 |  | The Stuff Page: Things that ended up tossed but that seem like they have another life ahead of them.
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| | The Stuff Page: Things that ended up tossed but that seem like they have another life ahead of them.
Click here to find out what this "Stuff Page" thing is all about
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Currently viewing older stuff, starting from entry number 1665....
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A Dell laptop carcas pretty much stripped, no HD, optical, memory etc. Somebody on ebay may want this so we will give it a shot.
Followed by a laptop docking station in seemingly good order. It is a pretty fancy one we suppose. Again, ebay fodder for whoever may want it an bid highest.
A Vaio laptop dock still in the original packing. It may or may not be unused and pristine but it seems fine. This will be paying a visit, along with the rest of the laptop garbage, to Mr and Mrs Ebay.
A stainless steel asparagus cooker, seemingly in good shape but missing the insert. No matter, this thing is useful for its stainless steel vessel-like qualities. Shown here after a quick clean with pumice for the body and in the dishwasher for the lid. No particular reason for that.
A pretty fancy stovetop espresso maker. It has some special attachment that allows one to make cappucinos direct in the stovetop device. Pretty fancy indeed! We have yet to test this extended capability but as the thing appears pretty much unused we suspect it will work to some degree.
A keg. More precisely, a half a keg, that is still keglike in topology. This has a bung but the tap fitting seems a little shonky. We will present this to the local brewer for his opinion and hopefully usage. Intense competetion for this, all the scrap metal opas wanted it for the deposit return and probably not for the couple of gallons of beer in it. What they do not know is that the gratitude of the local micro-brew-master is worth more than the cash deposit on any keg. Morons.
A slightly beat up jogging stroller by Baby Trend. Steel frame has some rust. Folding mechanism needed oil to work smoothly. Tyres need air. Fabric needed a clean. This will hit craigslist for some lowish price.
Also seen in background is a Tonka excavator thingy that seems to amuse the offspring unduly. Saves us hosting a pic here to mention that in passing.
Also found, a rather nice jogging stroller with an aluminium frame etc and no sun damage. Wheels, fabric, everything in good shape. Quick wash and it is ready for craigslist at some pretty high price, people don't value what they acquire unless you charge them accoridngly.
A whole metric butt-load of "Hooked On..." book/tape sets. Mostly these have not been filled in etc and we have no real use for this stuff but somebody we know might. Available or being got rid of.
A pair of somewhat ugly but quite functional chairs for small offspring. Small offspring in question seems to quite like them so that is fine.
A Trek bike had rusted components all over except the frame, wheels and seating gear. We took the aforementioned unrusted things and mated the rear wheel with a tyre from another bike to make yet another replacement rear wheel for the turquoise mongoose that is now a regular feature here. Pic shows just the happy rear wheel ready for install.
Also found, a pretty fancy bike for juvenile people. This will serve well in engaging and distracting the numerous cousinous people that are due to come our way next weekend. The chain shows up a trifle rusty in the pic but it works fine at present and will have received a cosmetic cleanup by the time it is pressed into service. Or maybe we will sell it on craiglist before they get here, gotta love some serendipity in one's life.
One iMac g4 800Mhz in fine shape. Mostly unremarkable stuff, lots of pics and movies shot in Central America and lots of music in spanish. Note much in the caches and little else to poke around in. Maybe more details soon.
A Pentium 4 Compaq 1.6Ghz 512 RAM that has to be one of the ugliest computers of the recent era. It has Windows XP installed on a 70G HD, does not boot and had a Windows 2000 install cd in the tray. Hmmmmm. Had kazaa installed with this lot in the "My Shared Folder"
04 - She Hangs Brightly - Mazzy Star.mp3 17 Tsunami.wma Blonde Redhead 10-Mother.mp3 Blonde Redhead-The Gentle Waves - Ballad of Lemons.mp3 Cruxshadows - Insomnia.mp3 Finch - i miss you.wma Joy Drop- All Too Well.mp3 Joydrop - Sometimes Wanna Die.mp3 Liam Lynch - My united States of Whatever.mp3 Local H - Bound For The Floor.mp3 Loudermilk- Insectica.mp3 Marylin Manson - Coma White.mp3 Mazzy Star - Before I Sleep.mp3 Nine Inch Nails - Something I Can Never Have.mp3 Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie & Roger Waters - Comfortably Nu.mp3 One True Thing - Dearest.mp3 Rasputina - Diamond Mind.mp3 Rise Against - Heaven Knows.mp3 The Get Up Kids - Out Of Reach (acoustic).mp3 The Get Up Kids - Overdue.mp3 The Get Up Kids - Stay Gone.mp3 The Rapture-Echoes-the coming of spring.mp3 The Weakerthans - Aside.mp3 The weakerthans jks- saint cecilia.mp3 at the drive-in - pickpocket.mp3 mazzy starr - Jesus and Mary Chain Cover.mp3 miranda sex garden - gush forth my tears (1).mp3 neutral milk hotel - king of carrot flowers 1.mp3 saves the day, new found glory- words unspoken-The Get Up Kids.mp3 tapping the vein - Sugarfalls.mp3 tapping the vein - crushing.mp3
Machine was probably used by a whole family, many of whom are pictured in the photos and decribed in the resumes left on the HD. One is a very accomplished resume writer. Also they are Ukrainian in origin and hence had lots of cyrillic web stuff in caches. Here are some very language-like google searches made by the teenage girl of the household, we guess that some of these are homework but some of them are not. Can you guess which are which?
