Auntie Weasel's Chifforobe of Technology

I actually own the shabby piece of furniture pictured on the front page. It lived in the shabby family hunting cabin for decades and, boy, it shows. Genuine cowboys have probably peed on this thing.

Today, it's stuffed full of old motherboards, patch cords, video cards, keyboards, dead mice (who knows how many kinds?), floppy disks, bernoulli cartridges, manuals, printouts and spare booze. (Okay, the booze doesn't fit the general theme, but I have lots of booze and only the one chifforobe).

Most of it is utterly worthless, but how can I throw away a complete DOS 3.1 manual set? Remember those? Real manuals, printed on paper, in three-ring binders in canvas-covered boxes. We hadn't yet learned to pay hundreds of dollars for a cardboard box and a disk in 1985.

How can I throw away working motherboards? I mean, yeah, they're 286 and 386 and 486 motherboards, but there's not a thing in the world wrong with them. Once upon a time, they were high tech. Scary high tech. In their day, they were illegal-to-export-to-China high tech. When I first began dabbling in this stuff, they would've been NASA-only-wishes, lost-alien-civilization high-tech. So what if the automatic toilet flusher in the loo at the airport has a higher spec today?

I once dreamed of covering the walls in my computer room with old circuit boards. I collected enough to do one wall, then I thought it might be a little too much like building on top of sacred indian burial ground. Who knows what wraith or revenant or restless spirit might waft through my shell sessions, gibbering COBOL and leaving behind an acrid whiff of hot silicon? Some signals you try not to tune in.

Still, I've got to get rid of this stuff somehow. It's beginning to spill out of the drawer and wander the house. I suspect it has begun to breed. Maybe if I document it, take a few pictures and tell a few stories, I can bear to throw some of it away.

Hahaha...yeah.

C:> NOT READY ERROR READING DRIVE C: ABORT, RETRY, IGNORE?



	About this section Wednesday, March 10, 2004 When I was twelve, my best friend had one of those Scary Mothers. You know, the kind of mother all the kids instinctively kept their distance from, without being able to articulate why. She had a pale moon face and dead eyes like dents poked in a wad of dough with your fingers. My own mother met her just once, and the woman told her in slow, flat, emotionless ruralese "I used to have five children, but the chifforobe fell on one uv'm and kilt it." Brrrrr. Chifforobe of Death. I actually own the shabby piece of furniture pictured on the front page. It lived in the shabby family hunting cabin for decades and, boy, it shows. Genuine cowboys have probably peed on this thing. Today, it's stuffed full of old motherboards, patch cords, video cards, keyboards, dead mice (who knows how many kinds?), floppy disks, bernoulli cartridges, manuals, printouts and spare booze. (Okay, the booze doesn't fit the general theme, but I have lots of booze and only the one chifforobe). Most of it is utterly worthless, but how can I throw away a complete DOS 3.1 manual set? Remember those? Real manuals, printed on paper, in three-ring binders in canvas-covered boxes. We hadn't yet learned to pay hundreds of dollars for a cardboard box and a disk in 1985. How can I throw away working motherboards? I mean, yeah, they're 286 and 386 and 486 motherboards, but there's not a thing in the world wrong with them. Once upon a time, they were high tech. Scary high tech. In their day, they were illegal-to-export-to-China high tech. When I first began dabbling in this stuff, they would've been NASA-only-wishes, lost-alien-civilization high-tech. So what if the automatic toilet flusher in the loo at the airport has a higher spec today? I once dreamed of covering the walls in my computer room with old circuit boards. I collected enough to do one wall, then I thought it might be a little too much like building on top of sacred indian burial ground. Who knows what wraith or revenant or restless spirit might waft through my shell sessions, gibbering COBOL and leaving behind an acrid whiff of hot silicon? Some signals you try not to tune in. Still, I've got to get rid of this stuff somehow. It's beginning to spill out of the drawer and wander the house. I suspect it has begun to breed. Maybe if I document it, take a few pictures and tell a few stories, I can bear to throw some of it away. Hahaha...yeah. C:> NOT READY ERROR READING DRIVE C: ABORT, RETRY, IGNORE?