Journal Shadow Wrought's Journal: FreekBox 31
So my younger stepson and I ahve been volunteering at a local computer recycling place called Free Geek for awhile now. An hour, a couple hours there, and we finally accrued our 24 hours. So I am now the proud Papa of a FreekBox: one fo their built systems which comes with Ubuntu preinstalled! It's actually fairly decent. P4, 2.4GHz, 500MB RAM, and an 80GB HD. With SCSI! I remember wanting SCSI back int he day but it was too expensive:-) I added a 128MB AGP MSI graphics card and will be maxing out the RAM at 2GB soon, but after throwing Xubuntu on it, it runs just fine. Next time I crack it open I'll include a pic of the graphics card, it's got the most impressive heat sink I have ever seen. The copper alone in it is probably worth more than the whole system:-)
Fine machine (Score:1)
That's the category one finds regularly in the dumpsters. I've even found better gear :-P There is no such thing as Free Geek where I live, or I'd volunteer because it's something right along the lines I loved doing anyway. I don't need any Freekboxes, I've got plenty. Giving them away to anyone who wants them.
Not that I find much takers with 300€-500€ machines in the stores these days... including monitors, which is something I never can provide. Luckily 59€ LCD screens exist now. Stil
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Beware with 3 DDR slots on motherboard. There are motherboards that will turn down the speed. I have one that only allows DDR-233 when all three are filled, DDR-333 when two are filled and DDR-400 when only one is filled. That particular machine was outfitted with 2x1GB modules as a compromise. It does allow 3GB, but then, well...
Dumpster diving is increasingly hard at the recycling centre. There are sings all over the place saying that it is prohibited and the staff is always hawking around :-(
$99 (Score:1)
Around here that is about exactly what I see being sold by the various whitebox shops for a hundred bucks, some bundle with specs almost identical to that one. They sell a lot of them. This is a non rich area, even walmart prices new aren't that great for a lot of folks. It's usually the computer and keyboard and mouse for 99, add in ten or twenty and you get a used crt 15 or 17 inch monitor. Most of them to me look like older p4 off corporate lease machines, various name brands, ibm, compaq whatever. Simi
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We volunteered on the recycling side, but later this Spring we're going to start volunteering to do the build side, in which we'll take teh recycled components and put them together to make FreekBoxen for local charities.
Re:$99 year/ that's my toy budget (Score:1)
A hundred bucks is what I allot to meselfs every year for electronic gadgets. Can't afford any more, my rescue critters take the bulk of my cash. The last time was building the system I have now, cheapest new tiger direct mobo and case and cpu combo, a vid card, then some ram, etc. Throw in the optical drive and hard drive I had already, done. I've added a stick of ram since then when it was on sale, like 20 bucks or something with the rebate. I think it went a little over a hundred initially, but not much.
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Have you tried dumpster diving in richer neighbourhoods? (Or recycling centres at richer neighborhoods). I often have the impression that even for "poorer" people in my country, 100€ still isn't considered expensive. (It is in my book, but I'm not originally from this country). I've found an AMD64-class machine at my local recycling centre. Sure, it only had 256Meg RAM, but I had stuff enough lying around from previous scavenging rounds that I could upgrade it nicely.
P-IV class an Athlon XP class
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Not against dumpster recycling, but we don't have that sort of rubbish pickup here, this is out in the sticks a little. People take their stuff to the dump, and the dump itself doesn't allow any scrounging. Back when I lived in Atlanta, though, heck ya, they had this deal twice a year sometimes that we called "big stuff chuck out day" where you could put anything you wanted to at the curb, all the way to like stoves and refrigerators and TVs and whatnot. Used to go cruise that action when it happened and f
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I miss the recycling place in bumfark, NC (actually Sanford, NC) that also had a leave it/take it shack where people left all kinds of neat stuff, free for the taking. I wonder if it is still there....
Leave it/take it (Score:1)
Sounds neat. They should have places like that everywhere.
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Neither does the recycling centre... I try not to get caught :-)
Ha! (Score:1)
Shoplifting at the Big D department store..hehehehe
Most fun I ever had scrounging was a long time ago. I am hitch hiking around, decide to go visit NYC. There for a day, do a favor for this knockout beauty in a coffee shop, she invites me home to her pad..for a couple weeks as it turns out.
