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This Raleigh M20 mountain-ish bike was missing a couple of pieces off the rear derailleur and the rear tyre. Spares from stock and it is reassembled and ready to go. It is still a piece of junk though.
A 2.8Ghz Shuttle PC with 2G RAM and no HD. It has a fancy nVidia video card in it and seems to sort of run knoppix. More investigation to follow.
Further investigation reveals that it works fine. It has on board video so if it gets deployed to a certain task the nVidia will become spare parts. As this text is being written it is getting a test install of Ubuntu on it.
This Schwinn Caliente bike is pretty junky and has some issues. We cleaned up a bunch of stuff and replaced some parts. The pic shows it halfway through this process, the front half of the bike is spiffy while the rear is still looks rusty crusty. When finished it will be an item coveted by numerous hipsters, we hope. But it will still be crap quality.
This fairly new push lawn mower was procured to order. The blade seems nice and tight, it cuts fine, it rolls, Monika?
This orange extension cable is about 80 feet long and has a missing ground pin on the plug. A new plug will be procured and installed. A handy thing.
This BabyTrend double jogging stroller needed air in the tyres and a quick rinse to get rid of the dust and it is as good as new and ready for sale. It does not even have the latch problems that frequently plague these models. No reason for discard apart from the flat tyre? Making an appearance on the list of craig soon.
Well, this is a slightly different model to the one we got a while ago. The previous one was given to friends but we have run out of friends in need of such so we will have to make new temporary friends via the list of craig to dispose of this one.
Most of a bike rack is present here in these parts, but not all of it. We suspect that bike shop owners of our acquaintance will be able to find a use for this pile of metal.
We got a bunch of parts in a transitional state, previously they were not bike parts but at some point they will be. We got another exercise bike from which we salvaged the crank and chain. Also a garage door opener yielded up its chain to us. It is good to stockpile these things while we can. No pic for now.
Also found was brand new front wheel and a road tyre for a mountain bike wheel. All very handy.
This folding bike is pretty crappo and heavy and primitive compared to the modern version but it was definitely worth picking up. If we can get it going somebody might want it but if not it has numerous parts on it that could be used on other bikes.
Given the high flow of random bikes passing through we decided to scavenge more key parts. One source of certain bike parts in perfect condition is Exercise Bikes. They yield parts of "New Old Stock" quality for two reasons, nobody ever uses these things and while they are being unused they sit inside in the basement as opposed to outside where they might rust. Pic shows some nice cranks we got, the chain was retrieved from this one also but not shown.
This kids' GT bike has seven gears and fancy linear pull brakes. It needed some attention regarding the front brake lever and saddle. The number of holes in the rear tube was also in excess of design parameters. Luckily, we know secret methods to remedy all of the above. Monika?
This Simo Bertini twin pushchair would seem to be the Maserati of pushchairs except that we think they are Norwegian rather than the obvious Italian. Whichever, they make quality gear and this is no exception. It needs a clean and then will be introduced to some new discerning owners at some point using the list of craig.
This Schwinn Hollywood girls' bike is from the mid 1940s we think. The previous owner had conveniently put two new tyres on it before tossing it into the scrap metal. It needed some seatpost attention and a clean and here it is for your viewing pleasure. It will probably find a home with some hipster, we will see.
This random Peg Perego Centro pushchair is in fine shape and needed nothing but a clean to be ready for offspring transportation deployment. Surplus to our requirements so off it goes to seek its fortune on the list of craig.
This Mongoose A40 bike has a few rusty screws etc and needed air in the tyres and the chain putting back on. Rides fine, junky but light and fancy looking, to some peoples' eyes. It will shortly be available on the list of craig for those very people.
Update: Sold to a nice chap who refused to test ride it but tested out the various subsystems in the static mode. Not our problem.
This is just the detachable seat part of an Emmaljunga. This would be the Volvo of pushchairs, we suspect. This model is pretty old but fully functional and in nice condition. There exists a small but discerning userbase for these things and hopefully we will make one of them happy at some stage. Egbert is visible behind it along with five (plus?) other items that have appeared on this page.
This classic English 3-speed Royal Scot Lightweight seems like it could be quite a viable bike after some air in the tyres. It obviously does not have the quality of Raleigh but seems pretty nice. Some hipster will love it.
Update: Sold off to a happy hipster.
This is a random large size Britax car seat with the adjustable element in the high back area. The cover is great but one of the straps has issues. It will either get new straps or donate its cover to the cause of rehabilitating another one, we will see.
