Re: gEDA-user: OT: You-Blew-It Electronics (was: Re: Home PCB and Liquid Tin)

[evan foss <evanfoss@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 8:20 AM, Stuart Brorson <sdb@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Apropos "You-Blew-It" Electronics, here's a link to those unfamiliar
> with this Boston institution:
>
> http://www.youdoitelectronics.com/
>
>> Ok I know their prices are significantly higher than mail order from
>> almost everywhere but why is it You-Blew-It?
>
> I dunno exactly.  But back when I was a feckless undergrad, that's
> what everybody called it.  The name always gave me the picture of a
> geek who had assembled a circuit, flipped the power on, and the
> circuit immediately burned up.  Ha ha -- you blew it!

Well if the deadline is too close for mail order you get to go to you blew it.

>
> At least for me, it did not have the connotation of making a mistake
> about where you bought your stuff.  There was nothing essentially

I didn't take it that way.

> wrong with the place (unlike Radio Shaft), and the moniker
> "You-Blew-It" was intended solely to be jocular.
>
>> While we are a little OT am I the only one who misses the days when
>> they carried more components and fewer audio video cables. They are
>> getting to much like radio shack.
>
> I agree.  What I liked about the place back then was that it was what
> Radio Shaft should have been:  A large store full of components and
> other stuff important to a real electronics geek.  But now it's going
> the way of Radio Shaft, selling cables and other consumer-oriented
> junk.

To be fair as I understand it Radio Shack was never the be all and end all.

>
> To be fair, there remains a largish -- but shrinking -- section of the
> store which still sells components.  But the Radio-Shackification is
> probably happening because the number of hard-core EE hobbiests is
> shrinking (the disappearing ham radio segment itself accounts for a
> large part of that shrinkage), and the folks looking for components
> now get them via internet search and mail-order from the likes of
> Digi-Key.

Well in the old days Radio Shack used to encourage young people to
take up Ham Radio which lead people into being EEs. I remember around
December the owner of the store in Natick used to operate his radio
for kids in the center of the malls court yard. It was the 1980's and
calling say Russia or Columbia was not something you could really do.
I have to wonder if it happened the way you think with the Ham's and
EEs going away messed up the electronics stores or if it was the other
way around.

>
> You-Blew-It's retail operation remains a good place to go if it's
> Saturday afternoon, and you've realized that you absolutely need a 10K
> resistor right now, you can't scrounge one from anywhere in your
> workshop, and you don't want to wait a week for mail-order.

I never understood why they stock 2% resistors. I can't speak for
everyone but I usually use %5 and %1 until I started going there I
didn't even know you could get them.

>
> Stuart

Evan

>
>
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