Scavenging sadness

To my knowledge, things tossed in a dumpster are fair game.

Yesterday around 3pm, on my way to the computer lab I run, I noticed a wide, shallow dumpster with obsolete PCs and CRT monitors behind the Social and Behavioral Sciences building. After the lab, had a brief pick through, and saw there were three PCs within easy reach. They'd been fairly picked over -- the RAM, hard drives, and power supplies had been removed.

But, the floppy drives, CD-ROM drives, misc. ISA cards, and the cooling fans were still there. The floppy drives and CD-ROM drives I'd use to build peculiar devices; at the very least, I'd salvage the electric ''drawer-opening'' motors from the CD drives. The ISA cards are green and nifty; I'd hang them from the wall. And the cooling fans I'd mount in a semi-circle around a piece of tile, thus creating a little soldering station: they'd suck the nasty fumes away.


Alas! Just got back from there a few minutes ago, carrying my briefcase of tools and a small cardboard box for my spoils. Sometime between 4pm yesterday and 8:15am today, the dumpster was removed. Dagnabit!

Foiled -- and spoiled.


--GG