Some guy was tossing this tree, rootball and all, onto the brush pile. It seemed like it might have a chance so we rescued it and brought it home. After dinner an earnest youth of our acquaintance implemented the planting procedure in our garden.
First a Dell 2.4Ghz PC with 512M RAM, XP installed and working, no apparent reason for discard. Lots of juvenile plus "mom" usage of the machine. Below is a randomly chosen IM session from the AIM chat logs, the names (and usernames) have been tinkered with to protect the terminally clueless.
cornsyyrup354: hi cathy look i think we have to talk, i no we have are
diffirences and stuff but i think we both miss are friendship and
we both want to be friends and of all the years we have been friends
and all the laughs we had i miss it and i am ok with u being friends
with alicia -not that u need my okay- but i am fine u can have friends.
i just was woundering if we can put this behind us and be bffl again
bc i no it would mean a lot to both of us, i am tired of fighting
and i thought it would last a day but i guess i was wrong-witrch
i am a lot- i am sorry abot what happened
[pic]
Auto response from ladytattoooo: Your IM has been sent to my mobile
device. When I receive it, I will be able to reply. Thanks for your IM!
Want your IMs forwarded to your phone? Click here
[pic]
cornsyyrup354: plz call or wright or send or talk or reply soon
ladytattoooo: you just dono't get it do you??
ladytattoooo: i have told you so many times that i am not becoming friends with
you untill you fisically YOURSELF calls my mother and appoligizes this
could have been over with so long ago but you just can't seem to realize
your in the wrong and your NOT right and you need to do something for
someone else
ladytattoooo: the thing that pissed me off is that you never apologized to me
or my mother
ladytattoooo: you have appoligized to me but you still have my mom
ladytattoooo: get that through your head
cornsyyrup354: wait wait wait watdoes any of this have to do with ur mom?
cornsyyrup354: i am trying to say i am sorry
cornsyyrup354: but wats the point if u wont forgive me ..the best part
of being a best friend is that when u have a fight u never stop
being friends u just find yourself makeing up and huging
cornsyyrup354: u forgive and forget ..
ladytattoooo: YOU RUINED MY SURPRISE BIRTHDAY WITHOUT A SORRY TO ME OR MY MOTHER
cornsyyrup354: a bump on the rode wont stop u from driving
ladytattoooo: IT COSTED MY MOM 1,000 DOLLARS
ladytattoooo: DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH MONEY THAT IS?!?!?!
ladytattoooo: DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I HVE WANTED A SURPRISE BIRTHDAY PARTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
cornsyyrup354: cathy..at lest u get a party for 1 and 2 u kenw about it, 3 yes i no
what $$is and 4 it did mean a lot to u and u had a good time - darryl
showed me the film - 5 i am glad 6 ...7
ladytattoooo: JUST SHUT UP!!! MY GODD YOU DON'T GET IT WHEN OUR "BEST FRIENDS"
YOUR SUPPOSED TO SAY SRRY RIGHT AWAY
cornsyyrup354: i did!
cornsyyrup354: the day after i left u a message
cornsyyrup354: the day at school i said to gg give this to her but dont read it
ladytattoooo: WELL YOU DIDN'T SAY IT TO MY MOM
cornsyyrup354: on wed i said darryl ask her - i never told darryl any thing -
cornsyyrup354: i put it on ur home phone! so u and ur mum can here it
ladytattoooo: AND YOU KNOW WHAT... THERE WAS NO FILM
cornsyyrup354: that is y i put it on ur home phone not ur cellz
ladytattoooo: but you didn't say sorry to her
cornsyyrup354: yes
cornsyyrup354: the film
ladytattoooo: shut up your wrong
cornsyyrup354: on darryls cellz
ladytattoooo: no your rong
ladytattoooo: you have to get this over with
cornsyyrup354: darryl has a tape on her cellz
ladytattoooo: call my mom and appoligize
ladytattoooo: thats all i have to say
cornsyyrup354: what do u want me to say
ladytattoooo: GOOD-BYE!!!!!!
ladytattoooo signed off at 8:11:41 PM.
(END)
Well, we are glad they got that sorted out. Any linguistics students out there want a Ph.D. topic?
The other machine was a Alienware thingy, missing HD and various hardware parts. It will certainly yield various parts for the fixing of computing machines in general, it will probably not run again in this form unless for short-term amusement purposes.
This Thinkpad T40 has a 1.5Ghz CPU, 512M RAM and no keys. It has a keyboard and typing still works but the keys were salvaged by the previous owner, or some such. Apart from that it cannot seem to make it past the BIOS when booting but we forsee no major issue there as it will probably be ebayed as is.
