2 posts tagged “cleaning”

Cables, cables everywhere

I decided to go through the Box today. The Box is actually 4 distinct boxes and a duffel bag. The box has been accumulating bits of electronic gear for the better part of a decade, and it was time for a come-to-jesus.

Treasures found in the Box:

• A/V cables. All of them. I could wire the Fillmore with the metric shit ton of wires the Box produced. You name it, I got it. RCA, TOSlink, quarter-inch, stereo, mono, 1/8th inch, sub-1/8th inch, component, RGB, RCA to 1/8th inch, RCA to 1/4 inch, splitters, elbow joints, pink & green computer audio cables, adapters.
• 22 power cords, including 2 vintage Apple power cords from the Bondi-blue era.
• Misc power bricks, feat. The hulking UK 220v Nokia adapter and his pal the Canon Ixus/Elph AC adapter circa 2001.
• 4 mobile phones, with devices from Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and some off-brand T-Mobile shit making an appearance.
• Misc adapters, car-chargers, headset cables for aforementioned phones.
• VGA cables, and one DVI cable. One baker’s dozen.
• SCSI cables: 50-pin to 50-pin, 25-pin to 50-pin and 25-pin to 25-pin.
• A bunch of 100MB ZIP disks, with various files and software, mostly Mac OS 8 era.
• 1 vintage Apple Adjustable Keyboard, complete with original Marathon sticker circa 1994.
• Marathon 1 CD-ROM. Accelerated for Power Macintosh!
• Ethernet cables. Lots.
• A set of really-short ethernet cables (5-inch, 1-foot, etc).
• 1 USB/VGA/audio 4-port KVM switch. Trick!
• All cables for said KVM switch, neatly zip-tied.
• Caller-ID box from Bell Atlantic.
• USB cables, of every flavor. Mostly still shrink-wrapped.
• Coax (cable) cables. In all lengths, shapes and sizes.
• Adapter cables for Bang & Olufsen gear. Now I can connect this vintage piece of art to my iPod!
• 1 Pentium II CPU (OEM).
  

Rarer were the devices:

• 1 Bondi-blue G3 tower.
• 1 Newton.
• 1 Apple prototype tablet Mac.
• 1 Game Boy Advance, with original batteries (I think it actually got less play time than my PSP).
• 1 PSP.
• 1 last-generation ADB Wacom tablet, with 2 styluses.
• 1 Apple-branded external SCSI hard drive. 850 MB, yeah!
• 1 Iomega ZIP drive, including AC adapter and SCSI cable.

In the non-electronic category:

• 1 pair chopsticks
• My first California driver’s license from January 2000. I want to smack that look off my face too.
• 1 golf ball.
• Old photos, business cards and greeting cards.
• Mix tapes!

So the lot will be going to Goodwill next week. If anyone wants a KVM, an Apple prototype or really really loves SCSI, make an offer.

At the aforementioned DWR warehouse sale (a disappointing shadow of its former self), I acquired a bookshelf. It's a nifty stainless-steel & molded plywood affair with 3 shelves + an extra they threw in for some reason. Edit: It was designed by Richard Holbrook.

So finally after 4 months I unpacked my book boxes. I also moved a lot of the various CD/DVD/electronics/cables/old mail boxes up to the closet. I came downstairs about an hour later and (maybe it was the time of day with the light streaming in through the window) my place looked twice as big. Or at least a quarter-again. All this extra space to work with, joy!

Dear Lazyweb: I'm looking for a desk. I have weird specific requirements:

• It's more like a table than a desk. No drawers, sides, etc. Just a tabletop and legs.
• It has an extremely high width-to-depth ratio. 80 inches wide by 20 inches deep would be ideal.
• The tabletop isn't reconstituted anything. Butcher block, hardwood ply, concrete, frosted glass, whatever. Just. No. Melamine.

The dimensions are important because I have a smallish office with a long wall behind my kitchen. It should be deep enough to slide my knees under, and hold a laptop next to a keyboard/mouse or two for other machines. All screens will be wall-mounted.

Craigslist/Ebay are utterly useless searching for this. Help!