{"id":32,"date":"2013-04-27T23:48:24","date_gmt":"2013-04-28T06:48:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/?p=32"},"modified":"2013-04-27T23:48:24","modified_gmt":"2013-04-28T06:48:24","slug":"muuahaha-big-bag-of-resistors-for-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/muuahaha-big-bag-of-resistors-for-2\/","title":{"rendered":"MUUAHAHA &#8211; Big Bag of Resistors for $2!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_33\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-33\" style=\"width: 480px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/Muuahaha.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-33\" alt=\"I got this for $2 at the electronic flea market last week.\" src=\"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/Muuahaha.jpg\" width=\"480\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/Muuahaha.jpg 480w, http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/Muuahaha-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-33\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">I got this for $2 at the electronic flea market last week.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I&#8217;m as happy as a squirrel with three nuts! Look at this huge bag of resistors that I got at the last Electronic Flea Market for just two dollars.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_35\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-35\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/sorting.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-35\" alt=\"Sorting out the bag took hours, and I only got \u00bc of the way\" src=\"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/sorting.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/sorting.jpg 640w, http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/sorting-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/sorting-624x468.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-35\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sorting out the bag took hours, and I only got \u00bc of the way<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>As with many things in life, a bonanza is usually paired with a burden. In this case, I had to sort out the contents of the bag. Not easy at all. I spent hours, and only got through a fraction of it. One of the problems is, the resistors don&#8217;t have numbers on them, they have color coded bands. Most of them have a band that is either black, brown, or gold (which turns up as a dark bronze color). A real nightmare to distinguish between these three.<\/p>\n<p>On the bright side, the bag also contained ceramic capacitors, regular diodes, zener diodes, and schottky diodes. The zeners and schottkys are worth at least a dime apiece (a dollar if you got them from Radio Shack). When I worked at HP labs, we regularly swept this kind of stuff into the trash. Why? Because it isn&#8217;t worth an engineer&#8217;s time to sort it out. The only person who might want to sort it is someone whose time isn&#8217;t worth a lot of money. That was me when I was a teenager, and that&#8217;s me now, as a retiree. In a way, I&#8217;ve come full circle.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_34\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-34\" style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/FleaMarketHaul.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-34\" alt=\"Other items from the March Flea Market\" src=\"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/FleaMarketHaul.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"612\" srcset=\"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/FleaMarketHaul.jpg 640w, http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/FleaMarketHaul-300x286.jpg 300w, http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/files\/2013\/04\/FleaMarketHaul-624x596.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-34\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Other items from the March Flea Market: 2 XLR connectors, free; a bunch of RJ-45 jacks, $1, stepper motor, 50\u00a2; duplex power receptacles, 10\u00a2 each; 24VCT 2A transformer, $1; 2 heavy duty 12V relays, 50\u00a2; audio cable and CD drive, $1.50; tc4200 laptop\/tablet, complete with original OS, $65; power adapter for laptop, $3.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m as happy as a squirrel with three nuts! Look at this huge bag of resistors that I got at the last Electronic Flea Market for just two dollars. As with many things in life, a bonanza is usually paired with a burden. In this case, I had to sort out the contents of the &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/muuahaha-big-bag-of-resistors-for-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">MUUAHAHA &#8211; Big Bag of Resistors for $2!!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pididu.com\/wordpress\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}