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Just heard over the radio that there will be an e-waste drive at Knoxville's Fairgrounds two weeks from Saturday. And that will be that.
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A couple years ago, we inherited a piece of nondescript hardware from the estate of our departed neighbor Otis. Dad had no idea what the black box was, so he had me go through the paces of finding out. It was a satellite receiver box from DirecTV. Since we neither had cable nor a satellite dish it was pretty much useless to us, although it was in working order and would have been completely functional if we also possessed the remote control.

During the months leading to the national digital TV switchover, we attempted to use the receiver box as a pass-through (because we had television sets that lacked the proper connecting hardware) but this wasn't a good solution and we soon got newer TV sets.

So this fall I thought about just returning the thing to DirecTV. Took it to the local franchise office, and the clerk told me..."we don't use those anymore. We switched our systems a couple years ago..." and she instructed me to contact DirecTV corporate's website.

And I did and they replied, "It's completely obsolete. It's your property now and your responsibility."

Showed it to my brother-in-law the more-geek-than-me when it comes to electronics hardware and he said, "Don't want it in my shop! Can't use it for anything!"

So tonight it had an appointment with my monkey-wrench and screwdriver and wire cutters. An hour later it was rendered into half a dozen circuit boards, an empty metal housing, a plastic facia, a grounded power cord (that I suppose I could reuse or convert into an extension cord), a plastic circuit board mount, and an assortment of fasteners, brackets and greeblies. The circuit boards await the next scheduled e-waste drive. Dunno if I have any future use for the metal housing, tho' I'm sure I can just donate it to the Tech Center boys...I know they could likely use it as a "breadboard" case.

It's better to take something like this apart and deal with the components separately than to chuck the whole schmeer in a landfill. And it's somewhat theraputic.
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My dad, once again, liberated a TV set on its way to the recycler. This one is a 1991 RCA model built for HOTEL use. Two remotes, with various degrees of functionality. So Dad wanted me to figure out how to reset it so it would work with a converter box.

At first I thought I would need a master remote control like the ones I used as a Night Auditor in Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. Then I Googled the model number and found a techie fix: there is a little hole on the front and if you stick a long, thin, metal instrument there, you could toggle the Setup functions of the built-in control buttons. So I did that, erased all the channels but #3, and now it's converter box-ready.

I guess Google and me almost add up to a competant technician.
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A few weeks ago (the week before Halloween) I was on a drive and passed by a yard sale and I noticed a camcorder among the offerings. With the switch from tape to DVD format, a lot of tape-based camcorders are out there and unused, and I was thinking if it could be possible to buy one and remove the tape output hardware and replace it with something more compatible...say a digital output to USB and a key drive?

I know this is uber-geekish. But I've always wanted a video camera with which I could terrorize the world express my visual creativity and all that, and I would rather reuse/recycle/renew than buy new. Has anybody done this before? Anybody know where I can look for information?
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So I had this shirt hanging in my closet for years. (It originally came from Sears and was somebody's present to me way back when. I remember wearing it for one of the Tampa Bay Rowdies' July Fourth games...which should be a good enough clue as to how old I'm talkin'.) Hadn't worn it because the fabric around the cuffs was getting threadbare.

Yesterday I cut the sleeves off. It actually works better now.

As for the picture, it was taken at Tampa International Airport, the grand opening of one of the newer terminals. I'm seated at a phone mini-booth. I don't look as good as the shirt.

FP

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Stephen R Bierce

March 2022

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