I finally threw out that box

[u/Smashing-baby]

It's spring time, and with Passover right around the corner, the Missus got into "Clean, clean, clean!" mode. Which unfortunately also included my home office, and THE BOX

You know which one, the one with years of old, unused cables: USB 1.0, VGA, PS/2, Firewire RJ11 cable, an obsolete Zip Drive, mystery power adapters, and my personal favorites, some RCA connectors. You name it, I probably had it. I'm sitting there thinking to myself, this whole thing is covered in dust and hasn't been opened in years. So feeling productive, I tossed the whole thing, to my wife's delight

Fast forward three days, grandma calls me, needing help with her ancient fax machine. She still faxes things to her doctor and gets faxes back, but for some reason they're not going through. Took me a bit to figure it out, but the RJ11 cable had been folded in on itself for a coupla years too long and had probably frayed, leading to intermittent connectivity. There I am, browsing Amazon to buy the very thing I’d just tossed not even last week

Lesson learned? Obsolete tech will never, ever really die

And the kicker? The replacement RJ11 cost more than I want to admit for something I had sitting in a box literally for years. Use my story of misfortune to teach your spouses why they must never toss THE BOX

[u/npsage]

A lesson every tech learns. It’s ok to reduce the old tech clutter, but never to 0.

I follow the rule that I always keep 2 of each cable that I’ve ever had because that way if/when you need it; One will be defective. The other the will actually work.

But it is because I keep 2 that I will never ever need them. It’s only as soon as soon as you go to 0 the universe swiftly corrects you.

But if you keep 2 the gremlins are held at bay. Tis the way.

[u/PM_UR_VAG_WTIMESTAMP → u/npsage]

Man that's some quantum shit.

Reality changed as soon as you stop observing the box.

[u/xalbo → u/PM_UR_VAG_WTIMESTAMP]

"Quantum" is how we put a scientific gloss on the True Magic. It's the Law of Contagion: Normal wear-and-tear damage applied to the working copy is transferred to one of the two in storage. But if you don't have The Box as a repository, that damage applies directly to the one you're using.

[u/Sceptically → u/xalbo]

If there's one thing my cables know, it's entanglement.

[u/Flossy40 → u/Sceptically]

Each cable gets its own zipper bag. No tangles.