Anyway, there's this huge garbage strike going on at the same time! The streets are hip deep in stuff. So, I notice she has this rather..nothing apartment (directly across the street from CBGBs). As in..nothing much, she
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double ha (Score:1)
Just get out and go do adventure-stuff. The old phrase we used to say was "go with the flow". You sort of "relax" into interesting experiences. You have a hard time forcing it, but relaxing into it, letting it happen, works pretty good. If that makes any sense.
She looked like Cher's sister. I was sitting in some coffee shop warming up, winter out and cold, with my back pack down on the floor under the table, sort of wondering where the heck I could find some place to camp out and go to sleep in the wilds of
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A bit too late for that. By now I'm married to a suicidial loonie. *sigh* My hair became grey in less than a year after she tried to kill herself. Oh, well, what I would give to be in my begin-twenties again. Glad you had it :-)
I wish my parents would have encouraged me to "go on adventure", but I stupid dolt went to University when 17 and was working by my 21.
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Oh, mine wanted me to go to school, had a lot of scholarship offers, etc, but I wanted to just go out and see what was what. Sometimes I regret that a little, have no college degree, never made tons of scratch or anything, but all in all I did OK I guess. My work is always hard though, getting ..difficult..to accomplish what I want to much anymore.
The loonie..man..hope you get away from that. I had a loonie room mate off himself once, what a freekin bummer and mess it was.
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The difference is: You can still go back to school, at least part time and get a degree. The adventure part is forever gone if you're over thirty and have responsibilities.
It's not that I earn that much, and it will become increasingly more difficult because dear wifey wants to stop working (She makes about 160% of what I make). Getting away from her is going to get hard. Social stigma on leaving a wife that's pretty much a cripple now (might recover, but we'll see). If I initiate divorce, I'll lose eve
Diet (Score:1)
I've seen amazing transformations with diet changes before. The deal is, you have to stick to it, and sometimes it is radical change. Modern supermarket food is half not food ingredients. Taken as a whole it causes a lot of not fully understood now and in denial it happens by those people who sell it changes to people. That nuts room mate I had, when he cut down on drinking and ate better, got better, but then something would set him off and he would drink more and eat a LOT more crap food and sugary stuff
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I don't think it applies. I'm the one who cooks, and well, I use fresh produce, buy my meat fresh. I even bake my own bread you know. (A fun and useful hobby, and I tell you: self-baked bread lasts much much longer than anything you buy in the store. It is more yummy too!)
Furt
oh well (Score:1)
You have better food protection, and the population is more hip to GM food dangers, but you get hosed with your more restrictive vitamin laws. Although they are trying to make it more restrictive here as well. They want to make cheap vitamins be expensive prescription.
Oh big fun on the bread. we do that sometimes here, even grind our own wheat when we do it, but not too often. Just have too much other stuff to do all the time. Like this morning had a buncha escaped cows had to go round up. Need to go check
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Well, I've been raised to appreciate and respect food. My mom used to have a vegetable garden and I learned a lot from her. Use seasonal foods, don't overdo on the meat, etc, etc, etc...
As for the vitamins: I've been taught that if you have a balanced diet, you should get all the vitamins you need by the natural way: by your food. (I know we do generate some vitamins ourselves, like Vitamin D using sunlight. However, if our ancestors could survive at these latitudes without additional vitamins from thei
Apple II stuff (Score:2)
Still looking for an accelerator for my Apple IIgs. :-) Anything like that ever show up there?
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Actually, I'm in Eugene... TIA for checking.
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So as I understand it you show up at 3pm every Wednesday and they let you into their piles of stuff to look for what you want. If you're there at 3:01, you have to come back the next week. So, I'm not sure what Wednesday I'm going to get over tehre, but they're not far from my work at all, so if you can give me some specifics and/or pics on what I'm looking for, and what a price you'd be willing to pay for it
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Hmmm.... maybe I should take a Wednesday off from work and head up there. I am actually interested in a ton of different things, it'd be impossible to list.
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How well did they treat you? (Score:2)
This may sound odd, but was anybody rude or overly authoritative? After 24 hours you've been there far more than I, and I'm wondering if things have changed in recent years.
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It has also changed substantially since they started partnering with the state. OSHA standards now apply and it is far more "Corporate" than "Commune" if that makes sense. But they've also started cutting back on volunteer discounts and the like, too, at the store;
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Yeah, that's exactly what I meant :) I was trying to get four 3 chip 30-pin SIMM's but they were too "old" and "useless".
The build program sounds good.. it will probably be a building block in his education of/addiction with computers :)