Donation of the Day

I complain too often about people donating perfectly good gear just because it lost its glitter when the plastic wrapping came off. Sometimes a donation comes in that redeems my faith in human nature.

This note came in with a couple of laptops. It reads:

A day in Drive Enclosure Hell

I hoped to celebrate my return to Free Geek after a few weeks' travel by hunkering down at the laptop table, but as usual, fate had other plans. A woman came upstairs looking for help, bearing in her hands a USB drive enclosure:

Looks innocent enough, right?

The Laptop Graveyard

In one of the dark corners of the warehouse is (what I call) the Laptop Graveyard. This is where laptops go to die -- well, maybe.

Laptop Station Humour

For the discerning, literate, sympathetic thief:

Laptops Continued

Tiny dog, tiny netbook

Caelan, Aaron and I spent the day working on the laptop station. (Thanks, guys!) Lots of work left to be done -- organizing and documenting, not to mention tearing through the tremendous amounts of stock -- but we got two or three laptops down into the store, matched a few more with power supplies, and prepared a half-dozen more for scrapping.

Laptop Station Chaos

I spent a Thursday working at the laptop station in the Mezzanine and I suppose it's no surprise to anyone that it's a mess.

OK, it's not the laptop station, but this would make a great tombstone. Whoever wrote this note, you're awesome.

In the interests of constructive criticism, consider this not so much an indictment of the laptop station as a celebration of how far the rest of Free Geek has managed to organize itself. Anyone remember what it was like a few years ago, when we first moved into the new space? Or further back, when we were in the old space near Science World? My memory is fuzzy going any further back than my last cup of tea [currently approx. 15 minutes], but I remember that waves of junk swept over every horizontal surface as though deposited by the tide twice a day, only to be fought back by diligent volunteers just in time for the next onslaught.

Both the Mezzanine and the Warehouse have been looking consistently sane, and the store is no longer a knee-deep snarl of wires. And I'm not making light of the amount of work that this takes: Free Geek takes such a bizarre assortment of equipment that there can't possibly be a proper place for everything. It can only be kept clean (in my opinion) by constantly paying attention to all the little corners where stuff can collect. So let me begin by saying: congratulations to all involved for apparently taming the lion.

The laptop station is a bit of a sore spot in the middle of all of this...

Laptop Station. Amelia Earhart is believed to be somewhere in this pile.

Network Device Testing Redux; Open Source & Volunteering

Last week I bemoaned the state of Network Device Testing. Here's how it looked one week later:

Network Device Testing, One Week Later

In summary, not bad, not great. It looks as though motherboard testing has partially migrated to the right-hand side of the desk, and a limited amount of junk accumulated again.

I spent most of the day working with a volunteer on Network Device Testing, teaching him how the station works and talking about volunteering, software development and the open source world. He is interested in studying software or hardware engineering and wanted to know about the prospects for both in Vancouver.

Sisyphean Task no. 1: Network Device Testing

Some days feel like progress, and other days feel like swimming in molasses. Today was a molasses day.

Network Device Testing: Before

What happens to hard drives at Free Geek?

When a piece of equipment comes in through the warehouse gate, the first priority is re-use: if there's a reasonable expectation that it can be given a second chance at usefulness, a piece of gear will get cleaned up, tested, and sent out again to a volunteer or a grant recipient, or sold through the thrift store.

There are several risky aspects in re-use – for example, those universal Windows stickers bearing serial numbers. If a machine is sent out without that sticker being removed, it could be used to install a pirated copy of Windows. The Windows license remains with the original owner and cannot be transfered. This potentially puts Free Geek Vancouver in a position of legal liability.

Another common example is hard drives. When a machine is received at Free Geek, it almost always contains a hard drive with software and user data on it – and on a typical machine, that is almost certain to contain private information, from names to resumes to credit card information to who-knows-what. One of the most common questions asked by donors is – what happens to all that data? How can Free Geek Vancouver be sure that it's treated responsibly?

40GB IDE hard drives, clean and tested and ready for Ubuntu to be installed