April 09, 2009

I voted in the Mountain Equipment Cooperative election again.

Again I have voted in the election of the board of directors for the one coop I belong too. I have also finally bought what I consider the signature item from MEC: a red cycling jacket. Also I have bought this past month new winter gloves for my partner and a rear rack pack. The rear rack pack now holds my tool kit, tires, tubes and pump. I also bought a new rear light as I broke my last one this winter cycling in a storm. I am not happy with the attachment that the present breed of cycling lights have they are far too flimsy. We also did not do well with the down jacket we bought my partner as it tears easily and is now full of taped up holes leaking down. My main concern is increasing quality of the gear we sell and buy. I voted for two experienced candidates and one newcomer. My grandfather who started as a farm educator in the working world was also into coops. So yes I respect elders.

Posted by robot17A5 at 03:56 AM | | Comments (0)

March 31, 2009

The recession and my survival, no strike three

I spend the recessions of the early 1980's and early 1990's basically unemployed and sick. I just got a promotion at work. So this time I have not struck out.

Posted by robot17A5 at 05:39 PM | | Comments (0)

January 31, 2009

Another computer swap update

I have now sold the 1 U clone server. I got 40$ so I am about 50$ short of breaking even on the computer swap now.

Posted by robot17A5 at 07:48 PM | | Comments (0)

December 12, 2008

An update about the computer swap

I was able sell the Sunfire server for 100 dollars minus 20 dollars for shipping.This means I now need to recover only 119 dollars and some money to adjust for inflation, time and taxes on the initial purchases for the stuff I traded away. There was a time when I would be happy to spend 100 dollars on a used laptop which is one item I have left. I also have an empty case and another Pentium M motherboard and a Dell 600 Mhz computer tower that has already done some work for the green party when out on loan. I also still have the 120 GB hard drive which is holding my mp3's now in a network storage drive installation. And last but not least I still have the 1U clone server to refurbish. For the clone I spent another 20 dollars for another pentium M chip used on ebay. So with a little positive spirit and patience I have actually come out ahead on his computer swap.

In an older swap, I traded an IBM T-30 thinkpad wih broken screen for 200 dollars and a Linksys open source router. I used this wireless router for about three years and just sold it this week for 25 dollars.

Posted by robot17A5 at 01:59 AM | | Comments (0)

I am actually learning to talk statistics and causality errors

At least today I was gifted social scientist at work.

Posted by robot17A5 at 01:54 AM | | Comments (0)

November 22, 2008

The workshop is over. I met some good sisters and brothers in the union movement

I attend the day's workshop and enjoyed the day. I knew most of the web 2.0 services we covered but really enjoyed covering them in a classroom.

Posted by robot17A5 at 03:26 PM | | Comments (0)

I am training with union activists today to use online tools

I am at a union sponsored training event. We are discussing and learning how to use ICT's to do union work. That is so called web 2.0 applications for union communications.

Posted by robot17A5 at 09:42 AM | | Comments (0)

November 11, 2008

I built a new PC workstation from parts.

I am just formating the first hard drive as I install Windows XP 64 bit on my homebuilt PC. I used an Asus motherboard, 8 GB of RAM, and an Intel Wolfdale power efficient processor. It has an e-GeForce 8500 video card with 1 GB of RAM. I have a new LG 19" widescreen monitor for this system. The monitor uses 36 watts for power. I also used a Seasonic 500 watt 80+ power efficient power supply. It seems to be working and is fairly quiet. This new homebuilt PC is fairly green in its power efficiency.

Posted by robot17A5 at 04:16 PM | | Comments (0)

August 03, 2008

I attended a workshop at MIT the home of much tech origins

I attended a workshop at MIT and spoke about knowledge management. Three learned professors gave me feedback on my presentation. I also heard many presentations on Internet topics and also work related sociology. This included development topics, politics, open source, Wifi, call centres, country comparisons of internet use, and network graphs.

Posted by robot17A5 at 12:09 AM | | Comments (0)

July 27, 2008

I did some computer swapping.

I have done some trading in computer parts recently. I traded my Sun Ultra 5 for a Sun Fire v120, a clone 1U server which takes a Pentium M, some parts like drives including a 120 GB SATA drive, a mother board, three towers of various vintages and a Dell Pentium II laptop without power supply. I focused on refurbing the servers first and bought a Pentium M chip for the clone and two 18 GB hard drives for the v120. This cost me about 50$ on ebay.

I also focused on the motherboard. I sold the mother board complete with the Pentium M chip I bought on ebay. After this I had 30$ from this deal after recovering costs for the chip. I still need to recoup 90$ to cover the Ultra 5 and then 99$ to recover costs from the Peavey stereo EQ I also traded as part of this deal. Then need to cover the costs of the two hard drives in the v120.

I am giving away one of the towers with Debian 4.0 r3 installed on it but am waiting to find a modem for this machine before I give it away. One of the other towers was so old a friend who was recycling computers took it to the recyclers. He also gave me a 19 inch monitor that I am now using for Eve Online and also my Linux computer. Other than the one tower I am giving away none of these machines is working right now.

Posted by robot17A5 at 01:10 PM | | Comments (0)