Monday, December 12, 2022

Old 2012 MacBook Pro before Recycling

I guess since I'm announcing when my old macs are going off to the glue factory, I should keep it up. Last Sunday afternoon I made a trip out to the Streets of SouthPoint to visit the Apple store and recycle the old 2112 MBP that I inherited from my wife when she stole my new MBP. This one went weird and swelled up and the mouse quit working properly. Eventually, the swelling subsided and the mouse functionality returned, but by that time, my new mac was hers. I used this one for a number of years, mostly on trips to the beach, until my company was kind enough to get me a new 2022 MacBook Air with Apple silicon (M2). It's very fast. This one was very old. Well, here it is, right before being shoved into a bag and taken off to the glue factory.

Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Old 2007 iMac right before Recycle

About 8 years ago I wrote about all the Apple Macs that I'd had over the years. My fifth mac was a 2007 iMac, the first of the aluminum body iMacs. Although I subsequently got another iMac (1983), which has since been replaced with yet another iMac (2021), the old 2007 model continuted to run. I took it to the beach and it sat in the office until Dan took it out and put it in the closet. Anyhow, I decided that since it was probably not going to be used again, it was time to recycle. So I brought it home. Before I sent it off to the glue factory, I checked on eBay to see if it had any value. There were 4 pages of 2007 iMacs with a variety of starting prices. No bids. None. So it's basically worthless. So I sucked off all the data that might have been of value and took it, along with a couple of keyboards that were hanging around, to the Apple store for recyling. Here's a picture of it sitting on the counter just before it headed out the door. It's a heavy sucker.

Saturday, March 12, 2022

Building as Prism

Eleven days ago, I was going over to the French Building to run an NMR. The French building is a mostly Chemistry building at Duke that was built with funds from Melinda French Gates, the former wife of Bill Gates. You know who he is. Anyhow, as I was heading downstairs to submit my samples (NMR machines are usually in the basement due to their weight), I noticed a beautiful rainbow on the floor. 

As I got closer, it disappeared. I was in a hurry so I ran my NMR and then came back up to explore a bit more. If you walked toward it, it got smaller then evaporated. If you went past it, you could see a small slit through a staircase where the light was streaming through. This is a long building so the light is about 50 yards from where it enters the glass at the end of the building. I moved around a bit and you could make it get bigger and brighter.


Wow, that's pretty cool. A little physics experiment in the chemistry building. Given the length of the building, I suspect that this is something that only happens for a short period of time during the year, like on March 1st. If I don't retire in the meantime, maybe I'll check next year. I went back a couple of days ago and looked for my friend. Eventually I was able to spot it, small and way upstairs.


Cool science is all around us. We just have to be on the lookout for it.