how are fossils used to identify rock layers? how did avagadro come up with his number? how did avogadro come up with his number? how did the twelfth amendment change presidential election? how does lorenzo's oil work? how do humans interact with their enviorment in the state of washington? how do humans interact with their environment in the state of washington? how many chromosomes are in two new daughter cells? how many people in the world have wilson's disease? how to calculate scientific notation how to draw mouths how to feng shui a bedroom how to give oral sex how to give oral sex to a male what's gwen stefani's favorite lipstick? what are some sites that are used to start and store online diaries? what are the seven deadly sins what did colonists do to rebel the sugar act what events caused the war of 1812? what events led to the war of 1812? what events led up to the war of 1812? what is a virtual image in science? what is erucic acid what is neon light what is neon light in physics what is radioactive dating? what is the definition of a virtual image in science? what is the definition of neon light in physical science? what is the definition of neon light in science? what is the difference between d-amino acids and l-amino acids? what led to the war of 1812? what problems in india facing as a result of modernization? what problems is india facing as a result of modernization? what processes in the human body produce carbon dioxide? what was the balfour declaration? where can i start an online diary? where is amsterdam who discovered wilson's disease? who has wilson's disease who was james oglethorpe who was william penn who won the war of 1812? why are the plasma membranes of plant cells hard to see? why did jean de bueil build the chateau usse? why was palestine not granted independence from great britain?
A cross-section of teenage girl stuff I guess, especially with the search for pro anorexia websites added in. 75 unique lyrics related searches also in the mix, etc etc. To finish here is a nice picture that was on the HD, in the mother of the family's space.
Wire basket at the side of the road in curbside garbage. Shown in pic fulfilling new duties, i.e. storing hard drives. Handy Dandy.
The mahogany we found turned out to be fancy porch floor planking. Some of it has already been deployed in the construction of this essential piece of hardware.
A tool chest (rusty and crappo) filled with a selection of interesting tools. Including but not limited to the following. A Remington powder gun thingy for blasting things into other things, some surface rust. We have no use for it so it is available.
Some solder. This stuff does not go bad and we are always running out of it.
A tasty selection of fanbelts. We tossed all the dry rotted ones and kept this sub-selection. These will be donated to an individual we know who has great need for a variety of these.
A set of valves hoses and torch for oxy-acetylene usage. The hoses are super long and may be in good shape. The valves and torch and pretty beat up. We will have to sinpect these for their potential usefulness.
Also present was a bit of scrap brass and copper, always handy in the sense that it turns into cash at some point.
A rather dubiously named bike, Free Spirit indeed. It is not the most fancy thing in the world but is in pretty good condition bar the missing tube on the front wheel. It also required an air impact wrench to get the back wheel off, interesting stuff. We threw on the nice wheels from that trashed Mongoose a while ago and it is ready to deploy into the custody of some distant family member's horrible offspring.
Some time ago we found a stainless steel rubbish bin, in the rubbish of all places, it probably showed up on this page. Or if not, should have been. The pedal never really worked due to overall cheapness of the mechanism and we just lift the lid all the time. A while ago we picked up a heavy aluminium pan for the scrap value and after we had chiselled the rivets off to toss the handles, the second handle had a use suggested for it. Pic shows it in action.
Raleigh LTD-3 bicycle in blue. This a is a classic made in Nottingham English bike in good condition. It has basically never been ridden, still the original tyres with a little dry rot but perfectly ridable. Chrome is all pretty good apart from on the optional extras, the speedo and kickstand fitted are crappo quality but functional. The chainguard is slightly kinky also, somebody may have hoofed it at some point. Brooks saddle (cheap version) also fitted. Rear luggage rack very useful.
Also with it was a small bag for of duplo, shown here draining after a wash. The colander we had already.
This coffee maker is the same as the one we have in our lab so the carafe is handy to have for a spare. As suspected the coffee maker itself does not work, bad heating element, so that will be tossed and the carafe stored in the lab for that fateful day when we break the other one.
Some books, Coetzee, Le Carre and other stuff of varying quality. Saves a trip to the library.
Well, this update is not actually very big as its title might imply, it is actually regarding the aforementioned Giant bike. Specifically it seemed in a pretty sorry state but is now a pretty fine bike. It still looks a little shonky in places but that is good for the theft repellent quality. It is a good solid ride.
A Dell Pentium 3 PC and an IBM Pentium 3. These are for a friend who has a 266 Mhz Pentium 2 and said that he would welcome anything better that that for use somewhere in his home. We shall see.