A plastic bag full of Lego pieces, fairly modern ones in general. This will be rinsed and tossed in whatever big bucket of Lego comes to hand first here.
All in one day we gathered up this nice selection of various devices for use with offspring in the seated position. We could have pictured and listed them seperately but the ensemble picture seems quite nice.
From the left:
This is a random Dell Pentium 4 2.6Ghz PC or so with memory, disk etc. The fan on the power supply is dead (possible reason for discard?) and the HD had all the personal files on it unlinked. Unlinked but still present.
This Compaq seems all nice and new and shiny on the outside but does not boot or show any sign of life. That is fine, maybe watch this space for more investigation or we will ebay the thing off entire as is. Maybe even both.
This Dell P4 GX270 2.8Ghz PC was missing memory and disk but they are in general machines worth saving, if possible. We found some memory in stock from prior salvage, a disk from a decommisioned RAID array and a discarded G-wireless PCI card and installed them. Then, using an XP install CD from the trash (first sale doctrine) we put an OS on it and made it ready for a friend's father. Bonus points for multi-sourcing we feel! Spiffy, despite the scuff marks on the case.
These random wooden chairs are nothing special, but they are useful and pretty nice. We have no great need for them but somebody we know will be able to find a home for them.
This Raleigh Grand Prix bike was dropped off complete except for one set of brake pads and the pedals. One tyre was blown out and the other was sketchy so after two (cheap) new tyres and a couple of various new cables it is ready to be ridden. The pic shows it approaching ridability, strictly downhill would be possibly with it in this state, but not desirable.
This plastic play house and slide thingy is in perfect shape and was presuambly tossed because the offspring outgrew it. That is fine, there are always offspring somewhere ready to grow into it.
A member of the barstaff at our friendly local brewpub requested some random patio sitting equipment, so we picked this up. They are pretty nice and after a clean should be fine. Cheers.
This red no-name kids bike was found in almost new condition with horrible stickers all over it. We removed them and it is now tolerable and no-name-esque. The stabilizer wheels came seperately but exactly when called for.
This Magna Blowtorch bike is also pretty much new and unused, reason for discard may have been that the chain had come off. It is a horrific paint scheme and overall concept but it will go to some random offspring in need of a wheeled device to fall off.
This Babytrend double jogging stroller is in near new condition and has not discernable signs of use except a slight fading in certain places. That of course is not neccesarily a sign of use, just of having sat in the sun, but there you go. Reason for discard may have been chronic disuse but more likely the folding catches, which on this particular model become stiff and unworkable with time in a humid climate. A judiciously applied drop of oil on each side fixed that though, so it is destined for the list of craig.
This is a random Calphalon "sauce pan" that has lost the interior coating. We know what to do with it. Shown in repose upon Egbert.
This Bianchi Strada bike is a piece of crud for a Bianchi but with that name on it somebody will want it. It was missing wheels, saddle, pedals and brake pads, all of which we have in stock. This will be nicely detailed for sale to a hipster.
This Schwinn Varsity bike has a huge frame, which is apparently in demand in certain circles. We shall see if some long legged hipster snaps it up. It needed a new gear cable, new tyres, a few other random things and some tweaking and tuning. Overall it has cleaned up nicely and is pretty nice to ride.
This bike looks in a pretty sorry state and is missing the chainrings and possibly some other small pieces. Some of the parts on it are really nice though and it may be worth saving, we will see.
This coffee machine, though slightly too feature-laden for our taste, seems to work fine and be all present and correct. It will tentatively become the reserve Z pot.
This table turned up with no top and looking a little rusty and forlorn. It was pretty simple to clean it up and the new wooden top was made up of wood we salvaged last year from a different table top. This might become our outdoor cafe style table, depending on how it turns out. The picture show it in mock-up mode prior to actually committing to a final design.
A pretty classic Schwinn Varsity road bike in the strange light green colour, somewhat spiffy but in need of a fair bit of tuneup and attention.
This was in part trade for the Gary Fisher. Kind of counts?
We rescued a Gary Fisher hybrid bike from stagnant imminent discard a while ago, here it is:
It needed numerous new parts and fixing but with what we had in stock we did not have to buy much. This then makes a really nice ridable bike for our friend. In return he gave us the two bikes he had that were not really being used and destined for some form of future discard. Those are also here somewhere.
The first is a Centurion Le Mans mixte. It is pretty junky but is in nice shape, just needed a flat fix and some general tuning.
