So the big question is
Can any of those bits of kit tell you the number of the local skip-hire company... EIther that or theres some ebaying to be done!
A staple of radio phone-ins is to invite listeners to share their stories about funny things they found when moving into a new property. There are some tales that everyone can share, such as front doors fitted with a letterbox so small that you’d struggle to fit a postcard through without having to fold it in half. There are …
About six months ago my ex-colleagues and I hired a skip or two and got rid of years (a couple of decades worth pretty much) of tat and crap. Unopened boxes of Borland Builder, books extolling the virtues of Lotus-123. The hardware front was mostly just old PCs but we also disposed of a rack mounted RAID box we'd been gifted.
What shocked us was estimating the cost at time of purchase. We reckoned we binned nearly half a million quid of stuff. None of it the slightest use any longer.
What saddened me was the software though. I remember buying it in high anticipation and now it's all just superseded crap. Some of it led to greater things but so much of it just stopped being relevant and was nearly forgotten.
There's a moral to this story but I'm not sure what it is. Except that three months after we filled the skips the office was closed down and most of us made redundant. Apparently my time hasn't yet come though as within a month I was back at work. So for now at least it appears that after 25 years programming I've not yet been superseded. I just have to survive another 8 years until I'm 55 :)
The moral is that it's still easier to address envelopes with a typewriter than a Google Chromey tThingy (tm) using Interwed print to the cloud full of iUnicorns.
Yes I have just tried to get a chromebook to print to a wifi printer 6 feet away - which seems to have failed because of a problem in a server on another continent.
For the sake of sanity, I'll assume you're serious.
A ram raid is when someone uses a vehicle to break into premises to steal something.
In this case the author has cleverly used the non-existence of said ram raids for the article in question (type-writers) to mock the squirrelling away of many of these articles instead of, for example, putting them in the bin or some other central location. (like a skip, tip, charity shop or E-bay)
I assume the word notorious was used to highlight the utter non-existence of type-writer theft or associated coverage.
I think that's pretty much killed that joke. Sorry Mr Dabbs.
Is it reference to the incidences in the early nineties (when RAM prices were very high) of thieves breaking into premises to steal RAM from computers? The left of the computers were left in place.
No one would break into a business to steal typewriter ribbons... though they might ink-jet cartridges.
Typewriter theft may not currently be high on the to do list for modern thieves but I remember in the '70s in South London a couple of local likely lads putting on white coats then strolling in to the BT office building and visiting several floors of the building with a purloined tea trolley.
They proceeded to take away enough of the old 'IBM Golfball' typewriters to fill the trolley saying the machines were going away for servicing.
IIRC one of these machines in those days was a couple of hundred quid and very desirable on the second hand market.
I was making about 75 quid a week in those days so a trolley full was not a bad haul.
Until about ten years ago, a member of my family used an Imperial typewriter, c1930, for typing out invoices on carbon paper. This was eventually replaced by an Epsom dot-matrix printer, under the control of Sage on XP (don't know about their migration plans!) The typewriter looked like this one: http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/assets/0802/0000/0143/ict_equipment16_mid.jpg
Bits of kit I've found in a new workplace: a large data tape machine (not cassette) shoved under the desk of a NHS mailroom.
In another workplace, a box of compact cassettes with Dyno labels, marking them out as containing instructions for a CNC machine.
I know I'm paranoid, but during the Icelandic volcano incident I bought a pair of suitable gas masks. For those who don't know, occasionally sulphur-laden plumes from volcanoes can hit the ground, and when they do, anybody in the vicinity can die or suffer serious lung damage.
Several years later they have been well used, during gloss painting (which used to give me severe catarrh), working with epoxy and spraying wood with preservative. They turned out to be a rather useful investment.
This isn't a crazy idea, and modern gas mask filters are proof against some pretty nasty chemicals, but getting the correct respirator and using within-expiry-date filters may be a better bet than a surplus gas mask. I'd be wary of the usable life of the filter, after the seals are broken, and the cost of replacement.
I see on eBay several lots of used filters going dirt cheap. Don't expect them to work. They might be OK for use in a film, rather than break the seal on a new filter, but that's all. Gas masks aren't a wrong answer, but it is important to get the details right.
Can't help you, I'm afraid, at least not yet. The best I can offer is a photo of the offending item: http://pic.twitter.com/PEVO3CbuGh
It's about four feet high. I would dearly love to use it as a drinks cabinet. But until I get the right to open it, it remains a large piece of junk that occupies space I'd like to use for something else... such as a drinks cabinet.
Given Hollywood's penchant fro remakes you could make an hour long documentary* on opening of the safe, raising all the speculation here
*Reference is to the 1987 1 hour doco dramatic opening of the Assistant Pursers' safe assumed to contain a small fortune in jewelery that went down with the Titanic - had a single diamond bracelet (I misremembered that it was empty) - I note the video of the original is available on youtube
Rather difficult for the likes of GCHQ/NSA and Google to slurp data from a typewriter.
It's actually very easy, especially with single strike ribbons - unroll the ribbon and you can read off everything it has typed directly. No one ever thought about that when throwing out used ribbons.
"No one ever thought about that when throwing out used ribbons."
when i worked, briefly, for the military industrial complex (industrial division) every typewriter ribbon used in the facility was collected and securely destroyed whether used for classified work or not.
and, as to monetary value - there are still too many places on this mismanaged planet that don't exactly have reliable electricity. if you only have electricity for a few hours/day and not always contiguous hours there is a real advantage to being able to keep working and not wait to reboot and fire up the printer hoping to get through the job. there is, last i checked, a good market for working or repairable manual typewriters. you might check with an NGO to see if they're interested.
