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The Stuff Page: Things that ended up tossed but that seem like they have another life ahead of them.

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2004-09-24 Monitor

Random monitor, to be exported to a needy househol with brrod eager for surfing. Nuff said.

monitor
 

2004-09-24 Athlon

Junky Athlon 500MHz. Previous owner was apparently a young female who insisted on lots of pink and annoying animated flowers. That and the spyware made this machine very slow with its Windows 98 install. Fresh install of Windows 2000 runs fine. She used Napster at some stage in the past and had a stupendous collection of crappy/sappy music. I listened to it during the re-install process. Possibly the worst audio track I have ever heard was:

WTC - new york city (night).mp3

Others strongly represented tracks amongst the rest were the Coyote Ugly and Moulin Rouge sound tracks.

 

2004-09-18 Wood Plane

One Stanley No7 plane. Of no immediate use to me but complete and in need of a cleanup. Presumably will be snapped up by a crazy tool collectors of our acquaintance.

Stanley No 7 Plane
 

2004-09-18 Plumb Bobs

Three plumb bobs. Seemingly useless you may cry but not if you have a mildly insane neighbour who collects them.

plumb bobs
 

2004-09-18 Percussion Oriented Tools

An assortment of thing to hit and things to hit with. What seems to be a slate splitting hammer and some other stuff. Again, only a couple of items of usee to me here but I know people who collect such things.

hammers
 

2004-09-18 Outdoor Chair

One portable drinking chair with spaces for two beers. One pop rivet on the back had given out but is already fixed and ready for service. Indoor usage pictured below:

drinking chair
 

2004-09-18 E-machine P3

A seemingly complete e-machine 500MHz Pentium 3 that does not appear to boot. One of the very few old machines I have found that really will not boot. No worries, the memory is useful, and the hard drive was a fruitful source of amusement.

Pentium 3

Previous owner had a small collection of mp3s seemingly acquired from semi-legal download sites. The following is telling:

wold0126<54>My Music% find . -type f | grep mp3 | sort | tail 
./Unknown/Untitled - 02-17-03/13 - Track 13.mp3
./Unknown/Untitled - 08-01-02/01 - Track 1.mp3
./Unknown/Untitled - 08-01-02/02 - Track 2.mp3
./Unknown/Untitled - 08-01-02/03 - Track 3.mp3
./Unknown/Untitled - 08-01-02/04 - Track 4.mp3
./Unknown/Untitled - 08-01-02/06 - Track 6.mp3
./Unknown/Untitled - 08-01-02/07 - Track 7.mp3
./Unknown/Untitled - 08-09-02/13 - Data Track.mp3
./Unknown/Untitled - 10-14-02/02 - Data Track.mp3
./Unknown/Untitled - 10-14-02 (1)/05 - Track 5.mp3

They are even missing their ID3 tags so I would have to listen to all that stuff to see what is there. The few I have so far got through were the likes of Tatu and Christina Agui-whatsit . Not promising. The word docs had some nice stuff in them and had more useful names. Former owner also seems to have had a proclivity for online gaming and dating services.

 

2004-09-13 3-phase drill press

I guess this counts. Relative of a friend of a friend picked up a Rockwell Delta drill press that was being chucked. It found its way to me. It is 3-phase, hence some fiddling will have to take place on the power supply front but seem very nice. Big, heavy, old, see for yourself:

Delta drill press

Amusingly somebody had jacked a regular 110V household plug on the end of the cord in some (presumably) vain attempt to use it.

