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   mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 24-Dec-2025 06:23:53 JST mhoye

   in reply to

   I’m not @deviantollam and don’t (usually…) aspire to his level of impromptu red team chicanery, but I deal with a lot of elderly people in as-elderly-or-more houses, and “I lost the key, we don’t have the key, etc etc” is a recurring-enough theme in my life that I have a set of generic, common-as-dirt keys on there, CH751 and friends. You have one of these keys in your life. You probably have most of them in your life.

   • Embed this notice
     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 24-Dec-2025 06:23:53 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     (Did you know most product lines in the world use identical keys? True story: I accidentally stole someone’s car once because it was the same blue 1994 Honda Accord as my parents and they parked next to me. The key worked, and I just got into it and left without noticing. I’m not sure how many people have ever been startled to discover that they’ve accidentally stolen a car when they’re already halfway home, but one squealing u-turn and five minutes of hauling ass later, I got away with it.)

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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 24-Dec-2025 06:23:54 JST mhoye

     Inspired by @deviantollam, I'm repacking the Tools For Most Problems Bag in preparation for a trip to the relatives, because I'm the person expected to fix the things. I don't have a go bag, but I have this.

   • Embed this notice
     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 24-Dec-2025 06:23:54 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     Ok so.

     The bag is a Maxpedition Neatfreak. They make excellently durable gear, and until recently I’d have strongly recommended anything they make, but their last few new products have been tough-guy “morale patches” and there’s a dude with a gun on their homepage, both red flags. This bag is a nice size for preventing this sort of effort from getting out of hand, but if I was restarting this from scratch I’d be shopping around.

     https://toot.io/@bexelbie/115770712572232028

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     mhoye (mhoye@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 24-Dec-2025 06:23:54 JST mhoye

     in reply to

     Hanging off the front: safety glasses and gloves, regular old utility knife, flashlight, some delightful, tiny little knipex pliers and a pry tool/bottle opener that CRKT designed to be a coyly deniable way of carrying around a brass knuckle, but I don’t live that life so it stays in the bag an opens paint cans. Two things you can’t see are a roll of electrical tape and a roll of silicone leak-sealant tape, both handy.

     The key ring is a bit interesting though.

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     tom jennings (tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org)'s status on Thursday, 25-Dec-2025 03:22:59 JST tom jennings

     in reply to

     @mhoye

     Lol I'm not a lock geek in the slightest, but yeah I know there's only N combinations and in 1960s cars, N is like 100.

     Junkyards usually had huge keyrings and some low status employees job was to take the big blob ring out the the latest acquisition and figure out which key it was.

     @deviantollam

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     GNU Too (gnu2@gnusocial.jp)'s status on Monday, 29-Dec-2025 08:18:51 JST GNU Too

     • Matthew Lyon
     @mattly back when we used metal keys there only were like 8 different ones. That's one of th reasons they started putting microchips in them.