I have learnt that the boss bought the sack of gas masks in the wake of the 7/7 bombings in London. Remember the bus on Hackney Road that didn't explode? That was just outside the office.
Unfortunately, I have also learnt that the gas masks were a job lot from that dodgy supplier rejected by the Israeli military, i.e. they probably don't work.
Other than the respirators being useless without the active filter that attaches to the hole on the front...
I don't suppose you found some loose doors stacked up in the same room as the drawers with the respirators in, when you've pretty obvious you've got a full complement attached in the relevant doorways, possibly unfilled sandbags and definitely pamphlets labelled "Protect and Survive"?
When I joined the current employer I inherited several iMACs (we'd been a Windows site for a couple of years), several firewall boxes, all redundant (it appears a former external support person would sell the company another one when he was short of beer money) and various other kit. Later on when we moved a remote plant I also inherited two spare complete phone systems but managed to junk a load of CRTs.
On movign into our current head office I gained an entire room complete with Chubb safe door. Getting the cabling in through the 6" reinforced concrete ceiling was interesting but if anyone wants to pinch my servers they'll have an interesting time!
A staple of radio phone-ins is to invite listeners to share their stories about funny things they found when moving into a new property.
When I moved into my current house the previous owners left a mountain of tat behind. This included an enormous piss soaked dog kennel in a summer house at the bottom of the garden (I hadn't even known about the summer house before moving in, as it was hidden behind a row of trees). In the loft I found a folder full of business cards for bars and clubs in France, all with multi-coloured flag logos and many with the phrase "hairy bears" written in French. I Googled the phrase, and then wished I hadn't.
You're sitting on a goldmine there.
- The eMac will sell itself on eBay to one of the many Apple hoarders.
- The typewriter - at a wedding show recently we were quoted 50 quid to hire a typewriter, like the one there with a bit of plastic ivy glued to it. The 'retro' wedding craze is in full swing and is an absolute cashcow to those in the know.
- The filing cabinets - used car dealers love these for storing V5s, MOTs, dodgy stamped service history books etc. - can't do that with a computer!
your office is actually the Government's 'hi-tech' COBRA war-room
Don't even joke about that - it's closer to the truth than you realise. I recall reading a news feature on Cobra a couple of years ago. It's where the nuclear button is kept.
It's a Telex machine.
As a spotty work-experience lad in the late 1980s working for a company making milling equipment, someone pried open a locked cupboard door and found a hoard of candles, drinking water and ancient packs of Walker's ready salted crisps, apparently stored up during the 1973 3-day week. We all went home with boxes of huge white candles, but nobody was very interested in the water or crisps (I guess nobody liked ready salted!)
At school we were taught to type on ancient Olympia and Silver Reed typewriters similar to those pictured. The teacher was of a similar vintage and looked like she had stepped straight out of a 1950s office, including perm and Dame Edna glasses. The smell of the fluid she used to clean the typewriters was intoxicating. It was sad when she retired and the new broom junked all the machines the old teacher had so lovingly cared for over the years and replaced them with electronic daisywheels.
I'd be surprised if they were Walkers. Back in 1973, the major brands in the UK were Smiths and Golden Wonder and Tudor.
If I remember correctly, Walkers crisps (which appear to actually be another brand of the same company that produced Smiths crisps) started appearing nationwide around 1978/79, and caused much confusion because prior to Walkers, everybody had Salt and Vinegar crisps in blue bags and Cheese and Onion in green.
Interestingly, Golden Wonder are back in the shops, still with the old colours for the flavours.
Some years back the educational support team I was helping to run deperately needed networking and collaborative sharing of documents etc.
As IT co-ordinator I made a strong business case, which was agreed.
I expected them to get us a server, or at least network the exisitng PCs and give us a shared drive.
But no. Someone higher up decided he needed a new network for his office, or something.
So we got sent the newly redundant Unix box, and a bunch of dumb terminals, with nice glowing orange screens - and some inbuilt software that no one working there had any idea how to use and had no compatibility with our existing stuff ( Windows/Office etc) or the software the schools we worked with were using. They then spent a fortune on cabling but couldn't get it to work properly. It just took up valuable desk space next to our Windows boxes.
Eventually they agreed it was no good, and said they'd take it back, so I disconnected it all and stacked it in pile a corner to be collected: Every year on the anniversary of the pile I printed a little plaque. Usually just before one of the high-ups made his annual visit.
Eventually I think we skipped it all ourselves.
The cabling remained in place, all round the building, mixed in with phone wires, alarm cables, and who knows what else, causing intense confusion for anyone trying to do any work on the building and sometimes trailling on the floor and tripping people up..
As this is a 1980's office and I was an office manager part of the '80's, I'm surprised at the absence of word processors. Sounds so silly now, doesn't it?!? Then, "word processor" was a big piece of hardware; now "word processor" is software. Also, from this long view, it seems likewise comically-ironic and unbelievable one of the leading word-processor vendors was a subsidiary of...Exxon!?!
Alistair ... congrats! ... the article is excellent ... Spring Cleaning ? ... a good example of why not! On the good side ... you might just make money on these old items ... some of them MUST be unique and there is always a market for the most unlikely things!
Thanks for making my day!
If you think vertical filing makes an unwieldy database, you should consider its predecessors: flat filing, chapbooks, and pidgeonholes. The last especially produced some real data-retrieval nightmares, like the Wooton Patent Desk.
JoAnne Yates' Control Through Communication includes an excellent study of the evolution of filing methods through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and their effects on how business was conducted. She has some useful things to say about the typewriter, too.
And hey - I had one of those Olympia typewriters, in that same style of case. It had been my mother's college typewriter. First typewriter I ever used; as a young lad (around 6 or 7) I would copy pages from my favorite novels out with it. I was perhaps a bit monkish.