2y ago

What was the best donation you have ever received?

Some days ago, a neighbor invited me over because she was donating books that belonged to her husband, who died from covid during the pandemic. There were a lot of books, and even by choosing only the ones which caught my attention, I was able to get over 100 different books.

It was the first donation I have ever received and I got really happy about it. I am already halfway through The Shining, which was in the collection. So it got me thinking about donation itself.

What about your experiences with it? And I am asking about donation of things, not money.

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At a garage sale, I mentioned to the homeowner that I found an empty camera bag for sale, but was looking for photography stuff and she asked me about how far I'd gotten into 35mm film, etc. Then she gave me her old Canon Rebel X for free. Changed my life.
- I never had a camera, but I was the guy using family ones to take pictures for free in events and parties all the time. Nothing beats the feeling of using a real camera.
  
  Film cameras are heavy AF and even expired film is worth a kidney, but it's so satisfying when you get it right.

My then girlfriend was spending a summer in Portland. Just before she left, she handed me a box of about twenty hardback novels all by the same author, one Sir Terry Pratchett.
A couple days after she'd flown out, I grabbed a random book from the pile and began reading. By the time she returned, I'd read the entire box.
So I married her. 😁
- Eighteen years and about twenty-seven hours just now!
- I have looked it up here, those novels look awesome. I will try to get some of them for sure. I didn't know about Discworld, but to start a series about a planet in a turtle's back, Pratchett must have great stories to tell. XD
  
  I highly recommend them. There's a lot of them, but unlike many other long-running series, you can pretty much read the Discworld books in any order. It helps to read them in rough publishing order, but it isn't required

I asked my brothers business partner to go see a Yankee game with me ten years ago, noting that there were $15 outfield seats. She says: "Don't worry. I'll take care of it."
Taking care of it meant:
Breakfast in the stadium club (and lunch, because we went in for another meal in the 7th inning) Peyton Manning and cast members from the Sopranos were in there with me.
2nd row seats behind the Yankee dugout, with a private waiter to bring us our drinks
And in the 3rd inning I was tapped on the shoulder. SHE BOUGHT ME A USED BASE FROM PREGAME, and they took my picture with it and framed it, sending it to my home months later.
All I wanted to do was see Derek Jeter. Instead I got a Make-A-Wish day.
- ... and you married her, right? RIGHT? I'm a Red Sox fan and if a woman did this for me, even at Yankee Stadium, I'd be so head over heels in love...
  
  She's a good friend.
  Started her career as a schoolteacher and ended up being a big producer in the theatre world, and her humble beginnings just make her love using her good fortune to do neat things for others.
- I'm so glad you had such an amazing day!
- I imagine the smile you had in that photo. This sure is a Make-a-Wish for a sports fan. XD
  
  The base thing actually made me cry. I was so overwhelmed by her generosity, and when you grow up on the poorer side, something like that's even cooler.

I was developing Cyanogenmod (and later Lineage) for my own tablet (Samsung Tab S2 10") and I figured I could develop for the 8" 'blind' when the developer for that tablet quit. I got a few donations from the community to keep on developing on my own device. A few years later I'm answering this post on the device I could buy from those donations. (On Lineage that's been developed based on my code)
I also got a load of top quality classical LP's from a neighbour of my parents whe they moved away as 'your son loves LPs, would he like classacal albums?'. I still have to check most of them out. (Already found the piano items)
- I have spent years using Cyanogen on Moto G2. I wish I could be one of the guys donating to help the developer of that phone then. I was just a kid tho, but I used to read all his blog posts at the time.
  
  After trying a Samsung A13 stock for a week (got lured in with the specs)_ I'm back again to my old Nokia 6.1 with Lineage. The hard requirement for the next phone will be custom rom support. (Pref Lineage) When you have tasted freedom, first rooted phone was the Samsung S2, 1st with custom rom a Moto G2, it's hard to go back.
  Oh, I forgot, while developing for the '15 Samsung Tab S2 I got a value edition version gifted to develop something for as well. A company wanted a cyanogenmod/Lineage for that tablet and gave it to several developers to get that image. (tablet still runs)

Actually reverse donation. If I want to get rid of anything that isn't worth the effort to sell, I put it on the curb and it's gone in a few hours. This works with scrap metal too.
I've also had trees and stumps removed for a case of beer.
/redneck life
- Same. I am a huge fan of curb-alerting large items that I can no longer use. Always a huge relief when a broken table saw that's not worth fixing or some other large item disappears from my garage into the trunk of someone's car.
  
