{"id":347,"date":"2015-02-06T06:50:03","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T06:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dave0.nfshost.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2015\/02\/06\/this-is-officially-the-most-sadly-prescient-superbowl-ad-ever\/"},"modified":"2015-02-06T06:50:03","modified_gmt":"2015-02-06T06:50:03","slug":"this-is-officially-the-most-sadly-prescient-superbowl-ad-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2015\/02\/this-is-officially-the-most-sadly-prescient-superbowl-ad-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"This is Officially the Most Sadly Prescient SuperBowl Ad Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s the RadioShack ad that played during the SuperBowl last year:<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YpkixVDFpcI\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nAnd last night&#8211;that&#8217;s just one year and three days days after this spot ran&#8211;RadioShack declared bankruptcy. An hour or so earlier I&#8217;d been on their site looking up stock numbers for a parts list in the final project of my new DIY book (*sigh*)  Guess that&#8217;ll be one more thing for the copyeditor to sort out.  I love you, copyeditor.  I am sorry.<br \/>\n<a title=\"RadioShack, The Electronics Chain, Files For Bankruptcy : The Two-Way : NPR\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/blogs\/thetwo-way\/2015\/02\/05\/384128304\/radioshack-the-electronics-chain-files-for-bankruptcy\">RadioShack, The Electronics Chain, Files For Bankruptcy : The Two-Way : NPR<\/a><br \/>\nI&#8217;m sure the Internet is already filling with eulogies for RadioShack today&#8211;eulogies largely written by folks who haven&#8217;t set foot in one or mentioned the store, apart from as a punchline, in years.  I was in my local RatShack weekly, because despite everything that was wrong with the place&#8211;as a bricks-and-mortar businesses, as an online retailer, as a source of anything useful&#8211;it was still the only place to quickly get electronic components when you were in a pinch&#8211;and as a guy writing a book full of electronic instruments, I was often in a pinch.  Yes, these components were mostly overpriced, and some were of relatively poor quality (their store-brand soldering irons were junk, as were their jacks; switches were occasionally janky).  But they had a few components that I&#8217;m going to sorely miss:  The funky, throwback hexagonal knob covers (part #275-507)&#8211;which weren&#8217;t really a throwback, since RS had been selling them without interruption for decades&#8211;the General-Purpose IC PC Board (part #276-159), their celebrated audio output transformer (part #273-1380), the many books of Forrest M. Mims III.<br \/>\nAnd, they had employees.  Lots and lots and lots of employees (because they had lots and lots and lots of stores).  And I&#8217;ve been in RadioShacks all over this great country, and I&#8217;ve gotta say: Those employees didn&#8217;t always know a damn thing about electronics, but they were always very nice and very helpful (within their capacity), and few of the ones I&#8217;ve spoken to over the last year were willing to admit that this day was coming.<br \/>\nSo, yeah, I feel sad for my memories and sad I won&#8217;t be able to get a couple RadioShack-specific parts I like and sad that I&#8217;m going to have to revise some chunks of a book that&#8217;s already 90 percent of the way to printed.  But I&#8217;m also really, really sad for the thousands of people who woke up without a job this morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s the RadioShack ad that played during the SuperBowl last year: And last night&#8211;that&#8217;s just one year and three days days after this spot ran&#8211;RadioShack declared bankruptcy. An hour or so earlier I&#8217;d been on their site looking up stock numbers for a parts list in the final project of my new DIY book (*sigh*) &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2015\/02\/this-is-officially-the-most-sadly-prescient-superbowl-ad-ever\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;This is Officially the Most Sadly Prescient SuperBowl Ad Ever&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}