Don't hoard your old stuff

On 20/01/2014 14:05, tony sayer wrote:
Why don't you get it on Ebay someone somewhere might think its worth
something?...

A friend of one of my colleagues was moving house and helped him clear
his attic. They found a large party-sized can of beer of a brand that
no longer exists (Double Diamond, I think). It must have been there
since a party some time in the 1970s and would have been vastly beyond
its drink-by date (if such things had existed at the time). Anyhow they
put it up for sale on ebay and despite the hefty postage charge, it sold
for a good price, which came as a nice surprise.

But that wasn't best bit - a couple of days later an advertising agency
contacted him and asked if they could buy rights to his picture of the
can. The agency offered him more for the picture than the can itself
had fetched, and he sold that as well. So you never know your luck.

--
Clive Page

On 20/01/2014 15:56, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , Davey
wrote:

On Mon, 20 Jan 2014 13:40:24 +0000
Bill Wright wrote:
....
...a board with the sign writing hardly discernable:
'Wright's Aerials' in that strange font ('Data'?) that was supposed
to mean 'modern' in the 1970s, the one that was meant to look like
'computer writing'.

Has any computer actually used that font? It was touted as what would
be on cheques, IIRC, but no computer I've ever worked with (since 1965)
has ever used it.

The font that was used was MICR-E13B, which was a number only font, used
on bottom edge of cheques. Data-70 and the visually similar Computer
were full fonts, using the same principles as MICR-E13B. SFAIK, Data-70
and Computer were only used by graphic artists trying to give a
machine-like look to text.

D'ye have any of those now-unobtainable adapters to plug into a light
socket so you can put two bulbs in?

Those were to let you run something totally unsuitable, like an electric
fire, off the light socket while still having light.

Colin Bignell

"mark" wrote in message
...

"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...
OK I admit it. I am a hoarder. I look at the item, turn
it over in my
hands, and think, "Maybe it will come in..." The
consequences of this
behaviour have stared to hit me.

When I moved to my present house 35 years ago I brought
an awful lot of
stuff. That was a warning, but I ignored it. This house
is quite
big and for a while I was able to accommodate the
ever-growing quantity
of 'stock'. Over a period of years I filled several
rooms. We converted
to gas so the room that had housed the old boiler and two
tons of coke
became free. I soon filled it with 'stock'. I then
extended the (already
large) garage, and filled that with 'stock'.

Makes for uncomfortable reading , the theme being a bit
close to home!

mark


+1
--
Woody

harrogate three at ntlworld dot com

D'ye have any of those now-unobtainable adapters to plug into a light
socket so you can put two bulbs in?

Those were to let you run something totally unsuitable, like an electric
fire, off the light socket while still having light.
+++++++++++
You see those in old TV shows or movies sometimes, often when an iron being
run off the socket.

Paul DS.

2A, 5A, and 15A mains plugs
Might the 2A at least sell on eBay (where I bought one last week so some
loft lights could be plugged into a 2A socket on an upstairs lighting
circuit)? And that'd prove you were right all along!

--
Robin
reply to address is (meant to be) valid

Nightjar wrote:

Those were to let you run something totally unsuitable, like an electric
fire, off the light socket while still having light.


How else can you run the Xmas tree lights off a wall lamp?

Bill Wright wrote:
OK I admit it. I am a hoarder. I look at the item, turn it over in my
hands, and think, "Maybe it will come in..." The consequences of this
behaviour have stared to hit me.

When I moved to my present house 35 years ago I brought an awful lot of
stuff. That was a warning, but I ignored it. This house is quite
big and for a while I was able to accommodate the ever-growing quantity
of 'stock'. Over a period of years I filled several rooms. We converted
to gas so the room that had housed the old boiler and two tons of coke
became free. I soon filled it with 'stock'. I then extended the (already
large) garage, and filled that with 'stock'.

The reason I'm apostrophising 'stock' is that the word, bare, suggests
that the items are saleable. I now realise that a large proportion of
the things I've hoarded will never be saleable, unless technology
suddenly and by some freak discontinuity in space and time reverts to
what it was in the 1970s. The absurd thing is that when I turned these
things over in my hands just after they had become obsolete I thought,
"Maybe it will come in..." No, they won't 'come in'. Technology that has
been superseded by a better, cheaper, more effective way of doing things
will never 'come in'.

What made things worse was that when I cleared my dad's house there was
so much that a sensible DIYer could not throw away. That's how it
seemed, anyway. The problem was that there wasn't just one or two
hammers, there were 23. Father had a long and varied career,
encompassing railway work, bridge building, joinery, road building, and
management, and I'm sorry to say it but it now seems that he had
sticky fingers. I guess it's the gypsy blood. I'm the same. I would
never steal, but really, sometimes, well, it would be a waste, a
criminal waste, to just leave things like that lying around, wouldn't it?

When Hil was in the early stages of recovery from her stroke she had a
problem with the shift key. She needed something to hold it down. I
found a very large bolt with a round head and a square nut. The nut
rested on the desk and the round head pressed down on the shift key. It
was a temporary fix that worked. Eventually Hil didn't need it any more,
so the nut and bolt sat on the windowsill waiting until I was due to go
near the box from whence it had come, the box called 'Misc nuts/bolts
(large)'. Father saw it and said, "That came from the wagon shops." He
worked in the wagon shops until he was called up in 1939.