A Calphalon Stainless steel skillet. This is in near perfect condition, reason for discard seems to have been a few specks of greasy dirt on one side of the thing. Not visible in this pic as I had just taken the required two minutes to clean them off. Works well and is pretty much available to anybody who wants it.
A Kitchen Aid stainless pot, sort of a milk warming pan or something. We may use this as it fills an empty cookware niche in the kitchen. Absolutely no apparent reason for discard.
A Campbell Hausfeld PowerPal compressor. It is of no great use to us due to our predominatly high CFM requirements but it may form the basis of a vehicle installed portable compressor. It works fine and just has some light rust on a couple of the steel components.
A fairly random mix of books, a mushroom taxonomy books that seems super useful, Anna Karenina and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. No spoilers here, even though it is too late for you to realistically expect me to to worry about that.
After the frantic bike (re)building effort last weekend we used up quite a few spares from the stockpile so it was good to find a few random bits today, some good tyres, tubes, wheels and quick release skewers. Also present was a beautiful old Schwinn but the rust had taken too much hold on the rims so we left that in the scrap metal.
This Schwinn bike seat was actually on a discarded exercise bike, i.e. one without wheels. It was so stylish in an un-cool way that I decided that it needed to be put on real bicycle (on which one might also obtain exercise, imagine that) so that it could see more of the world with it's campy cool logo.
This Giant carcass seems in pretty poor shape at first sight but due to our freshly replenished spares department it could probably be quite a usable beater bike pretty quickly. Some rust on chain and brake cables etc but will work fine for a long time yet with some care.
Hmm, Giant carcass, makes one think of Ender's Game, a copy of which has appeared on this page.
The mongoose that was stripped of wheels, pedals and saddle has been resurrected. The scumbag thief also cut the brake cables in order to get the wheels off. We ended up finding bits from several partial bikes in the scrap metal and assembling it all. Now it is better than before but that is in no way a silver lining on the cloud that scumbag bike thieves cast.
This rocky mountain bike was found a day or so ago, stripped amongst the scrap metal. Possibly a scumbag bike thief had been at it and the previous owners treated that as a reason for discard? Today we managed to find all the requisite parts to make it whole again to a standard suitable for sale on the list of craig or some such. Maybe the previous owner will buy it back? Also available to avid readers of this page of course, at a deep discount. It is now a pretty fancy bike but only suitable for hominids under about 5 ft 8 in height. Having small feet helps also, about the size of those of the foot model in shot are fine.
An Evenflow toddler seat in perfect condition, has barely (if ever) been used. Not nearly as desirable as equivalent Britax etc but usable nevertheless.
As if by Murphy's law, just days after we bought some hardwood to rebuild a park bench, we find some nice mahogany. It is not quite enough to finish an entire bench but will be useful for something else. Custom whiteboard frame? Hmmmmm....
A Peg Perego baby seat with two matching snap-in bases (not shown in pics) and snap-and-go chassis thingy. For those in the know Peg Perego is pretty good stuff, less of the whole seat detaching and baby plus seat flying out of car business. I guess a nearby somebody's offspring just crossed a height/weight threshold and they tossed their entire infant car safety setup. All in very good shape and will appear on the list of craig soon. Monica?
A gentleman new to the neighbourhood had obviously decided to upgrade his entire home computing infrastructure and hence was pitching his old one. Emachines 2.2Ghz athlon with 512M ram and a nice 160G HD. Also flat screen packed for transit in original box and all paperwork etc, including Geek Squad receipts. At the last minute, when he saw us coveting his hardware, he asked us to take the HD out for him. Sensible fellow. I have a HD the same as that with broken controller board so I would have quite liked that but there you go. Machine will probably be donated to a needy family at some point. Teenage son needs the learning, skills, responsibility of setting it up for younger sister, who needs a faster machine, all to benefit of parents, who need demanding offsprings' demands quieted. All of them need something.
A nice Stanley tool chest. It has super monster bearing drawers, holes drilled in the top and couple of dings but all in all is in fine functional shape. Colour is pretty nasty but there you go. This may end up used, traded or sold, not sure which yet. Put in your offers....
A Dell laptop missing everything. The last one of these that we had went well on ebay so I think this one will follow it. Missing memory, HD, optical drive etc etc. Has screen, keyboard, motherboard, power supply and most of case.
Some random books off some various bestseller lists, acquired for a youngish female relative to get through. Now she has finished HP7 she has cycles to spare......
A rather nice mountain bike. Simple but effective. The thing had a super bent front wheel so we grabbed a wheel off some crappo walmart special bike and a also the seat was better replaced with one from stock. Now, a nice machine, posibly destined introduction to its new owners via the list of craig.
Also found some fancy 24 inch wheels from on super high end mongoose kids mountain bike. The bike itself had a really nice frame and all sorts of cool stuff but was a little messed up and had bits missing. Never fear, the wheels will live to fight another day.
Also scavenged off the mongoose the brakes for sombody who needs brakes such as these for a repair job. Fine and dandy.
