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Jul. 3rd, 2016 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psipsyLast week I worked 3 days, and now I'm off for 11. The 11 days I'm off will go faster than the 3 I was at work. In fact, some of those days are already gone. That's just how it goes. I wasn't really planning on any major road trips. Maybe a small one here and there. (Don't worry, I already have plans for the time off.)
One tooth fixed, ready to start on another one. I'm on my way to eating hard and crunchy foods again! I am blessed that I can afford to have this done, pay my other bills, and put money into savings anyway.
More cleaning up, here and there. I'm trying to avoid relying on motivation because this sort of thing takes discipline. Motivation shows up when it feels like it. Discipline is much more reliable. Know what also takes discipline? Getting rid of crap. Boy howdy does that take discipline.
Over the years, I have accumulated a large amount of electronics junk. The idea was, I wanted to Do The Right Thing so I let it pile up, thinking someday I'll get rid of it. Well, that someday arrived and I finally unloaded (most of) it. There was enough to fill the trunk and back seat of my car.
Some old printers from the 90s? Broken VCRs? Burned-out computer parts? A scanner that didn't work with anything newer than XP before it quit working entirely? Chargers for old and obsolete phones? Out. There are a few more things that somehow missed the first cut but their time will come.
Another reason why I wasn't in a hurry to get rid of it was I felt the need to keep much of it for parts. It was like, "maybe this isn't useful but parts of it could be". Or "maybe I can fix this and get it to work". This was probably a holdover from when I was much younger and poorer, when cobbling something together was more of a realistic option than buying something outright. Or the only option.
Times change. I'm able to afford things. Now, instead of searching for hours to find a customized 3rd-party driver with the faint hope of maybe getting an old scanner to work with Windows 7, it was far easier and more efficient to just roll down to MicroCenter, buy a new one, and have something that's overall faster and better, and with driver support better than "send us $10 for a CD-R of a driver we're too lazy to put on our site". Instead of spending hours looking for parts that may or may not exist, I can get a new (thing) for cheaper than the parts. And don't get me started on what my time is worth.
Am I proud of being able to bring a couple VCRs back from the dead with a handful of parts from Radio Shack? Yes. Would I do that again with a modern equivalent? No. Could I have soldered new capacitors into a motherboard from 2005? Yes, and the cost of the parts would have been negligible. Would it have been worth it? No, because there's no guarantee that would have worked, and if it did, there would be no use for it.
Granted, there are times when something IS worth fixing, at least to me. I didn't mind putting a bunch of new parts on a laptop that I had since 2000. That laptop is unique and it still works. My desktop that I built in 2007? That still runs like a champ. If something breaks, it's modern enough that new parts will work.
I know about the whole maker culture and up-cycling thing going on, and I think it's awesome, but it needs to be worth the effort. I've seen people who keep entire rooms or buildings full of electronic junk. It's great when they regularly use that junk to make fun and useful projects, but at the end of the day, I don't need to be That Guy cuz I don't have his patience anymore.
So yeah. When I see someone getting rid of something electronic, I still get that itch to claim it for myself, just to see if there's something I can do with it. And sometimes I can. Usually I can't. That's what I'm coming to terms with. That's where the fight is.
One tooth fixed, ready to start on another one. I'm on my way to eating hard and crunchy foods again! I am blessed that I can afford to have this done, pay my other bills, and put money into savings anyway.
More cleaning up, here and there. I'm trying to avoid relying on motivation because this sort of thing takes discipline. Motivation shows up when it feels like it. Discipline is much more reliable. Know what also takes discipline? Getting rid of crap. Boy howdy does that take discipline.
Over the years, I have accumulated a large amount of electronics junk. The idea was, I wanted to Do The Right Thing so I let it pile up, thinking someday I'll get rid of it. Well, that someday arrived and I finally unloaded (most of) it. There was enough to fill the trunk and back seat of my car.
Some old printers from the 90s? Broken VCRs? Burned-out computer parts? A scanner that didn't work with anything newer than XP before it quit working entirely? Chargers for old and obsolete phones? Out. There are a few more things that somehow missed the first cut but their time will come.
Another reason why I wasn't in a hurry to get rid of it was I felt the need to keep much of it for parts. It was like, "maybe this isn't useful but parts of it could be". Or "maybe I can fix this and get it to work". This was probably a holdover from when I was much younger and poorer, when cobbling something together was more of a realistic option than buying something outright. Or the only option.
Times change. I'm able to afford things. Now, instead of searching for hours to find a customized 3rd-party driver with the faint hope of maybe getting an old scanner to work with Windows 7, it was far easier and more efficient to just roll down to MicroCenter, buy a new one, and have something that's overall faster and better, and with driver support better than "send us $10 for a CD-R of a driver we're too lazy to put on our site". Instead of spending hours looking for parts that may or may not exist, I can get a new (thing) for cheaper than the parts. And don't get me started on what my time is worth.
Am I proud of being able to bring a couple VCRs back from the dead with a handful of parts from Radio Shack? Yes. Would I do that again with a modern equivalent? No. Could I have soldered new capacitors into a motherboard from 2005? Yes, and the cost of the parts would have been negligible. Would it have been worth it? No, because there's no guarantee that would have worked, and if it did, there would be no use for it.
Granted, there are times when something IS worth fixing, at least to me. I didn't mind putting a bunch of new parts on a laptop that I had since 2000. That laptop is unique and it still works. My desktop that I built in 2007? That still runs like a champ. If something breaks, it's modern enough that new parts will work.
I know about the whole maker culture and up-cycling thing going on, and I think it's awesome, but it needs to be worth the effort. I've seen people who keep entire rooms or buildings full of electronic junk. It's great when they regularly use that junk to make fun and useful projects, but at the end of the day, I don't need to be That Guy cuz I don't have his patience anymore.
So yeah. When I see someone getting rid of something electronic, I still get that itch to claim it for myself, just to see if there's something I can do with it. And sometimes I can. Usually I can't. That's what I'm coming to terms with. That's where the fight is.