And now the time has come to throw many things away. The dilemmas of
youth (shall I go to university; shall I ditch this girl?) are as of
nothing compared to what I face now. These masthead amplifiers, they are
brand new (although dated 1972). They require 16V DC negative inner on
the coax, and I have no compatible power supply units, nor have I had
any for 35 years. But they are still in their boxes, dammit! I can't
throw them away: I paid good money for them! They stand in the doorway
of the stockroom, in limbo. But into the bin they go, finally. I shed a
tear.

So many things were supplied but not used. Rather flimsy wall brackets
for Sky dishes (I substituted my own brackets). Single output LNBs when
quads were de rigour. Remote controls for receivers that we installed in
tens, leaving just a couple of remotes, because if we'd left any spares
the staff would take them home. Scart leads that were supplied
with every receiver and never used because we always took the AV from
the phono sockets. Instruction books, hundreds of them, for analogue Sky
receivers. Why did I save them? Sun shields for cameras that were
installed indoors, mast clamps for FM aerials that wouldn't fit a 2"
mast and so were not used, rubber boots for LNBs that were a predictable
failure, so I used self-amalg yet carefully saved the rubber boots in a
box marked 'useless rubber boots for LNBs', small aerial installation
items of uncertain provenance and utility in a box, haplessly marked
'Queer Things'.

Then there are the lead-headed wall nails, the 75/300ohm transformers
(you never know, they might start to import 300 ohm tellys again), 2A,
5A, and 15A mains plugs (they might start to use them again), plastic
element holders for VHF 'X' aerials, aluminium clips to hold 1/2"
elements onto 1" booms, flush plates with built-in aerial switches (that
had very poor isolation between inputs and were thus useless), fifty-two
great heavy diecast aerial switches that worked well once you'd fitted a
213 plug onto the coax, 119 U links for a type of modulator we haven't
used since 1990, 57 crimp plugs for CT167 but alas no crimp rings, 12
'CB filters', a whole box of filters built into aluminium boxes, all
mysterious in their function and labelled 'General Post Office', 500
yards of a rather strange 75ohm coax that was grey, had an OD of 5mm, a
seven-stranded inner, yet was air spaced and worked well enough at UHF
in strong signal areas, a huge coil of ribbon cable 3" wide and with 22
cores, 100 yards of heavily screened 3-core 1.5mm mains flex, 17
assorted indoor aerials, thousands of adhesive cable clips and thousands
of adhesive felt pads, all with the adhesive perished and hardly sticky
at all, an impressive demonstration board showing a Wolsey tap-off line,
a box of those very good Labgear tap-off units that had the 'f'
connectors in line so the thing would fit inside trunking (why were they
discontinued?), manufacturers' samples of four different in-line UHF
'signal finders', a board with the sign writing hardly discernable:
'Wright's Aerials' in that strange font ('Data'?) that was supposed to
mean 'modern' in the 1970s, the one that was meant to look like
'computer writing'.

Over the years, each time we've got home after a few days working away
we've been tired, so we've simply put the returned boxes of left-over
stock -- their contents a dreadful post-job muddle -- onto a shelf, with
the vague intention of sorting them out 'at the weekend'. I have now
unearthed a large number of these boxes. Each one takes about an hour to
sort out, and typically yields a 50/50 mix of scrap and good stuff, the
latter probably being worth £200.

I know I've gone on about this before, but honestly it's a nightmare!
I'm having a one- or two-hour session every day, because beyond that it
is just so stultifying. I think the main stock room is going to take
another 15 sessions. Luckily I have a good arrangement with a licensed
waste carrier. Whatever I put out he takes, whether he wants it or not.

I feel better now I've got that off my chest! Thanks for listening.

Bill

I read this carefully, before I decided to ignore the advice. Two jobs
in the last month have used the useless junk I've kept for decades!
Someone else can sort the mess out when I've gone!

On 20/01/2014 15:03, Bill Wright wrote:
Huge wrote:

Makes for uncomfortable reading , the theme being a bit close to home!

Precisely.



Come now gentlemen! Take up your ****e and walk! May the landfills of
our green and pleasant island receive gladly a million tons of cassette
players, analogue Sky boxes, VCRs, monochrome CCTV cameras, and masthead
amplifiers with valves in them!

Now there probably is someone on ebay that will buy the valves!

--
Cheers,

John.

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On 20/01/2014 15:47, Tim Streater wrote:
In article , mark
wrote:

"Bill Wright" wrote in message
...
OK I admit it. I am a hoarder. I look at the item, turn it over in my
hands, and think, "Maybe it will come in..." The consequences of this
behaviour have stared to hit me.

When I moved to my present house 35 years ago I brought an awful lot of
stuff. That was a warning, but I ignored it. This house is quite
big and for a while I was able to accommodate the ever-growing quantity
of 'stock'. Over a period of years I filled several rooms. We converted
to gas so the room that had housed the old boiler and two tons of coke
became free. I soon filled it with 'stock'. I then extended the
(already
large) garage, and filled that with 'stock'.

Makes for uncomfortable reading , the theme being a bit close to home!

There are people who keep previous telephone directories "just in
case", and a friend of mine, doing VMS support at work in the 80s, kept
/two/ previous versions of the VMS manual set at home "just in case".

Which unless you have actually seen the grey/orange "wall" that is a
full manual set, probably does not sound anything like as extreme as it
really is ;-)

I figured someone out there would have a picture...

quick google image search

Aha:

http://williambader.com/museum/vax/vax.html

(about three quarters of the way down)

--
Cheers,

John.

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| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 20/01/2014 16:21, Nightjar wrote:

D'ye have any of those now-unobtainable adapters to plug into a light
socket so you can put two bulbs in?

Those were to let you run something totally unsuitable, like an electric
fire, off the light socket while still having light.

although perhaps not just from the lamp ;-)

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/