Ikea again and potentially not a good item to find used but it is in near perfect condition (one handle loose) and the liner is of course washable. Cool.
The old desk chair was getting a bit ratty and pieces would sort of swivel off at random times so this is a welcome addition to the household, even though it is Ikea. It is more comfy and more functional than previous chair and more or less brand new except for a few cat hairs or something.
A folding garden chair of no great notability except for the fact that is is pretty comfy.
Ikea bookshelves in perfect condition. This event is fairly astounding as these things tend to fall apart when you move house or even under normal use. They must not have been ever really used. Will be plonked in some bedroom to hold a cache of books, can never have too many bookshelves. Note of course the key advantages of picking other people's Ikea stuff out of their garbage are that we do not have to go near the nightmare swarm of people that perpetually envelope every Ikea and we do not have to do any self-assembly. Win, win, and because it is free, win again. This was found with the chair while we wsere on foot so it was most convenient to put the shelves on the chair and wheel the both home.
A somewhat monstrous stainless BBQ with side hob and cabinet and stuff. It has a few broken spot welds that we can easily re-weld, then we will convert it to charcoal from gas and proceed to press it into service. Replacement of the junky steels nuts and bolts will also occur, stainless all round now. This should last a while when finished. No real apparent reason for discard.
This is a very early calphalon I think, it has a bowed base so will be returned for a new one.
A set of rollers for when you have a bike but don't actually want to go anywhere with it. Near perfect condition, super spiffy all round. We have no use at all for this, off to Craigslist.
Update: Exchanged for liquid financial instruments via the list of craig.
A BMX bike in good shape, needed a flat fix on rear wheel and all ready to go. Available or used for distant family offspring.
Update: As expected it turns out to be coveted by some distant family offspring. Hence saved for such.
A graco duo glider double pushchair. All the stuff seems to be present, one or two little things on it are a bit ratty but otherwise seems OK.
1/4 and 1/3 cup stainless measuring thingies. I ferreted around trying to find the whole set but alas that seemed too much to ask. If we end up not using them or just getting bored of them we can send them for scrap stainless.
A pair of imposing iron fireplace thingies. They are pretty nice and simple and are available to anybody who wants them.
A pretty fancy instep brand double jogging offspring transportation contraption. It has numerous bells and whistles, as you can see from the pic. There is nothing really wrong with this but it does not push that nicely, even when empty. With two fat slobbering parasites in it I would imagine it is even more cumbersome.
A mongoose bike in spiffy red. It seems to work OK except the front shifter. Has knobbly tyres so not so good to ride on the road but all round pretty serviceable and happy. Available.
Update: Sold via the list of craig.
A panasonic bike in spiffy red. It has super nice tyres for city riding and is very like the schwinn found last week. Broken gear cables soon fixed by replacing with some some off a nearby frame. Available-ish.
A matched pair of smallish his and hers Trek mountain bike carcasses. Fairly small frames and one missing a chain. One damaged wheel had to be tossed but we have one rideable made from the pair already. Available.
A Specialized mountain bike with small frame. It looks a bit well-used but is OK under the dirt and scratches and has somewhat nice components on it. It is allocated already. Puncture in rear tyre was fixed and needed a good clean and adjust.
A really nice Schwinn mountain bike. Needed air in tyres but nothing else, this is really nice to ride and somewhat classic and hence may be kept for future usage. The only real downside to this is the supa knobbly tyres which are pretty awful on pavement. The saddle cover is a bit loose but not in any serious way.
A Ross ladies racing style bike. Uninspired except for the fact that it might have just a touch of hipster appeal in the same way a brown 1979 olds V8 would. This possibly has a home already, tentatively yours Brendan, for the swiss miss?
Update: Bike given to aforementioned swiss miss, unfortunately soon stolen by some scumbag.
A large framed Mongoose, perfect for riding in the city. This has been earmarked for exactly that purpose. Once its sadly disfunctional-by-design carrier is fixed it will be a handy thing to have access to.
Update: Used for a while in a large city, then stripped of its pedals, wheels and saddle by a scumbag bike thief. Reminder, always flay alive any bike thief you catch. Then put some salt on. Bike currently awaiting arrival of replacement parts from various garbage sources. This was a really nice rideable bike before being stripped so is worth rebuilding.
A smaller Mongoose mountain-ish bike, seemingly set up for a delivery type situation. This may become the property of some restaurant in the city for exactly that purpose. Functional, but ugly.
A random Huffy bike. It has a super cushy seat with a sprung seat pole. It is sort of comfy to ride but not very satisfactory due to ill-defined adjustment related issues or just the generally poor build quality one gets with Huffy bikes. Available.
Some form of offspring entertainment device that seems to work quite well. Not sure how long its entertainment capabilities will last though.
A rucksack for carrying offspring. It is all very fancy and in perfect condition, this may be deployed for the actual carrying of offspring or it may be sold. Maybe even both, in some order.
