2006-06-03 Two bikes

Two slightly dated racing style bikes, a Schwinn and a Univega. Both are slightly heavy compared to their really modern counterparts etc but are in nice shape. Both are already in new home with happy users, sketchy pic of this one with tyres pumped up and rideable.

2006-06-03 Dell P3

1GHz Dell Pentium 3 PC with a nice 256M RAM chip and 10G HD plus DVD rom. We got this mainly for sending to certain avid teenaged tinkerers (you know who you are!). It does not seem to boot (hardware/power supply issue) and has linux installed on it. Whole or in parts it will still be sent off. Pic shows it pulled apart so that I could inspect the HD on another machine (yours Charlie) using knoppix.

Update: After reseating memory, CPU, HD and all motherboard connectors this PC now works fine. Canadian rebuild strikes again! Currently running knoppix on it watching Ultraviolet with xine as a test of the machine. Check out the screenshot of this here, Dr March is just cleaning up Mike's leech bite. Machine will now be sent complete with extra parts added in rather than as extra parts itself.

2006-05-27 Stainless thingies

Somebody had zip tied 3 bosch oil pumps together and plumbed their inputs and outputs together with very fancy stainless tube fittings such as those sold on this page . As we often purchase and use fittings just such as these we dismantled the assembly, tossed all the junk and the pumps and kept the fittings. Spiffy, the collection included stuff such as these in sizes such as 1/2 inch tube and 5/16 inch tube resp.:

The whole arrangement looked pretty new so I suspect the construction was rather speculative and did not work. And no Rob, these pumps would be no use for your your reclamation setup. For other things maybe some use. Pic of them hangining out between on a shelf

2006-05-27 Stainless Drum Dolly

A newish stainless steel 55 gallon drum dolly. These are not cheap, check out McMaster again here ,l item number 2608T14 near the bottom. I have no real use for it so it is up for grabs (Christine??) before I try and find somebody to pay for it. Or maybe I should expand my own oil reclamation activities?

2006-05-27 Scrap Brass Update

The brass we found was 135 lbs and scrap brass is now USD 1.70 per pound. Woohoo!

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.