Securidad

I got a bug to clean out my office last night and I came across a stack of paper I had gotten from my lawyer last year. They were all preliminary copies of a document that had been finalized. Well, what do I do with this stack of paper? Dump it in the recycling as is, or should I shred it first? I don't think there is anything in there that would be useful to a criminal, but I don't know, I don't want to check, and I wouldn't know what kind of info would be useful. We have a shredder, so shred it.

The shredder is one step up from economy, it claims it can shred five sheets of paper at once, and it can. However, it will choke on six, as I quickly found out. Mucking around trying to get it unjammed and it quits completely. What's going on? I suspect a big clot of shredded paper has jammed the there-is-paper-in-the-slot switch, which doesn't completely explain the problem, but it gives me an excuse to open it up. After all, it is my wife's machine and if I broke it she will be unhappy, so there is a certain amount of panic here.

Root around for a #1 Phillips screwdriver. None in the kitchen, none if the garage, none in the basement workroom. Ah here they are! In my desk, two of them. Figures. Remove six screws and it opens up revealing a second plastic box inside that contains the actual shredder. This inner box is tied to the lid with short wires. To open up the inner box, I will need more wire, so out come some more screws holding the switch, the LED and a cable clamp. Now I have it out where I can look at and I see my suspect switch is right out in the open and there does not appear to be anything wrong with it. Put everything back together and it works. The thermal cutoff has reset.

Start grinding more papers and it quits again. Use this opportunity to empty the basket and clean up the mess. Did you know that when you shred an inch thick stack of paper it will expand to fill your entire living room? Pack it into a paper bag, and pile a bunch of old magazines on top before dumping it in the recycling bin. The idea being that the shredded paper will stay in the bag until it is safely inside the truck. Nothing like a cubic foot of shredded paper being blown all over the yard to make ... what? A mess? I don't want to find out.

Back to the shredding. Thermal cutoff is happy again, so I proceed with what's left, one or two sheets at a time. It's easier to feed one corner of the paper to the shredder than to feed it straight in. It works well enough with one sheet, it just gets dragged in, folded in as it goes. Two sheets together like this and you can hear the motor straining.

Can you feed it as fast as it can shred it? Mostly no, peeling off one or two sheets of paper takes seconds, seconds I tell you, and by then the shredder is done with it's last sheet, is tired of waiting for you to feed it, and has shut off. Which is okay, except it means I am not being as efficient as I could be.

Sometimes I think I screw up just so I can see if I can get out of it.