 

2004-09-11 Update: Compressor

For those with curious nature here is an updated picture on the Emglo Compressor. It was dismantled and had a paint job with POR-15 on the tanks and some general attention. The pressure switch needed cleaning to make it function correctly. It now seems to work fine.

emglo compressor
 

2004-09-11 Trolley

Flatbed trolley. A little rusty, works fine, suitable for large welders, gearboxes etc. I may give it a coat of POR and touch up some joints with the welder (not necc in that order) but in the meantime here it is after having the wheel bearings greased:

trolley
 

2004-09-11 Garden Seat

Garden seat with cast iron ends and wood slats for the seat and back. To get it into Heidi for transport home we broke off all the wood slats and cropped off all the bolts. Nice. Plan for this might be galvanize the cast iron ends and put new teak slats on with stainless hardware. Rubber feet will make it the indoor/outdoor bench. Pic of the ends resting in the garden (not my pic!):

seat
 

2004-09-11 Bolt Croppers

Pair of bolt croppers, about 18 inches in length, OK quality, fully adjustable, nick in one jaw, slight rust. We used them on the way home to help clean up the next item. Pic of them cleaned up and oiled here:

bolt croppers
 

2004-09-10 Puters

One Pentium 2 400MHz Gateway. Seems damaged physically on the motherboard and is missing a cdrom.

One Pentium 3 Slot 1 style, missing memory, half the case and hard drive. Hmmmm, maybe I see a chimera coming on.

 

2004-09-04 Vise

Smallish, and potentially completely useless, swivel vise mentioned above:

vise
 

2004-09-04 Mosquito Deleto

A new-in-box Coleman Mosquito Deleto 2100 device. Looks all special, its destiny is not yet decided but could end up joining some similar ones , Pic of ours here:

mosquito device
 

2004-09-04 Frame Saw

Interesting old frame saw that should provide entertainment for those collectors of old tools. It works, it was used to chop an old workbench in half for no particular reason, well maybe to facilitate extraction of the two vises bolted to it. Pic:

saw
 

2004-08-26 Update: Loppers

The loppers from Tuesday, pictured below, have been used heavily over two days of clearing trees. They earnt us two bottles of fine wine so far and promises of more to come. For being so useful they got a quick canadian rebuild and coat of high visibility paint on certain parts.

loppers
 

2004-08-25 Fuel

Was a long way from home and hence out of free fuel, was forced to actually buy fuel! The horror. Put in 10 gallons only. Went to pay and noticed that the fuel stop had a food area, almost a cafe. I asked about their deep fryer oil and they showed me a 55 gallon drum of the best looking oil I have ever seen. It was not luck that I had three 5 gallon buckets with me.

They did not seem to understand that it was against their interest to give me that oil. Oh well.

 

2004-08-24 Puter Dumpster

A realtor type office seemed to have emptied itself, including lots of computing related items, into a dumpster. We made off with numerous items, inclucing but not limited to.

One Gateway Pentium 2 266MHz with no memory but a hard drive full of realtor stuff. Most entertaining. No porn though.

One Gateway Pentium 2 233Mhz yet to be investigated.

One unidentified Athlon type thing with lots of memery but no HD. DVD rom and CD-R still there all happy.

One Belkin KVM switch, two TV capture cards and assorted 168 pin memory.

Several Windows and Office install CDs. Great, just what we need.

Pair of ethernet crimpers and lots of cable ready to be crimped. These are probably the most useful thing in the dumpster even if they did draw blood. Pic:

ethernet crimpers

Linksys wireless print server adaptor, not the sort of thing we would use but you never know we might find a use for it. More likely a customer for it. Pic:

wireless thingy

Pair of pruning loppers. They seem to fully functional. They are not computer related but they sneaked in at the end here anyway.

 

2004-08-22 Fuel

Ten gallons of oil from a well known, if slightly touristy, bar. I will never be eating there as their oil was pretty brown and burnt. Slackers. Oil filtered quickly though and is all ready to go.

 

2004-08-10 Compaq Presario

What a grandiose name for such a piece of junk, one crappy Compaq Presario type thing with a ~350MHz Celeron, Windows 98, 8G HD and some weird and barely useful amount of memory. It has a CD writer which could always come in handy. More to the point it had Kazaa Lite installed with an extensive collection of "media", for want of a better word. In particular 1030 MP3s from such luminaries as:

     49 Metallica
     45 Aerosmith
     23 U2
     22 Rolling Stones
     22 Kid Rock
     17 Led Zepplin
     16 Rage Against The Machine
     15 Linkin Park
     15 Elvis Presley
     13 Red Hot Chili Peppers
     12 Dave Matthews Band
     11 Van Halen
     11 Steve Miller
     11 Offspring
     11 Guns N' Roses
     11 Bush
     11 Audioslave

Also there were some Seinfeld episodes and the obligatory sprinkling of porn. I bet if the owner is reading this he is really hoping I do not reveal his name and address further down this page. Oh yes and I now have a bunch of his passwords and his horrible homework assignments written in Word. Blech.