  Told the other guy but lemmy.world/c/curbfind exists to help recreate the niche on reddit. Tell other people who were in that community also.
- My city has a curb culture too and I love it.
  That reminds me, there was /r/curbfind on reddit. Niche, but does anyone want to make a Lemmy community (or kbin magazine)?
  
  lemmy.world/c/curbfind exists my friend, my city has the same culture and love it and hate it. As there is a lot of people in vehicles going around neighborhoods making it hard to get nice items when they always take it first as I walk.
  
  Just today I got 4 brand new SLA batteries from the trash-treasure pile behind the recycling dumpster
- Every single laundry rack I've owned so far I have found on the curb on my street. Three different places every single time in the first few months of living there. By now I think I'd feel bad actually buying one of those things.

When I was preparing to leave (/flee) Japan after the earthquake and nuclear disaster, my one co-worker who I was somewhat friends with gave me a couple of really nice and somewhat expensive books on Kyoto, her home city. It was very touching that she would give those to me since I knew she was homesick for the city herself and I was already heartbroken about leaving Japan so unexpectedly.
- Japan's disaster stories are bone chilling. One of the books I got is called Dirty Hearts, it tells about the Japanese who fled to Brazil after the nukes. I have read just the beginning, but it already hit hard. I hope your friend is still ok. :)
  
  Thank you. She experienced a mild back injury but recovered and moved her family with young children away from the radiation zone, so I'm sure they're doing fine now.

A co-worker was getting rid of years worth of Science Fiction paperbacks. I scored about 500 books and only ended up with about 50 duplicates. I sold the collection 20 years later to some other luck Sci-Fi reader.
- I wonder if my book collection will end up with some other reader years from now... 20 years is lot of time to read them all.

I was in touch with a local luthier (guitar repairman and designer) and I started to visit him frequently. Sometimes I got my guitar modded, sometimes traded some stuff with him like pedals, keyboards...
One day he called and said he was going to move away, and wanted to give away his album collection. 100+ CD's, cassettes, movie and document DVD's, mostly original and in very mint condition. Rock, jazz, classical, all kinds of genres had he. I went to his house and returned home with 3 big grocery store bags!
That was 2 years ago and there still are stuff that needs to be listened and watched. Whenever I think about this, it gives me smile and want to do the same thing.
Thanks to him.
- It took me 5 trips to carry those 112 books home. I can't even imagine how much time it will take for me to read them all.
- That's so cool.
  When I moved in May I gave away about half of my comic book collection, about 90% of it to parents who wanted them for their kids. It's my hope they have similar feelings and just find things in there that inspire them and make them happy for years to come.

Coworker brought me an old Macintosh light he found in his attic.
Turns out only a few thousand were made and its pretty awesome.
https://vintagemacmuseum.com/the-macintosh-picasso-dealer-sign/
- This site has the smell of the old internet, it was a real trip to read it. This sign really is a cool donation, I loved it. Do yours still works?
  
  Yep, it's also that faded yellow of old computers. I've been thinking about trying the hydrogen peroxide trick to clean it up.

Are you enjoying The Shining? So different from the movie, but so good.
- I do. The first thing that caught my attention when she invited me over were the photos with Stephen King books on them, I got five of them. I have never read horror before, and I am loving it (It even made me read a published manual on the rules of Roque, just to know what the hell it really were).
  Actually I never saw the movie either, by choosing not to until now. So I am going in completely clean and having no idea how the story actually ends. I will watch it only once I have finished the book.
  
  I’ve always had trouble labeling King as horror just because most horror is gruesome, and King rarely is. I used to be critical of his work because of that before I’d ever read it, and then once I started reading him I realized that how he’s marketed is very different from what his work is in reality. King didn’t like the movie of the Shining because it’s not at all like the book. But it IS a fantastic movie in its own right. Just go into it knowing it’s a very different story from the book.

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