Trash & you

[guyjin]

Pick any of the above that you agree with.

Also, have you ever gotten anything interesting from other people's trash?
We're all familliar with Tatsujin's recent score, but what did _you_ get?

I've gotten an ipod and a USB hard drive, among other things.

edit: I'm a dumbass. Could one of you smart, hardworking mods move it to chit-chat? 

[NecroPhile]

One man's trash is another man's treasure.  There's nothing wrong with recycling something useful, though I don't recall ever finding anything worth salvaging from the dust bin. 

[nat]

I've never spent any time rooting around in garbage.

On that note, I've never seen anything worth taking on casual inspection while passing by a dumpster. Usually all I see is.... garbage.

All that said, I'm left wondering what you people that find these gems are going through to even discover them? Wait, I probably don't want to know.

[Turbo D]

Funny story: One time this girl I was dating took me to a dumpster behind party city. She took me there to get Halloween costumes. Lmao. I went along with it though. We ended up with some funky costumes too,lol. It was an experience. I've never done it before or since. I suppose if I ever went to Japan, I'd do it like crazy to get SuperFamicoms 

[PCEngineHell]

Nes and computer stuff once. Also a Vic-20 once back in mid 2000.
If its at the curb and I can see it,its fair game.

[guyjin]

All that said, I'm left wondering what you people that find these gems are going through to even discover them? Wait, I probably don't want to know.

Too late! 

So yeah, I work as a janitor at a university. it pays the bills. But anyway, I have to clean up after the kids when they move out, and since this is a university, and private, they throw away stuff that any of us here would at least ebay, if not keep. I don't often even get the good stuff; I've heard of some students throwing away working televisions and laptops. 

[quoth09]

I have gotten some nice items from the trash before. I have gone dumpster diving a few times as well in the past, and gotten some nice information at the time, which I will not disclose here.

I have gotten working computer parts, NES and SNES games, as well as numerous other items that I can either sell, or do something with on my own, from people's trash.

I have no qualms about any of it, nor am I ashamed. If people are stupid enough to throw things away and not recycle them or otherwise, then it's fair play.

[Dark Fact]

People actually threw out old NES and SNES games as well a NES? What the hell were they thinking?

As for me, I do paper deliveries in a very high-class community.  There were people throwing out old work desks and shelves that only had a few scratches on them and still looked useful.  In addition, they also threw out perfectly good washing machines and dyers! You think the middle-class are wasteful bastards? Try walking through a high-class neighborhood sometime on garbage day.

[nat]

People actually threw out old NES and SNES games as well a NES?

I threw away an NES once.

Here's the kicker. Are you ready for this? It actually didn't work.

This thread has me wondering if some chump went dumpster diving, found it, took it home only to find out his banana peel-encrusted find really was just a heap of junk.

[Keranu]

All that said, I'm left wondering what you people that find these gems are going through to even discover them? Wait, I probably don't want to know.

Too late! 

So yeah, I work as a janitor at a university. it pays the bills. But anyway, I have to clean up after the kids when they move out, and since this is a university, and private, they throw away stuff that any of us here would at least ebay, if not keep. I don't often even get the good stuff; I've heard of some students throwing away working televisions and laptops. 

Hey I'm a janitor too! Unfortunately I clean up at a town hall, so nothing that interesting gets thrown away . I did find a nice perfectly working Casio print calculator though which even came with four working AA batteries and a AC adapter! I also brought home a Sony U-matic video tape that they like to record board meetings on.

[esteban]

ha! great topic.

Personally, I'm all about recycling, so I find new uses for old crap:
I save bags from cereal boxes and frozen veggies to use for coffee grinds,
random crap becomes "stuff" my daughter uses in her arts-n-crafts projects,
etc, etc.

I've refinished / re-upholstered a lot of nice furniture that folks were getting rid of on garbage night,
I've taken old plastic drawers from fridges to use in my garage workshop,
old lamps from the garbage are easily rewired,
blah, blah....

my favorite is finding amateur "art" in the garbage.

