2006-05-27 Scrap Al

No, not the long lost imitator of Weird Al . Al as in the element, or alloys thereof. We finally caved in and picked up some scrap aluminium, mostly because we found a whole pile of good solid chunks of it. It is not as valuable as copper/brass etc but when you find chunks weighing 20 lbs it becomes worthwhile to collect

2006-05-27 Puter parts

Some memory and a 30G HD, blah blah. Memory will go to ebay as part of a job lot. The HD had the following salient points:

• The cache directories were an estimated 90 percent porn pics. No specific style of porn on the whole, one or two gay porn instances did pop up though .
• The remainder of the cache was mostly airsoft or paintball guns. Mmmmmm, now there is a classic combination: guns and porn. I was actually quite astonished by the near total lack of anything but porn and guns in 1200+ cached jpgs. Now that is a dedicated web surfer!
• Kazaa was installed, with a "My Shared" directory of 727 mp3s with that acquired look about them. Naughty. Music sampling pretty standard, a rough rundown of popular artists:

       21 tom petty
       10 red hot chili peppers
        9 bruce springsteen
        8 led zepplin
        8 eagles
        8 dispatch
        6 tupac
        6 led zeppelin
        6 kc
        6 frank sinatra
        6 bob marley
        6 50 cent
        5 will smith
  

• Lots of junk installed like dodgy looking games etc
• Some spyware/adware stuff plus multiple anti-spyware/anti-virus thingies
• Big fat "recycled" directory. I guess before tossing the machine previous owner has "cleaned up".
• Found in recycled, lots of pics taken with a Sony Cybershot camera and showing a happy family christmas.
• Also in recycled, two ripped CDs. Note that this dude had "deleted" his more legal music and left all the illegal stuff in place before tossing the machine. There is a story here somewhere.

All in all a nice view into the life of a "normal" internet user. Very satisfying to see some nice cliches fulfilled. Here is a pic from the family Christmas Trip to Radio City Music Hall, at least from what I can gather. Do they let you take pics in there, maybe this pic is illegal also?

2006-05-26 Buckles and such

We found a fancy rucksack/carryon converter bag with lots of fittings on it. Bag was a little decrepit but the snap fittings etc were good so we cut them off. These will possibly be used in some form of custom offspring retention device, maybe as part of aforementioned homemade baby-bjorn project.

2006-05-24 Calphalon Update

The most recent 12inch calphalon frying pan we found has duly made its way back to us after having every part of itself simultneously replaced by the manufacturers under warranty. Nice.

2006-05-19 Printer

An Epson c84 printer, see here for example. Needed cleaning but seemingly works. Spiffy.

2006-05-19 Laptops

Two 500Mhz Pentium 3 laptops good for not much at all, ITC brand (who are they we ask, without caring to hear the answer). Donated to somebody who seems to value such things so fast that there is no pic, good turnaround.

2006-05-15 Tricycle

The existing tricycle that was deployed to amuse the offspring of guests was getting rusty, a testament to its permenant outdoor home. We found an new and inferior version today, inferior because it is plastic, but it will not rust I guess. It will just embrittle and fade. Either way it is on much better shape than the last one, o9ut with the old and in with the "new"