A murky brown Ross Eurotour bike in much neglected but not abused state. It may actually have never been ridden, certainly not discernably. The tyres are dried out and there is some surface rust but apart from that it is but a small amount of work from being a hipster's dream transportation device.
Update: Sold to a happy hipster within hours of being put on sale. In a slightly cleaned cleaned up state of course.
A random kiddie bike procured upon request for some friends. It had a genuine reason for discard, something along the lines of "we reversed over it with the SUV". This is a pretty common cause of death for strollers and bikes these days. Fortunately the damage was limited to the front wheel so we replaced that and voila, ready to ride (or fall off).
A random eMac 1.25 Ghz, 768M RAM, 40G HD, all in good shape, boots fine. The picture shows it undergoing upgrade to 10.4 for the purposes of use or trade or sale. The previous owner had some real estate related documents on it and some pictures that seemed to be documenting an insurance claim, otherwise uninteresting.
This is a pretty junky AMF Roadmaster bike but it is cleaning up nicely and will go to make some hipster happy in their newfound bike-trendiness. It needed air in the tyres and one spoke replaced. The reason for discard may have been the fatal error inducing install of some bracket on the seat mount, that is all cleaned away now and it is more or less ready for sale.
We are not sure exactly which roads this thing is supposed to be the master of, but we definitely do not wish to travel them. Update: Sold to a hipster and a basket installed on the front.
A friend had this spiffy little Schwinn Suburban for years in his garage, it was his childhood bike or some such. Given a choice between near/long term tossing and us he discarded it our way. We cleaned it up to it's present state and it will go to satisfy a hipster's urge. The proceeds will be (partly) spent on a keg of beer from our friendly local brewer for a party of some form.
Update: Sold and the proceeds earmarked for a keg of beer or some such.
This Fuji Suncrest was a little dirty and had two flat tyres when found. Either of those factors may have been the reason for discard but both were remedied in about five minutes leaving a pretty functional bike ready for the next owner. This person shall be introduced to us by the list of craig.
Update: Sold, after some dithering by flakey customers to a nice chap. Certain CLers are really a pain in the butt.
This Lotus Viking mountain bike was partly stripped and not very happy at all when we found it. A bunch of spare parts made it rideable and pretty nice but we will see what occurs with it.
B>Update: Sold to a nice Dutchman for use as a random round-town bike.
This is a nice Phillips 3 speed English bike in OK condition. It was made in 1959, the year before Raleigh bought the company. It had 4 missing spokes but that seems to be all the real problems. The Sturmey Archer hub was dry and wedged in neutral but upon refilling with oil and some mechanism working it was fine. The tyres and tubes are original (or at least very old) and in fine shape. The pic shows it after some cleaning, front wheel, cable sheaths and some small details yet to do.
The quality on the Phillips was slightly below Raleigh but this is an astounding piece of technology. It has lasted 50 years with very low maintainance and after some lube and air and such it is now a great pleasure to ride. Dear reader, how many items do you own that exhibit these properties?
A Hilift Jack with a slightly rusty mechanism. We are betting there is nothing really wrong with it and that a quick "canadian rebuild" will put it in order. These things have a habit of sticking unless you keep them slathered in oil so I bet the previous owner encountered that condition in the dim and distant past. Then they neglected it for a few years before tossing it. We will see when we inspect it more closely.
Update: Just need a bunch of oil and it now works fine.
A random suitcase that will be handy for giving away to somebody who needs one at some point.
This random Baby Jogger only had one wheel when we found it, but luckily the spares department was able to supply a full set in nice condition. The rear ones are larger than intended but that will be heralded as a feature for rolling smoothly over extreme jogging territory, or some such. Off to the list of craig with it.
Update: Sold on CL a day or so after listing.
This is a mostly stripped down Baby Jogger. It is missing all the accessories but usaable as is, hence will be sent to seek its fortune on the list of craig.
A random but pretty fine double jogging stroller, it may or may not be missing the hood. A sticky strip has come unstuck at the bottom but that will be glued back on at some point. Shown here after a quick wash.
A random iBook G4 that will be good for spares/parts etc. Pieces of it may end up on ebay.
A random Trek 800 ladies model bike that seems in OK shape. Some scavenger had just pulled wheels off it when we got to it but it seems in OK shape so we pulled a couple fo stock to rebuild it. Previous owner had put on a new front gear cable and wired it up wrong, probably the reason for discard.
A small cast iron radiator set up for steam heating. This will be made aavailable on the list of craig soon.
