In the garden, and RAIN!!! (2)
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Friday, September 11, 2026 15:29
VIEWED: 338648
PAGE 714 of 834
Oh right....
I forgot to mention that I took the mirror out of the medicine cabinet before sanding it. You can see that in the picture with the sanded pieces. It looks like a picture frame now. Unfortunately, the mirror itself is actually glued to the backer board that screwed into the frame from the inside of the cabinet. It was stained darkly, and the old shine leaves me to believe there is quite a bit of poly on it too. I'm way too afraid to sand that at all, even by hand. I can't think of a way where I'd be able to apply the force necessary to sand that down without scratching or breaking the mirror, or at least being paranoid the entire time it is what I would end up doing.
So I'm going to leave it like that before I put it back in. I think it will look cool though. Nothing else in the room is going to be stained wood except for the inside of the drawers behind the faces when you pull them out, but it's not something you would ever see except for the few minutes out of the day max that the cabinet would ever be open, and I think the contrast inside could look interesting too. If this were all low-quality stuff I probably would put in the extra time and work to do all of it and even risk breaking that window, but it's all mid-to-high-quality stuff. And the medicine cabinet is by far the highest quality of the bunch with every single piece of it being cut from Oak.
The lowest quality piece I have is the over-the-toilet cab that is oak in front with oak doors, but everything else is veneered particle board and hardboard. That will get the full treatment, and I don't think you'd even notice that it wasn't as high quality as the rest of it. The trained eye would notice that you don't see any wood grain on the sides and inside of the toilet cab like you do anywhere else, but my guess is that 99% of people would never even suspect it wasn't all a matching set after it's done.
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Oh boy... Decided to empty out that curio cabinet mess.
Most of it is good stuff, and I didn't put too much in the toss pile first go-around.
The last time I remember thinking about wall plugs that are designed for a USB cord to plug into them and some other device was back when I never had one when I needed one because I didn't have a cell phone or a lot of other new tech over the years that came with them. I know I took them whenever other people were getting rid of old cables and stuff. I think I can stop now. I counted 14 of them just in that one, big, nearly-overflowing drawer 
.
How could you ever expect to remember you have some of these things when you need them and why hold onto all of them when you're not using them??? Well... there are reasons...
Examples???
I found what's at least a 3 foot long heavy duty looking USB extension cable with the Amazon store logo on it. I have no recollection of buying this or anybody giving it to me. I have no current use for it now, but I could think of about 100 ways of making great use of it with a project or something. When I have a big TV, I might ditch the AIO on my coffee table altogether and just use that thing from across the room if it doesn't make me cross-eyed doing it. Plugging that thing into the computer and having a hub at the end of it for a keyboard and mouse could be a cheaper option than getting wireless stuff that always needs recharging or new batteries.
I found a really heavy duty optical cable that dwarfs the piddly crap that came with my cheap soundbar and subwoofer combo. I remember at one point I was going to try swapping them and then throwing the cheap little one out. But I also vaguely remember that I already tried that, yet here we are with both cables still (which means I didn't throw something out when I had a reason to). I don't know if the vague recollection of trying it out and failing is a real memory, or something I've filled the blanks in, but now's the time to test it out for real. I've got two sound bars now and this cable would be better than either of theirs and there's no reason it should be taking up a good chunk of space in that drawer.
Wireless internet adapter nubs, blutooth nubs, USB hubs... all of it is useful...
Anything of this age I won't throw out unless it's blatant crap they put in with cheap products. The stuff that you know there isn't a single bit of copper wiring inside is all going to get pitched. But the rest of it can be boxed up and put away for projects after I finish my "outlet layout" and how I want charging stations set up. I have the equipment available to set up a charging station in every room of the house, and a furniture layout that would make it worth doing in most of those rooms. No better time than now to set that all up.
And when I'm doing that I should really go through the several boxes of ancient wires and cables and other junk I have upstairs. I'm sure that I could probably get rid of 5 times as much stuff up there as I'd be putting away. I've got a few hundred feet of speaker wires. Some of it really thick gauge too. But I can't see what I'm going to use that for anymore. I don't even max out the volume on my cheap little soundbar and I gave away my nice speakers years ago. I think that big house party I imagined I was going to have here one day was probably already going to happen quite a while back if it ever was. I know a guy who gets a kick out of recycling metal that I haven't seen in a while. Maybe I'll drop by one day and give him a few boxes of that sweet copper.
Because otherwise it's all going to end up in my garage now and take up shelf space for another 5 years like half the stuff I've currently got up on them now that needs to be sorted through.