 

2004-08-07 Shredder

Yet another shredder, this one had a slight jam behind the power switch that the paper trips on the way in. Cleared with a pair of needle nose pliers (not even any dismantling with this one) and all ready for its new home. This one is not cross cut but goes very fast. Pic:

shredder
 

2004-08-07 Outdoor Chairs

Nice pair of folding aluminium outdoor chairs with drinks trays on the side. They look little used, and in fact the fabric is not faded, just dusty. I am sure they will be employed at some riotous event in the woods someplace. Pic of one of them:

chairs
 

2004-08-07 Fresnel Lens

One large canal boat lamp that has a steel (as opposed to brass) body. It had a hack job electric conversion and body was very rusted hence I think it is not worth saving but the nice fresnel lens has cleaned up nicely. This may have to form some type of post-industrial artsy table lamp, to go with our galvanized pipe coffee table. Pic of it mostly cleaned:

fresnel lens
 

2004-08-06 Veg Oil

Got 5 gallons of oil from the butcher that was nice and clear, filters well. Bought meat for the BBQ, they gave me the fuel for the truck, what a deal. Pic of the cardboard wrapper from the oil bottle for reference purposes.

oil wrapper
 

2004-08-06 Chainsaw

Long hiatus there while I was off and about. Back to business with a small Craftsman 358 chainsaw that had a broken pull cord. Cord is now fixed and some attempts will be made to run the thing. Not a very useful thing though, too small, disposable chainsaw if you will as I am sure that one good session cutting oak would kill it off.

chainsaw
 

2004-07-17 Fuel

Found a restaurant with a small dumpster full of waste oil. Was maybe 6 feet by 2.5 feet and had a foot of oil in it. I make that about 400 litres, or around 100 gallons of fuel. I got 20 gallons first time hence have lots to look forward to. Quality was good, nice and thin and clear.

 

2004-07-15 Mac Hardware

Found a pile of 5 old Mac laptops and a Newton, but decided not to take them as they were so super old and useless.

 

2004-07-15 Fuel

10 more gallons of oil from the drum I found earlier. There are maybe 5-10 more in there but it is getting more murky as I get further down.

 

2004-07-14 Craftsman Table Saw

One Craftsman table saw. It is very heavy and has pretty high speed. It was missing the belt when we picked it up but the temporary use of a genuine mercedes alternator belt demonstrated the functionality of the unit. Missing a fence unfortunately and the legs need tightening up. Pic of it showing evidence of testing around

table saw

As I did not until now have a table saw this one gets to find a home in the basement, at least until a better free one comes along.

 

2004-07-13 Veg Oil

Lastly I took some buckets to that drum of cooking oil and got 10 gallons. Half is now filtered and ready to go, the rest soon to follow. Will get the remaining 15 gallons tomorrow. Need more plastic buckets......

 

2004-07-13 Shredder

Well, got another shredder today, must be about the fourth this year. It is not a cross cut version and is missing its basket and lower flap but has a credit card slot. It is an Aurora AS1002MSB. When I first tested it I got nothing but I dismantled it and removed some stuck plastic and paper crud and it works fine now in forward and reverse. Pic below of it tastfully poised on my next (but not yet fully assembled) cork trivet:

shredder
 

2004-07-13 Scanner Thingy

Some kind of PS2 scanning pen inventory dongle device, maybe from a store. There was a whole pile of Pitney Bowes kit nearby but it had been half stripped. Pic below:

scanner dongle
 

2004-07-13 Mercedes Educational AV

Weirder still is the Mercedes microfilm and audio educational device plus many cassettes for it. To be explored later on, watch this space.

