Ha… fooled you. I’m not talking about cleaning up files on your PC’s hard drive, but rather the physical process of clearing out the high-tech version of Uncle Buck’s closet. For those not familiar with the classic John Hughes movie starring John Candy, there is a scene where Buck Russell opens up the closet in his dumpy apartment, and everything falls on top of him… including a bowling ball. Form a mental picture of that, but instead of assorted dusty sports equipment falling out - it’s keyboards, trackballs, and various CD burners and power adapters.

My townhome community is having a yard sale in a week’s time; a perfect opportunity to, ahem, part with old equipment. Last year, I unloaded several Palm Vxs, a P-III PC w/ monitor, and other assorted oldies but goodies. In the year since, I’ve unearthed other unused hardware and accessories. While most of this stuff is too old to be useful to us techies, it can be absolute treasure for some bargain hunter. I’ve got a couple Iomega USB 2.0 ext. CD burners, a 2GB JAZ drive with cartridges and USB interface, and an HP Jornada PocketPC with two synch cradles. I only wish I had more time to sift through all my equipment, but they moved the date of the yard sale up two weeks.

I am nothing if not a pack rat. I suspect many of you are as well. I pretty much hate the process of digging through everything, but I do get a charge out of some of the items that I find - I stumbled across a CueCat - bonus points for those of you who know what that is. Needless to say, that’s dumpster material. Then I run across things that remind me of certain times in my career, like Windows 95 manuals. Kind of makes me all misty eyed. NOT.

My father in law, a retired LAN administrator from a suburban Chicago school district, knows of some good computer swap meets. Whatever I don’t sell next week or throw out right away, I might crate up and try unloading it there. One person’s useless 3Com-Megahertz Ethernet dongle is another person’s treasure.