A random piece of limestone cut to be a large step, we think. This will be used to make some form of little bench in the garden at some point. It is quite nice.
An X41 thinkpad tablet machine in pretty rough shape. Somebody had beat it up but we took it for spares etc. HD was full of evidence of a drugs company sales rep who use match.com but not much else. The 60G super mini HD and the 1G RAM stick are pretty handy, everything is pretty much scrap thinkpad material.
This middling crappy mountain bike had two flat tyres upon pickup but after insertion of compressed air into same it seems fine. It is barely ridden though a few years old and pretty fine bike for pootling around town, it has mountain bike slicks on it. Going up onto the list of craig.
Update: Sold to a nice chap for use as a station bike, a good choice on his part we feel.
A random jogger in OK shape, nothing special but handy if you need one of these. This will be quickly destined for the list of craig. It needed air in the tyres and a quick clean, pic shows it rinsed before getting a light scrub.
Yet another Dell GX270 Pentium 4 PC machine, this one is pretty dirty inside and is also missing memory and HD. It is a 2.4Ghz and seems like it should be fine after a spot of cleanup and a few parts from the pile. It seems like this came from the same previous owner as the others but the dirt profile inside is very different.
Having examined the rather large inventory of Pentium 4 PC machines at our disposal we decided to offload a batch of complete but non-booting machines in exchange for cash. The two Dell machines you may recognise from the sketchy picture below but the Compaq and the Gateway probably did not make it onto this page when they were picked up. All are between 1.4 and 1.8 Mhz and kind of junky but perfectly useful for basic computing needs. Coincidentally (or not) they are all case designs that annoy us, hence maybe better to have somebody else do the serious fiddling.
This is probably an update entry and a new stuff entry.
We found three Dell Pentium 4 GX270 PC machines, all three were missing their memory and hard drives. We took two, a 3 Ghz and a 2.4Ghz model. We have access to some memory with which to resurrect these, and random hard drives are easy to come by. The pics show them baring their guts with new drives and an OS installed but awaiting their longer term memory (borrowed sticks were used for the install process). These will be sold or traded.
A bumper crop of computing machinary all in more or less the same state, missing HD but complete with RAM. This seems to indicate that somebody just closed down an office and was wise enough to secure their data before tossing out a whole bunch of perfectly good machines.
First up a Dell dual 3Ghz PC machine with no HD, 1G RAM and a super fancy graphics card. A test with knoppix indicate two happy little penguins and everything seems to work.
Next in line is a HP Pavillion dual 2.8Ghz, again plenty of RAM but missing the HD. Again tests fine but needs a quick clean out before it settles into what ever use we find for it.
Also present were 2 1.4Ghz Dell Pentium 4 machines, obviously less fancy and such but still pretty functional machines. The missing cover is out of shot, not actually missing. Pic is fuzzy but you get the idea:
Last an not least were two Dell Pentium 3 laptops, presumably from the same source but they both still had their hard drives but were missing the power supplies. Both booted XP and ran slowly due to all the anti-virus junk. We investigated the yellow trimmed one and once all the anti-virus stuff was taken off it ran surprisingly well for a 500Mhz with XP on it. Fortunately we sold them both off before we could play with them any more.
A random Macally USB keyboard, these are always handy to have if only to give away to friends in need.
This KitchenAid mixer was unfortunately missing the stainless steel bowl, we suspect that the scummy scrapmetal guys took that. On the plus side it works fine and even looks very fine now that is cleaned up, the pic shows it still all covered in special previous owner dust.
Update: Snapped up by a friend, they call him "the Donald.". Well, we do anyway.
A somewhat ornate cast iron radiator in nice condition. We have no need for this and none of our steam powerred friends are in needs of units so this will be sent to heat another home via the list of craig.
Update: Sold to a nice chap who introduced himself to us via the list of craig.
This Ross started out a while ago as a silver 10 speed Gran Tour II and ended up being converted to a painfully hip flip-flop singlespeed. Various parts were purchased in the process but the frame and some other stuff came from the original discarded Ross. The paint job is the tar-like bumpy undercoating for cars, probably this one.
This Dell was picked up a while ago but we only really got to grips with it today. It is a 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 PC, so plenty useful enough for most people.
