How I Spent My Summer 2022 Edition

 I can't remember if I addressed it in my last post, but my laptop was on the verge on dying.  For over a month I toughed it out and listened to what sounded like a the fan or heat sink getting louder and louder.  Eventually it went from happening every few minutes to nonstop.  I still contest it isn't the hard drive or anything else, but I can't really replace them right now and can't afford a new computer.  Finally about two weeks ago I decided to drag out the old desktop.  My laptop lasted about 5 years of heavy use, however my desktop is 10 years old.  Its to slow to run Windows 11, and I missed out on upgrading to Windows 10, so its running on Windows 7.  I'm weary on using it too much for safety reasons, but its working fine.  It doesn't have Wi-Fi, so I had to find an ethernet cord which I still had, and so far so good.  I've transferred most of my data from my laptop, with only a few movies left behind (for now) and only because I don't have enough space to move it over yet.  I should correct that soon.  In the meantime, I will probably clean out all my hard drives and computers so I don't have to move stuff around so much.  Losing the laptop means finding room for about 700 GBs or more of data when most of my hard drives were almost maxed out to begin with (including an old 500 GB external that lost data before and almost 10 years old itself).

I realized I have a very old IBM Thinkpad I bought at a garage sale for 5 bucks, and I might be able to get a good chunk of money for it.  While it isn't ideal, my thought process is to possibly (if I have enough money from selling a few things I should have long ago) buying a Chromebook or something similar mainly to use for being online.  When I need to do offline stuff or things needing more space I can use the desktop.  With whatever I have leftover, I hope to also buy a 1-2 TB external hard drive which I can use to free up some space in addition easily move stuff from the Chromebook to the desktop if need be.  I'd like to get a 2 TB one just so I can retire the old 500GB hard drive or at least use it in emergencies.  Luckily the desktop does have a 1 TB hard drive, so for now I am good with storage.

With all that being said, I haven't been in the mood to write, and even then not much to show.  However I have taken pictures of stuff and figured what better way to clear up some space than to do a blog?  I could do a Savvy Loot Crate post since I've bought a few movies from there as of late, but I'll hold off.  I figure today I will show other random stuff.  I'm not sure what, but I'll figure it out.

Let's dig in.

In June I bought this puzzle at a garage sale.  It was very nice and fun to put together, though I found out it was missing a piece.  Oh well.  Throughout the summer I've worked on quite a few puzzles.  Instead of talking about each one, I'll just show them.

These were part of a box set and former neighbor gave my mom and I.  A few pieces were missing, but nothing too bad, plus you can't beat free.  The challenge was the box fell at one point and you couldn't figure out what pieces went to which puzzle.  I think there were 6 or 8 puzzles in the box, and at one point we were working of 4 puzzles at once.  Still we finished it pretty quickly considering.  I had pictures of all of them, but either misplaced them or my phone is turning photos sideways and I don't want to deal with correcting every photo.  I'm still learning to use the phone for pictures and videos and have almost retired my digital camera.  However, I still have a lot to learn on recording video on the phone.

In July I decided to film my town's annual Rodeo Parade.  Held the third weekend every July, it has been going on for almost 70 years.  This year I figured I'd test out the phone filming it in video.  I also figured I'd use a selfie stick to get a more overhead view.  Nobody was around me so I had the perfect spot.  In the end, the phone worked perfect, but I didn't calibrate the selfie stick right and ended up filming the ground the entire time.  In addition, about halfway through another neighbor came over and despite knowing I was filming, decided to carry on a conversation with me.  She is a fairly older lady, but I don't conversate too well to begin with, especially while filming and with people I've never talked to.  In the end the entire venture was a bust, but at least I can work the camera and video.  I just now need to figure out why pictures are loading sideways even after I crop them with Paint.

Let's see what else has been going on...

In June my town hosted their annual city wide garage sales.  Being mostly broke I didn't have high hopes.  In addition I didn't really need anything.  However there were a few things I hoped to find and surprisingly found a couple things.  None of these were really on my wish list, except maybe the computer fan thingy.  However I had to clean it, and after I put it back together, it broke.  I don't think the few seconds it worked it helped the laptop.  I might have made things worse.  Anyways it was a buck, but the bookshelf above it was also a buck at the same sale, and it was something I was looking for.  It is sturdier than the one I have and its perfect for my books.  I also found a rolling cart at that sale (I'll show in a second) and for 5 bucks, I did good (despite the fan not working).  The corner shelf is small, and was cheap, but at this point I'm not sure what to use it for, but I'll figure something out.