 

2004-07-13 Mac Upgrades

Also there was what I think was a Mac Clone from some years ago. HDs were all present and SCSI-2, I left them being impatient. I took what I think is the CPU board in case it is sellable, pic below.

cpu
 

2004-07-13 Compaq

A Compaq Pentium 3 mostly stripped. I took the 10/100 ethernet card and the HD. HD is 6.4G Western Digital 26400 and functions fine, has a total of 20366 files on it. Looks like a functioning WinNT install with FAT32 file system. Former owner was a Morpheus user, but I cannot see much in the way of downloaded crud. Pretty tame HD really this, some files pertaining to appliances and household stuff.

 

2004-07-12 Fuel

Hmmm, have located a 55 gallon drum with old cooking oil in it. Obviously I have to leave the drum and take the oil, hence I need to go back with several buckets. May also have to accost the owners of the drum, but only after I have this batch from it. It seems to have about 25 gallons in it and quite clear looking.

 

2004-07-11 Pipe Vise

One somewhat rusty clamp-on pipe vise. I did not have one prior to this so it is worth cleaning up I think. Photo makes it look worse than it is......

pipe vise
 

2004-07-11 Compressor

One portable wheelbarrow style compressor made by Emglo. Are they owned by Dewalt now? Previous owner informed me it worked as I lifted it from his minivan into my trailor. One wonders if that made him feel sheepish. It has been left out in the rain a bit but a quick coat of POR-15 might have to occur.

It works intermittently, current suspect is the presure switch thingy, which should be easy to clean or fix or replace. Here it is in unflattering surroundings woken from peaceful sleep in the trailer:

compressor
 

2004-07-06 Stainless Food Service

Five assorted small stainless steel food service containers, complete with refried bean remants and maggots. They look to be just dirty but otherwise in very good shape. You can never have enough commercial quality kitchen gear, or so I hear. If you do ever have enough then there is always ebay..........

Here is a pic of them in varying states of cleanliness. Angle grinder with stainless wire brush is my friend.

304 stainless
 

2004-07-05 Veg Oil

Five gallons of cooking oil. It had already seperated into about half-half creamy goop and oil. I decanted the oil off the top and filtered it, looks very clean and ready to go. I am sure I could use the goop as well but will just take that back as am not in the mood, too humid. Added to the 5 gallons from the city the other day this lot should take care of my fuel for the week.

 

2004-07-05 Shelf Units

Two nice 304 stainless modular shelf elements made by Metropolitan Wire Corporation. Both are 60 inches long and the depths are 14 and 24 inches, check them out here for a price quote , $286.70 and $386.70 respectively. Now all I need is some legs for them. Available here its seems for slightly less money. I have seen these legs floating around before, I will have to pick some up at some stage. Meanwhile here are the shelves after some form of cleaning:

shelves
 

2004-07-05 Athlon

One HP 6360 with Athlon 367MHz CPU and 10GB disk. It was missing its memory but upon being supplied some it booted fine. Lots of family pictures, tax docs for every year since 1998 and all sorts of other goodies on with working copy of Windows 98 (great, honest!). Extensive addressbook present (good for social engineering purposes?) and other assorted personal items. Too much data to wade through now, will store away and save for a rainy day. Here are the faqs and specs for this from HP, nice that the first item on the list is spyware. Errr, I run NetBSD and my machine is slowing down, do I have spyware......?

One sketchy screen dump of me rifling through the "My Documents" folder using Knoppix, much more stuff scattered all through the disk.

My Documents
 

2004-06-28 Motor Mounts

One pair of new-old-stock industrial electric motor mounts, in the original plastic bag with screws etc. These could be handy. Not even any rust on them despite the fact they are cast iron and unpainted.

