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 :)
