Yesterday was like Christmas if your Christmas wishlist included a laptop and a way to get rid of mosquitos. Yep, it was a fun day yesterday getting two packages delivered. Too bad I suck at deliveries.
Coincidentally, the two packages arrived on the same day. The first package was from Dell. I've had my Sony Vaio laptop for quite some time now. I'm not sure how long I have owned that laptop, but it has been a long time. I had gotten that laptop when I still worked in Boston, which was well over three years ago. At the time, Sony was offering a trade-up program where they would provide a discount on one of their laptops if you traded in any laptop. It was really a no-brainer to do the trade-up program because I had a decrepit laptop at the time. Plus, there was peer pressure involved since my boss did the trade-up program at the same time.
Sadly, Sony no longer offers a trade-up program. Oh well. Needless to say, my Sony laptop has been a little sluggish of late due to its age. And rather than waste precious time waiting for the computer to boot up and launch certain applications, Karen and I decided that it was time for a new computer. Hence, we went with a Dell Inspirion 14z which was on sale.
Interestingly enough, the same laptop was part of another sale for $50 cheaper three days after I had ordered the laptop. But I have to hand it to Dell. I inquired about the difference and they credited me the difference. Yay Dell! Well, I haven't actually gotten the credit yet, but it is supposed to go through or so they told me.
The other package was from a company called The Mosquito Store. For a couple of years, my Mosquito Magnet has not been working. Because I'm particular about things, I am usually good about maintaining my things. Among those things is the Mosquito Magnet. I would clean it after each season. I'd use the quick clear cartridges as recommended. One season, the Mosquito Magnet never started back up and it has since sat in my garage for some time.
Well, thanks to my favorite brother-in-law (PJ), I had come into possession of another Mosquito Magnet. PJ left it on my front porch one day. Sadly, that particular Mosquito Magnet was in worse shape than mine. After spending a brief moment trying to see if I could use it for parts to fix my own Mosquito Magnet, I decided to see if I could at least do something with it.
Anyway, I came upon a store in Rhode Island that does an exchange program with Mosquito Magnets. Essentially, they send a refurbished Mosquito Magnet when one is sent to them. After some deliberation, I decided to give the company a try. So, I shipped the Mosquito Magnet. Lo and behold, they sent a fully functional Mosquito Magnet back. Granted, I still have one Mosquito Magnet that does not work, but it's better than having two Mosquito Magnets that don't work.
Needless to say, I spent most of yesterday setting up the things that were delivered. I got the Mosquito Magnet up and running in the yard. I added printer drivers, applications, and whatnot to the Dell laptop. For anyone curious, I am using the Dell laptop right now as I type this post. It definitely is nicer than my old laptop. All in all, yesterday was a fun busy day.
Showing posts with label dell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dell. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Thursday, June 3, 2010
I Suck At Recycling Computers
I woke up with my grumpy pants today. The main cause for the grumpiness: the humidity. I absolutely do not function well with the humidity, in part because I radiate so much heat. The combination of my heat and the outside humidity feels awful. (I remember my trip to Hong Kong during the summer after sixth grade... and feeling that sense of... stickiness on my skin. Truly awful.) And as luck would have it, the weather here has been very humid of late. Hence, the grumpiness today.
Now naturally one might ask as to why I did not put on the air conditioning. After all, Karen and I do have central air. Apparently, it was supposed to rain today. We had figured that the rain would cool things down, which in turn would mean that we did not need the air conditioning. We were completely wrong. We waited... and waited... and waited for the rain. Well, the rain never came (at least not when we had expected it to come). So for hours upon hours, I remained cooped up in the house with the humid weather (as our windows were open).
So needless to say, I was not a happy camper. I felt lethargic, sticky, hot, thirsty... complete and absolute grumpiness. If my friend (Hot Amy) were to ever challenge me in a competition again, her best chance of winning would be during a humid day because I really cannot function in humid weather. I guess you could say it's my kryptonite.
Amid the humidity, the major highlight for today was that I was able to recycle some computers. Now, I suck at recycling computers. I have a crazy tendency to be a hoarder/tinkerer when it comes to computers. Karen makes fun of me for having so many computers in the house. And the sad thing is, the majority of the computers are not working. (Hence... the tinkering because I try to re-purpose them.)
According to my rationale, my tinkering is somewhat in line with the three R's for the environment: reduce, reuse, and recycle. (It would fall under the "reuse" category... except that I have had very little time to actually reuse them. My original intent was to reuse them. It just never turned out that way.) Sadly, I have amassed quite a collection of computers.
