Tag: donations

September 17, 2024 – Wiping Your Data

September 17, 2024 / / 0 Comments

I am a connoisseur of techno junk. All of that comes off of the secondary market. As a result, you never know what procedures are put in place to protect the former owner. I suspect that companies do some things, but really why would I as a former owner want to put chance out to the universe.

I had our old phone system sitting around for a few months. The reason is because I wanted to clean them before I got rid of them. I will acknowledge that getting any real, usable data and having that fall into unscrupulous hands is a very small possibility. That being said, who would want to buy something with other’s junk on it either? We as consumers need to do our due diligence to protect ourselves as best possible.

I will admit that when I get something second hand that has data on it, I take a look at it. I never intend to do anything with it, but more as a curiosity. Who were these people, what did they do with this, what did they replace it with and those kinds of questions. I never invest much before I start over, I suppose it is that due diligence look.

I don’t have anything to hide, but people don’t need to know that I received calls from a household in Germany in 2023. I feel like it is more protecting them, not so much me. The main unit is a cell phone that has a wired connection. So, this is as good as handing over a cell phone to a stranger. I took the SIM card out. Probably, information could be obtained through the provider but at that point, it is out of my hands.

I have sitting in my shop a robotic vacuum. The reason it has not gone to the recycler is that it is still configured to run. This is a device that has a map of my house, down to how the furniture is arranged. It also has a connection to my internet, albeit it is a guest connection. But still, there is no reason just to hand that stuff over to parts unknown.

This is a related scenario but I am becoming aware of old devices and vulnerabilities. The rough outline is old applications that are no longer supported by manufacturers offer a potential home for malware. This could be inadvertently installed and get access to a network. I am a little on the fence on what to do here. Probably the best thing is disconnect old devices from the network or segregate to a guest network an protect active data.

That seems like a subject for another day. But in this day and age of everything can connect, everything wants an account and everything is collecting data, it is a good idea be thinking longer term in security strategy. It is not so much the money but the time to deal with all of these things that could be the real killer. My advice is to clean everything you can before disposing of it, no matter the mechanism.

End Your Programming Routine: I used to believe that I have nothing to hide. I still think that is true, but I also think that no doing due diligence with electronics disposal is like leaving a stack of 100 euros laying at a park bench. It may not be immediately useable, but somebody could figure out how to convert it into something that they want. Don’t just surrender potentially valuable information, think about what you are doing and the consequences.

August 9, 2023 – Americans Really Are Disgusting

August 9, 2023 /

I have spent too much time buying new clothes lately. It wasn’t because I needed them but because my look needed to be right. I am speaking specifically all the activities around my renewal party that we had. For my re-proposal, I was instructed to wear a white flowing shirt with jeans, which I didn’t have. I had to get a new wardrobe to wear to the party as well.

I don’t want to make myself sound better than I am but the truth is I have gotten too fat for much of my current wardrobe. So, the reality is I have been sucking it in for the past year as well as enduring bulging shirt buttons. Getting some new cloths was a opportunity to breath a little (and get fatter). I have probably gained 30 pounds since I started working again. When I was delivering packages for Amazon, I was logging 30,000 steps a day. Now, I am sedentary and I also generally hate exercise. I like a eat and drink too.

So, gaining weight is a me problem. If I really wanted to change that, I could get serious about it and I should before it is too late. I have unfortunately always been a yo-yo person. I am not naturally skinny and I gain weight until I can’t believe where I am at and set about changing that.

But I have also spent too much time in various malls lately. I shudder when I go in. I see a lot of people wasting away their lives looking for things to buy. We colloquially call it shopping. It is not just buying things we don’t need but it is spending money we don’t have which I think is more damaging. What makes me shudder is rampant consumerism for the sake of entertainment.

I do pretty well financially, but I think about the waste and resources that it takes to make things that we buy just to make us feel good about ourselves. With the rash of visibility in homeless, I see piles of trash that just follows their movements. It makes me think that items like clothing are literally disposable. I would say that it is so ubiquitous and inexpensive that it is really valueless.

Recently, I took the whole back of the car to the donation center. Yes, it was clothes my kids outgrew and that I have no fault. But is was also unwanted bedding because the color palette changed, same with the drapery of the whole house. It was many items of clothing for whatever reason. It was decorations that were used a couple of years and now no longer have earned our fancy.

The whole thing just kind of makes me sick. I know that these organizations are cherry picking out of our donations. That means the rest of it just gets thrown away. So while we fool ourselves into thinking that we are doing something good, the net result is still the same, waste.

I suppose that I would be remiss that it is not just home goods or clothing but a lot of our lives. Our cars get too expensive to fix, appliances have dated colors, TVs are not flat enough, curved enough or large enough and don’t have places to plug in more things that aren’t flashy enough. We are so busy looking to buy things that are enough today that we only have enough time to consume things made in factories to save time so we can look to buy more things.

Clearly, we are not all going to be in a position to grow our own olive trees and make our own oil or thresh our own wheat to make flour so that we can bake our daily loaves of bread. But surely chicken fingers and diet soda is not a proper human diet. In fact, it is a diet that actually adds vitamins an minerals to deliver any sort of nutrition at all.

End Your Programming Routine: This probably warrants more work on what should be done to lesson the environmental impact and be good stewards of the land. We live in a modern world with modern convenience. We can eat world cuisine because the ingredients are available. I can purchase an entire set of clothes in 30 minutes instead of waiting days for it to be made, that’s a good thing in my book. Let’s just make wise and future thinking choices.