Soooo... bell bottoms are back? Time to open up those boxes in the attic I guess.

I have probably mentioned this, but IMHO portal was invented by Terry Pratchett.

Discworld, Book 22, The Last Continent (1998)

The wizards looked at the gently rippling surface. There should have been several feet of solid wood sticking out of it.
“Well, well, well,” said the Archchancellor, going back in out of the cold air. “Do you know, I’ve never actually seen one of these?”
“Anyone remember Archchancellor Bewdley’s boots?” said the Senior Wrangler, helping himself to some cold mutton from the trolley. “He made a mistake and got one of the things opened up in the left boot. Very tricky. You can’t go walking around with one foot in another dimension.”
“Well, no…” said Ridcully, staring at the tropical scene and tapping his chin thoughtfully with the seashell.
“Can’t see what you’re treading in, for one thing,” said the Senior Wrangler.
“One opened up in one of the cellars once, all by itself,” said the Dean. “Just a round black hole. Anything you put in it just disappeared. So old Archchancellor Weatherwax had a privy built over it.”
“Very sensible idea,” said Ridcully, still looking thoughtful.
“We thought so too, until we found the other one that had opened in the attic. Turned out to be the other side of the same hole. I’m sure I don’t need to draw you a picture.”
“I’ve never heard of these!” said Ponder Stibbons. “The possibilities are amazing!”
“Everyone says that when they first hear about them,” said the Senior Wrangler. “But when you’ve been a wizard as long as I have, my boy, you’ll learn that as soon as you find anything that offers amazing possibilities for the improvement of the human condition it’s best to put the lid back on and pretend it never happened.”
“But if you could get one to open above another you could drop something through the bottom hole and it’d come out of the top hole and fall through the bottom hole again…It’d reach meteoritic speed and the amount of power you could generate would be—”
“That’s pretty much what happened between the attic and the cellar,” said the Dean, taking a cold chicken leg. “Thank goodness for air friction, that’s all I’ll say.”
Ponder waved his hand gingerly through the window and felt the sun’s heat.
“And no one’s ever studied them?” he said.

read of a person that found film left in a camera in an attic of an old house. had the film processed. the majority of the pictures were of the family pets. more of the cats than the dog.

from Eygpt to early film to the 'net.

1913. that's pretty close to being historically factual. if that cat is 1, the avg lifespan was 8, filmed in '06...good job.

Yah--he just wants to complain. If you open your attic window and the front door on a windy day---the house will ventilate. Air will move past...stuff in the house.

Lots of laptops around my house; the Apple stuff gives us the least problems.

Perfect? nope. But...still good enough.

I used to shoot them out of my bedroom window in the attic on the 3rd floor. LOL Good times too!

As a child I played with matches up in the attic of our house. The matches were book matches from a funeral home my father worked for as a part time job when he was off duty as a cop. The cover of the matches had a black glossy finish.

Dad found the matches while cleaning out the attic. Dad called my name from upstairs and I headed that way.

His first question to me was, "Were you playing with matches up here?"

His second question was, "Are you lying?"

His third question was, "Are you lying?"

His last question was, "I'm only going to ask you one more time. If you lie to me I'm taking you down to city hall and lock you up. Were you playing with matches up here?"

He grabbed my hand and turned it palm up. He pulled out the pack of matches and picked up some floor sweepings then sprinkled it on the black glossy cover. And DAMN! wouldn't you know it. There stood a perfectly proud little fingerprint. It matched the one on my hand. (I guess. I never brought a lawyer.)

Out to the car we went. I was on my way to jail which gave me about five minutes to rethink my answer. The closer we got, the bigger my fears grew. He made the last turn onto the street for city hall.

I cracked! "I did it. I was playing with the matches." I confessed.

My answer was my Get Out of Jail Free card.

Many years later I brought up that day with my dad. He confessed that he had no idea what he was going to do if I didn't crack.

My only reply to him was, "You bastard!" We both laughed together.

That's funny... I once had a girlfriend that looked like that. In fact, I've probably still got her somewhere in my attic.

Awesome build, very impressive. My kid's 15, but you know I'm going into the attic to get his laundry basket full of Lego's out just one more time...

p.s. Just to get it out of the way, let me be the asshat who misses the point and says ".... but those characters inside are not to scale!" There. Now carry on.

What was amazing was the outdated polygon graphics, MIDI music, etc. that still scared us. I remember having a hard time in the attic. Its controls and camera views drove me crazy! Haha. I never actually got far too in the full game. Did you finish it?

