My uncle was involved in some capacity with decomming mountaintop AT&T signal stations. These were built in the 60s, 70s, back when composting toilets weren't a thing - but union/workplace reqs required you have facilities for workers.

So AT&T contracted with this company down in Texas to build toilets that could incinerate feces and urine via electricity, as the only thing they have a lot of at these relay stations is power. Thus was born the Incinolet. My uncle wandered off with a couple of these - no one actually wanted used incinerating toilets, except my uncle, who is a magpie and will also do similar things with laser equipment and MIG engines.

Anyhow, he installs his new incinerating toilet at various offices of his various startups. The toilets were designed to be maintainable by telecom technicians, because those'd be the only people onsite at AT&T sometimes for months. So, field-repairable.

But my uncle is also possessed of crazy ADD and also a schedule of someone who does startups. So he was never the one field-repairing his shitter. This duty often fell to my less ADD and more angry aunt, who found out that I'd asked to borrow what I later named Deuces McGee for Burning Man way too late to warn me that it ate a 30A circuit and would shut down in high heat as a safety measure. We subsequently bought a heavy-duty jobsite generator with a 30A circuit for the sole purpose of powering the electric shitbox.

It turns out that this last year was one of the hottest Burns in a while, which is how we found ourselves with an incinerating shitter that refused to incinerate because it was too hot out.

The toilet also arrived broken thanks to after being overnighted at the last minute from Maryland to Berkeley in a cardboard box with no packing materials.

Things done to the toilet in an attempt to make it usable: whacking on the hinge of the bowl with rebar to make it open and close properly. Replacing a broken thermocouple with a paper clip. Sitting there and spritzing a temperature sensor with a bottle of water trying to get it to incinerate the remains of us, uh, unit testing the toilet. Later packing the semi-incinerated remains into a CostCo pickle jar for disposal.

The pickle jar was mostly, but not quite, full of ash. For several days after the exorcism of Deuces, volunteers had to be found to burp the container.

Deuces McGee has since been retired to a storage unit in Oakland, California.

The pickle jar remains unaccounted for despite a thorough search.

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