[frgeek-michiana] Lab Notes, 4/13/04

From: Tom Brown <tbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: FreeGeek Michiana <frgeek-michiana@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 23:26:31 -0500

Lab Notes, 4/13/04
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Present: Frank and Judy Bradley, Sherral Stamatovich, Terry Click, Jay Schlatter, Mike Cook, Tom Brown, Chris Wharton

:: Schedule Conflict

Eric Payton rehearses a brass band at the church on Tuesday evenings. Normally they are done before we start lab. If they stay later than normal, they usually practice in the sanctuary upstairs.

But last night Eric changed the rehearsal schedule. He has two bands rehearsing instead of one. The extended rehearsal starts at 6:00 PM and ends at 8:00 PM. And Eric used the fellowship hall rather than the sanctuary. So we had to wait until the rehearsals were over to begin lab.

All of us but Jay went to a restaurant to talk and eat until 8:00. Jay stayed at the church to work alone in the Upper Room. Eric locked the church and armed the alarm when the musicians left. Eric didn't know Jay was working in the upstairs storage room. Jay didn't know Eric had set the alarm. Jay unwittingly triggered the alarm, and a cop showed up as the rest of us returned to work at 8:00 PM.

I will contact Jody Montgomery and try to work around this schedule conflict.

:: FreeBoxes

We built six FreeBoxes for the class this Saturday. Unfortunately none of the boxes have CDROM drives, and most have 8-bit color. The boxes are below our minimum standard. I chose to drop our standards rather than cancel the class and jam up our storage space.

Jay found some video cards upstairs with 2 MB of RAM. We can install them later if the recipients want to volunteer time with us. When the CDROMs I purchased arrive, we can install them for the class graduates too. However the recipients will have to reimburse me for the cost of the drives.

:: Recycling

Mike helped Frank and Judy demanufacture some boxes from the Upper Room. Mike brought several tubs in which to store the components.

Jay reorganized the Upper Room so there is more space. I have about 12 monitors in the Astro van to move to the Upper Room. I need to make space in the van to start hauling computers to the lab for demanufacturing.

We need to: # Move the printers in the Upper Room to The Barn. # Sort through the remaining equipment upstairs. Anything we don't use to refurb FreeBoxes goes to The Barn or another storage site. # Obtain gaylord boxes for The Barn ASAP. Mike says his company doesn't have used ones at the moment. Does anyone else have a lead on low cost gaylord boxes?

:: Modems, Printers and Such

Some of our FreeBox recipients are installing Windows on their computers or at least trying to install Windows in order to attach modems and printers. If we don't supply folks with peripheral devices, people will switch to Windows to have more functional systems. This is certainly not the outcome we are looking for.

If we don't move quickly, we'll lose these folks as volunteers and Free Software advocates. I think more functional systems will also motivate FreeBox recipients to earn volunteer credits for classes. Here's the plan.

1. FGM will offer components for sale at our cost. We will install the components in exchange for volunteer credits or cash donations.

2. We need to load the better computers in the Upper Room with a decent distro and put a price on them in both cash and volunteer credits. Some of our volunteers will want to buy them outright so they have better computer systems immediately. Others will want to bid on them with their volunteer credits.

3. We need to sort through the boxes in the Upper Room and segregate and test every sound card, speaker, CDROM drive, modem and Ethernet NIC. Then put a price on them in both cash and volunteer credits.

I will talk to Henry Davis about obtaining a printer tester and a supply of low cost printers to sell to our volunteers and FreeBox recipients. Jay or I may talk to Chesapeake Recycling re supplying us with peripherals.

The requests I hear from FreeBox recipients are:
 . Internet access
 . printers
 . games and sound

I have purchased some modems to test. Mike is working on games for Vector Linux. We have some sound cards but probably need to purchase more. Henry will help us find printers.

Tom

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[frgeek-michiana] Lab Notes, 4/13/04

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