True Tales of Tech Hoarding 268
Recently some member of my household forced me to watch several episodes of A&E's Hoarders. This led to several *ahem* discussions about hoarding tendencies and the closet of cables, wires, boxes and parts in my basement. But I'm not doing bad compared to some of these tech hoarders. My favorite is the guy using a stack of 9 VA rack machines as an end table.
You call that hoarding? (Score:5, Insightful)
value (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be interesting to find out if the reason why some of us are so attached to old hardware just might be that it was not long ago that that hardware was mind boggingly expensive. My brother sometimes took a IBM model 5155 [oldcomputers.net] home and let me play nethack on it. At that time you could buy a nice car for that money instead of such a beast.
More than 10 years later I got my hands on one of these, but sadly parted with it under the influence of my wife at the time. (Yup, we divorced.). Seeing a picture of it still fills me with awe thinking how expensive this machine once was. Maybe that awe combined with a but-it-still-works attitude makes us think twice about throwing such stuff away?
Now who will save the world? (Score:5, Insightful)
first sign of trouble (Score:5, Insightful)
The second sign: an intervention by way of watching a tv show devoted to your disease.
Take it from a former hoarder: just throw everything away (donate, trash, etc). There are way
more important things in life than, well, "things". Once you start spending as much time, energy,
and care for the people in and around your life, I doubt you will ever hoard again.
-sent from my cray-
Murphy's Law (Score:5, Insightful)
The small stuff (Score:3, Insightful)
In my electronics box I found:
* Disk labels for an Apple ][e
* PC/XT to PS/2 keyboard converters
* PS/2 to USB keyboard converters
* A 14.4k modem
* A chip extractor tool
* A laplink cable
Archaic, but small enough to overlook for another decade. I put it all back of course.
Toxic waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that much of tech gadgets contain toxic waste, usually in the form of heavy metals, reusing them as furniture isn't a bad idea. It beats dumping them into a landfill or paying for recycling.
The tech industry is a filthy industry. Esp. when you factor in the planned obsolescence.
Re:Murphy's Law (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:AtariAge (Score:2, Insightful)
I also don't keep extras of anything, just one of each. I simply don't have the room for backups and spares. Eventually my goal is to have everything setup like a museum of sorts.
>>Strangely, I don't imagine any chicks hanging around.
I think my wife would disagree with that statement.
Re:I painfully threw away three P.C.s just this we (Score:3, Insightful)
Fe2O3+2Al
Re:I painfully threw away three P.C.s just this we (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that my significant other is moving in with me, some "adjustments" have been made to my single-Engineer lifestyle..
This past week I delivered unto the philistine clutches of the local Electronics Recycler:
Six Amiga 1200 Computers; [14 MHz MC68EC020/2MB/120MB EIDE HDD]
Four Amiga 3000 Computers; [16 and 25 MHz MC68030/18MB/105 to 400 MB SCSI HDD's]
Two Amiga 4000 Computers; [25 MHz MC68040/18MB/250MB SCSI HDD's]
Five Amiga 4000T PCBA's;
Two VideoToasters;
1 Moniterm Monitor;
Are you bragging or trying to piss people off? I have an empty shelf in my hoarding room just crying for an A4000 and 1200. I can't even win one on eBay and you're tossing them out....
Re:Partial Reinforcement (Score:4, Insightful)
It a cost-benefit thing.
Keeping a few things that you might need is sensible. Keeping everything you've ever had isn't.
Re:I painfully threw away three P.C.s just this we (Score:3, Insightful)
Why... why would you do this? The recycler? Hell, I've sold things like "grab-bag of untested PC cables i found in my garage" on ebay for money. Functional Amigas could have at least earned you several good dinners out with the wife if you hadn't just dumped 'em... and selling to somebody who will use the gear is ALWAYS a better option than recycling, which should be your option of last resort. People on ebay will buy ANYTHING, and pay you to ship it to them.
Start in on your video game collection next. It's just a waste, sitting there unplayed-- people will pay you to play those games. Your easiest option is probably a swap service like goozex.com-- just get on and list your collection, and requests will start to roll in. It's taken most of a year for my old games to gradually disappear, since the older ones are not requested frequently-- but it's pretty low-effort.
Re:You call that hoarding? (Score:3, Insightful)
Eventually, your wife will discover monoprice.com, call you out on both misleading her AND hoarding useless shit, and make you get rid of it all again. Seriously-- when any cable you can conceive of is like $4 shipped, there just isn't a point to keeping an entire attic full of them "just in case".
Re:You call that hoarding? (Score:3, Insightful)
Can they ship the cables to my house in less than the 5 minutes it takes to dig the cable out of the box in my closet?
Sometimes you need parts NOW, and I have been desperate enough on several occasions to get ripped off by the local stores.