I said in one of the previous posts on the site that I would add some more detail about clearing the old offices. Well I’ve decided that now is the time to do it, before I completely forget the train of events leading up to the final clearance of the offices.
When I was called and told to clear the computer stuff from the offices, there was a certain amount of “it’s nothing to do with me – my bit has been done”. This was a sentiment echoed by all the people that I spoke to prior to me going back to the old site, the picture above was taken in the communications workshop and as you can see it has been completely cleared. In actual fact there were nine different locations within the building where offices were in this conditions, all communication with the people responsible for these rooms elicited the same response – “nothing to do with me – my bit’s been done”. When I arrived I found that these sentiments were a great big pile of “Horse Pucky!”, something that you get used to in the world of IT.
An other one of the offices that had been cleared, the stuff in the boxes was all new and had never been used. I’d actually like to know how much of this equipment had cost when it was bought, but I’m guessing that I never will. On the second day that I was clearing the offices ( there has been a delay as we had filled all six skips), we had to wait until the skips were emptied. The next day we were up to full strength, there were three of us to start clearing rooms. And we set about it with gusto! but after about 10 minutes gusto left and was never seen again, did this change our work ethic – no not a bit of it. We went and had a cup of coffee, then carried on. There were some light hearted moments, I’d gone out and bought a couple of pairs of side cutters – well three pairs actually. By the end of the day only one pair was left, two pairs had suckummed to flash bangs as I cut through live mains cables. Stll all had went well and after a hard day and even although I looked like a member of the casr from the Black and White Minstrel show all was well.
The goodies that were thrown in the skip included things like high quality SCSI cables, several dozen of then ranging fron one to five meters in length. Many of these were in the plastic bags that they had been delivered in, so had never been used. There was equipment and parts for equipment that was 30 years old and had never been used, it’s hard to work out why the equipment was still there and why it was there but it was. Still after around four days and with the help of some other people all the issues with the equipment rooms were resolved. The vast majority of the equipment was binned, there were not really any bits that were worth salvaging – so it all went in the skip. One of my colleagues liberated a five foot pot plant, he took it home and it promptly died. Just like the offices that I had asked people about, in most cases to be greeted with “What do you mean it’s not cleared”. All was not as it appeared to the untrained eye, what with the things that had been done and the people who were suppodsed to be working on things.
Funnily enough I have found another room exactly like the ones you describe above at our site. There are enough unused boxed disks to fill another EVA5000 and a cabinet in the goodies still boxed up. As our site is the next to close I wonder where this lot will end up?
Most likely in the same place, however with a little planning it would be possible to ship to the AIX center of excellence as spares – would it not?