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Technology things I threw away today (2011 Edition)

I am an early adopter, packrat. When people need an extra phone charger or connector cable they come to me.

So if I throw something out, that means it must be old as dirt. Here is a list of things I threw away today.

  • A Dell PS2 keyboard I got for free with my computer in 1997
  • Palmrests for two keyboards I'm not even sure I own any more
  • A Belkin vga/ps2 KVM switch I purchased in 2004
  • A IEEE1394 (Firewire) PCMCIA card I purchased so I could connect my first generation ipod to my Windows XP powered 2003 HP laptop (I'm keeping the laptop)
  • A PCI E-Sata connector - I think I got this with a 2.5" hard drive enclosure that ran on USB2.0 or E-sata (actually, I'm so keeping this if I can just find the e-sata cable!)
  • 2 RJ11 (yes, 11!) cords - one approximately 10 feet, one 20 feet. Wired telephones??!?! Ha!
  • A 6 foot long USB extension cable (i.e. male to female) that we bought in 2002 so we could put the computer behind the couch and the monitor on the side table like a TV
  • A serial to ps2 connecter that I got for free from upenn.forfree so I could plug in a serial mouse I got somewhere...I don't even remember how this story ends
  • A plug that goes from UK to standard power supply - WTF did I need this?
  • A USB to Sony Ericcson T-9(?)00? connector cable I purchased in 2004. The software it came with sucked
  • A PCMCIA adapter for compact flash I bought in 2000. This was awesome. But, it turns out that compactflash is the biggest kind of flash. Also, I have another 9 way flash adapter that has compactflash in it! :)
  • Not one, but TWO power chargers for mini USB phones. Too bad the industry just standardized on micro USB.
  • An adapter that takes USB/PS2 power and uses that to give energy to an external 2.5" hard drive enclosure just in case your USB1.1 doesn't give the drive enough power. (Yes, USB 1.1!). I bought this in ~2005.
  • A PS2 mouse from a computer I bought in ~2005
  • A PS2 extension cable I borrowed from a job in 2001. Wow.
  • A usb-mic/headphone adapter useful for macs that expect mics to be powered. Purchased in 2006.
  • A USB to PS2 adapter from some Microsoft keyboard from god knows when
  • A USB female to RJ45 male plug. I think this was for a printer or scanner or something. What a weird combination.
  • A 5 pack of CD-Rs I purchased for $2. Just after I bought it to create a boot disk for a hard-drive that badly needed a little fsck love, I had the pleasure of encountering Randy Fay who was also up way too early. Turns out Randy always travels with a handful of USB 2.0 thumb drives that have bootable linux installed on them. We had coffee and a great conversation together (turns out we both love travel in Latin America) and then I used one of his drives to fsck my way back to sanity.

And that is what I threw out today.

Amazingly enough I emptied these items out of a box where I keep old junk. When I filled a bag with these things and looked back at the box it hardly looked any less full.

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