A hose and floor wand for a miele vacuum cleaner. This is highly fortuitous as a steam heating pipe managed to melt the hose on our miele. From this we figure that no german would be stupid enough to use steam heating etc etc because we cannot imagine that miele made an error on their hose material. But now we have a new hose should the duct tape fix applied to the old one become unsatisfactory. And a spare wand, whatever use that will be.
A kids Schwinn Pixie bike that is in pretty good condition for its age. It will be cleaned up and deployed as an offspring transportation device or sold as a "classic hipster kids toy" or some such.
This jogging stroller has 20 inch wheels and is in perfect shape now that I straightened out the bent axle it had when we found it. No idea what caused that bend. It also needed a squirt of air in the tyres but had never really been used. We, in keeping with its former owners, have no real use for it so it will be sold at some point.
Update Sold on craiglist, took a long while though. These usually go withing 24 hours but this took 5 days. Finally we can feed the family again....
A Dell Pentium 4 2.4GHz PC with 512M ram. It had a dead power supply. One from a Dell carcass found the same day was swapped in and voila, works fine. Previous owner searched web for amsterdam escort services, porn, guns, and pics of shiny expensive cars he will never own. Media on HD included fuzzy SVCD rips of Wedding Crashers (2005) and Mr and Mrs Smith (2005). Yuck. No music or personal pics at all, but some documents in wWrdperfect present, high-school or college homework style stuff, very generic subjects like Jefferson, September 11th and the Battle of the Ironclads.
Notable pieces of downloaded movie content in a Shared directory on the HD also include those prefixed by these stubs
14 ufc
9 naughty america
4 top gear
4 naughty office
4 illegal street racing
4 heather brooke
3 jenna jameson
3 ghostrider
3 latin adultery
3 american daydreams
2 my friends hot mom
2 milf hunter
2 mikes apartment
Ultimate Fighting, Fast cars and Porn. All deleted now thankfully. Even the crappo rip of Land of the Dead (2005), of which a screenshot below. Even for free, I am disappointed that somebody is prepared to watch that rip?. Just go to Schlockbuster dude!
60+ feet of curbstones. Some of them had attached cement and stuff but it chipped off very easily. They just need a quick cleanup and they can be used for edging various areas in our yard, they even match the existing curbstones on the driveway. Pic shows exemplary model.
A bathroom sink. This is in great condition (despite its appearance in the pic) and is a candidate for use in one of our bathrooms. Pity about the scalloping on it, but even with that it is nicer than the one we have. We will see, if we do not want it them somebody on craigslist will.
Update:Taps stripped off for somebody, rest is still available.
Yes, yes, enough with the silly topical toy/film jokes. This converts 110V AC to 220V AC and is pretty damn handy for any european that happens to end up on the North American continent with some of their appliances. We have 220V run throughout the house as well as the native 110V so do not need it. This is available or for sale or whatever. It can only handle 250W so think before you speak up.
And no, it does not turn into a drill press or any other useful household item. It transforms leccy. Now if it could transform into a 3-phase converter I would be happy.
Thule ski racks that seem in perfect shape apart from the missing keys. These are vagueley available.
A pile of 5 still sealed in the original package dual interface NIC, 100baseT. I think they are for some compaq server or other. Also present were a pile of new old stock 4G scsi drives in hot swap server trays. Oooooooh. You could almost extract a DVD onto one of those, but not quite. Anyway, I now have a couple of dual NICs to spare, Allan or Russell, these are probably great for making firewalls etc. One taken out of it's special wrapping for photo purposes shown in the pic:
Yet another kitchen sink, this will be bound for criaglist pretty quickly. OK condition, needs a bit more cleaning.
A telescopic thingy for fishing golf balls out of nasty places after errant shots. This will be donated to people who may have use for this type of thing. This in conjunction with a box of 100 golf balls makes for great fun in the garden. After dinner games etc.
Very handy for a friend who will be going in for ankle surgery soon, these crutches are super spiffy. When we are done with them they can become scrap Al.
Sort of artsy and wierd, we are not entirely sure of the intended use of this cast iron fish thingy. Maybe it is a planter, the inside stuffed with potting compost would allow seedlings to sprout out of the holes quite nicely. Answers on a postcard to /dev/null. Pending approval of recipient this may have a home.
An AV stack from some auditorium type place. Came in a large case with lots of stuff. First the power conditioner and console lighting unit, seems to work fine but one bulb is dead. Pic:
Next a Yamaha power amp, seems in very nice shape. We have no use for it so ebay should be seeing this soon:
A video switching unit with some number of input cards in the back. Not sure about this, it might be useful for certain things (Z boys??) or might just be out of date. Investigation followed by allocation seems to be in order.
Also present was high end professional VHS player. What garbage that was, it seems all VHS players are crap no matter how high end they are. We got rid of that plus some other peripheral junk and the case.
Some 12 ft lengths of copper tubing that were initially candidates for scrap copper but turned out to be new old stock and hence will be saved in case we need to do some plumbing at some stage. No pic, you know what copper tube looks like.
