ROOPHLOCH 2024
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Posting from: Petch Fountain, University of Victoria
Hardware: Dell Latitude D630
OS: Debian 11 (bullseye), xmonad
Software: xterm, ssh, emacs

So yes, here I am, doing ROOPHLOCH [1] on easy mode, posting
from the fountain immediately in front of the university
library, connecting over the campus wireless network. I am
using a vintage 2007 laptop I have never used for gophering
before, about which more in a moment, but that scarcely ups
the difficulty level.

The challenge, if such there be, is simply "getting it
done." I had somewhat more ambitious plans for last year:
restore a 2003 Thinkpad X31, upgrade the wireless card so it
can handle modern encryption, and cycle somewhere a bit
further away (Royal Roads University) where I would connect
over their eduroam access point. Nice idea, but it didn't
happen last year, and it wasn't going to happen this year
either, alas.

It's quite pleasant here by the fountain. Coolish, being
late September, but sunny, lots of trees partially obscuring
the mostly non-descript campus modernist buildings on all
sides of the quad. The leaves are only just beginning to
show their autumn colours.

The laptop on which I am writing this post has a bit of a
history to it.  Back in 2007 it was one of our pool of
lending laptops, one of a fleet of 24 loaned out to students
for two hours at a time.  The fleet needed to be replaced
after about 3 years or so of getting kicked around by
students, and so it was, but a few of the laptops came
through the gauntlet relatively unscathed and were
accordingly refurbished and made available to staff. This
one was mine for a couple of years after that, but
eventually I upgraded to a newer castoff, and gave the Dell
back to our technicians who I assumed would send it for
recycling. That would have been back around 2013 or so.

Silly me. The technician to whom it was returned, whom I
will refer to here as "T", did not like to discard anything
that might still be useful.  He had a bit of a reputation in
fact, as his various collections of older gear had a way of
migrating into any available storage space in the
Library (temporarily vacant cubicles, obscure rooms in the
basement, unused faculty offices ... ). 

(Nothing I say here should be interpreted as critical of T,
by the way.  He was an excellent technician of the old
school, a master craftsman who provided excellent service
with a personal touch, and a joy to work with).

T retired last year, after a Library career stretching back
to when I was still in grade school, and I'm not that far
off retirement age myself.  I was sorry to see him go, but
it was time for sure. A major IT reorg was then underway,
one that I think left little room for technicians of the
old school, particularly those whom, like T, preferred a
certain independence in their work.

One of his last major projects was to clear out his various
collections of older equipment, and it was a trip down
memory lane seeing what turned up in the discard pile that
month.  One of those many things being my old laptop, which I
was able to identify as it still had a "Dr. Doom" sticker on
it that I had taken (with permission) from one of my sons
sticker books.

I remarked on it to T, who then took it upon himself to
refurbish and upgrade the old laptop one more time, maxing
out the RAM (4G), replacing the old  mechanical drive with an
SSD, replacing the battery with a brand new old stock
battery he just happened (of course) to have on hand, and -
completely useless, but it pleases me - a floppy disk drive
in the modular drive caddy. It can be swapped out with an
optical drive should the need arise.

He gave it back to me shortly before he left.  A wonderful
parting gift from a valued colleague, to be treasured for
years to come. And, floppy drive notwithstanding, it's
surprising how useful this 17 year old laptop still is.

And now the sun has gone behind a cloud and I'm getting
cold. Time for me to wrap up my ROOPHLOCH contribution for
2024.

References
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[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/1/~solderpunk/roophloch/2024

Sun Sep 29 12:03:21 PDT 2024