The Burned Out Nerd

Players next to their game avatars

small (or at least under 40lbs)

no prey drive

not a yappy barker

no long strings of drool

hypoallergenic is a plus!

low activity level

Terriers or terrier-adjacent (high prey drive and potentially dangerous to the cats, though how dangerous depends entirely on exact breed and you can always ensure you're buying from someone who raises the puppies around household cats to prevent future problems)

brachycephalic (chihuahuas, tibetian spaniels, japanese chins, shih tzu, all of these are relatively robust little dogs that fit most of your other boxes but definitely are brachy)

Prone to barking (literally most of the rest)

Partner recommends lowchen which I have not met more than a single, and tibetian terriers (low allergen but wooly/coarse hair texture)(they're not actually terriers), and havanese.

Lowchens are also a possibility, but I have to keep reminding myself not be prejudiced because of their stupid haircuts. I could just get one and not cut the hair that way. the shaggy faces are very cute!

This dog

Is also this dog

I would never pay money for a redbox. if you ask politely and are very very persistent (i.e. annoying) they will let you take it away

here's my dad and i taking it away

luckily there are no shortage of freaks like us who will just take them away on our own volition. we did it all "by the book", too: we set up cones and caution tape, disconnected electricity properly, used an angle grinder to grind down the bolts in the concrete so nobody would trip on them, then cleaned everything up afterward and sealed off the electrical panel so the store would know everything is safe and tidy. though they were hesitant when we were first contacting them, they were honestly very relieved and grateful when we finally took it away, especially once they saw that we "knew what we were doing" (we don't) and look like we've "done this before" (we haven't).

the fun part: the reason why this redbox, in particular, was completely full and unraided is because the computer hardware inside had failed some months before the bankruptcy, and a failing company sure as hell wasn't gonna send a tech out to our podunk dipshit city to fix it, so it was impossible to rent movies or take any discs out. plus, for who knows how long, people were returning old redbox discs to this machine and not taking any out, leading to a much higher variety of movies than your average redbox.

there is a thriving community of redbox hackers and modders out there, as well, creating open-source software for repurposing the machines and not letting their very interesting and robust disc-management hardware go to waste. this one belongs to my brother (who was very annoying persistent and did all the legwork of contacting managers and securing permission) who is a programmer by trade and will be hacking it into a family-access movie library, with whatever discs we want. i mean the machine is completely weatherproof and has a built-in AC unit, it would be such a waste to not try to turn it into something cool.

if we get another one, i'm gonna try to mod it into some sort of art or zine vending machine. the disc boxes are just the right size for small print art or stickers. would make a great "little free library" too.