I got a snazzy LCD flat screen whatever computer screen. Quite recently. Approximately fifty hojillion years after the whole CRT monitor technology had become obsolete. That meant I had to dispose of my current monitor, a behemoth, 19" Samsung Syncmaster 900NF. Weighs about 40 pounds and has the dimensions of a early CAT scan machine.
A google here and a clicky there and apparently there's a depot nearby that will take it. Situated in a byzantine maze of twisty turvy streets that have never heard of a 90 degree junction. A place where entire businesses and thrive or die or live a kind of half-life that crushes the dreams of anyone who tries to work there. Marble counter top re-installation? Got that. Double Decker bus storage? Yup. One gets a sense of how many different sorts of things there are that people do to get food on the table. An entire life worrying about 'Industrial Outdoor Deck Design and Repair'.
I'm not usually a sentimental guy about stuff. I don't think I am, anyways. I'm cheap, which is why I hold onto stuff until mere molecules are left of it, past thread-bare, past donation. My Steam games library is made up of mostly $5 and cheaper games (made by Czech developers who are most famous for doing the conversion module for Quicken 2005) that seem like a good bang for my buck even though 99% of my gaming time is spent on games I've spent more than $20 on.
What I'm getting at is that I'm frugal, shop for clothes at Costco, books at Value Village and usually avoid spending money. So I guess i don't have alot of opportunity to get rid of stuff, as I have very little of it to get rid of.
I'm also not sentimental about technology, either. I watched that almost good movie, AI, and never once got hooked into the OH POOR ROBOT BOY sentiment that Spielberg was swinging for with all the subtleness of a $100 million budget under the aegis of the guy who used a robotic fricking shark in 1975.
But it could be this new kick I'm in, listening to Folk Rock, which is apparently a music genre.
And, foolishly, I was listening to this song.
I grew up listening to John Denver and Simon and Garfunkel and this sorta of music is kinda ingrained in my DNA, for good or for bad. And after I heft the behemoth of monitory goodness on the plastic dolly, I fire up this song. The man starts to dissemble it as I'm driving away, removing the stand. There was something about the way he kinda pushed it onto its side. Brusquely. Something inside me whimpered.
All around are palettes filled with other monitors, TVs, CRTs, massive projection TVs that might have featured in a Connery Bond film. All going to the grave. And there I'm thinking. There she goes. I'm driving out, and I'm watching my poor monitor being given up to the dead. To be sucked of it's component parts and rendered in such a way that will damage the earth the least.
I'd had that monitor for about 10 years. My not unconsiderable computer leisure time has been spent in front of that thing. Ill-thought out novels and laughable short stories and hours and hours of gaming.
I almost tear up, leaving there, but am struck by a nearby business, as I pull out of the parking lot, 'Hot Tub Reweathering', that's a thing?
A google here and a clicky there and apparently there's a depot nearby that will take it. Situated in a byzantine maze of twisty turvy streets that have never heard of a 90 degree junction. A place where entire businesses and thrive or die or live a kind of half-life that crushes the dreams of anyone who tries to work there. Marble counter top re-installation? Got that. Double Decker bus storage? Yup. One gets a sense of how many different sorts of things there are that people do to get food on the table. An entire life worrying about 'Industrial Outdoor Deck Design and Repair'.
I'm not usually a sentimental guy about stuff. I don't think I am, anyways. I'm cheap, which is why I hold onto stuff until mere molecules are left of it, past thread-bare, past donation. My Steam games library is made up of mostly $5 and cheaper games (made by Czech developers who are most famous for doing the conversion module for Quicken 2005) that seem like a good bang for my buck even though 99% of my gaming time is spent on games I've spent more than $20 on.
What I'm getting at is that I'm frugal, shop for clothes at Costco, books at Value Village and usually avoid spending money. So I guess i don't have alot of opportunity to get rid of stuff, as I have very little of it to get rid of.
I'm also not sentimental about technology, either. I watched that almost good movie, AI, and never once got hooked into the OH POOR ROBOT BOY sentiment that Spielberg was swinging for with all the subtleness of a $100 million budget under the aegis of the guy who used a robotic fricking shark in 1975.
But it could be this new kick I'm in, listening to Folk Rock, which is apparently a music genre.
And, foolishly, I was listening to this song.
I grew up listening to John Denver and Simon and Garfunkel and this sorta of music is kinda ingrained in my DNA, for good or for bad. And after I heft the behemoth of monitory goodness on the plastic dolly, I fire up this song. The man starts to dissemble it as I'm driving away, removing the stand. There was something about the way he kinda pushed it onto its side. Brusquely. Something inside me whimpered.
All around are palettes filled with other monitors, TVs, CRTs, massive projection TVs that might have featured in a Connery Bond film. All going to the grave. And there I'm thinking. There she goes. I'm driving out, and I'm watching my poor monitor being given up to the dead. To be sucked of it's component parts and rendered in such a way that will damage the earth the least.
I'd had that monitor for about 10 years. My not unconsiderable computer leisure time has been spent in front of that thing. Ill-thought out novels and laughable short stories and hours and hours of gaming.
I almost tear up, leaving there, but am struck by a nearby business, as I pull out of the parking lot, 'Hot Tub Reweathering', that's a thing?
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On the plus side, the cats try to keep my clutter trimmed down by having extremely loose concepts of the "litterbox." Not the best abstract thinkers. Or marksmen.