The drive to ditch drives

Sunday night we loaded the equipment into my trunk. Three computers and a monitor that displays maybe four colors. None of which had been used recently because two were broken and one was older than dirt. Two years of grad school means you tend to stop cleaning out your house and start accumulating things like ancient technology that benefits no one.

Let me start from the beginning.

In an attempt to rid our house of clutter, I pulled everything from the nooks, crannies and storage room of our basement. I went through it all and sorted into piles: keep, throw away, garage sale/donation, and "Good God, where in the hell did this even come from and what do we do with it?" The keep was kept, the throw away was thrown away. The garage sale/donate pile just sat downstairs, like a giant misshapen lump, on the table, under the table, around the table, for months. Every once in awhile we'd pass the pile and say, "Yeah, we really gotta do something with that." The pile was too small to have a garage sale, but too large to donate. So it sat.

Finally we had an impetus to do something with it. Family is coming in from out of town, staying with us and our pile of junk. I went through it some more and consolidated, organized, and packed, before finally cramming most of it all back into our tiny storage room. Sigh. Sometimes I feel overburdened by our junk and incapable of escaping, mainly because M says, "That's good stuff! We should have a garage sale!" when really I'd like nothing more than to make 8 runs to Goodwill and let them make money off the 5-sizes-too-large leather Blues coat that I was given when I was in college and never, ever wore because a.) I'm not a biker chick and b.) that thing is huge on me, even now, when I weigh more than I ever did.

(One of my reasons for not having a garage sale, by the way, is that many of the items designated for the garage sale are gifts, and since friends and family come out in force to help with the garage sale, it'd be kinda awkward to say, "Hey, like, I know you spent good money on this and everything, and I really, really love it, but we just don't have space for a four-headed monkey lamp" a gajillion times.)

Anyway, what I refused to cram back into our storage room were the computers. Computer #1: M's old trusty Packard Bell, bought in college about 80 years ago, which he refused to part with because it was the only machine in our house that could play the flight simulation software he purchased 79 years ago. And which he hasn't played in six years. Computer #2: an old desktop left over from my last job that was salvaged in an attempt for use with the Christmas display. I spent hours loading all our Christmas music on it only to have the hard drive crash when M installed some software for the display. It's a miracle it survived my wrath. Computer #3: a server-rack mounted beast M got for free from work, whose short-lived life mirrored that of the computer I got for free from work. (Lesson learned: quit taking crap that work gives you for free. It's free for a reason.)

M helped me load these gems into my trunk before leaving for RI Monday. (Part of him wanted to keep the computers. He was like Scotty watching the Enterprise get the snot kicked out of it by some badass Klingons.) On Tuesday, I journeyed to Best Buy over my lunch break to joyfully rid ourselves of junk by donation for recycling.

I parked, went in and got a cart, took the cart back to the car and loaded up all the stuff. I pushed the cart back into Best Buy only to have the 12-year-old behind the counter cheerily say, "You removed the hard drives, right? Because we can't take them with the hard drives. Security and all, you know. But we can remove them for you for $20 each!" I tried to stem the string of expletives, and managed to hold them in until I texted M. His reply: "Oh, shit. I knew that. Sorry. I'll do it when I get home." I pushed the cart back out to the car, reloaded my trunk, and returned the cart to the store.

Waiting for him is not an option because not only am I tired of the computers clanging around in my trunk, I can predict the future and the future was this: It's Sunday night. After several hours of hanging with family and having a great time, we pile into cars to go watch fireworks. M pops the trunk to load in our lawn chairs and lo! The trunk is still full of the computer crap because he didn't get home until late Friday and then Saturday he had to cut the grass and we were hangin' out with the family, etc. Commence more cursing, removal of the computer crap to fit the lawn chairs and there it is: I still have a bunch of old, useless technology sitting in my house.

No f*cking way.

I tackled them this morning with a screwdriver set scrounged from the junk drawer at work. I got two drives taken out of one computer. I got the case and half the screws removed from the drive of another computer. I couldn't even begin to figure out the third one. When I saw blood gushing from a finger and none of my screwdriver heads fit the screws on the third case, I gave up and sought help from our IT guy. While I bandaided my finger (you know it has to be bad if I use a bandaid...I'm more of a "nah, I don't need no stinkin' bandaid" kind of girl) he finished removing the drive from the second computer and did the third one in its entirety. I owe him beer.

And over lunch, I took my trunk of junk and handed it to the 12-year-old at Best Buy. Who foisted the damn hard drives back on me anyway. At least he gave me a bag. And the drives are much, much smaller than the computer cases. And will go in the garbage can after I smash them with a sledgehammer.

So, getting rid of three computers, four hard drives and a monitor took only two trips to Best Buy, 8 cart runs, a borrowed screw driver set, a borrowed IT guy, and a bandaid. But it's done!