Rather than continue maintaining the scrap heap of old computers, I decided to do the next best thing: recycle them. Recycling is a must because computers can contain things that are detrimental to the environment and consequently need to be disposed of properly. Landfills will not do the job. That's why there is a category called e-waste... for electronic stuff.
Anyway, luckily for me the computers that are in my scrap heap collection are all Dell computers. Dell offers free recycling for all of its products. It's a very nice program. All you have to do is pack up the computer in a box, affix a label to the box, call FedEx to have the computer picked up, and that's it. Done. Once the computer is picked up and shipped off to Dell, the computer is essentially recycled and you can feel good that you helped the environment. Easy.
All you really have to do is make sure that the hard drive has been wiped clean. I actually have some cables now that can connect directly to the hard drive and make the hard drive function like an external drive. So wiping the old computer hard drives clean was an easy task to accomplish.
I had to wipe four hard drives because I was recycling two old Dell computers that each had two hard drives in them (as a result of my tinkering). As much as I enjoyed tinkering with the computers, I actually am glad that I was able to recycle the two computers today. It just freed up some space... or clutter around the house. I wasn't using the old computers, so why keep them, right? I'm sure Karen was equally thrilled.
I still have a couple of computers remaining that are in need of repair. I have yet to decide if it is worth keeping them to work on them, or if it would make sense to just recycle those as well. With my ever shrinking window of free time these days, it may make sense for the latter, but we'll see. Hopefully my amassed collection of old computers won't get too big by the time I make that decision.
Now naturally one might ask as to why I did not put on the air conditioning. After all, Karen and I do have central air. Apparently, it was supposed to rain today. We had figured that the rain would cool things down, which in turn would mean that we did not need the air conditioning. We were completely wrong. We waited... and waited... and waited for the rain. Well, the rain never came (at least not when we had expected it to come). So for hours upon hours, I remained cooped up in the house with the humid weather (as our windows were open).
So needless to say, I was not a happy camper. I felt lethargic, sticky, hot, thirsty... complete and absolute grumpiness. If my friend (Hot Amy) were to ever challenge me in a competition again, her best chance of winning would be during a humid day because I really cannot function in humid weather. I guess you could say it's my kryptonite.
Amid the humidity, the major highlight for today was that I was able to recycle some computers. Now, I suck at recycling computers. I have a crazy tendency to be a hoarder/tinkerer when it comes to computers. Karen makes fun of me for having so many computers in the house. And the sad thing is, the majority of the computers are not working. (Hence... the tinkering because I try to re-purpose them.)
According to my rationale, my tinkering is somewhat in line with the three R's for the environment: reduce, reuse, and recycle. (It would fall under the "reuse" category... except that I have had very little time to actually reuse them. My original intent was to reuse them. It just never turned out that way.) Sadly, I have amassed quite a collection of computers.
Rather than continue maintaining the scrap heap of old computers, I decided to do the next best thing: recycle them. Recycling is a must because computers can contain things that are detrimental to the environment and consequently need to be disposed of properly. Landfills will not do the job. That's why there is a category called e-waste... for electronic stuff.
Anyway, luckily for me the computers that are in my scrap heap collection are all Dell computers. Dell offers free recycling for all of its products. It's a very nice program. All you have to do is pack up the computer in a box, affix a label to the box, call FedEx to have the computer picked up, and that's it. Done. Once the computer is picked up and shipped off to Dell, the computer is essentially recycled and you can feel good that you helped the environment. Easy.
All you really have to do is make sure that the hard drive has been wiped clean. I actually have some cables now that can connect directly to the hard drive and make the hard drive function like an external drive. So wiping the old computer hard drives clean was an easy task to accomplish.
I had to wipe four hard drives because I was recycling two old Dell computers that each had two hard drives in them (as a result of my tinkering). As much as I enjoyed tinkering with the computers, I actually am glad that I was able to recycle the two computers today. It just freed up some space... or clutter around the house. I wasn't using the old computers, so why keep them, right? I'm sure Karen was equally thrilled.
I still have a couple of computers remaining that are in need of repair. I have yet to decide if it is worth keeping them to work on them, or if it would make sense to just recycle those as well. With my ever shrinking window of free time these days, it may make sense for the latter, but we'll see. Hopefully my amassed collection of old computers won't get too big by the time I make that decision.
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