Two alloy wheels off a fancy schmancy Saab 9-3. 20 lbs of scrap aluminium alloy each or for sale on craiglist. I suspect we will get significantly more than scrap value for them from some saab owner. The rims seem to be in good shape and have no dings impairing their wheelness function. Some minor scratches on the outsides where a curb-wheel interface problem occured. We could wait and see if we can collect the rest of the saab as it is incrementally thrown out but I suspect that would not be fruitful.
Update: Sold on CL to some guy whose nephew had just driven his fancy saab into a curb and trashed the front wheel. He gets a bargain, we get to eat dinner!
An alienware PC, minus the HD. It is only an athlon 1GHz but seems to work fine. Somebody will want it for the case I would think, these things are handy if you need to pack loads of crud into a machine. They have loads of drive bays and largeish power supplies and other such features. They are rather large and ugly though.
The Tivo boots fine, batteries in the remote are good, everything is happy. The selection on the HD is the sort of thing that people really do not need a Tivo for. Apologies for the super hokey analogue hole capture, but I currently do not have a TV capture card installed in any computing machinary at the required locale, and this TV is the best I could scrounge up to use as a display with the Tivo. Honestly. The Tivo has the lifetime subscrption on it. Spiffy.
The replay does not seem to boot. The batteries and the battery compartment cover were missing from the remote. It will be fiddled with. Keep wtaching this space. Both of them needed a good cleaning, there was all sorts of fluff inside. Yes we violated the warranty on the replay in order to do this but the Tivo seemed to have no little stickers informing us of this.
Somebody really went to town and bought both a Tivo S2 and Replay. Then, some time later they apparently tossed both of them. Investigation will proceed into the gems of television culture left behind on the HDs. Both remotes are present, as shown in the pic. Tivo is only the 80G model, not sure abnout the Replay's HD size. For now, a pic, watch this space for more details later.
A set of fancy logitech surround sound speakers and suchlike. All very fancy and of little or no use for us but again exactly what a friend wanted. Straight into the arms of a happy new owner.
A fancy looking HP printer. Guy who tossed it said it worked fine so figured it was worth a look. Tests out fine, ink is low but all the vaious modes of operation seem to work.
Found at the same time but not related I think is some printer ink new in the box. One in date and one expired. Ebay for the good one.
An acquaintance asked me, "Have a you a junky machine I could put OpenBSD on to make a home firewall?". Off we went looking for such a device and we found a nice Pentium 3 Dell PC in small form factor. I loaded him up with lots of spare ethernet cards and a extra partial machine or two for even more spares and hopefully he is now firewalling away.
A firewire enclosure that looks like it was made to appeal to 1st gen iMac users. Really ugly. But that is OK because again it was just what somebody wanted, now hopefully being used by its new owner.
Some bubbles stuff, mysteriously abandoned but fully functional. Great for offspring entertainment purposes.
Graco 3-way pack and play, almost new, with changing table, net cover, canopy etc etc. Again, super fancy example of its type, almost new but no use to us. Already sold.
Combi dual stroller in almost new condition, a very recent model, if not still a current model. We never knew these things came with so many features:
This thing has more features and special thingies than our cars. No way we need all that stuff or any dual so off this goes to craigslist.
Dell Pentium 4 1.7Ghz PC with 256M RAM and a 40G HD. Has the funky paired memory with blanks required for unused slots. Bit of a pain. Machine had Windows XP install and hung for no real reason late in boot process, seemingly just prior to login. Eh, who cares, Knoppix is the answer. (But then also note that for some rather large set of computing machinary related questions or problems, Knoppix is the answer). Points to note on contents of HD:
Pic shows what might be the family dog winking with one eye and getting redeye with the other. Maybe it knew it was destined to have this picture shown on the interwebs??
Compaq Athlon 1.3GHz with 500M RAM and 75G HD. Has a whole family's worth of users on it. Yum, delicious found data. Machine bluescreened on boot and seems to have io errors on the disk. But then also the main 71G partition is absolutely stuffed full, zero bytes available. Highlights:
Friend (10:00:07 AM): yo
User (10:00:09 AM): yo
User (10:00:11 AM): what up killa
Friend (10:00:15 AM): nm u
User (10:00:19 AM): nm'
Friend (10:00:37 AM): you were supposed to call me yesterday douche bag
User (10:00:48 AM): i know cocksucker
User (10:00:54 AM): if i had something to tell you yet, i would have
Friend (10:01:13 AM): what about the summer shit
Friend (10:01:18 AM): send me an email
User (10:01:50 AM): oh yeah
User (10:01:55 AM): aight, i'll get on it
User (10:02:00 AM): those things are hard to find
Friend (10:02:20 AM): wha d o you mean
User (10:02:58 AM): like, it's hard to find good college
programs that aren't like all work for five weeks
Friend (10:03:13 AM): oh yeah
Friend (10:03:26 AM): is it 5 weeks
User (10:03:53 AM): i dont think so, how long do you want to go for
User (10:03:54 AM): about
Friend (10:04:30 AM): i dunno whatever
Friend (10:04:43 AM): not really long like 7 weeks though
Friend (10:05:02 AM): are there choices
User (10:05:26 AM): yeah, but im still lookingh
User (10:05:34 AM): i'll email you all the choices by tonight
Friend (10:06:22 AM): ok ggt
Friend signed off at 10:06:24 AM.
