Posts Tagged ‘earth day’

Earth Day Reflection, 2013…

April 24th, 2013 by Jeremy Pavlov | No Comments | Filed in Announcement

As you may recall, last year the folks at my <un-named customer location> graciously permitted me to participate in their Earth Day recycling “event”.  During this event, the organization encourages the employees to bring in certain items to recycle, which are picked up and utilized by nearby recycling organizations.  This year, the supporting organizations again included those that accept old eyeglasses, old mobile phones for soldiers, etc., as well as computer component recycling by local organization re-Source Partners. 

No matter what your opinion of “Earth Day” itself, I think it’s a great idea to utilize this day in a way that fits your motivations.  As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t think it matters as much *why* you do good things, as it does that you just *do*.  So in my busy life, I think it’s great to have these sorts of reminders to make at least a tiny donation (like the eyeglasses, phones, etc.), especially when the stuff doesn’t even matter to you any more.  Even recycling old computer junk with organizations like this can be considered a “donation” when you think about all the componentry and raw material that will be scavenged from the old computer hardware and returned to usefulness in new products; so much better than filling up a land fill!

 EarthDay2013This year, while my part was fairly small (my mother’s old PC and monitor, 2 of my wife’s old laptops, 2 desktops I got off eBay fro Dev/Testing, and 2 Intel clone servers that served me well), I took a moment to reflect on a couple things:

  1. Even though these are all *working* computers and parts, all of the computing power — combined — is still just a fraction of just ONE of my Virtual Machine hosts that replaced them
  2. It’s a tiny piece of “mess” in my basement that can’t and won’t be re-made; these types of computer components are just not seen as much anymore (and certainly will not be seen in my home anymore) as smartphones, tablets, and other modern devices (and cloud services) have pretty much replaced the need for these things

So that’s all the good news…  The bad news is that my basement still has a ton more of this old hardware.

;)

But I hope Earth Day 2013 helped you in some way, too.

 

 

 

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Earth Day Reflection…

April 26th, 2012 by Jeremy Pavlov | No Comments | Filed in Announcement

Recently, I participated in some Earth Day recycling events at <un-named customer location>, where I’ve been working on a project for some time.  This customer puts together a really great program of accepting contributions, donations, and recyclable materials; and they make a light, celebratory, atmosphere of it all.  It’s easy to get a bit swept up in it! 

I had just started working with the un-named customer not too long before last year’s Earth Day, and missed the opportunity (or inclination, frankly) to participate.  This year, I was determined to “do my part”.

The customer partners with re.Source Partners for technology recycling, as well as a couple others that deal with certain other donate-able/recyclable items.  Together, they provide quite an impressive list of things that may be brought in to recycle (computers and parts, printers, batteries, cell phones, etc) — and if you’re anything like me, you have at least one or two of these things somewhere in your house.  Except in my case, I have *many* of these things. 

Over the years, as a consultant “back in the day” for many SMBs, I picked up alot of computers/servers/monitors that I could just never seem to part with; usually for sentimental reasons.  I could point around my basement, and recall that I did my first packet captures on “this” machine…  And built my first NDS replica on “that” machine…  And so on.  But this time, I was determined to take advantage of the Earth Day event opportunity to get rid of… *something*.  

So when the time came, I took out the minivan seat, and started filling up the back with… CRT monitors!  The perfect thing to recycle.  They take up too much space, are obsoleted by flat-screens, and I honestly didn’t want to even have to move them again.  That was an easy decision!  Far easier than having to get rid of… say… the first server on which I ever slaved a reverse DNS sub zone.

But as the van filled up, I realized there was still some space left, even after I had loaded up every monitor I had (except the three I still use).  Oh no!  My spacial relations urges were trumping hoarding compulsions, and I was going to have to fill that space up and recycle some of my precious babies!

And so I did.

In the pic below, you can see two massively heavy old Compaq servers that were my second and third-ever NDS replica servers (I still have the first server, thank you).  To the left of that is a rack-mount ATX chassis from an old datacenter that once serviced DNS for hundreds of users, and spent many years as various incarnations Linux firewall for me over the years.  To the right of the Compaq servers you can see an old buddy’s 486 from back in the 90′s.  Yes, all 9 of the monitors you see are from me.  The coolest is the tiny one at top right; it’s an old IBM grey-scale server monitor I used to use on my 386 running NetWare 3.12.  I still have the server though…

Of course, every server that’s actually *running* in my home is 64-bit these days, and anything that isn’t 64-bit is pretty much a recycling contribution waiting to happen…  I guess the museum will remain until next year…

I want to thank <un-named customer> for holding the Earth Day program, and for being kind enough to allow me to participate.  I hope some of you out there got a chance to participate in one or more of these types of programs.  It benefits everyone involved!

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