When To Say Goodbye To Stuff

As a computer ‘guru’, my job is to find out what’s wrong and fix it as fast (and as inexpensively) as possible. It should come as no surprise then that one of my mottos is ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. The companion to that one is, ‘if it’s broke, just fix it’.

I am compelled when these things break to know why (which is accomplished by take-it-all-apart mode), and then I come to the conclusion that: ‘Aha! I can fix that’. The very last thought in my head is ‘Oh, we’ll need to replace that’.

I put full blame and credit for my irresistible compunction to ‘repair and not replace’ firmly upon my father, Richard. When my brother Mark and I were young and impressionable, every Saturday morning the three of us would take our household ‘trash’ to the community dump. With every passing moment of that ten minute drive, our young hearts filled with anticipation as the car transitioned from smooth, blacktop road to the bumpy, gravel one that finally led to the dump. The smell of waste product from 3M (who also used the dump) would permeate the air. We had arrived: treasure hunter paradise.

First we’d look for Ol’ Joe – the aged, wizened old keeper of the dump and all treasures within. He’d point to a spot at the bottom of the pile with his scepter – I mean shovel – for us unload. No sooner had the car backed into that place than my brother and I lept from the car and into the dump in full acquisition mode: bikes – radios – anything with a plug, wall or spark – lawnmowers – wheels. While Dad unloaded, we kids scrambled madly over other people’s garbage for buried treasures. Mark and I were like frenzied coon dogs off leash, crazy with scent, barking ‘over here’ ‘look at this’ ‘here here here!’ and dragged our prizes back to the car.

But we didn’t have a lot of time. Dad would only talk to Joe for a little while after he’d unloaded (I think to give us kids time to find more stuff). We didn’t want to get Ol’ Joe in trouble for letting us take stuff, so we played it cool while another car or truck was unloading. You know that just meant we should ‘stay near the car, don’t touch anything’ – but it didn’t stop us from infra-red scanning and geo-imaging the dump with eagle eyes. Soon as we saw the tail lights of the last folks leaving – BANG – the hunt was on again.

I think we often brought back more than we dumped.

Back at the house, we couldn’t wait to unlock the potential of our booty! YAR! Mark tended toward items of a mechanical nature, I tended towards things electronic. Surely there was nothing wrong with this radio… see! Just a loose tube! It works! Or maybe just a little cleaning of this flywheel and… spark! This engine will run!

We were totally in disbelief of what people through away… perfectly good stuff… easy to fix. These people had to be stupid or something. Every Saturday was Christmas day, just add a little elbow grease.

And now we come to the crux of my compunction: it was burned into my synaptic memory just as sure as ‘don’t leave food on your plate’: Never be one of those people and throw away good stuff. Just fix it. Repair, don’t replace.

Fast forward 30 *cough* years. What I learned as a youth has served me well in my professional life and provides my family a source of income. Those days of examination, evaluation, postulation and experimentation serves me perfectly in my career. Admittedly, when I take some salvaged electronic carcasses to the recycling center, my eyes lock on to all the things around me. Look at that flat screen. Bet I could make it work.

So, while fixing a 5 year old computer is an achievement ($1.00 part… but 6 hours labor) sometimes it would have been better to just say goodbye and get a new one. Especially in the area of consumer electronics, a 2 year old anything is obsolete.

It runs against my grain. I just know that someone is going to see my 1989 Zenith Data Systems Z-SPORT 425S laptop (which still works by the way, DOS 3.1 for the win!) that I threw in the dump and say “Why is this here? It still works! What stupid people!” I have a lot of good memories in that plastic case. How can I throw this away? I’ll just keep it.

And it’s not just me – Mark is infected too. I’ve been to his place. *knowing nod*

To make matters worse, you just know the very moment I throw away that old 200W Compaq Deskpro II power supply, someone’s going to call me and say their old computer isn’t booting up and – uh huh – I used to have the very part that would fix it.

Ultimately, I guess the answer to the question ‘when is it time to say goodbye’ is when the time and cost to fix exceeds the cost to replace. My dad has told me ‘you could be working and earn enough money to just have a professional fix it rather than take the time yourself.’ True with cars, true with computers, true with floormats made from left over high-density plastic that I once used to make a Symbol Microwand III downloading stations (another story, another time… except to acknowledge I still have the downloaders in the garage).

And yes, I am writing this on my old Sony laptop with the bad screen wiring and bad power connector, sharing the desk today by my wife’s old Dell laptop (which the screen goes black on for no reason) and my daughter’s old Sony laptop (which has some odd virus on it which required me to take it apart to separate the hard drive for scanning). In the driveway sits a ‘00 Saturn with a loose rod bearing, a ’95 Dodge Caravan with an engine tick and more rust than metal, kept good company with the ‘94 F ord Explorer which still runs, thanks to Mark and his creative auto repair skills.

Guess I’m still working on that last lesson, Dad.