Thus do the high-flyers of tomorrow spend their time today.
389 Compilations
92
79 Outkast
74 The Notorious B.I.G_
71 Dave Matthews Band
40 Van Morrison
38 Bruce Springsteen
34 DMX
28 Creedence Clearwater Revival
27 The Offspring
24 Dropkick Murphys
22 The Beastie Boys
20 Bob Dylan
19 The Jam
18 Green Day
17 Sublime
17 Jimi Hendrix
16 LWL
16 Jerky Boys
16 Bob Marley
15 Paul Weller
15 Chili Peppers
15 Blink-182
14 Red Hot Chili Peppers
14 NaS
14 Metallica
14 J-Kwon
14 Jay-Z
13 Pearl Jam
13 Lit
13 John Mayer
13 Incubus
13 Guns N' Roses
13 Bob Marley & The Wailers
13 Black Eyed Peas
13 Barenaked Ladies
13 Alien Ant Farm
12 Will Smith
12 Nirvana
12 New Found Glory
12 Midtown
12 Matchbox Twenty
11 The Strokes
11 The Streets
11 Death Cab For Cutie
11 Counting Crows
10 Jojo
10 Franz Ferdinand Unknown art of unknown provenance. It has been donated to somebody who may appreciate it.
A wine rack made from that modular wireframe shelving system whose name currently eludes me. It is complete with all the little plastic collets required fopr assembly (in the a tupperware box!), but I think it has never been assembled. Useful for a friend or a stranger via craiglist I suppose, we have no need for a wine rack.
Update: Traded to a wine-store owner for some fine wine but we kept the tupperware.
A pile of faintly interesting books. The salacious exposé into the secret ways and workings of tools is of interest to certain relatives who collect hand tools and the Bell System book is of interest generally, because all old Bell System stuff is cool.
A Delta compound mitre saw in rather nice condition. It is not the most recent type, which I think is a good thing as it feels pretty solid. It runs nice and smoothly of course and the hinge-down action is good. The blade is carbide tipped and fine for good number of cuts. This will be pressed into service in place of the previous one that had some issues.
Most of a Dell Pentium 4 PC. No HD, cpu or memory. I have one exactly like this that has a bad power supply, hence this will result in one working machine plus a spare motherboard. Fine and dandy.
US Army Survival Manual reprint in OK condition. How useful. We may keep this as it has some nice plant guides and stuff in the back.
A fancy first 13 states special state quarter presentation pack, issued by the US Mint and the NARA. Hence this is technically New Old Stock coinage. This is of course useful for the fact that it contains 26 25 cent pieces, handy for toll money we think! Though maybe there is somehow more value in preserving the presentation in its entirety......
We are still faintly perplexed by the fact that this ended up in the trash. Who tossed this and what was their thought process? Answers on a postcard....
A lightweight jogging stoller in good condition. After some air in the tyres it is all ready and good to go, go on craigslist that is. The tyres are almost not worn at all, slight rust showing on some bolts.
A rather nice ornate cast iron steam radiator in OK shape. It has that nasty "heat transfer" paint on it that inspires so many arguments. Not sure if we will use this one or pass it on to our period--piece-o-phile neighbours.
Two micron 1GHz or so Pentium 3 machines with Windows 2000 and Windows NT installed. The NT machine was almost totally empty (wiped?) and the Windows 2000 machine empty except for TurboTax usage and some evidence of moron grade web surfing (espn, weightwatchers, jrcigars, pgaofamerica being represented in the cookies). Courtesy of the tax records we have some detailed information on the people in question but they are just too boring for any further analysis. Not even any cool pics on the HD, no media, nothing. So much for this alleged digital media revolution we hear so much about.
A Sportrunner jogging style stroller that folds up pretty small for it's style. It runs well and is in OK shape. It works OK, unlike most strollers, it is possible to push it without kicking the rear of it all the time and the handle is at a reasonable height (though not quite high enough). It has a label written in hebrew on it so I am guess this is a super spiffy grey market model. Fine and dandy, it even came with a hat for very young offspring and a full bottle of spray-on sunscreen. The only thing really wrong with it was that the tyres needed a quick squirt of air, which of course promptly got.
A nice Allclad skillet. It has a stainless steel interior lining in the aluminium main part. It is in very good condition. Should check on warranty availabilities on these, but meantime this one may be available.