The two radios were unexpected and bought cheaply at the same sale as the corner shelf.  The first one is a hand cranking radio, not really a weather radio, but one to use when power is out.  I had one similar before, but it was broken when I got it (no wonder it was included in Woot's Bag of Crap).  This one works pretty decent from what little I've used it.  Luckily I only had to test it, not actually in an emergency situation.

The second radio is an HD radio.  I've always wanted to try these out, and for a buck, it was worth the risk.  It works pretty good and is compact.  The only problem with it is my area doesn't really have any HD radio stations.  I think I picked up one, which plays classical music.  If I was closer to a place that had more stations it would probably be a much better find.  This one is sort of outdated, and HD radio isn't really catching on, but it still picks up normal stations and works pretty good.  I'm not disappointed with the purchase.

Never mind the stuff in the bottom, but this is the rolling cart I got at that one garage sale.  We decided to use it for a microwave cart and the old cart we had will now be used for my VCRs and the bottom will house my record collection (which oddly on the same day I found more of my records in storage).

I found a few more things I was on the lookout for at other sales.  One sale was located at an old hardware store.  The store closed 20 or more years ago, and most of it hasn't been touched since.  A new owner of the building decided to have a name a price sale.  Looking back I should have went the first day and bought more.

Here was things I wasn't expecting to find, but was on the lookout for.  I was looking for screws (specifically wood screws) to build the 2x4 shelf I showed off in July.  I wanted some longer screws, so I was quite happy to find almost full boxes of screws even if they weren't Philips head.  These were old screws I'd say almost 40 years old.  They work just fine and most of the screws I used for that shelf were these.  I broke quite a few, but that was more on me than on the screws themselves.  Before I found my drill I was screwing these in by hand and thus broke them.  All worked out fine though, and I was happy.

The blank covers I was looking for because my mom didn't want her bed right up against an outlet.  She needed two of these and wanted plastic ones.  I found these and figured I'd try them out.  In the end, we didn't use them for those outlets, but the apartment we are in had a couple cable outlets hooked into the wall that aren't in use anymore.  They have those old connectors sticking out of the wall.  So I decided to use these for those instead so we can place stuff up against the wall.  The screw were a bit short, but I managed to get them to work.  When it came time to name a price (I always hate naming prices).  We realized we didn't have much money.  In fact we only had 3 bucks in our pockets.  This place was pretty big and everything was dusty.  He wanted it gone, so he was happy taking 3 bucks.  I wish he'd open it up for another sale and if he does I'll spend more time looking and maybe even spend more money.

While all that was cool, the 3 bucks was well worth it.  However we spotted something else there that wasn't hardware related.  In fact to most people it was trash.  Normally I'd agree, but I'm a sucker for advertising.  This was basically a throw in, and worth the 3 bucks to me.

A KFC bag from 1987.  Yes its used and a paper bag, but to me it is totally awesome.  Even If I only wanted the logo, it was worth it.  Now if this was 3 bucks I wouldn't buy it, but like I said, it was really a throw in.  The guy said he saw the bag when looking around and was going to throw it away, but figured someone might like it.  I'm glad he didn't.  I don't know what he plans to do with the building, but I'd like to look around again, and see what he does with it.

I might have bought more at these sales, but I either didn't take pictures or moved them.  Like I mentioned I stopped at storage that day to look for my drill (which I found about 2 weeks later), but did bring a few items home from storage in addition to the records.

I'm glad I found some drill bits because it really helped me out with that shelf.  My drill wasn't too reliable in the past, but worked really well, so now I might use it for more projects, so the bits can stay here for a while. Just realized those screws are old.  The Dollar General price tag is really old, at least 20 years.  Then again my dad passed 15 years ago, so it makes sense.

With that I think I'll stop so I can find more pictures for a future post.  This desktop runs a bit slower so it takes a while to do blogs, but maybe I'll post a bit more frequently since I don't hear loud noises while on a computer.  If I get a Chromebook, it should be able to handle doing more posts, so maybe I'll keep looking. Anyways, thanks for sticking around and for reading, have a great week.