 

2004-06-26 Micron 1Ghz

One Micron 1GHz desktop in complete working order with a working install of windows 2000. Comes with 10G HD, 126M of RAM, slot loader CD drive and Zipdrive (oh joy). Surprisingly clean install, in terms of spyware and data from previous owner. We of course now have his ISP and work logins and passwords.

micron
 

2004-06-23 Mongoose Bike

Aforementioned seatless bike now has a seat. A rather dated peugeot racing bike graciously donated its seat. A quick squirt in each tyre from the compressor and a wipe all over with a WD40 soaked rag made the bike look rather shiny. And we all know that shinyness is what counts, n'est pas? I rode it round the garden a few times during SFW to do proof of concept work. Now that thing is officially looking for an owner. I do not want it. Pic of it in it's "canadian-rebuild" glory:

mongoose
 

2004-06-23 Mac CDrom

One apple 24x laptop cdrom drive. I suspect it to be broken but we shall see. Also found an iMac recovery CD. I suspect some macHeads have been cleaning out.

cdrom
 

2004-06-23 Garden Shears

One pair of garden shears, in somewhat better condition that the ones I used the other day on the long bits round the front lawn. A second pair were examined but had loose handles. Long conversation with Costa-Rican guys about volcanos.

 

2004-06-23 DIMM

One Gateway 32M PC100 memory dimm. Not much use but I will throw it in the next elligable PC that I overhaul. Image (I suspect) not of 32M dimm but found from GS for part number:

memory
 

2004-06-21 Push Lawn Mower

One push lawn mower in slightly rusty but working condition, identical to previous push lawn mower

 

2004-06-21 P3 parts

One Pentium 3 chassis and motherboard with 46G IBM HD. Hard drive proves to have flippy floppy heads, machine yet to be tested. Big Blue quality shines through again, I had one of these exact drives go bad a couple of years ago. Picture shows sample from GIS:

ibm HD
 

2004-06-21 Bar Bottle Wells

Two stainless steel bottle troughs from a bar, slightly dirty. One is just over 3 feet, the other is 2 feet long and both cleaned up nicely for the pic:

troughs
 

2004-06-19 Mountain Bikes

Two mountain bikes, one with disc brakes and missing only an inner tube. Fixed and sold within 2 days. The other missing a seat and otherwise complete except some minor tyre issues, saved for stock, probably just awaiting addition of a seat at a later date. It looks like some 14 year-olds rode these just long enough to make them no longer shiny, then left them out in the rain until they were thrown away.

 

2004-06-19 Apple Laserwriter

One Apple Laserwriter 8500 for up to A3 paper in good condition except for the fuser. Pic of similar from GIS :

printer

It even came with a with duplex tray which is shown below ready for ebay. Some of the other good parts may get used also.

printer stuff
 

2004-06-17 Dell Pentium 4

One Dell Pentium 4 PC case and motherboard, no CPU, memory etc.

 

2004-06-12 Hard Drives

Maxtor 91531U3 15GB hard drive. 15482 files found, of which I extracted 6617. These included such entertaining gems as

My Documents/Goals2001.doc
My Documents/ProposedCommissionSchedule.doc
Recent/Wire Transfer.doc
Recent/Resume.doc

Library picture of similar drive from GIS. The drive functions fine.

maxtor

Seagate Medalist 4321 4.3GB hard drive. 14682 files found of which I extracted 4888. The extensive porn collection included such delicacies as:

My Documents/My Pictures/pics/HILARY.gif
My Documents/My Pictures/pics/INTERN.bmp
My Documents/My Pictures/pics/FloppyTitsAnimated.gif
My Documents/movies/movies/2xfist11.mpeg
My Documents/movies/movies/monkeyp.mpe
My Documents/movies/movies/nipple_twist.avi
My Documents/movies/movies/smoking.avi
My Documents/movies/movies/poopin~1.avi

This drive also functions fine despite being pretty old. 2/2 today. These drives will go towards fixing up Pentium 2/3 machines for people.

 

2004-06-09 Radar Detector

One radar detector. As yet untested but this could mean I get to drive home faster! Yeah right. Is it more important to get there eventually or get there fast? Answers on a postcard to /dev/null.

 
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