[Tatsujin]

trash & me = big frens!! (as long the trash has to do something with japanese videogaming, still is usable and kinda clean)

[Joe Redifer]

It sucks that I'm only able to choose 20 of the options from that list.   

[Tatsujin]

yeah..where is the cheat for the hidden 21th?!

[WoodyXP]

I'm a trash picker and proud to be one.  Military people pack up and move all the time and during their moves they
throw away loads of good stuff.  I've found all kinds of shit like car parts, video games, DVD's, books of CD's, electronics
you name it.  If a person can't take it with them they usually throw it away.. even when there's nothing wrong with it. 

[Dark Fact]

I have a story here I like to share:

One of my dad's friends is what you call a "pack rat".  Someone who hoards away lots of old tools, trays, you name it.  He always finds ways to make use of them for his own pet projects.  He has stuff packed in his house, the basement, the shed, the garage, and his entire backyard.

Now normally, this would be a good thing for him, right? Well yeah.  However, one of his neighbors that he doesn't get along with didn't see it that way and considered his stuff a "nuisance".  So what does his neighbor do? He calls the city and complain.

The next day, the city crew comes in and starts seizing all of his belongings in the backyard (they could not seize anything that is in his house, shed or garage though since they don't have authority for that).  Now a lot of those belongings were in perfectly good condition.  The city crew seizes nearly all of it so they could take it to the dump.  Hell, they even seized a 100 foot roll of red gift wrap! My dad's friend was really upset but there was nothing he could do about it.  He was ordered to keep his hands off of everything in plain sight.

A week later, he gets a bill for the entire collection which amounted to nearly a thousand dollars.  Yes, my dad's friend gets billed for "clean up" that he never asked for.  Nice way to add insult to injury huh?

This happened a couple of years ago.  The neighbor who complained passed away last year and my dad's friend still collects stuff but only in small quantities this time.  Still, it was a terrible waste to see a lot of good things going to the dump.  Hell, he even tells me that a lot of things at the dump are still in pristine condition and the public is forbidden from setting foot there.  Yeah...

Here's the kicker. Are you ready for this? It actually didn't work.

You couldn't try to get it repaired?

[nat]

Here's the kicker. Are you ready for this? It actually didn't work.

You couldn't try to get it repaired?

I dunno, the thing got water in it and shorted out. Probably would've been more trouble than it was worth to track down and fix the affected components. Scratch that, it was too much trouble. I just threw a couple bucks away and got another NES.

[Dark Fact]

It was waterlogged? Damn.  What a waste of good hardware.

[nat]

Yeah, I brought it over to this massive party in the U district of Seattle a couple years back. There were like 200 people there at this one single house and all the toilet usage was too much for the house's ancient plumbing to take. Something ruptured somewhere and the entire downstairs of the house flooded. Some drunken rocket scientist tried to play some SMB3 after the deck been waterlogged and POP!

[MurderDate]

The dudes on here who have known me from my first utterance a couple months ago know that I found my TG16 out on the street in the trash. 

The only time I ever officially "dumpster dove" was out behind Anchor Bay HQ in Michigan, looking for DVDs.  This was years and years ago when Anchor Bay was a fairly new company releasing Argento et al.  Anyway, came up with 0.

It's funny, no one voted that dumpster diving is "dirty".  It is many of the things people did vote for on this poll - but it's also fucking dirty!

[Dark Fact]

Yeah, I brought it over to this massive party in the U district of Seattle a couple years back. There were like 200 people there at this one single house and all the toilet usage was too much for the house's ancient plumbing to take. Something ruptured somewhere and the entire downstairs of the house flooded. Some drunken rocket scientist tried to play some SMB3 after the deck been waterlogged and POP!

Wow, I hoped you kicked the guy's ass.  That's a waste of good hardware right there!

[Sparky]

have never really got anything good out of the trash but i voted for " gooooooood" i would have no problem diving in to get something worth while.
I am a country boy so there not much in the trash except trash these days where i live.

[Dark Fact]

Man, dumpster diving is a pretty silly term, isn't it? Whenever I think about it, I picture some poor hobo dressing in scuba gear and flippers about to swan dive into a binful of refuse.