Getting things outside the house is only half the battle.
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Yeah... wow. It's just crazy.
My dad brought over a fairly weighty Samsung soundbar a few years back. Looks great. Only two problems with it though... It didn't come with a remote, and there is no plug.
Maybe you could find something online? Yeah... maybe. Or maybe one day I'll look and sort through what I have first.
I go through what had to be 12 different possibilities. No... Make that 20..... More?
These are the sturdy plugs to the wall that go into a fairly long brick and then a pretty thin wire that goes into your laptop. But the Soundbar needs 24V input. Most of the cables I had like that were only 12V. The closest I got was a few that were 19.5V. I had one that was a whopping 32V in there. I've read that it's alright if the plugs specs are over the needs of the device, but I don't think it would be alright by that much. I didn't even try it but I would guess that the size of the hole is too small for it if I did. Last resort I will look into this but I don't hold out any hope for that.
I'm going to take another look out in the garage and see if I left any bags or boxes my dad may have brought over, or I took from a friend or something. I believe I brought it all in, and I've exhausted all of the options I had up in my attic.
I think I'm just going to be leaving that thing out early on a nice warm, dry trash day for somebody else to pick up and add to their own hoard. Even if I had to pay $30 for a replacement plug and another $10 for a remote, it's probably a steal. But am I going to do it? Ever?
I don't know.
Maybe I'll check out the specs and reviews on it tonight since I've already got the model number. If it's actually worth the cost I might consider it. I just wish I had a way to test it first to make sure it even worked before I invested in the plug. I wouldn't have to risk the remote right away since there are buttons on the thing.
Maybe I can use one of those 19.5V just for a minute to see if it works? I'll look into that. I wanted to see if I could buy a cheap one on Amazon and the ones going for around $15 are false advertisement. They claim to be 24V, but the photographs on the listing clearly show the plugs saying they're only 19.5V. And I have no way of knowing if the photo is wrong or if they're straight up scamming. No reviews worthwhile to paint a picture.
So I'm actually assuming that 19.5V has to at least be fire-safe in this situation, or we'd probably be hearing horror stories all the time of people burning their homes down using sub-standard electric plugs on Amazon. I think it would even be safe on the product itself or you'd probably have heard about a lot of people blowing out their expensive soundbars with cheap Amazon alternatives with false labeling. The only drawback would probably be a lower quality sound and/or the volume not going nearly as loud as it could.
I don't think this is going to turn into another whole-home dehoard situation, but this is the kind of thing I mean here.
I've got a collection of probably at least 20 plugs, just of that style and not counting all of the smaller ones that I have... and when I needed one, none of them were compatible with the needs.
If I don't get rid of all of them, I'm at least getting rid of the cheap ones. I saw a lot of overlap in the specs while I was looking today, and there's no reason to keep five of these things I'll probably never end up using for anything. Especially when two of them are Samsung and two of them are from a brand you never heard of and weigh about half as much.
I lost the daylight and I really don't want to be lighting up the whole front of the house for hours just sitting on the floor going through everything all night. I'm going to have to live with that mess tonight. Maybe tomorrow too if I don't get through it all.
Now that a bulk of it is out for sorting, I'm going to dig out the rest
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Hah.... those laptops were groady. I knew one of them were being pitched no matter what because I remember melting part of the edge of it mistaking it for my ashtray back in the drinking days.
The other one probably would have looked alright if I cleaned it up. I have very vague recollections of using that thing back when I was doing that mechatronics course. A heavy, ancient Gateway. I think I got it from my mom or step-dad eons ago.
It would have been cool to see if I could get that thing to do anything reasonable with Linux before I pitched it but neither screen was even working anymore. Sounded like everything was firing up right but you couldn't see it. Hard drives were hardly worth the effort too. 250GB on one and 100GB on the other. I'll just get the magnets out of the smaller one and put the 250GB in an enclosure since it's still bigger than most of my thumb sticks by quite a bit. At least until I get something bigger.
Took the memory out and will look at it in the light tomorrow before pitching it. I can't imagine they're worth anything with how small those drives were.
Looks like the 32V plug would fry my soundbar, and I doubt it would be small enough to fit anyhow. Even the 19V plugs are different sizes, as that's what both laptops ran on and I had to dig out their plugs from that set. I didn't realize they weren't with the laptops when I found them. Sounds like I was probably right that as long as the pin fits the hole you can possibly get a 19V plug to get it to fire up although it will be under powered. Maybe I'll get lucky and one of these will at least let me know that it works before I buy a plug. I did find one for 20 bucks that's still off-brand, but I can see the specs are right on the label and somebody mentioned it getting their Samsung soundbar to work in the reviews, and also mentioning it was hard to find one that was actually the right specs.
