aheil blog

Bye #14: More HDD Tech Cases

Andreas Heil — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:22:03 +0000

What? Just another piece of hardware – an old external IDE HDD drive case. The case is still – okay – however, the controller does only support discs up to 250GB. Meh.

Where to? Plastic parts to recycling, aluminum case to scrap metal

Bye #13: D-Link Access Point

Andreas Heil — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:43:28 +0000

What? A piece of technology from the last decade. A 2.4 GhZ wireless access point from D-Link. I think this was my first or second access point I got. Whilst I am still running four wireless networks – I even forgot about this access point in a drawer as it is even too slow to see the other wireless networks at all. Hence, bye bye little gadget…

Where to? Scrap electronics/recycling

Bye #12: Still some media left

Andreas Heil — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:29:33 +0000

What? Actually, I did not find any time to post yesterday. Instead of spending time with stuff, I spend time with a very special person. That’s definitely the advantage, of this process, not to worry about many things anymore (I’ll probably write about this in a later post). However, there are still some leftovers from my DVD collection. However, this does not mean something did not have to leave yesterday. Hence, I took some leftovers (still not all of them) from the once so famous DVD collection and sent them to a place far far away…

Where to? eBay

Bye #11: AC Adapters

Andreas Heil — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:26:54 +0000

What? As in every household, two dozens of different A/C adapters live somewhere in a hidden place. It feels like they spawn from nowhere – at least they increase year by year. Usually, one keeps them because you never know when you might need them. However, thanks to a non-existent standard none of them will ever fit any new device you will buy in the future. This is sort of a well known but not yet named law. So, bye bye collection of A/C adapters…

Where to? Electronic scrap and recycling

Total Costs of Ownership

Andreas Heil — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:28:07 +0000

If someone can’t let things go because they did cost ~~much~~ money at some point in time, consider the following:

What was the value of this item once you purchased it?
What would it costs if you had to buy it today again?
Would you spend that money for this item today?
Do you still use this item or do you keep it just because it did cost money some time ago?
What a re the costs of keeping it?

From all thoughts, I propose the latter is the most important. Keeping things does come with cost (time for organizing, time for tidying up,…). If you are not using something at all and probably not using it anytime in the future while you spend time in carrying it from one place to another, there is no ~~rational~~ reason to keep it. Calculate the costs of doing so, and you will realize that the original investment of purchasing it, was only a minor portion of the total costs of ownership…

Bye #10: USB HDD Case

Andreas Heil — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:14:20 +0000

What? A quite stylish (but empty) aluminum case for an external SATA HDD. As various cases pile up in my home office and I recently switched to a dock solution for external HDDs, this one is the first one leaving…

Where to? Still in a very good condition, so eBay

Bye #9: Butter Dish

Andreas Heil — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:21:32 +0000

What? For someone who isn’t eating butter at all, where is the point to keep an empty butter dish? Live can be so easy sometimes…

Where to? Glass and plastic recycling

2011 Spam Statistics

Andreas Heil — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 12:15:14 +0000

As I recently moved my mail server to a new cloud provider, I used this opportunity to check the mail statistics for 2011. All together I had

64.097 mails processed from which

42.469 where spam mails and

375 included viruses.

All together this makes 66.25% of spam. However, only 0,58% of processed mails included viruses, which is a quite surprisingly fact. Over the last year I encountered only two to five spam mails a day in my inbox, and I have not reported any false positive at all. In contrast, I pick up false positives in my GMX junk mailbox on a ~~regular~~ weekly base. For my personal mail server, I am using SpamAssassin with settings, I improved over two to three years as well as a set of various DNS blacklist.

Quite a part of the regular mails origin from various mailing lists and newsletters which leaves me with about 60 mails a day to process. A number to be definitely improved (i.e. reduced) for 2012.

Bye #8: Nintendo GameBoy

Andreas Heil — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:30:34 +0000

What? Another piece of ancient technology. In the late 1980s of the last millennia, Nintendo release one of the first handled consoles. Of course, as a young gadgeteer, I had to get one. I can’t recall how many hours, days or even weeks of my life, I spent in playing Tetris (alone or via link cable!!!).

Where to? Found a new home at eBay, probably someone who is even younger than this device

Bye #7: Texas Instruments TI 30 Galaxy

Andreas Heil — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:51:26 +0000

What? Some ancient piece of hardware from the last millennia. I guess it has to be from the early 1990s. This Texas Instruments TI 30 Galaxy is probably older than most of you kids out there. In case you don’t know what this was for before Pocket PCs and Smartphones did even exists: one used it this thing to perform scientific calculations. You typed in numbers and operators and received the results. Awesome piece of technology – in an age people still used mechanical typewriters…

Where to? Either Deutsches Museum in Munich or scrap electronics – probably the latter…