After some parts shuffling (cdrom was working but slow) we attempted a clean OS install but it failed with a big fat bluescreen. It seemed like a memory failure so we used knoppix to conduct a memtest. That failed hugely so we pulled one memory card out and tried again, hence success! After the install we threw in a new piece of memory into the empty slot and failure again, oh no! Maybe the slot was bad? A few false starts and then close inspection revealed dust bunnies in the RAM slot. Shopvac action and all is fine. This presumably explains the reason for discard, previous owner put extra memory in some time after original purchase, in doing so crushed accumulated clumps of dust into the slot rendering the machine nebulously useless, hence to discard.
Update: Sold on the list of craig.
This was attached to the Gary Fisher bike. It is probably better to try and sell them seperately rather than together so we unscrewed it. After a quick wash this will be off to the list of craig, complete with the suitable rack under it.
This fine bike is Gary Fisher Big Sur, which is apparently something halfway fancy. It had been dropped in the scrap metal with the Topeak seat attached. The bucket loader had grabbed it by the front wheel and tossed it in the big can, ruining the front wheel. We rescued it, put on a new wheel (and tube) and will sell it on the list of craig forthwith. Reason for discard appeared to have been a flat front tyre, the tube was missing and the tyre was off the rim. It had a weird junky seat with it but we tossed this Trek seat on for the pic and will throw on a spare Gary Fisher seat later.
Update: Sold within 12 hours of being salvaged. In other news we have available one Gary Fisher front mountain bike hub.
Yet another Trail-a-bike, this one slightly more used, or at least older, than the last. This is also missing the little coupling hitch on the front but after a clean and some new (old) handlebar grips it is ready for the list of craig.
The traffic cone is nothing to do with the bike, it is just allowing it to pose in the rough orientation it is intended to be used in.
A 12 inch iBook G3 missing battery and power supply. Upon testing absolutely nothing occurs when attempting to boot. This will probbaly be parted out for ebay at some stage.
An IBM dual 3Ghz Pentium 4 in nice shape except missing memory and hard drive. Some memory from inventory allowed us to test it using knoppix and it seems fine. The addition of a HD will make this a fine element in a certain distributed computing task. Pic shows the scavenged memory installed.
A pretty fancy Fuji Saratoga touring bike with triple chainring, spare spokes mounted on the frame, and lots of lugs. It is really rather nice but we have no use for it. It is already on the list of craig but super special deep discount available to readers of this page if they should want it.
Update: Sold within 12 hours of initial pickup.
A Lodge cast iron griddle with ridges on one side and smooth on the other. We do not really need this so it may be available. Two pics, one showing each side.
This may already have been snapped up.
It started snowing again today so of course we are on the lookout for snow clearing tools. Most conveniently we found this Snapper Snowblower. With the choke on and a couple of pumps on the fuel bulb it started first time. It has half a tank of fuel. The reason for discard seems to be the fact that the drive belt to the snow chomper on the front seems to have stretched and does not engage properly anymore. A quick adjustment on the moving idler pulley that engages said drive and it works fine.
The previous owner seems to have kept it well serviced, the oil was clean, the plug is new and the joints had fresh grease on them. But maybe we will throw it away once we have finished the fuel in it...
An Xbox 360 in undamanged physical state but missing the special power and A/V stuff required to actually use it. We will borrow some cables to try this out and see what happens.
This stainless steel catering style table is brand new and seemingly never been assembled. That must be sufficient reason to discard it we suppose. Pic soon, maybe?
A selection of wireless phones and other mobile gadgetry, notably five Palm Treo devices. We picked these up for somebody who needs a new phone thinking we would get one of them working and indeed that proved to be the case. Two shown working in the pic that will accept the relevent sim card, various chargers and USB thingies present. Also a palm and lots of random adaptors and gear in the bag.
Some cheesy pics present on the phone from the previous owners, nothing too exciting though.
This Nishiki Cresta was partly stripped by the time we got to it, which is a shame as it is a really nice classic bike. We have the wheels for it and it came with bars etc, just lots of little parts were missing.
Update: Sold with the Fuji to a nice chap who was sent by the list of craig.
A small form factor Dell Pentium 4 PC, missing the HD. It has 2.7Ghz, 512M RAM, boots knoppix fine and runs very quietly. How nice.
Update: Refurbished and a huge hit on the list of craig. It seems these small machines are in quite some demand.
A small chair we acquired some time ago turns out to be moderatly nice and made of maple. It had a nasty thick coat of dark finish on it and was loose and rickety. After liberal applications of sandpaper, glue, clamps and varnish it looks like this. It does not fit to the maple desk but it is useful nevertherless for the offspring.
