Back in the OC

I cleared off my desk and I feel better now. Lamp, laptop, notebook, pen. Good to go.

I am back from Baja now. It was a good trip. I will write about it later. Nowadays I feel guilty about writing, because so many people complain that it is too much to read.

The best part was riding in the back of a pickup truck, speeding down a dirt road in the the middle of nowhere, looking up at the snow-covered Sierra de Juarez, the purple sunset, and the desert storms racing through the valley.

It is possible to remove all of your Livejournal friends with a single unix command. I admit, though, that I used, instead, cut-and-paste, search-and-replace, and telnet.

I am going to Hanford on Sunday.

http://43things.com/people/view/tobin
http://del.icio.us/tobin

Putting old computers to good use

I am trying to get rid of the piles of computer equipment from various sources that seem to be piling up here at Location Alpha -- old PC's (from 486 to Pentium II), basically. They work fine, but we have no use for them. I think the situation is similar in many households around here.

I have heard that computer recycling is pretty much a fraud, with little actual recycling of materials taking place. Typically, from what I hear, "recycled" computers are shipped to some southeast Asian country, some valuable materials are stripped, and the rest is dumped in the river.

I just got back from a week in Baja, and while there I was impressed by how people in remote towns were able to make use of used clothing, electronics, and other items, and generally make good use of meager reasources. It occurred to me that these PC's would probably be fantastically useful to, say, a school down in some small town down in Baja. Indeed, I quickly developed visions of new Mexican hackers cutting their teeth on these venerable machines. A pentium-class machine is perfectly usable for most purposes.

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