I have two Banana Republic catalogs from 1984, Spring and Summer. I went and got them when I saw this. They have product reviews by Garry Trudeau and Martin Cruz Smith, among others. Products include pith helmets, 100% Egyptian cotton British officers’ shorts, lambskin flight helmets (official headgear in the Banana Republic Air Force), and surplus WWII British Army handkerchiefs, 3 for $5.
Goddamn Gap.
Mind the gap.
Totes umbrellas.
I have a tendency to lose umbrellas. Rather, I need one when the one I own is not anywhere near where I am. Example, the damn umbrella is in the car, and I’m standing there in my office, gazing longingly at my vehicle to get some lunch, but the downpour is so heavy, I’ll be drenched just walking ten feet to the car. So I stand there and wait until the rain lets up.
Anyway, I used to think that Totes umbrellas were really good quality, held up great in high winds and heavy rains. I’ve purchased two in the last two months from Walgreen’s and they are cheap, plastic Chinese crap. Now I consider them to be basically disposable umbrellas because I don’t think any one will last a whole rainy season. Pure garbage.
I’ve got another technical one, though my perspective is rather odd:
Dell. Dell made decent PC’s, back in the day. And in addition to this, Dell also got into the Server business.
I don’t know how well they were viewed, those servers, because we finally got rid of the last 2-3 we had when we moved our data center. They were the laughing stock, and we didn’t even have a service contract on them. If it’s not HP, it doesn’t exist (*ix based hardware being the exception, of course).
Blackberry. They were the gold standard of smart devices/PDA’s that EVERY executive had to have to show the other executives they were to important to be out of touch for more than a few hours. They are still around, and trying to recover, but…
Our mobile guy told me that when he started 5 years ago, probably 70% of our folks that had corporate phones had BB’s. That number is down to 13%, and falling fast. We no longer even offer them as corporate phones. Android and Apple have won that race.
My wife has a Blackberry, and for what it is supposed to so, it is still the best, most reliable thing on the market. The problem is, even Joe executive wants to shoot birds at pigs, or collect gems, or something. I don’t know what kind of app support BB has, but I’ve never seen one up and running .
I used to love my BB. It would be nice to have all of the solid tech functions wrappednaround the gamemapps. Maybe they do now, but so many teens are iusing smart phones, and I’ve never seen a teen choose something practical over something fun. Maybe BB has fallen behind the curve,
Ah, Fieldcrest. I have a kind of history with them. Back in the day, Cannon towels were absolutely great. Then in the mid-to-late 80s they got bought out by Fieldcrest and the quality of the towels, as you’d expect, became distinctly less great. The company limped along until 2003 when it went belly up and 95% of the population of Kannapolis, NC was suddenly unemployed. The mill itself was bought and torn down a few years later and relandscaped into something entirely different.
So now, because of Fieldcrest (because I choose to blame them) I can’t find my way around my hometown. Apparently I used to navigate by the mill. No mill means I’m lost in my own territory. Also, the massive unemployment. I reserve certain vile profanities for Fieldcrest.
Shooting birds at pigs on the BlackBerry.
Collecting gems on the Blackberry.
From that latter site for Bejeweled on the BB, looks like there’s a problem with compatibility among BB devices… might explain why you don’t see games running on them too often, but there’s a decent number of apps there, but buyer beware.
Man this thread is depressing.