A friend bought a house and this desk was left in the basement by the previous owners. It did not, of course, look like this at the time we came into possession of it. It had a thick layer of ugly stained varnish on it and the drawers were all falling apart at the backs. The liberal application of sandpaper, glue, varnish and such rendered it into this state. The centre drawer is not yet finished (in more ways than one) but will make it in there eventually. The desk is now deployed in service of the offspring.
A white KitchenAid mixer in used but perfectly working usable shape. Comes with two mixer blades, stainless bowl, pouring thingy. This is available to anybody who wants it.
Update: snapped up by some vegans.
A set of 3 Victorinox luggage pieces. We are quite sure the swiss army don't use these. Two large cases and a rolling suit bag. All three seem lightly used and in excellent condition. We have no idea what to do with these at present as we pretty much never travel with anything this large. We will see.
BMX bikes are really not bikes in the sense of being a useful conveyance and so we do not generally deal with them, but this Kawasaki seems quite new and complete, hence we may be able to hook it up with a new owner at some stage.
Update. While the bike seemed eminently fixable the previous owner had got sand in all the bearings and bent the rear wheel. Too much effort for us so we stripped some useful parts to help another bike live.
A selection of pots and pans. We left several cheaper (but technically usable) items behind and cherry-picked the good stuff. First a couple of Calphalon items that both have a very good reaason for warranty return and hence may end up being returned.
Next an Ikea collander, sort of useful. Not sure if we will keep this yet.
Also in this batch were a large Le Creuset lid, a steamer and some stainless steel bowls. The lid fits a nice cast iron pan that previously featured here so we may deploy it in that role. The bowls are available and the steamer has yet to be tested for fit and effectiveness.
Update: Several items found homes already with various friends. The Le Creuset lid fit one of our pans so it gets to find a home here.
A Vaio Pentium 4 laptop with a broken screen. It seems in good shape otherwise but we have no power supply for it. No worries, we were able to make a handy backup of the previous owners data and see what was there. Lots of pics of suburban club culture, a bunch of mp3s reflecting the same taste and almost nothing else. The browser cache was entirely what one might expect for the relevent demographic.
Some of the pics seem like they could appear here, except that the parties involved are only respectively douchie or hot to a moderate degree, nothing worthy of widespread publication on the interwebs. Sorry, no pics for you here.
Update: Turns out that the fine users of ebay seems to find this enticing. Smashing, entertainment and cash value in one easy to ship package.
Somebody took some nice cleaned up up cast iron pans from us a while ago and they got all excited and made pizza with them. Turned out pretty well, according to the reports, and here is the pic they sent of the results.
Seems like pizza might be a great way of building up the cure on pans that have a young cure on them.
A Stanley No 72 chamfer plane, in pretty good shape and still sharp. The pic shows it after a quick cleanup. If the crazy tool collectors of our acquaintance do not want this it will be sent to make its fortune on ebay, where apparently they are rather sought after.
This is the working guts from a parking meter. Who knows what it was doing in the scrap metal but it is a nice piece of machinery for generally playing with etc. It may find a home in the z-dudes' museum of computing.
We got this Schwinn Varsity road bike a while ago and it sat around until we cleaned it up. Lots of attention with the chromezall and some new bar tape and it is off to be sold to an eager hipster. Pic shows the new bar tape and the super cool Schwinn head badge.
A Mac G4 cube, missing the power supply. Pity, the power supply is worth more than the cube, testing will commence once we borrow a spare power supply. Also present the keyboards pictured, a 1st generation 450Mhz iMac and a mac flatscreen. A competing scavenger got the screen and those iMacs are too slow for us to bother with now.
Update The thing works fine though now but the IDE ribbon was pulled out of the HD. Was this a primitive attempt at data security by the previous owners we wonder? Probably was considering the tricky nature of the mounting. Contents of the HD:
Two small strip lights. One came a few days ago and is shown installed under some cabinets in the pic below. The other also works but is as yet hanging around and not illuminating anything.
Note the toaster appeared on this page in the past.
Two bikes, all very wibbly and spiffy. First a Kona Hahanna, whatever that is. It is not the best bike in the world but certainly not the worst. Somebody will want this. When found it was missing a seat and the two quick release skewers for the wheels, but otherwise in fine shape. A seat and skewers from the pile and it rides OK. Look for it on the list of craig or snag it before it gets there.
Also a Lotus Excelle, which seems to have been a halfway fancy road bike at some time. The bars were badly bent by some collision/crushing type event but we tossed another pair on. It is very tight and smooth to ride, needs bar tape then off to feed the rabid hipster market for drop bar bikes. There is a good chance that some hipster might want this to be a single speed, the frame has a certain elegance to it. We don't care as long as they hand over the cash.
