I am in the midst of another office cleanup. Unlike last year, I don’t think I’ll bore / shock you with too many pictures. But as I shuffle things around, I have to occasionally shut down the network- including the server that provides this website. I expect the outages to be fairly brief: so far, there have been three outages of under thirty minutes each. But you have been warned.

One thing that is different this year is that I am attempting to dispose of a vast quantity of outdated/no longer used computer bits. I have four chassis, three of which have partial or nearly complete PCs ranging from a pentium III to a dual processor Athlon. There are also three CRT monitors, a stack of hard drives, another stack of network hubs and cards, and several boxes of “miscellaneous parts” (including RAM, sound cards, and other odds and ends). Most of the stuff is over five years old, and I can’t honestly tell you why I’ve held on to it other than it is hard to dispose of.

I plan on renting a truck later this week to cart it all to the Goodwill electronics recycling depot: they reuse what they can, and break down/dispose of what they can’t use. The scary thing is that I need a truck… I’ll probably post a picture or two of the loaded truck once it is all done. And probably a picture of the finished re-org: the “in progress” pictures would be truly frightening.

I have a stainless steel coffee mug that Irene bought me a while back that I really like.  I use it several times a day.  It is an extremely well made Oxo mug, highly polished inside, so it took a long time to build up a stain.  But eventually, even a really good coffee mug needs more than just plain soap and water to make it sparkle.

So, I did a bit of research: how do you clean coffee stains from stainless steel coffee mugs?  The two suggestions I found that sounded easiest were baking soda or powdered dishwasher detergent.  In either case, you mix a tablespoon or so of powder with a full cup of water, shake or stir, and let it sit for a while.  Sounds easy enough.

I couldn’t find any baking soda, and Irene was already asleep for the night.  So dishwasher detergent it is.  We have those little tablets instead of granules, but I’m a handy guy: take the tablet still sealed in plastic, pound on the counter top- voila, powder.  I wasn’t sure exactly how much to use, but the entire tablet had been powdered, so I poured the whole thing in.  I added water from our “instant boiling water” dispenser, closed the cup, shook, and set it on the counter.  I then wandered back to my computer to continue my usual wanderings around the Internet.

A few minutes later, there was a BANG! and some rattling sounds from the direction of the kitchen.  I knew the kitten had been playing around a bit, so I went to see what kind of trouble she’d gotten into.  What I saw when I arrived took a few minutes to process.

On the floor was a strange black object.  On the counter was an odd looking stainless steel thing, and lots of water lying about.  After about 5 seconds I figured out what had happened: my coffee mug had exploded.

To be more precise, the dishwasher detergent had produced a lot of gas, and the sealed coffee mug was so air-tight (the Oxo mug is extremely well sealed) that it had no where to go.  It blew the top (plastic) part of the mug cleanly off.  I picked up the odd looking black bit, and realized it was the lid plus the ring that attaches the lid to the stainless steel.  I noticed it was designed to snap back into place, so snap it back in I did.  A few moments later, I found a rubber seal ring several feet away that was probably supposed to go on the mug before the plastic part snapped back on- unfortunately, it took a lot of force to put back together…and it’s a lot easier to apply compression force than expansion force with my bare hands.

I calmly shook the (slightly reduced) dishwasher detergent + water mixture in the mug again, cleaned up the mess, left the mug unsealed this time, then went back to the computer.  

The end of the story is that the mug is beautifully clean- the dishwasher detergent removed the coffee staining without any scrubbing whatsoever, and did so in under an hour.  I have a spare rubber seal in case I ever somehow get the mug apart again.  Interestingly, the mug still seems to be totally water-tight, but I’m sure that rubber seal had *some* purpose.

And yes, I’m letting the mug soak in plain water to clean out any residual dishwashing chemicals.  I knew the stuff was nasty, but the explosive power of the expanding gasses produced by simple dishwasher detergent is pretty impressive. 

In the “my God, I can’t believe he took pictures of that…” department, I give you…pictures of my office cleanup!

For the protection of the squeamish, I’ve put the pictures behind a break.  Click “Read the rest…” to see them…if you dare!

Read the rest of this entry »

Irene is going in for her second hip surgery next week.  I’ll be working from home for a while as she recovers and gets mobile.  In preparation for this, I’m taking *this* week off to re-organize my office and take care of a few other things around the house to make things ready for Robo-Irene.

I’ve let my office go, basically stacking junk on top of junk for over a year.  To get things under control is a major project, and starts with (incredibly) making things even messier.  First I need to sort and discard things in order to make space to achieve some organization.  One of my objectives is to clear a space for a new “game console desk” I want to set up.  I have this idea it would be neat to have a monitor and an Xbox 360 in my office for gaming.  Another objective is to make my work space a bit more functional: the layout of a couple pieces of furniture (the filing cabinet and a “trunk” I have) are less than ideal.

Stage one is complete- I’ve emptied the trunk, cleared out the cabinet, and shifted them around.  In the process, I’ve created one full curb-side bag of garbage, a similarly full bag of cardboard, and a half full bag of recyclable paper.  I have also displaced about 30 miscellaneous computer game and software boxes, and collected another box full of various cordless and cellular phone parts.  And I generated a discard pile of antiquated technology: joyless joysticks, hopeless hard drives, pathetic processors, crappy CD ROMs, cantankerous keyboards, and moribund mice.  I also have a bunch of 35 mm film and a decent but very old Canon 35 mm film camera that I’ll likely never use again.  And as a real blast from the past- a Polaroid “instant” film camera, I’m guessing one of the last ones they made.  And an unopened package of film for it.

One interesting and unexpected “collection”: I seem to have about half a dozen of those little clip-on “wrist wrest” attachments.  Apparently every keyboard I’ve ever bought has one, and I never use them- if I want a wrist wrest, I use one of those gel pad rests.  I wonder how many discarded keyboard wrist wrests exist in various landfills?

I managed to cut a trail back to my computer keyboard to write this post.  I’m going to have some lunch now and then see if I can cut through some of the software boxes and organize the CDs/DVDs they contain.  Stage 2, hopefully starting tomorrow, will be to shut down my computers and “re-do” all the wiring.  With two kittens in the house we’ve had a couple of “unexpected power shutdowns” as they’ve discovered various ways to turn off the powerbars…and the wires themselves are very vulnerable.  I’d like to keep as much of that stuff out away from inquisitive little paws and teeth as I can.