mechanikul phenomena that annoy you

[CopperCone]

High efficiency/low flush volume toilets that take 3 or more flushes to do what one flush of an "inefficient" toilet would do.

Excalibur the turd smiter (coat hanger taped to stick )

[TerraHertz]

IDCs. Insulation Displacement Connectors.  Most unreliable connectors in existence. (Closely followed by poor quality IC sockets, with tin-plated IC legs.) How many times prior to SATA did I have to replace bad IDE and floppy drive cables?

The first pic is me finally getting around to sifting through two huge boxes of IDC cables from PC motherboard kits. In the early 2000s I worked at a place that used PC motherboards in a commercial product. They didn't use most of the cables that came with the motherboards, so accumulated a vast number of them. When they decided to throw them all in the dumpster, I intercepted. The boxes then sat around for many years, being a bulky, barely liftable nuisance. This year in a cleanup I moved them to a pile of stuff outside under a sheet, all to be sorted to keep vs toss.
I kept about 10% of the cables, for future historical-PC maintenance. The rest are gone to the recyclers. About $70 worth, ha ha. Just glad to be rid of them.

Among the 'keep' pile, a box of 10-pin connectors with cable. Useful for use with some USB flash chip programmers that just arrived in the mail. For laptop BIOS unlocking experiments.

[JohnnyMalaria]

The thing about 'keep' boxes is that they ultimately become 'pointless crap' boxes. Looks like in your first photo that you are getting ready to bury them...

[CopperCone]

making a list of things to do with all your garbage helps, but holy shit you look at it and you go like 

so much easier to accumulate shit then to use it. I am still on a 10 year backlog.

Sometimes I feel that the practice causes intense mental stress, particularly when its not sorted right.

But sometimes I think about it, and like the effort that goes into sorting one junk screw box, you feel completely wired afterwords, you spent 3 hours doing it, and you calculated you made around 5 dollars an hour............................

Then you think, fuck, why not just buy stainless screws when I need them? Why do I have galvinized zinc?? 

Whats worse is welding stock, like keeping pieces of angle iron, bits of sheet, studs, etc.

It's kind of nice to have but its a complete cunt to maintain, because of rust. Is it even worth spraying with wd40? Is it worth the wire brush time, angle grinder accessories, etc to clean up?

I almost feel like some of us can benefit from hiring fucking stockpile managers.


I have a box of component cables that are making me downright psychotic.

[TerraHertz]

But sometimes I think about it, and like the effort that goes into sorting one junk screw box, you feel completely wired afterwords, you spent 3 hours doing it, and you calculated you made around 5 dollars an hour........

I don't worry about it. Mostly don't bother sorting 'parts junk' much. But when I do, I treat it as a relaxing interval of 'basketweaving'.

Then you think, fuck, why not just buy stainless screws when I need them? Why do I have galvinized zinc?? 

Ha ha, made worse when like me you have an *amazing* wholesale warehouse of high quality fasteners very close by, and their stainless steel stuff is still cheaper even in bulk packs, than a few crappy iron bolts from the hardware store (that is further away.) I've often considered throwing out my entire stock of iron fasteners (various platings) and switching entirely to stainless. For some sizes and purposes I pretty much have. But ironically, it makes me feel guilty to use 'luxury' screws on plain projects. Weird huh? So I keep the boxes and boxes of old fasteners.
At least I very rarely buy plain steel ones anymore.

Whats worse is welding stock, like keeping pieces of angle iron, bits of sheet, studs, etc.

It's kind of nice to have but its a complete cunt to maintain, because of rust. Is it even worth spraying with wd40? Is it worth the wire brush time, angle grinder accessories, etc to clean up?

Wrong approach. Keep an open top tin with some heavy oil, and a rag soaking in it. Run the rag over all bare steel surfaces. Nearly permanent rust prevention. WD40 evaporates, protects for less than a year.
Also stack the bars end up in a vertical rack, helps keep dust off the surfaces.
I have bar stock I bought 30 years ago, still not rusty.

I almost feel like some of us can benefit from hiring fucking stockpile managers.

At last, an actually worthy application for AI! Forget your self-driving cars, and Internet machine-learning censors. We want junkstockpile manager robots!
Asimov's three laws of hoarding:
1. A robot may not throw any potentially useful shit out, or through inaction allow those things to become lost/buried/inaccessible, or ruined by exposure to weather.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
    Robots must be trained in diplomacy, to deal with instances of wives instructing them to throw things out.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
    Getting crushed under collapsed piles of junk is to be avoided if at all possible. Ditto getting dismantled by wives.

Edit to add:

Something else I hate.
The very moment that you get your hands covered in filthy black grease, your nose starts to itch ferociously.
I just replaced a broken gear change lever in my best power drill, and had that effect the whole time.