FYI from many years ago on VS: http://videosift.com/video/Alone-In-The-Darks-First-SceneLevel-Walkthrough and http://videosift.com/video/Alone-in-the-Dark-1-Introduction-With-MIDI-Music

Right? I still remember tiptoeing through that attic... *shudder*

I think Republicans have a disconnect on the word "Build" when they talk about Building an Economy. You build from the ground up. You don't build an attic, then put up walls, then floors, and finish with a solid foundation. It starts with that solid foundation. In an economy like ours that rely on people spending, you need people to be able to spend. That means the people at the low end that do more spending than those on the top (per dollar earned anyhow), need to be the ones having disposable income. If they spend 100% or more of their income on living essentials, they can't spend to move the economy. When they finally do spend, then the retailer can hire more people (at least until automation starts taking over low end jobs, which is frighteningly soon), which means more people with income to spend, which feeds into the cycle. Eventually transportation starts picking up, which feeds more money into the economy. Eventually production has to keep up. By punishing those at the bottom, is shooting oneself in the foot. Half the people who work for Walmart qualify for food stamps, though Walmart makes enough to pay everyone a living wage, give them benefits, and still be profitable, but the people conservatives (Christians yet, who Jesus said to help the needy and the poor, and how the rich were going to hell) are mad at, are the poor people working there, rather than the rich owners/operators for not paying living wages. So conservatives seek to punish those workers by taking away something that allows them to spend money on things that actually move the economy forward. 3 people buying a $25k Chevy will do far more for the economy than that rich ass hole who just put $70lk on a Mercedes or Lexus. Their collection of TVs, video game systems and the like, do far more for the economy than that rich guy's super high def, ultra large screen TV. It's such a fucked up world in conservative land... I'm still at a loss how I used to be a part of it.

It gets to what @enoch was talking about above. There are some really good business owners, then there are the winny bitches who say they can't pay living wages... One of the jobs I worked at, complained in a letter to all of us that if Obama won (first time around) he'd have to fire over 350 people if he put his tax plans in place. Come that February, Obama isn't even in office yet, and he fires 350+ people. Then tells the rest of us that the company couldn't afford to give us raises... of course the company at the same time, went out and purchases a private jet for him, and then he purchased a second mansion in the local, Jack Nicklaus, signature golf course gated community... and he already owned the second largest mansion there. But oh, the conservatives are so support him over his employees, and think poorly of his employees for needing help living day to day, and praise him for his business acumen. The problem with conservatives is they LOVE greed. Love it. They worship it more than they do the Christ they say they serve. They just don't want their money going to help others, they give plenty at their church, they give time at the soup kitchen, but God forbid that their taxes help those working for the asshole business owners who chose greed over their employees. Pay your employees living wages, and no, you won't have it on easy street like Enoch's nephew, but I can guarantee you that his son is the far better human... and that's not to say the nephew doesn't give, he very well may, but he chose to take that money for himself than to pay his employees well. It doesn't matter if he gives tons of it away, it was ill gotten, how much could it have helped his employees had he let them keep more of their labor? Sadly, that nephew seems to be the vast majority of businesses in the US.

Locally, it is generally cheaper to buy than rent... you need the deposit and all that of course, but the per month costs, even after insurance, property taxes and mortgage still end up cheaper. Now other expenses such as upkeep, utilities and the like may go up, but given you can get into a super nice home in a good school district and good neighborhood, for well under $150k (under $100k and even under $50k for less good areas) and rent is still in the $450-500 for smaller apartments... ownership appears to be the better idea. More space, for less money. When I had a house, I went from a small one bedroom apartment to a 3 bedroom house, 2 stories, walk up attic, basement (minor leaks)... saved a bundle per month, though gas ended up being ultra high, and job changes caused me to lose it eventually. Still, it was per month cheaper.

Heck, I know somebody, not local, but in Pittsburgh who moved from an apartment to owning a condo, and even after mortgage, association fees and utilities, it all comes out cheaper than her rent was alone before utilities, and the places are the same size (if not a bit bigger at the condo)... and that is still in the much coveted North Allegheny school district . Obviously homes and the like there are much more expensive than where I live, but still, seems cheaper to own than to buy for equal square feet even out there.

The mother raccoon that lives in the attic where I live is pretty chill. Accept for when my cat is around.

Wow! In the US, we only have to remove raccoons and possums from the attic, never leopards, panthers, or lions.
Poor guy didn't seem to be having a good time.

I'm wondering if the thermometer he used wasn't really an accurate way to measure and that radiant heat may be more significant (measuring the temperature of his clothing would have been useful). On many occasions I've had to do manual labor in humid, over 120F buildings all day and shorter stints in 150-160F areas (attics, crawl spaces). It's not at all pleasant, and drinking a ton of fluids is important, but regardless this guy seemed to suffer more than he ought to have (not that I condone leaving children or animals in parked cars). I bet if he put a probe on the part of his shirt exposed to the sun, he would find it was well over 150F.