Being harsh

So this weekend just gone we spent, for all values encompassing all of Saturday, disposing of mine, and my father's history.

I am a horder. I actually have to fight very hard against hoarding urges, my mum's a horder, my dad was a horder, and well, the genes definitely made it to me. So, since my mum & her husband are hopefully moving soon, the time had come to attack my parent's attics (the garage has an attic too, because it's a separate outbuilding).

We set to, and produce vast enormous piles of rubbish.

Seriously.

A good skipload of crap was produced over the day, but not without distinct pain on my part. See, most of those things carry some attachment to my dad, and a good chunk of them fit within my well-drilled-in concept of recycling - i.e. it can be reused. Huge great swathes of salvaged and NOS electronics are now sitting in a big box awaiting the scrap-recycling which is their future. Miles of redundant cabling, piles of books on obscure topics. On top of which there's lots of salvaged thin sheet metal and mica, and suchlike useful for making *things*.

I also have a vast quantity of stuff to go on e-bay. Already on there is a Telephone operator's desk, A tilley lamp (from pontypool road station), my IBM 5155, a 180A HP Oscilliscope, and my dad's punched paper tape reader/writer. The more I think about it, the more I think it generates punched paper tape, but I *think* it worked as a reader too. I should have looked more carefully at it while I was up in the attic. Meh.

Worse, however, is still to come. As I worked my way through the vast cabinet of wonders which constituted my play area when my dad was looking after me when I was teeny small - deciding on things which might be worth salvaging and e-bay listing, and things I couldn't convince myself to get rid of, and reduced it down to about one box of keep-components, and some books.

Incidentally, if anyone's after a pile of DEC books (Some PDP manuals of various sorts), or Elliot 401 manuals, give me a shout. They'll be going on the bay, but it's going to take me a while to work through the vast huge pile.

Interesting question: is the fact I've remained a prolific blogger since 1999* due to my vanity, or is it just habit? This is a question which popped into my head because, well, most of my friends sort of phase in-and-out of blogging, and tend to do a new-shiny-tech-thing (so twitter/facebook/etc) become the current *thing*. I've been lurking on LJ since about 2002, and had my own site (on my own server!) from 1999, and actually, had a blog when I was at uni - so probably 1997ish. Wow.

My life has been on the internet for 13 years. How weird.

Anyhow, yes, it leads me to wonder about me. Right, I need to get showered, and put more stuff on ebay, I guess.

* Yes, I do have archives of those posts. No, you may not see them. I used to be a bit too open in my blog :)

Side point, and for once, some positivity

My mum's G-Wiz decided to stick it's 'Service' light on during the very, very cold phase and snow. It has, during that time, been sat in my mum's garage on charge, so this came as a bit of a surprise. Thus it was that during our little sojurn in the garage of my mum's house, the MacBook was to be connected to the G-Wiz, for the pokeage of it's software and with the avowed intention of finding out what ails it.

With this in mind, en-route to my mum's we stopped off at Maplin obtaining a USB->Serial adaptor. Made by BAFO this item was on offer... and had two (not one) serial ports. How delightfully handily archaic I thought.

Unfortunately, when we got there no amount of poking, prodding, beating with sticks, insulting or denigrating publicly would coax the evil little pile of crap into being recognised as a USB Serial converter. It would go 'Hey, there's a Moschip USB Device' and then not load drivers for it, because they weren't the right ones. At least, that was Windows approach to it. MacOS just looked at it mockingly before stalking off.

Even remote-James-WindowsFu wouldn't make it work.

So I took it back to Maplin, expecting a fight - because if you plug it in it goes 'hey I'm here' just doesn't work *properly*. But no, all credit to maplin there was no problem at all. I went into some of the details about what we'd done to persuade it to work, and the guy offered a refund or exchange, and I came away with the Prolific USB Serial converter, which I installed the drivers for and which promptly worked.

Now I just need (a) a very long serial cable, or (b) to remember to take the Mac down to my mum's again.

Also on the positivity front - Topps Tiles, who when I bought the floor tiles said 'bring extras back when you're done for a refund' - well, it's been over 2 months since I bought them, and while the lowly store clerk wasn't sure, the manager said that he'd overlook the over 45 days (apparently on the back of the receipt it states it must happen within 45 days) because it's a tile they stock all the time. And so we now have the two edging strips we require to finish the flooring in the lounge.

So, big-ups to JLH (who rock), Maplin and Topps Tiles for all exceeding my expectations.

And big downs to the filler which has, for the 2nd time disappeared unused. I have no idea where it's going, but I really would like to know.

Aaand breathe

So, I've now got 22 items listed on e-bay. I think that's about my limit for one sesh, as it were. Otherwise I'm going to lose track of things.

Although I might start listing the chips; then again I've no idea if the chips are worth anything - I think John took most of the useful ones, so I'm slightly tempted to throw one auction for a bunch of 1980s chips up. Then whoever wants them can grab them.

Meh.

Anyhow, some things that I'm not selling ('scuse the lousy photos, but this is what my pathetic digital camera produces) - points for guessing what they are before reading the answers...







So, hands up who can guess what my dad did before he became a 'good guy'?

Yeah, that's right, he was a phone phreaker. And quite impressively too; at some point I'll get some some shots of the incredibly organised system which allowed him to make long-distance calls for the cost of a local call. Somehow, despite it being a big hunk 'o paper and electronics, I can't throw it away. The top one is his original piece of kit, simply a dial in a tin, essentially. Which allowed you, when hooked up, to send the pulse dials required to dial your call. The later one is sadly incomplete, but shows off my dad's engineering prowess, it's a tone-dial generator for achieving the same thing. He never did finish it though.

Despite being, by the time I was growing up, the most insanely law-abiding citizens I've ever met, both my parents have (/had) a mischievous gleam in their eyes - and my dad used to have some highly interesting hobbies - it's from him I learned to pick locks (although I can't do that anymore, sadly). From him that I learned lots of tricks for breaking padlocks; and I distinctly suspect his desire to explore didn't stop before he got on-line.

His desire to explore also gave rise to interesting things like the third shot. That was the complete set of master keys to several buildings in London. We went to his university reunion about 10 years ago and were disappointed to find that while quite a lot of doors still sported potentially the same locks, they also sported keypad or swipe access *grins*.

Apparently, his adventures included making his way from his university, underground, into the bowels of the science museum. He said he never could get into the display areas, the relevant doors locking from the outside.

Anyhow, I'm going to eat lunch and take the motorbike out for a test-run.