{"id":381,"date":"2008-07-02T00:18:55","date_gmt":"2008-07-02T04:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/decluttering_for_geeks_computer_components"},"modified":"2013-11-17T22:49:29","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T22:49:29","slug":"decluttering_for_geeks_computer_components","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2008\/07\/decluttering_for_geeks_computer_components.html","title":{"rendered":"Decluttering for Geeks: Computer Components"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to <cite>Decluttering for Geeks<\/cite>. This is Part I of a four-part series:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Part I: Computer Components<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/Journal\/2008\/09\/decluttering_for_geeks_roleplaying_games_1.html\">Part II: RPGs<\/a><\/li>\n<li><i>Part III: Books<\/i><\/li>\n<li><i>Part IV: Media<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>So after glancing at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/tag\/decluttering\">current crop of decluttering books<\/a>, I think it&#8217;s safe to say that the subgenre of &#8220;decluttering for geeks&#8221; is underserved. Which is a bit disappointing, because we geeks have, shall we say, <em>special needs<\/em> when it comes to decluttering. Sure, some guy like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peterwalshdesign.com\/\">Peter Walsh<\/a> might give you some general guidelines to follow&#8230; but is he going to be able to intelligently advise you whether to keep your old copy of <cite><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Temple_of_Elemental_Evil\">The Temple of Elemental Evil<\/a><\/cite>? What about <cite><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wizards.com\/default.asp?x=products\/dndacc\/882370000\">Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil<\/a><\/cite>? Is this a trick question? Probably!<\/p>\n<p>Typical decluttering books devote at least a chapter or two about why decluttering is a good thing. To save space, I&#8217;m going to assume that you&#8217;re already at least partly convinced. Here&#8217;s the thumbnail argument:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>decluttering will save you time (you can find your stuff quickly)<\/li>\n<li>decluttering will save you money (you can live in a smaller house, or avoid using external storage)<\/li>\n<li>decluttering will save your sanity (you won&#8217;t be distracted by constant reminders of abandoned projects and rooms that need cleaning)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/forums.somethingawful.com\/showthread.php?threadid=830487&amp;perpage=40&amp;pagenumber=1\">the thumbnail of the thumbnail argument<\/a>. There but for the grace of God go we all.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, so, <em>computers<\/em>. Most self-respecting geeks go through a phase of building their own computers. It&#8217;s fun to build <em>exactly<\/em> what you want, fun to compare and contrast different components with your fellow system builders, fun to put together a $500 box that outperforms the $2000 machine of the non-geek. You have powers beyond the ken of mortal men!<\/p>\n<p>But like mathematics and women&#8217;s gymnastics, system building is a youngster&#8217;s game. Although the truly hardcore might stick with this hobby for decades, the typical geek burns out around their 30th birthday. All of a sudden, debugging overheating problems and scouring the internet for updated drivers becomes&#8230; less fun. You&#8217;ve reached the magical age where time begins to &gt; money. Maybe it&#8217;s because you&#8217;re making more money, or maybe it&#8217;s because you feel the icy hand of death approaching. Either way, you sell out. You buy a Name Brand Computer, possibly a shiny silver one with a fruity logo. At first you feel guilty, dirty even. Then you get over it.<\/p>\n<p>The end result is closets full of old, decaying systems, plus scads of individual components: Pentium II motherboards, PCI sound cards, and cables. Lots and lots of cables.<\/p>\n<h3>The Psychological<\/h3>\n<p>Before you can get rid of your computer stuff, you have to convince yourself to get rid of all your computer stuff. This is harder than it sounds.<\/p>\n<p>So we&#8217;ll start with an anecdote. When I first started going through my cable collection, I pulled everything out of the desk drawers and tried to save only stuff I <em>really<\/em> needed. After about fifteen minutes of flailing around, I think I had decided to get rid of maybe two cables.<\/p>\n<p>Sensing that things weren&#8217;t going so well, I called my girlfriend in, much like calling in an airstrike. The conversation proceeded as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>S: So, what&#8217;s this?<\/p>\n<p>Me: Ah&#8230; I think that&#8217;s a USB A-to-B cable, still in its packaging. Hey, that&#8217;s kind of cool.<\/p>\n<p>S: Have you needed this cable in the last two years?<\/p>\n<p>Me: No.<\/p>\n<p>S: Do you think you&#8217;ll need this cable in the next two years?<\/p>\n<p>Me: Probably not.<\/p>\n<p>S: Did you even know you had this cable?<\/p>\n<p>Me: Nope.<\/p>\n<p>S: What would you have done if you had decided you did need this cable?<\/p>\n<p>Me: &#8230; gone to the store and bought one?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>After that, it was pretty easy to narrow things down.