Tag Archives: Collectibles

Nitty Gritty PCs

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There are at least 6 old computer hard drives littering my basement and four or five old color monitors, too. Sometimes there has been a little glitch and it’s been moved aside. Most often there was a crash and I just ditched it in favor or a new faster better machine. Computers are practically becoming disposable, especially since they are dropping in price to around $1,000 for the mid range, better systems
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The past few days we’ve been poking around the old computers and trying to decide if it is worth reformatting the entire hard drive and reloading the old original software on the ones worth salvaging or just tossing them into a recycling bin.

A few of them are giving me trouble rebooting and two are loading partially before locking up. That leads me to believe that we need to get into the system registry and work on it, or call in bigger guns to do what we can’t seem to master.

We tried a variety of internet resources. One place that I like is an encyclopedia of the top data formats. This site tracks the most searched file extensions and lists them in their searchable database, called “File Extension Library.” For example, there is a thorough description of the SYS files data extension, along with dat, doc, dll and other popular extensions.

Little Car Fever

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I met up with one of my long time colleagues and we sat around shooting the bull and engaging in a little trading and buying. He brought along the red line hot wheels cars he’d been telling me about. I was pretty close in my original estimate as to how many he might have.

I made a deal with him for about 75 or 80 of them and have already moved about a fifth of the lot! Seems a nearby neighbor that I’d met at the local market collects them and I just happened to have quite a few that he didn’t have, including one or two that are pretty rare according to his price guide that he just happened to bring along with him. Simply as a reference, then he tossed it in on the deal. I do believe I may have done rather well, if I can sell them that is. But it does look good so far! Believe me right before Christmas isn’t the best time to try and sell items such as these, so I’m surprised that I’ve done as well as I have so far. The extra money in my pocket at this time of the year is always welcome.

 

A Good Book Find

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It certainly makes my day when I go to my favorite used/new book store, which is located in the old town district that is always full of such interesting finds, and I am able to locate a good book for what I consider to be for dirt cheap, so today was a good day in which I found “Is Paris Burning?” by Larry Collins & Dominique Lapierre, Copyrighted in 1965. It isn’t in too bad of shape, looks like it has been well read, and the cover is missing, which is all right with me, the cover just gets in my way, I find that I end up taking the cover off while reading and then have to hunt around to find the darn thing when I’m done.

This particular part of history, that took place in the 30′s & 40′s, I find I haven’t learned very much of, I have read a little here and there about it. I’m more inclined to read about the days before the 2 big world wars came into play, but am now looking forward to reading and learning a whole lot more about what happened back in the day of Adolph Hitler, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Charles de Gaulle.

 

The Selling of Items Online

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At times I enjoy reading other blogs that I run across while spending time on the PC and I ran across a design blog that I enjoyed looking at the other evening. I found it on a website by the name of Stylishdesign.com, which is about web designing, as if you couldn’t tell by the name.

I have a few friends who are deep into flea marketing and thought that we’d ask them about maybe selling their goods online through their own website, sort of like having your own store on the web, so to speak. It seems like a better idea then having to list their items on eBay one at a time hoping that someone bids on them and praying that they can at least get the cost of the item. With the right web design to attract viewers who surf the web, they could establish a world wide clientele while still being able to set up at flea markets.

Interesting and Entertaining Time Keepers

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I come from a military family, my father was a Master Sergent in the Army and we spent some time in Germany. That is my mother developed her yen for clocks and we always had an assortment of some very lovely and unique time keepers in every house that we lived in, and we moved around a lot and lived in many places.

The house that they are in now still has a bunch of clocks, all set at different times mind you, that decorate their living and dining room, my mother has always had a wacky kind of sense of humor. She loves the look on peoples faces when they come in and start looking around and noticing all of these clocks, some one of them that she has had since our Germany days.

I remember that we had a few very unique and unusual grandfather clocks that my mother really wanted to bring back state side, but had to leave them behind at my father’s insistence due to the amount of things that were already being brought back, he decided that the two grandfather clocks had to stay. I do believe that one of them was a Howard-Miller grandfather clock and I can’t remember what the other one was, I’ll have to remember to ask my folks if they remember.