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What Should I Do With My Tech Junk?
Thomas Matysik writes "I'm attempting to de-clutter my house and I've hit a rough patch: the computer room. I've got a bunch of wires, hardware and software that (I think) were useful at one point in time, but these days it doesn't do much more than take up space. Selling it seems like it'd be a huge hassle and it seems really wasteful for me to just pitch all of this stuff in the dumpster. I've considered giving it away to Goodwill, but I'm afraid that's not the right sort of outlet for this stuff. My question: what should I do with all of my tech junk?"
...and use the cash to fund more future tech landfill, obviously.
Apparently, whatever you do, don't send it to Africa!
It'll disappear even faster if you leave it outside, marked "$10". You have to go inside though.
I recycle by burning all my old junk; turning crap directly into carbon. The more junk you have the better, preferably stuff that burns really well. If not just chop down a few threes and make a great fire that will melt anything that doesn't burn. By doing this not only do you save the environment the burden of driving the stuff to a landfill; you also have a nice backdrop for a summer party. What could be cooler than burning a heap of potentially toxic materials.
The Long Now Foundation
to form the white trash version of Voltron.
Monstar L
I've found the best way to get junk to disappear overnight is to put a sign on it reading "For sale: $10"
The high voltage power supply in a monitor can keep a kid entertained for quite a while.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I'd love to think that there's some 8-year-old kid out there crouched in front of an old monochrome amber monitor yelling "XYZZY!" "PLUGH!" and "THESE TWISTY PASSAGES ARE ALL ALIKE!" instead of bitching about how all his friends have an XBox 360...
Vacuum-bag your electronic junk.
Go out camping in a rugged area.
Dig a hole, and bury your stuff.
Gather some rocks and place them in a cool design on top of your electronics.
Cover the rocks with more dirt.
That should be enough to screw with the heads of future archeologists.
Then at some point your wife will demand that you get rid of some of that junk.
Considering the alternative, you will find it quite easy to decide what to throw out, and quickly, before bedtime...
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
Nice! I'm a reasonable man. I'll let both of my Hayes modems go for $500, and I'll even throw in a generic internal 2400 if I can find it.
Funny, I've found the best way to see my stuff vanish is to find out my wife "cleaned the place up."
Bark less. Wag more.
I don't even need a sign and people take stuff out of my yard. Maybe I should move to a better neighborhood.
There. Fixed that for ya.
In some places this is against the law. I know where I live you are not allowed to put out your garbage until after 4pm the night before pick-up.
So put it out in front of a neighbor's house. At night. When God is sleeping.
I am not a crackpot.
During a garbage strike I boxed and gift wrapped the kitchen garbage, left it in the back of the pickup. Gone when I got back.
Here's what I do. Put your stuff on the curb the day after the garbage truck shows up so it will sit there for the next six days. Put a note on it.
Air Conditioner: Free. Works but it's a bit noisy, but yours if you want it.
Lawn Mower: Free. A bit smoky, has a loose rear wheel. Yours if you want it.
Those are two I've done. Both went somewhere before the next garbage day. Just stick a note on it and say it's free, and what might be wrong with it. I'd try something like this:
Old computer stuff: Free. Outdated, but worked the last time I used it. Yours if you want it.
I tried this once with an old XT form factor case. I couldn't sell it for pennies during my garage sale so I put it at the curb. Later that day, much to my relief, someone took it. A few hours later it was back on the curb. You can't even give away some of the older stuff! I should have put a note stating "If you take it don't bring it back".
I tried that with an old fridge. (Too big for the garbage truck obviously.)
It sat out there for over a week with a sign that said "Free to a good home" and no-one seemed to pay any attention.
As an experiment I put out a new sign: "For sale $100".
It disappeared overnight!
Optimist: The thumb drive is half empty! Pessimist: The thumb drive is half full...
Dude I remember one particularly old CRT that I couldn't get rid of... I ended up tossing it out the drivers-side window of my moving car, while driving 35mph after dark on a residential street. The explosion and parts flying in my rear-view was AWESOME.
That, or you could leave it in a shopping cart in the parking lot of your local big box home improvement store.
And when you get home from work the next day...
"Holy crap - someone took my TV, my Xbox, my DVD player, and that stack of movies over there."
Last time I tried that, somebody emptied out my honesty box before I could get to it =[
At the very least, put the stuff you think might be useful outtside or on top of the cans. Down here in New Orleans...often that stuff will disappear overnight. I've left old monitors and computers and gear out overnight for the trash, and very rarely do I ever see it in the morning still on the pile. If the stuff isn't good enough for the dumpster divers, then off it goes to 'trash land'.
If it weren't for this, I'd never upgrade my stuff. Now that gigabit is out, I finally upgraded my home network to 100-base-T thanks to other people's garbage.
Besides, that's also how I got my Commodore SX-64
That's nothing, someone's taking my computer right n%$@^[NO CARRIER
3. Is it something that I might find a use for later? THROW IT OUT!
You've convinced me; I'm tossing those snow shovels out today!
BTW, where did you get your sign?
Sorry, but wasn't there an internet video about putting your junk in a box that was totally about something else?
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.