Time to Clean my Home Office

It is the end of 2020 and a lot has changed in the world. If you had told me that I would spend from March until now working from home instead of going into the office, I would not have believed you. It looks like I will continue to do so until July and maybe even longer. That has me doing some cleaning of my home office as old electronic equipment has a tendency to accumulate in it. Unfortunately it is not as easy as just throwing old computers in the trash and letting the garbage man deal with it.

The catalyst for my post today is that I have an old ham radio and linear amplifier that is just taking up space in my office. While I could set it up and play with it, I have newer radios that are easier to use and work significantly better. In one of my ham radio magazines, I found an add for a group that wants old radio donations and so I contacted them today. They will take the radio equipment and give me a tax donation receipt. The only catch is that they cannot pay for me to ship it to them. I will have to pay that but they will give me a second receipt equal to the shipping costs as a cash donation. I don't mind helping out an organization that uses my old equipment to help kids learn. So that is where I will be sending the radio. What else can I get rid of?

I have some really old televisions from before the flat-panel days. You shouldn't just dump those in the garbage no matter how tempting it may be. I also have a number of old desktop computers that I want to get rid of. Ultimately I would like to put everything in the back of my truck and take it to one place that will accept it all. The local Best Buy will accept most old electronics, including old television sets. A quick Internet search let me to Earth911.com that has a link at the top of the page titled, "Where to Recycle." Just tell it what you want to recycle and put in your zip code. I found a place near me that accepts all sorts of hazardous and electronic waste. It is managed by the local government and free for all residents of the county where I live.

Yes it would be nice to donate a bunch of worthless computer equipment and get a hefty tax write-off. Unfortunately your donation needs to be of value to someone in order to get a tax deduction. My old ham radio still can be used even though it was manufactured in 1965. The only use for a computer that old is in a museum.

One word of caution about old mobile phones and computers: you want to be sure to clean all of your information from them. For mobile phones it is easy, just beat the screen with a hammer and drop the thing in salt water for a day or so. It will corrode all of the electronics so they are unusable. For computers, be sure to remove the hard drive and destroy that. Rotating disks are a bit tougher to destroy and so pull all the screws out and tear the enclosure apart. Then rub your fingers all over the platters as that will make it almost impossible for anyone to pull data off the disk.

If destruction is not your method of choice for destroying old hard drives, you can always find a utility that allows you to write all 1's or 0's across the entire drive. That is probably a little more elegant but not nearly as much fun.

Time to Clean my Desk

You can tell when I have been incredibly busy as my desk doesn't get cleaned. I was looking at my desk in the office this morning and thinking that I really need to clean it up. I have mentioned before how a good work environment is critical to helping focus on a project. This morning I have some extra time and so I will clean up my desk.

I am trying to figure out why my desk gets so messy. Part of the problem is that I think I am afraid to throw anything away. The moment my trash has been emptied is exactly when I realize that I shouldn't have thrown something away. The sad thing is that what I really need is a note scribbled in the margin of an unimportant and unrelated paper.

Another reason my desk gets so messy is that I take a lot of notes. Generally I try to use an engineering notebook for all of the important stuff. If I know I won't need the information in the future, I will write on a yellow tablet and then throw it away when I am done. Unfortunately I will write one of those super-important and unrelated notes in the margin and end up keeping the paper and cluttering my desk.

Finally I like to create piles. If I don't know what to do with something, I will put it in a pile of other stuff I don't know what to do with. It is a practice that drives my wife crazy. She will walk around the house questioning me about piles of junk in various corners. Eventually the piles get moved to my office which is where they needed to go anyways. I guess that means I am good at getting my wife to clean up after me. Now I just wish she would come hang out in my office at work.

Time to Clean the Office

Monday I will be starting a new project and so I get to spend today cleaning my office in preparation. The problem is that I am not really sure what to do with some hardware I received from an old project. I need to find space for it so I am not constantly working around it.

Last year I developed some kiosk software for the home improvement industry. I now have a kiosk at my house. The thing is huge! There are sample pieces of cabinetry in my garage with the computer part sitting in my office. The computer has two screens. One is a touch-screen that the customer uses to provide input while the other screen shows video of the manufacturing process for the products being sold.

The problem is that my office is already filled with computer equipment and I don't have room for two screens. Do I build a shelf above the laser printer and stack the color ink-jet on top of it? Nope that won't work because the color printer is also my scanner and that makes the scanner too difficult to use. Maybe I should move one of the two Playstation2's? Nope that won't work because there still won't be enough room. Besides, how will my sons be able to play video games against eachother if one of the Playstations is taken down.

I could try and find a storage place for the kiosk computer but I am still doing active development with it. Part of the purpose of actually having a kiosk is so I can see how the software runs on it. I guess I will just have to make room for it somewhere. I think if I swap locations with the touch screen and the paper cutter, everything fits. Yep that just might work. I guess I can't put this off any longer.