I should have known by the regular spike in #TOTP posts what subject would be all over the local timeline last night. I had to scroll down for 12 hours before finding someone talking about xyr shed roof.
On the subject of sheds: I am debating whether to go over to the relative to attempt some more #ShedClearance.
The relative is outdoing me, and I need to catch up. Xe has just done a charity shop donation run, whilst I am stuck in a quagmire of sorting tiny woodwork and electrical parts.
I wonder whether anyone on the FediVerse knows what obscure #magic ritual can be performed with a box of #teeth, income tax forms from 2003, and a Sacha Distel album.
Because the relative has all three.
The income tax forms box was not labelled. I think that this was a safety precaution against any old random person rocking up and accidentally raising some ancient Mesopotamian god.
The plan is to consign the income tax forms to the flames, and keep the world safe.
The boxes of teeth are Holy Medical Relics and Must Be Kept For Future Archaeologists, apparently.
I did not dare ask about #SachaDistel after learning that.
His and hers. There was a paper bag of waiting-to-be-properly-boxed #teeth as well. That was properly filed into the right box by the relative's other half. Obviously. One has to be tidy about these things.
And they're only 3 litre boxes, too. Not the 50 litre ones that I had to use for the #valves, #resistors, and extension cables.
The productiveness of fixing an almost three decades old segmentation fault bug in daemontools is going to be offset by yet another visit to the relative later to do yet more #ShedClearance.
Two questions for the amateur electronicists:
What could 1 person reasonably do with 50 litres of hoarded #valves, some of which are in slightly manky cardboard boxes with U.S.A. military datestamps from the 1940s?
Or 60 litres of hoarded #resistors, thousands of which are on their original paper ribbons?
Yes, I'm measuring in litres.
For those following along: The relative's other half has complained that xe cannot find the 2nd box of teeth. I had put them next to each other, in the same building for the first time in years.
Maybe one has eaten the other.
I found a disintegrating plastic container of a mystery crystalline chemical in amongst the re-used plastic food containers of electronics spares in a cardboard box in the relative's shed. I only realized after reaching in to the container.
I believe that it was #thymol.
There was what was left of a non-specific hazard warning on the container, but the labelling was woefully inadequate to indicate the contents or the hazard and the lid had gone. Sold by a specialist supplier as an insecticide decades ago and them dumped part-used in a box by the relative. Alongside re-used plastic ice cream tubs still labelled for the ice cream.
Fortunately, I was wearing gloves. But now I've had to put those and all of my clothing into the wash, after rinsing myself down on site.
Leaving chemical boobytraps in what seems like a box of electronics odds and ends is not on.
I don't know how many #resistors the relative has hoarded over the years, in a huge collection of jars, tins, matchboxes, plastic yoghurt containers, and even in one case an old ammunition box going mouldy inside.
I'm not counting them.
But I can measure the collection by volume in tens of litres.
A rough calculation leads me to believe that if the relative soldered 1 resistor per day into something, the relative and the relative's children would be long dead before the resistors ran out.
The relative hasn't done any soldering in years. I know because I just found the relative's soldering irons.
They weren't in the plastic bin that was marked 'soldering irons'. That would have made things far too easy for me.
One of them almost falling on my head was a clue.
For those following along: the his and hers boxes of teeth are still there, grinning at me as I re-folded strips of resistors.
Even more annoyingly for #Ryman #ClickAndCollect, the manufacturer of the items concerned has its own on-line system. The manufacturer doesn't do weekends, and I picked Ryman believing all of the 'Click-and-Collect TODAY' statements on its system.
I picked a collection branch near to the relative because I needed this stuff for the relative's on-going #ShedClearance, and used the branch picker to also ensure that everything was in stock. The plan was to go to the branch in the relative's town in the afternoon and collect the Same Day stuff so that I could use it immediately in the evening.
I tested the same order in the manufacturer's system.
I could have gone to the manufacturer this morning and had the same order delivered directly to the relative's house, without the trip across town, at just £10 more total including the shipping charge, by the day after tomorrow.
I could have added in some of the other items that Ryman changed the collection date on the basket because of.
The cable box, that the relative's cable company never wanted back well over a decade ago, has come out of hiding down the back of a workbench in a shed and yielded a 500GiB Seagate hard disc. Not to be sniffed at.
If I can figure out how to get the heat sink off, I shall satisfy my curiosity about what CPU it used.
It's one of those affairs that uses the 'H' type of torx-head screws — purportedly a 'security' measure, but I was able to buy a set of L keys for £15 from Machine Mart.
Thanks should go to whoever it was on the FediVerse who put me on to #MachineMart a couple of years ago.
https://machinemart.co.uk/p/laser-miniature-star-bit-set-tamperproof/
Yes, I know. £15 for something that I could have got for a tenner off e-Bay is not the best trade. But I'm having fun channelling #BigClive, opening the thing up with pry bars and sticking the hard disc into another machine to see how it is partitioned and formatted.
Gosh! This was 2024.
To show that history rhymes: The place where these beehives stood became the site of a new modern (waterproof!) shed, replacing three cleared and demolished ones. In late 2024 and 2025, it filled with some inherited stuff from another relative.
So in 2026, I'm back to clearing exactly the same volume of space (indeed, a somewhat larger enclosing volume) of a whole new set of stuff.
Very little of it is mouldy and rotten this time around, though.
Although the his and hers boxes of teeth were somewhat unsettling.
The U.K. mowing, cleaning, and pressure washing channels on #YouTube tend to highlight helping infirm or disabled people with access and quality of life, or places like schools.
The similar U.S.A. channels often pick empty properties and go on about 'kerb appeal' and the neighbours's house prices.
However, there are remarkable exceptions to the latter, and Kevin Hansen from #TheBoringChannel has just produced another one.
Warning: It's nigh on 3 hours long, and when it hits day 4, you're not even halfway through.
The shed gave me flashbacks. I've tackled that sort of thing with no power assistance, everything moved by hand. It's not trivial.
(In fact, I have more such to do this weekend.)
https://youtube.com/v/shzKZfUpgKM
#LawnCareJuggernaut #KevinHansen #GardenClearance #ShedClearance
JdeBP