computer") so I can turn it off when not needed.

Bob

Do you feed all those desktops to one or two screens on your desk? Or does each system have it's own screen/display?

If they all go to one (or two) - how do you switch them? It interest me because I can't bring myself to get rid of an older desktop that I used to use, but has since replaced with a new laptop feeding to split screens on my desk. But as far as I know the screens only have one feed in point for linking to the source..... If it's switched I intrigued as to how you do it. I don't need lots of internal memory because I store everything (including 35,000 pictures) in the clouds, backing them all up to an external 1TB of storage regularly

Looking on from down here.

Lyndon

 

[zanyad]

@Lyndon, if I may interject: what you're looking for is called a KVM switch. It switches one keyboard, video, and mouse between multiple CPUs. You may also be able to access the desktop in a window on the new laptop. Look into RDP (Windows) or ssh (Linux/Apple).

 

[rharman]

Lots of options on KVM's. I used to have 4 desktops live at one job. Different OS versions and some with specific applications I needed to replicate for support. KVM had a magic keypress sequence (something like hitting the Ctrl key twice in rapid succession and then the 1,2,3, or 4 key) to switch between machines or you could push a button on the physical switch.

 

[Bob Heine]

@Bob Heine - I remembered that picture and it immediately popped into my mind when I went looking for something to post re: your PC hot-rodding!

Roger, I figured you remembered my frankexhaust. I keep posting photos of the car to motivate me to pull the cover off and get to work on it.

Bob, great idea and good job, fixing up the basement... And installing your equipment in the walls. I borrowed my Dad's reel-reel tape recorder for a short time. I think it was an Altec-Lansing. Great sound, even if it was just about a 100 lb portable setup. Getting back to your built-ins, shortly after we married, I demonstrated my stereo setup to her.... It didn't really impress her. She politely asked me to remove my stereo from the house and set it up in my shop, instead. It's way too big and loud to be in the house. I looked at my feet and said that I'll do it right away. But see!! Had I built my equipment into the walls, removing that from the house wouldn't have been an option. Ha.

Rick, Liane also hates stereo equipment, thus the mostly hidden system in our first home. I've had a number of setups over the years and they were always hidden from view in the guest room or garage. I started with a store bought cabinet in the guest bedroom with a cassette tape, CD Cartridge system and receiver. It connected to a pair of ceiling speakers in the living room installed by the previous owner.

The current system is located in the garage. I built the cabinet to house a Blu Ray player (for garage TV), Sony surround sound system and two 400CD changers. It is connected to 6 speakers in the garage, those same two speakers in the living room and two speakers on the patio. The old ice maker was a little bigger so there's extra room in the bottom shelf space,

Bob

Do you feed all those desktops to one or two screens on your desk? Or does each system have it's own screen/display?

If they all go to one (or two) - how do you switch them? It interest me because I can't bring myself to get rid of an older desktop that I used to use, but has since replaced with a new laptop feeding to split screens on my desk. But as far as I know the screens only have one feed in point for linking to the source..... If it's switched I intrigued as to how you do it. I don't need lots of internal memory because I store everything (including 35,000 pictures) in the clouds, backing them all up to an external 1TB of storage regularly

Looking on from down here.

Lyndon

Lyndon, the four desktops connect to two screens and a single wireless keyboard and mouse through a KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse) switch. They sell different switches to control multiple computers to one, two or three monitors. I think you're looking for a two system, two monitor switch. Something like this would work:

https://www.amazon.com/Monitors-Computers-Monitor-Devices-Extended/dp/B0F8N3YBVR/?tag=atomicindus08-20

My KVM switch controls four computers to two monitors and a single wireless keyboard and moue. The fifth system is now a spare that can be quickly hooked up by swapping a few wires under the desk. I like having two monitors so my Quicken and Office applications can be displayed on the 19" Dell monitor (on its side for vertical oriented stuff) while the internet is displayed on the 32" Samsung slightly curved monitor.

I have had a number of KVM (Keyboard, Video Mouse) switches but the current one works best for me. Here's a diagram of the system, showing front and back sides.

Amazon.com: USB 3.0 KVM Switch - 4 Computers, 2 HDMI Monitors, 4K@60Hz, EDID Support, Audio & 3 USB 3.0 Ports : Electronics

Buy USB 3.0 KVM Switch - 4 Computers, 2 HDMI Monitors, 4K@60Hz, EDID Support, Audio & 3 USB 3.0 Ports: KVM Switches - Amazon.com ✓ FREE DELIVERY possible on eligible purchases

www.amazon.com

The two system KVM switches are significantly cheaper.

@Lyndon, if I may interject: what you're looking for is called a KVM switch. It switches one keyboard, video, and mouse between multiple CPUs. You may also be able to access the desktop in a window on the new laptop. Look into RDP (Windows) or ssh (Linux/Apple).

@zanyad, I had one of my laptops hooked up to the KVM switch for a while. It was attached to a dock so the USB, HDMI and VGA cables didn't have to be connected every time I took the laptop out of the office. The VGA output did require a VGA to HDMI adapter cable but it worked fine.

Lots of options on KVM's. I used to have 4 desktops live at one job. Different OS versions and some with specific applications I needed to replicate for support. KVM had a magic keypress sequence (something like hitting the Ctrl key twice in rapid succession and then the 1,2,3, or 4 key) to switch between machines or you could push a button on the physical switch.

Roger, I bought my first KVM switch around 1995. The keyboard key combos worked on even numbered days but not on the odd ones. I ended up using the buttons on the front panel of the KVM switch box. Each successive switch got better and I use the wired remote on my current KVM switch. For some reason there's no mounting provision for the switch so I just locked it in place on my keyboard drawer with three screws.

For years I used the plastic under-desk keyboard-mouse drawers but I broke every one of them in a number of creative ways. Ended up making a wooden tray that uses the metal slides that came with the last plastic POS. A nice sturdy lazy susan unit attaches the wooden mouse tray so I can have the mouse wherever it feels comfortable that day. The whole thing slides out of sight. I use the mouse tray as an armrest quite frequently.