Well now... that's something nice I never knew...

I'm sure I am the only one who didn't know this until just now, but if you're a Chrome user, you can grab a tab and drag it off, away from the chrome window, and it will get put into a new chrome window by itself.  And, correspondingly, you can drag a tab into another chrome Window and it will get sucked in and become a tabbed page in that window.

There's a bit of trickiness to getting tabs to merge into other windows... I haven't yet figured out all the magic, but it definitely does work.

I can't tell you how many times I have opened a new window and then loaded up a page I had open elsewhere so I could compare things side by side.

I wish I'd known about this a long time ago!

An ad I wrote for our local freecycle list

Apparently my muse bit me this afternoon while I was composing an ad for our local freecycle mailing list. Someone has already responded telling me they really liked it. That's nice, and it causes me to overcome my usual reticence and share it here. Maybe you'll enjoy the ad too, but unless you live close to me, don't bother asking for the material, and if you are that close, why aren't you on the list already? (Seriously... email me and ask how to join it.)

OFFER: melamine boards (it's a long shot, I know...)

Back in the dark ages - before the invention of electricity and running water - when we bought our home, the previous owner installed a set of closet shelves and rods in the master bedroom closet. Despite my telling him not to do it, he did it anyway, and it was really not the right thing, and I wish he hadn't done it, but he did, and we lived with it for over 2 decades*.  (That's about as long as that run-on sentence, I think.)

A few weeks back we finally got around to taking that old closet system apart and installing something we liked better.  Yay us!  Yay for the annual Elfa sale!

Sadly the old system didn't go quietly into that cold night, or something. Plastic bits broke, metal bits bent, some screws that held shelves together were rusted or corroded into the melamine in odd ways. And, being an aggressive recycler, everything plastic or metal has already been hauled away to help the Gray Bears feed people in need. (I'll bet that donation bought them all of 5% of a banana, or something.)

What I am left with is a bunch of pieces of melamine.  You know the stuff: particle board, covered in white plastic.  Occasionally ground up by unscrupulous business people in far away countries and included in pet food and baby formula to make it look like there is more protein in there than there really is.**

How much melamine you ask?  I'm glad you did. This much:

and:

The small pieces are 16" by about 23", give or take.  The large ones are 42" by 16", again, give or take.

As you can see, some are drilled with holes for shelf pins.  I think all of the longer pieces are like that on one side. Some of the smaller pieces are also drilled, but some were the shelves, and those are hole free.

This is pretty thin melamine - maybe half an inch or a bit less - so take that into account if you are interested.

To be honest, I have no idea if anyone will want this stuff. I hope so, but if not I will haul it off to the dump one of these days, which I kind of hate to do.  But it cannot be recycled by any craft that we, here, possess. It must be taken into Mordor and cast into the very fires of Mt. Doom, where it was forged. I, must do this***, unless one of you has something you can do with it that is more ecologically sound than stuffing it into the landfill.

I must stress that it is not suitable for use as closet shelving again... all of the bits that made it work that way are gone and at least one piece is dinged up on an edge where a screw was firmly stuck in the particle board while disassembly was attempted.  You'll want to use this for some other project.

So... if interested, feel free to let me know.  Somehow I doubt I'll get any takers, but I can hope.

I am on xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Road, and will deliver to reasonably close locations if desired.  Most anyone that would respond to this email is closer than the landfill anyway, so it's a win.

--jeffp

* Don't ask why electricity and running water weren't invented just 2 decades ago. I'm making this up.

** Yes, I know, those unscrupulous businessmen only grind up the plastic bits and not the particle board****. But you'd think the latter would add fiber, right, so it would be good too? And anyway... didn't you read the first footnote? I am making all of this up.

*** If you represent the Tolkien estate, please don't sue me. Also, if you work for or with Peter Jackson or the companies that created the Lord of the Rings movies, please don't sue me either.

**** Yes, I know, they actually use the liquid version in pet and baby food, before it's been applied to the particle board at all. So sue me.  Unless you're associated with the Tolkien estate, Peter Jackson, or related parties. See footnote immediately above.

*****  My there are a lot of footnotes here.