A Slice Of Life.

[theweaselking]

me: "I have just moved about 80kg of lead. Lead is heavy."

torrain: "What were you doing with 80kg of lead?"

me: "Throwing it away. Because who needs 80kg of lead?"

torrain: "No-one, but who has it in the first place?"

me: "I did. Which is why I had to move it."


I am the most helpful conversationalist.

Comments

[kjn]

I think you'd need some leading questions there.

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

Got rid of all your lead?  Now how are you going to keep secrets from meddling Kryptonians?

[ydna.livejournal.com]

Old, dead uninterruptible power supplies?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yup. A trio of old APC SmartUPSen.

[ydna.livejournal.com]

Freaky. I have a pair of the same that I need to disappear. They "protected" my computer from a brief power outage by shutting down and never turning on again.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

These were rack-mount units that worked perfectly for a number of years, but that we'd replaced as they aged and failed and as our needs for reliable power got larger.

And the recyclers are doing a pickup *today*, which meant all the e-waste needed to be moved to the pickup point yesterday.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

Ah, I was wondering what you do with a large amount of lead. I was hoping that "Throwing it away" didn't involve domestic trash. Aside from the weight, there's the toxicity.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

There are e-waste recyclers all over the place. For household stuff (individual workstations, TVs, laptops, printers etc) you can take it to almost any Best Buy - all three of the ones in Ottawa take e-waste. For more sensitive data (HDDs, etc) you can smash them with a hammer and take them to Best Buy, or pay a bunch of local places $10/disk for destruction with a certificate. (For $15/drive one will let you carry them in and feed them through the shredder yourself) and they'll recycle the leftovers.

For large amounts of e-waste (~15 old desktops, a pile of dead UPSen, a bunch of broken monitors, etc) there's people that will come to you and take it away for free.

[skiriki.livejournal.com]

OMG, I know those, those are complete pain in the ass.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

They're perfectly acceptable A Young Server Room's First UPS candidates.

Which is why I was throwing them away.

[skiriki.livejournal.com]

In early 2000s, we had to haul two of them to my ex-workplace's HQ -- we had bought them from Finnish Army's surplus store (!!!!!) at the request of my boss (brother in law who worked for the same company along with us regularly pops there to see if there's anything interesting, spotted those and called the ex-boss who said that yes, she'd like to have them), and Significant Otter never, EVER wants to see that type of UPS again, 'cause he had to do most of the hauling and the topography through which he had to do that included a steep hill, floor full of stealth surprises ranging from loose components to cat shit... and, oh, of course, that weight.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Ah. I've noticed I still have quite a bit more lead than you, leftovers from replacing the pack on my old electric motorcycle.

At least around here they're worth $5.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I'm happy enough to get rid of them that I'm willing to accept "You'll come to me and take it away, for free?" as a fair deal.

[skington.livejournal.com]

torrain is clearly wrong here. Some (few) people need 80kg of lead.

Although maybe not as many as you might think (http://www.thedailywtf.com/articles/Special-Delivery).

[harald387.livejournal.com]

But which is heavier, 80kg of lead or 80kg of feathers?

[cleodhna.livejournal.com]

Drop each of them in a forest with nobody around to hear it and you'll never know.