<\/p>\n<p>So why is it so hard for us to get rid of our old computer cruft? Here are some of the arguments we make to ourselves:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;This stuff is really valuable.&#8221; <b>Wrong.<\/b> Nothing depreciates faster than computer components. With the possible exception of certain cameras.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I&#8217;ll save money by resurrecting this old box \/ building a useful box out of these components.&#8221; <b>Wrong.<\/b> That feeble eight-year-old box does not have enough CPU\/watt to be worth powering on <em>at all<\/em>. Farm those tasks out to a machine that can do the same work for a fraction of the cost.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I paid a lot of money for these components back in the day.&#8221; <b>Irrelevant.<\/b> What&#8217;s important is how much it&#8217;s worth right now (close to zero), versus how much money it&#8217;s costing you to store it (more than you think).<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;This one is a classic, I&#8217;d just be sad to have to lose it.&#8221; <b>Wrong.<\/b> I have a friend, D, who has lovingly restored an original Amiga from his childhood. Maintaining the Amiga and being able to play some of its old games is a source of pride for D. But <em>you<\/em> are not D. Your &#8220;classic&#8221; machine is not being set up in a place of honor and shown off to fellow geeks. It&#8217;s sitting powered off and buried in a dusty closet. It needs to go.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>The Practical<\/h3>\n<p>After figuring out what to get rid of, you&#8217;re faced with the the second problem: how to get rid of it. Electronics are tricky, because you can&#8217;t just toss them in the ordinary recycle bin. And it&#8217;s not always easy to sell them or give them away. When it comes to decluttering, I&#8217;m a strong believer in the &#8220;take time to find things a good home&#8221; philosophy&#8230; but computer components depreciate so quickly that it&#8217;s often hard to find anyone who wants them.<\/p>\n<p>Some of your options include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Donate to schools or charities: A reasonable choice, but only suitable for relatively new hardware that&#8217;s in good working order. You don&#8217;t want to saddle a school with an IBM Deskstar hard drive that&#8217;s mere days away from the Click of Death. Also, most schools and charities are savvy enough not to take old hardware anyway. They don&#8217;t have infinite time to tinker with dying machines.<\/li>\n<li>Give it away: One geek&#8217;s trash is another geek&#8217;s treasure. You might know someone who still has the system builder bug. If you work at a large company, you might have a &#8220;free stuff&#8221; email list, and then there&#8217;s always <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freecycle.org\/\">Freecycle<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>eBay or Craigslist: Getting a little cash for your stuff is always nice. But eBay is a bit of a trap, since once you start thinking about <em>maximizing! my! return!<\/em> on all this low-value hardware, you&#8217;ll end up holding onto it for a long time, possibly forever. The goal of this game is to get rid of the stuff. (It&#8217;s like playing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boardgamegeek.com\/game\/3076\">Puerto Rico<\/a> &#8212; at the end of the game, money is nearly irrelevant, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boardgamegeek.com\/article\/488766\">it&#8217;s all about the victory points<\/a>.)<\/li>\n<li>Recycling: The EPA has a list of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epa.gov\/e-cycling\/donate.htm\">links for finding electronic waste recyclers<\/a> and dropoff stations. If you&#8217;re lucky enough to live in the Bay Area, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greencitizen.com\/\">GreenCitizen<\/a> has several locations and excellent rates, or you can drop your stuff off for free at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weirdstuff.com\/\">WeirdStuff<\/a> in Sunnyvale. They&#8217;ll go through your broken and crappy stuff, take what they want, and recycle the rest. Highly recommended. Just make sure you leave the loading dock immediately, and don&#8217;t make the rookie mistake of wandering through the WeirdStuff warehouse. There&#8217;s only one way to win at decluttering, and that&#8217;s not it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Next time: <a href=\"\/Journal\/2008\/09\/decluttering_for_geeks_roleplaying_games_1.html\">Role-playing games<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sure, some guy like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peterwalshdesign.com\/\">Peter Walsh<\/a> might give you some general guidelines to follow&#8230; but is he going to be able to intelligently advise you whether to keep your old copy of <cite><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Temple_of_Elemental_Evil\">The Temple of Elemental Evil<\/a><\/cite>? What about <cite><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wizards.com\/default.asp?x=products\/dndacc\/882370000\">Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil<\/a><\/cite>? Is this a trick question? Probably!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-howto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":780,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions\/780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}