[Noisebridge-discuss] more free junk!

Rubin Abdi rubin at starset.net
Sat Oct 3 20:28:41 UTC 2009


Hi Michael.

After the last truck load of e-waste was picked through and hauled off 
last night, I was pretty happy to think that what was left over was more 
or less the cream of the crop (though it was a very small percentage 
left over) and that I wouldn't have to spend more time picking through 
piles and piles of junk at Noisebridge then actually hacking on some 
sort of hardware I found.

Sorting through dozens of broken optical drives to locate 1 functional 
DVD burner is very counter productive and sometimes so intimidating that 
giving up and buying my needed supplies seems simpler. My thoughts were 
that now we've (mostly) reset the hack pile and have gotten an 
understand of the difference between "oh this stuff is totally hackable 
someone will eventually hack on it" and "no one will most likely waste 
their time on fixing this" members and guests will be a little bit more 
cautious about what things may or may not be useful to the group. And I 
feel now that we've got an "exit plan" for anything we don't want 
through e-waste pickup, it'll be easier for folks to look at something, 
decide that it possibly shouldn't have come into the space in the first 
place and toss it into the e-waste pile to be picked up in a month or 
taken to someone's home.

Michael Shiloh wrote, On 2009/10/03 12:12:
> I've been carefully sorting out the tons of stuff that pass through my
> hands, selecting items that I'm pretty sure will be useful, and in all
> cases, asking via email first if anyone wants these items.
>
> In addition, I always state in my email that if there is anything left
> over after everyone has picked over the collection, I will take
> responsibility for  recycling and/or disposing of these items. I fully
> understand how a place like NB could easily become a dumping ground for
> everyone's unwanted items, and I have no intention of using NB as such.

I just want to thank you for having the attitude that you have towards 
donating items and that it means a lot to me that you feel it's your 
responsibility to make sure what you do donate gets used in some sort of 
way and doesn't eventually turn into cruft. I hope more and more members 
adopt this way of thinking when they plan to donate things to the space.

I also wanted to apologize to you for the comment I did make to Zedd 
when I saw him place more pc towers in the e-waste pile that's sitting 
in the elevator room. After picking through, sorting out, and moving 
donated items that we've had in the space for almost a year and finally 
having it get hauled off, being completely drained from the past two 
months of build out, getting to be extremely flustered with the 
unexcellent attitued folks have been sharing on and off this list, and 
the fact that I had just allow myself to drink for the night, I let some 
pretty nasty words fly for a minute. I'm sorry if you found that all 
offensive and I hope you can understand that it wasn't with any ill 
intent or hate.

Again thank you for your donations and sorry for being a dick head at 
that moment in time. I think you're quite an awesome person for thinking 
through your donations.

-- 
Rubin Abdi
rubin at starset.net



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