Weird Stuff other people have thrown out

[Jack McSlay]

I once found the old ink pens my father had (no, he's not an artist, he's graduated as an electronics engineer, so you can guess he won't ever need them again anyway) the things are nearly 40 years old and working

Quite.  Fingernails usually work, though for fine detail you generally need a proper stylus with a plastic tip.  Metal is not recommended, nor are pencils or anything sharpened to a fine point as it will tend to destroy the touch-sensitive layer if you're lucky, and go into the screen itself if you're not.

I think Nintendo sells spare DS stylus pens. Depleted markers could work too.

[thegayhare]

belive it or not I've been ordered to throw out a 40 inch big screen tv...

It works great cept that 3 channels don't get sound

We asked the garbage man and he didn't want it... truthfully I'm tempted to try and fit it into my room,  but it's just to big... (its a cathod ray tube tv so it's big and bulky)

[radarnocturn]

The goggles I wear at Anthrocon.  My grandfather had thrown them out, the strap was gone and they were dirty, so I cleaned them up and got a new elastic strap for them.  I found them in a trash can after he passed away.

[Tezkat]

So... once upon a time, there was this guy with a PC. Fairly new--less than a year old. He goes and gets it infected with a virus or something. Windows dies. Totally borked. Takes the thing back to Best Buy and complains. The "geeks" there say they can look into it; it'll cost a couple hundred dollars and be ready in a few days. Now the guy is all: No, no, it has to be ready right away, he has to be in Washington for a meeting in two days, and what's this idiocy about charging hundreds for repairs when the damned thing only cost a thousand bucks in the first place? Long story short, he returns from Best Buy. With a brand new computer.

After hearing the story, I naturally inquire into what happened to the old one.

In conclusion, Tezkat acquires a "broken" PC. Which becomes unbroken after reformating the hard drive. And now runs Linux anyway.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

... Box goes green.

[Lisky]

this seems to have died, but also is probably the most appropriate place to put this

last weekend, while cleaning out the attic in hopes of storing some things that no one is using here, we came across a couple of old boxes.  Probably left and forgotten by whoever owned the house before our landlord bought it... Searching the boxes, we came across a lot of old newspaper clippings, and, in my case, a few books 90+ years old...

The one that particularly caught my fancy was a book in rather amazing condition given it's age.  A collection of short stories by Edgar Allen Poe, copyright 1903... If anyone knows where i'd even begin to get it appraised i'd like to know...

If i don't sell it, at the very least i could look a lot more scholarly toting around an ancient book, full of stories most people probably have never heard of...

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

If you do get it appraised, when you do, mention that it's for insurance purposes, not for sale purposes. If you don't, there's a possibility that the person will give you a lower offer, in the hopes that you'll just go for it.

Oh, and take it to multiple places. Heck, take all the books - it's possible that something damaged will be much rarer - and more expensive - than the E A Poe one.