Update: The new bar tape is on and the thing is ready for the list of craig, pic updated also.
A small Krate bike in middling condition. This may clean up nice and find a home, we are not sure. Bikes of this ilk seem to be recently trendy and commanding absurd prices so it is worth a try.
Update: Cleaned up and sent away to amuse the offspring of certain relatives.
Due to coffee pot issues in certain circles we frequent, we resolved to collect a stash of spare coffee pots. Shortly thereafter a friend dropped his and hence was able to take advantage of said (small) stash. Shown in his kitchen ready for deployment in wakeup duties.
A brass lamp in the form factor of a candle stick. The pic shows it stripped of most of the junk that came on it. We originally picked this up for the considerable scrap brass value but it seems like it might make an OK lamp to actually deploy somewhere, so we will put a new cable and fitting on it and find a shade for it. We have already used it as a candlestick.
A random bike minus the wheels and seat, we picked it up for the rear derailleur to fix the slightly stricken Fuji. Here then is the part installed and all happy. The rest went back into scrap metal as it was pretty junky and beat up.
A Dell 866 Mhz Pentium 3 laptop with 128M RAM and 20G HD. It lacks the horsepower to really run the XP installed on it but there was nothing physically wrong with it. Even the battery seems to hold a charge.
In the cdrom was a CD full of 500M of powerpoint stuff, all very important sounding business deals and such. On the machine were two users. One had a selection (on the order of hundreds) of cheesy soft-core porn in IE cache, the other had this image cached:
Errr, duh!
It turns out that the second user also had 5000+ mixed hard-core porn images in cache. Wow, a deceptive popup thingy actually turns out to be accurate! Nothing else on this machine but the porn and the powerpoint, not even regular surfing (that we could find). There were some RTFs with birthday invites and house construction info etc but they were standard issue for this demographic of computer user. Polarized porn and powerpoint 'puter.
Also found a small case Dell Pentium 4, partially stripped but useful for parts and the G-wireless PCI card that was in it.
We do not use these cards but we know people who do.
A Fuji Odessa mountain bike. This one is in OK shape except a broken derailleur hanger. That is a easy fix. It was also missing the front skewer as some guy had just taken it off rather than taking the whole bike. What a moron. We like these bikes as they make great city beater bikes, not fancy enough to be stolen, robust enough to use and reliable enough to just ride without ever doing maintainance again after the first tuneup.
A very nice All-Clad stainless pan. When found it had traces of sauce on the outside and some burnt food on the inside. We suppose that yes, it may actually be easier in some sense to toss a pan rather than clean it, but no, it is not the correct thing to do. And this pan was not difficult to clean, maybe 5 minutes scrubbing.
In the periphery of the pic you can see four items that previously appeared on this page.
Update: Pan snapped up by some friends along with a suitable lid that turned up a couple of weeks ago and did not merit a mention here on its own. Voila, a new home for a fine piece of cookware.
A Pentium 4 Dell 2.4Ghz PC with 250G HD and 256M of RAM. All seems present and correct with the machine including the data from the previous owners, a mother and daughter. Salient points:
A somewhat funky but pretty fine Maclaren pushchair in fine shape. The picture here tends to emphasize the random things that get in the way of the flash but it is nice and will be sent to a new owner by way of the list of craig. Shown sitting on a table that should have appeared on this page at some stage in the past.
It may shock you to see us installing windows for our own use, but yes we did. We have some replacement windows to put in various area of the house and these basement ones called for some 2x6 type stuff. We found some very nice 2x8 that we cut down and used to frame the hole for some of the windows. Spiffy, much better than buying the stuff, it was very solid old wood that is far denser than the modern stuff. Shown here framing out the window, no internal trim yet applied. Finished but unfinished, so to speak.
The Volvo of strollers, for those in the know, an Emmaljunga in pretty fine shape. This is all present and correct and this model has a niche following in our area so we will introduce it to its niche via the list of craig. All very nice.
Incidentally if you are in the market for a pushchair this is a pretty nice machine if you have the space for it. It is very high quality with various adjustments and has modular replaceable tops. The old style chic it exhibits might be seen as a plus or a minus, depending who you are.
A Fuji cruiser bike in very nice condition. This is almost found to order as a possibly buyer for the Huffy wanted something a little different and this might be it. Has a leather saddle, 5 or so gears, chrome mudgards etc etc. All very nice, only needed air in the tyres.
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