Down through the years I have often trawled in bins and skips (dumpsters) in search of interesting rubbish of the tech variety to hack/repair/re-use or just to salvage some parts from. I have managed to get quite a few really great things over time and once I carried a massive oscilloscope home on a sack truck to cannibalise it for parts. Today I was walking back from my physiotherapy appointment through the grounds of the University when I noticed a real gem dumped in the back of a truck along with other various items that were all destined for the dump. I immediately found the driver of the parked truck and the following conversation took place...
Me; Hi, are you the guy driving the truck?
Guy; Yes, what can I do for you?
Me; I noticed a piece of rubbish in the ba...
Guy; No!
Me; I just wanted to know if...
Guy; No!
Me; Could I just finish? I just want to...
Guy; No!
Apparently, and I would have known if I could read minds, the stuff that gets dumped by the college must get dumped INTACT and cannot be interfered with by anyone for...wait for it...HEALTH and SAFETY reasons. It seems that there is a worry that if someone takes some rubbish and harms themselves with it then the college may be liable. OK, I get it but it strikes me as a bit full-on doing things like that. The guy that was driving the truck reassured me that "everything gets recycled". Well, I sort of figured that one out for myself but why? In this age of hackerspaces and makerspaces as well as the proliferation of robot builders it could be a good idea to offer these bits to students and other interested people so that they can use the redundant plant for interesting projects. Rules are rules I suppose but it still rankles that some really choice hardware is getting dumped. It wouldn't surprise me if the 'scope still worked ok. The trouble is though that yes, it IS possible that somebody could get hurt messing withh a machine that may have some problems but if the person is a tech then surely they would have enough presence of mind to exercise all of the usual caution when dealing with a potentially dangerous machine. I really wanted to argue the point with the truck guy but there would have been little point. The thing that I found interesting was that when I said that the 'scope was worth a few hundred the guy REALLY changed his tune. Maybe I have opened up a new avenue in the electronics hobby for the guy though I doubt it. I resigned myself to not getting to hack the 'scope and tried to think about something else. I did though, take a photograph of it just so I could post the picture. It is sort of sad that those cool retro knobs will never find their way onto one of my homebrew projects. The thing seems WAAAY more desirable when it is just out of reach - hey, I'm only human. Here's the picture...
I need to get friendly with that truck driver I think.
The physio appointment that I mentioned earlier went quite well too. The physiotherapist was very encouraged by my progress and to be honest so was I. I have managed a 50% increase in my flexibility and improved strength too. I have a new regimen of exercises to do too so hopefully in a few weeks I will be even closer to being back to normal. I took another picture while I was in the hospital. It was of someone that spends a lot of their time in the physio department...
I've tried to format the image so that it appears the correct way up but my efforts so far have not worked. Sometime I'll get around to learning how to do it properly. Anyway dear readers, I will close for now owing to the fact that I am VERY tired. I will try to get some more writing posted soon but I have a couple of essays that need doing and IF I am ever going to submit them then they are going to have to be written first. I hope it goes ok. G'nite.