A late first gen iMac in good shape with a LaCie firewire casing containing a fast cd burner. The former owner is an executive with a large music company, in fact he even seems to be some guy in charge of digital privacy for said music company. Oooops! Recently the machine seems to have been used by the young offspring of the family, learning to play chess and suchlike. Continuing our series of self-referential digital archeology, here we have a pic found on the HD, taken with a Kodak EasyShare CX6200:
Extra self-referentiality points for taking a picture of the screen with iPhoto open! Note that in common with many new digital camera owners the first pics they took documented the box the camera came in. How nice!
A Pentium 4 2Ghz Toshiba. This thing works very well except that the enter key is a little touchy, requiring a good tap to get it to work. The machine was unfortunately almost completely empty, no laughable user data here, move along. Picture of the machine shown here for no particular reason. The apple stickers are a little baffling, maybe they replaced this with an apple?
A Pentium 3 600Mhz Dell laptop in somewhat well-used shape. It boots OK with some encouragement and seems to work fine. On it we find:
Two pics shown, illustrating the physical house this household lives in courtesy of local.live and a juvenile female member of it indulging in her favourite high quality beverage with a friend.
Mac Powerbook 667 Mhz, other specs as yet unknown. I know that the charge board does not work on this but that otherwise it might be fine. I have no power supply for it hence will have to borrow one to find out and test it a bit. Watch this space.
It may seem all very idle when you sit around and muse that in order to clean up one's apartment one needs a serious storage system for all the laptops and stuff lying around, but sometimes fortune smiles on the idle. 3 hours after exactly this type of musing, here we are, a special laptop filing system. It may need a couple of extra shelves but this is a good start.
A ridged base cast iron Wagner skillet. In nice condition, just needed a quick scrub and a cure. We already have one like this so this is up for grabs if anybody wants it.
A firewire and USB2 card seemingly somewhat new in the box. Weird. I found it at the bottom of a big box of ethernet cables and such. This may get tossed into the Dell for good measure.
Dell 2Ghz Celeron PC with 256M RAM, 30G HD and Windows XP installed. It seemed to have some trouble booting XP but knoppix worked fine. Primary uses for this PC were surfing and digital pics shot with their PENTAX Optio S. Pic shows the keyboard and screen from the machine in its former household. They had two very similar machines. The other was set up for use by a blind family member. This machine may join a certain cpu intensive project, once I have tested its cpu for its suitability for the task.
A handy dandy CD carry case with lots of CDs inside. Windows ME with key and other such uselessness. The case is available if anybody wants it and the CDs are coasters (i.e. getting tossed).
EMachines Athlon 1400, missing memory, 40G HD, somewhat dusty inside. Machine works fine with some borrowed memory. Lots of delicious things on the HD:
77 Compilations
28 Black Eyed Peas
27 Norah Jones
27 10,000 Maniacs
25 Michael Tilson Thomas, Philharmonia Orch
20 Christina Aguilera
14 'N Sync
14 Kelly Rowland
14 Justin Timberlake
14 John Mayer
14 Jewel
14 Counting Crows
13 Coldplay
13 Britney Spears
12 Zero 7
12 Vince Guaraldi Trio
12 Sheryl Crow
12 Seal
12 George Michael
12 Dido
11 Sade
11 Natalie Merchant
11 Dave Matthews Band
10 Sarah McLachlan
10 Maroon 5
10 Destiny's Child
Lovely. Listening to them now as I write up this page.
2 Emenem
13 Eminem
1 eminem
1 Eminem Feat Dr.Dre
1 Eminiem Pic is one of a series found on the HD that were taken at a wedding. Amidst all the happy people attending there was apparently somebody who felt the need to bring a sickbag from delta airlines in their pocket. That says something about family occasions I guess.
Yet another netgear wireless NAT box thingy. Seemingly OK but we have not actually properly tested it yet. We were able to bring up the management interface and log into it after resetting the thing but have not got it working on an uplink yet.
Weirdly, two calphalon lids. Often we find the pans without the lids, but today the converse. We now have a huge surplus of lids due to the extra lids you get from doing returns. Calphalon lids anybody? They are nice.....
A pretty fine pile of books. Assorted novels and literature etc, all very interesting. An interesting combination of cookbooks and weight-loss books, mostly we do not pick these up. Also some really nice art books etc. The Sotheby's wine enclyclopedia we already found a home for. Some pics below:
Two worklights, as idly requested the other day while working on the house.
HP Pentium 3 800MHz with Windows XP installed and only 32M of ram. Astounding. From the pristine undisturbed state of the monster dust bunnies inside I would say that the 32M of ram was all that was in there the whole time and none had been removed before we got to it. The dust bunnies were the worst I have seen in a while. Needless to say, bearing in mind the memory size, the thing took for ever to boot. Lots of family pics and stuff, a few word docs, kids' homework etc etc etc. iTunes installed with just a few pieces of media, Limewire likewise. This picture was on the HD and is particularly notable in the self referential sense because it shows the HP machine itself that we found the picture on but also the box from the Sony camera that took the picture (as confirmed in the exif headers).
This machine has a new home with a friend of a friend already. We tossed in a 256M ram chip we found seperately. So now the machine is not so very bad and might have another life ahead of it.
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