Those laptops are heavy. Probably another 30lbs of crap out of my house right there.
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Well, hearing aides are all cleaned for tomorrow and I have made a slow start on redoing over thing for that publisher.
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Out soon. Will put on a jacket as we are only sitting at 13C which is 56F. Hearing test cancelled have to go in and reschedule before they head off to lunch.
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No more cables or wires in the garage. Verified.
While it's light outside today, I need to kind of go through the junk that's piled up in the small bedroom and see if I missed any in there. It should mostly be just bags of clothes I have to go through before I decide what goes to goodwill.
Got a few more boxes upstairs I need to bring down and go through. I'll have to start making some decisions about what gets thrown out too, since I only want 20-30% of that stuff going back upstairs. I'm throwing all those damn plugs out once I know I'm not throwing away a plug for something that still needs it. The only time I ever needed one and none of them fit. If I want to do youtube projects down the road that needs a plug, I can go to goodwill and buy a plug. I don't need to keep goodwill bin crap here.
I may break off to finish priming the pieces I had started the other day. Maybe not. We'll see how the day goes. I don't want to be dancing around crap all over the floor 2 nights in a row, so doing this part of the dehoard is probably going to be my main focus today.
I found a cool little clear plastic bank that is near perfectly cubed. I'm pretty sure I got that when my friend's father in law passed and they gave me his pretty much brand new fridge. I remember thinking I could find good use for it out in my garage since clear things show what's inside of them.
But this thing is nice enough to be inside the house, especially if it's in what is essentially a gigantic junk drawer. It's too big for thumb drives, and I've already got a good solution for those. I think it will be good for the USB plug outlets. I don't feel like taking time to sit there and test all of them, so I'm just going to throw them all in that box and call it a day on those. I just don't need to be taking any more, so if I can see I've got a big clear box of them it should jog my memory. I'll never need one for the rest of my life and it takes up very little space.
What I really need to be doing is saying NO when people try to give me their junk though.
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Found some cool things I've never seen before in the bag of crap my old man had given me that was my youngest brother's. Hes one of the two Apple Guys in the family. Most of them were just curiosities, really. I'm not going to keep at least 1 type of every adapter under the sun. I've gone nearly 50 years without ever seeing these before, and they were old enough to be in a tangled mess inside a white trashbag for a few years in my garage, so I'm sure they're nothing new.
He's got money, so I can tell that overall the quality of the cables in his bag were really good. Fortunately, most of it wasn't Apple stuff. But I found the two best Apple charging cords and I'm going to keep them. I'll be sure to put one of them in the bedroom charging station I'm going to be putting together. I'm almost never without the proper cord should anybody need one, so why throw them all out just because I'll never own anything by Apple? When my brother visits for a while he can just plug his phone in on the night stand instead of digging around his bags for his cord.
There's almost no room on the floor anymore, but I still need to get that stuff down from the attic so I can go through everything at once. I've exhausted any other place I could imagine would be hiding any other unused cables.
I'm getting a little heated though, looking for a small leather pouch that I use to hold USB drives. None of my drives are worth anything since they're mostly hand-me downs and none of them particularly large in size. And I know where my one that I'd call important is. But I put various Operating Systems on some of these things so I can install them to new computers on the fly. One of the things I want to do soon is going to require doing this, and I'd rather not go through the process of burning more drives if I don't need to. I think I'm missing about 6 of them at least with that pouch.
I'm sure it will turn up somewhere. Everything is kind of a mess right now because of the bathroom remodel, and the fact that I didn't really clean the bedroom before my dad's visit and I just kind of moved all the stuff that didn't belong there into the smaller bedroom.
Yeah...
That's no good. I think I need this. It's time. Gotta get rid of the crap again.
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Back and done for today. Hearing aide appointment reset for this Friday. Place was a little busy. First lady needed her hearing aides fixed and a box of batteries, lady in front of me needed a box of batteries. Front desk lady had to call for help for another couple with broken hearing aides. Then there was me who needed to set a new appointment and oh, I got a box of batteries too. Poor woman, she set my appointment and forgot the batteries.
Cleaned off a section of the kitchen table and now it is covered again. Went through my pins finally and save quite a few including one that says, "Beam me up Scotty. There is no intelligent life down here." I've always liked that one.
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Yeah... Heh. We'll make great pets.
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