When I finished yesterday's "Walk With Me" post about the town dump, I had no idea how my evening cliffhanger surprise was going to work out. In fact I was thinking I'd probably just loaded myself up with more garbage, and would come to regret it.

Thankfully this was not the case!

Sometimes you just gotta ask.

As I drove in to the dump yesterday, I noticed there were a few desktop computers on the pallets near the entrance. These are items that you've got to pay extra to throw away, like TVs and refrigerators and tires. They are specifically not to be left at the swap shop, because odds are they don't work, and then you're just sticking someone else with the burden of disposal.

Still, there were a couple computers there that looked a little less trashed than normal. So after I made my rounds of the swap shop and took the pictures you saw yesterday, I circled back to the pallets next to the gate house and approached the window.

The usual attendant is what I'd describe as "New England Grumpy," or maybe "Cape Cod Gruff." Picture your bearded, mid 60s, white haired, slightly unkempt stereotypical Gorton's fisherman, minus the yellow rain-slicker.

I took a deep breath to overcome my social anxiety and said, "Do you mind if I have a look at some of those old computers over there, and maybe take one home for parts?"

Silence.

"It's just, I could use them for an art project. I'm always looking for old circuit boards and things."

"Are you a resident?" he said.

This was an odd question, since I was in a car with a resident sticker and couldn't have been here without it. "Of course," I said.

Heavy breathing. "Well...."

"Look, man, if the answer's no, that's fine. If there's rules against this, it's not going to hurt my feelings."

Finally, a nod. "Well, all right then. Go ahead."

On closer inspection they didn't look as good. The two computers that looked most promising from a distance had cases that were out of alignment and held together with packing tape. Rain had pooled in the crevices, which meant they'd been here through Tuesday's torrential storm, and they rattled as I turned them over. But the price was right, and I wasn't lying about having some ideas for an art project with old circuit boards, either.

As I carried my choice back to the car, I heard another voice. "You get everything you needed?"

"Well, I think so, yes." I walked back to the booth and saw there was a younger man sitting inside now - he addressed me from the opposite window.

"If you want more of that stuff, take all you want. We have to pay to get rid of it, so you're doing us a favor."

Clearly there were two different interpretations of dump policy going on here.

Well, they say "beggars can't be choosers," so instead of choosing, I went back to the pile and took both.

What I didn't expect was for them to work.

And at first they didn't. After several days of soaking in the rain, this was no surprise.

But they were surprisingly complete. Nothing fancy. On-board graphics on both of them (rather than a dedicated video card). The older one was loaded with 2 GB of ram and the newer one with 6! It had a wireless antenna card too. Both had good fans on the CPU and at the back of the case, and while any hard drives had been removed, the data cables were left behind. (This was the source of the rattle when I turned the cases over.) Both had DVD burning drives mounted, but disconnected. And as for the cases being held together with packing tape - that was just a matter of whoever disposed of them being in a hurry. I was able to slot them together again.

The older computer actually powered on right away. It displayed the motherboard's BIOS screen on a monitor. Great, I thought. I'll plug in the DVD drive and put a bootable Linux disc in. But as soon as I tried that, it went dead. I couldn't get any response from the power button.

Nothing from the newer computer either. Motherboard lights went on when I plugged it in, but no action.

Well, if the moisture was the problem, there was only one thing to try. I set the computers over our hot-air grates, turned up the heat, and poured myself a scotch. Usually we use fans to keep our computers cool, but right now I wanted them hot and dry.

A couple of drinks later and they both powered on.

The joy of tinkering.

Man, I don't know why I enjoy building computers so much. It's one of my favorite things to do. I just go into this blissed out frenzy where I want to pack as much technology into a thing and see what it does.

This, despite the fact that I don't play many video games or do processor-intensive tasks. There's no justification for buying new computer parts that I'm not going to use, so it's rare that I get to indulge this whimsy. Having two actually working boxes to rip apart and put back together again sent me to cloud nine.

Part of the joy, I think, is the basic puzzle aspect of how do these things fit together. It's not really hard, per-se. But every case comes apart differently, and every manufacturer has some variable way of coming at the challenge of where to mount things. If I'm working on a laptop I'll usually download some kind of instructions, since the stuff is small and delicate and easily broken. But with desktops it's just more fun to dive in, scratch your head, and figure it out.

Like - where can I mount some hard drives? I had a couple old ones hanging around in a drawer, and a big tin of spare screws, so it was just a matter of figuring out where to put them. In the newer machine, you have to attach rails to the side of the drive and then slide it in upside down, for some reason:

Where on the older one the drives get mounted sideways.

Once those were in place, it was just a matter of booting to the Linux USB Thumb Drive I created this summer, poking around a bit to discover that everything worked fine, and then installing. I had Linux Mint running on these two free computers before I'd finished my third drink.

Free, as in speech, AND free, as in beer!

Things aren't as fragile as you might think.

Two inches of rain followed by freezing temperatures? Who cares. These things work just great.

The lesson? You don't have to be afraid of breaking stuff. You might even be able to make them better.

One final surprise. (Protect Your Data!)

It's good that whoever disposed of these computers went to the trouble to take the hard drives out. I've actually gotten used drives with people's photos, school projects, and tax returns before. They think that just because the computer isn't working, the data on the disks in inaccessible. Not true!

But the newer computer has a hidden front panel for USB devices and an SD card reader. I only discovered it when I was trying to work out where to stick that hard drive. And once I flipped it open, I found an SD card inside!

Now, I know the honorable thing to do would be to format this thing without looking at it. Or chuck it into the fire. It's really none of my business what's on there, right? I mean, it could be anything.

Hmm... The temptation. Not to mention the risk! This is how businesses and top-secret government facilities get compromised. Someone drops a couple infected flash drives in the parking lot and your high-security-clearance employee just can't resist sticking it into his laptop.

Well, good thing I was running a live session of Linux with no hard drive plugged in. No risk of contaminating my own systems that way.

So, you want to see what was on the card, right?

Turns out it was...

Paintings!

Some pretty nice ones.

And a little view into an artist's studio.

Nothing salacious. Just another delightful surprise.

What an adventure this turned out to be.

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with these computers. I may throw a graphics card and a small solid state drive in the new one to really speed it up. And it'll be nice to have a dedicated Linux desktop that's free of viruses and unburdened by Microsoft's botnet spyware. Even the older computer is a step up from the ancient Dell we've been using in the living room as our Netflix and Chill machine. (I guess it says something when the crap you get from the dump is nicer than what you've been using at home!)

It's fun to be a crap-hound, sometimes.

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Thanks for reading and for checking out my junk! May your day be full of unexpected treasure and artistic surprises!