It is close enough to the end of the year for me to say that it has definitely been good. For those who aren't quite sick of me saying it, we surpassed our total number of computers donated this year with our last project.
We built and gave away 300 machines so far in 2008 and the year isn't over.
Things however, have gotten to the point where our organization needs to be...well, just a bit more organized. Now that my personal situation is a bit more clarified, I am able to expand The HeliOS Project and bring some people on board that can not only give me a hand with the day to day stuff, but bring some real talent to what we do. Allow this to serve as official public notice for the new Directors of HeliOS Project. Aside from myself, they are:
Larry Cafiero - Larry of course is my counter-part to Lindependence. He is an Editor with the Santa Cruz Sentinel and an active FOSS advocate. Larry has some unique talents that can give The HeliOS Project not only added exposure, he also acts as necessary ballast to an excellent organization. Larry resides with his wife and daughter in Scotts Valley California.
Tom King - Tom is a Server Analyst with Dell. Tom has been a stabilizing factor for us now for over a year. His talents in Networking and Network Administration will aid us in those tricky network situations where my abilities are far from adequate. He will also administer the books for HeliOS Project and shoulder the responsibility for our legal obligations for open disclosure as described by Texas and Federal Laws. Tom is also a consultant and will be an employee of HeliOS Solutions. Obviously, Tom resides here in Austin with his wife Cindy.
Bob Pianka - Bob has been invaluable to our efforts for over a year now. He isn't interested in any recompense for his duties as Outreach Director for HeliOS Project. He just wants the fancy title and a cheezy T-shirt to wear when he does our fund raising. We can do that Bob. Seriously, Bob has been the "face" of a few of our projects and he has been responsible for getting the word out about what we are doing at various times. Bob spends his days lazing as a gentleman of leisure in the gentle breezes of Valrico Florida. Life is so hard for him...
There is one other Director pending. There are some issues however in his actual identity being known. Since all Directors of a nonprofit must have their identities and places of residence as a matter of record, we are looking at ways to bring this person on without divulging his personal data. He has worked in the past for a certain Software company and there may be problems by identifying him due to some of his work since. We are looking into that now and should we either get the go ahead to publish his name or find a way to protect him, we will do so then.
These people will round out the nonprofit efforts of HeliOS Project and make what we do not only better, things will happen faster and hopefully, more often.
So...What ARE we doing?
Glad you asked.
"The Season" is upon us and as every holiday season, the requests we get for machines jumps two-fold. We are fortunate enough to have a friend by the name of Mark Van Kingsley. Mark in turn has friends at the University of Pennsylvania - Bloomsburg...in the IT department no less. Mark has introduced me to the people that gather, store and keep watch over the excess computer equipment the University accumulates.
Dude...
I am now in negotiations with the University to lay hands on as many as 25 of their "excess" P4 machines. The great thing about them is that they are, for the most part, Dimension 2400's. They will survive a head-on nuclear strike and parts for them are as abundant as my opinions.
While the University will happily give us the computers, they will not, and understandably so, foot the bill for shipping. We're looking at just short of 800 dollars to have these machines picked up and shipped so we are coming to our community to let them know that we could use some help. HeliOS Solutions sales traditionally take a nose-dive from the middle of November until about the same period in January. Unfortunately this is the time period where we are the busiest and we would graciously accept any assistance you could give us to get these machines here.
Now...should this for any reason fall through, we have a backup plan. Not quite as good but it's better than a sharp stick in the eye. Tom King, and oh did I mention the fact that he works for Dell...? He informed me that Dell was having a clearance of their refurbs. These are refurbished after lease returns and we are gettiing 18 month old Optiplex units for about 170 per unit. These are loaded units with between 1 and 2 gigs of ram, either no OS or WinXP, 80 gig drives, either onboad intel video chips or Nvidia chipsets and they are again, refurbished.
So that's an option as well but we are really looking toward the University as the first choice, for obvious reasons. Should you want to help us meet our holiday needs, you can do so by clicking the donation button at the top of this page.
Thanks again for being part of what we do. Without many of you folks, these things wouldn't be happening and from all of us here at HeliOS Solutions/HeliOS Project, Thank You.
"So helios, where does all this happen? Do you have some magic workshop with dwarves and magic dust?"
Nope...but I'll show you where it happens...or at least where it's happened for the past couple of months. Here is a picture of our workshop and testing bench. Note the machine on the right. That's the Larado Quadrado we are testing and fixin' to review for Issac and Young Computer Company. Stay tooned.
All-righty then...
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Refueling the Effort
blather and mumbling provided by Blog of helios at 5:59 AM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
12 comments:
Man, are those the monitors you are giving away with your computers in the picture above? I notice your computers all have LED flatscreens. on your "test bench". Can't you do better than museum era CRT's? Some of those look like they are ancient.
"Man, are those the monitors..."
You can help change those crusty old CRT's into flat screen LCD's.
Ok helios, this has bugged me all day. I notice on the workbench with the computer that is obviously in some stage of metamorphosis, there appears to be a salt shaker on the right side of the picture. Uh, a salt shaker? Any particular reason for a salt shaker on a computer bench?
helios,
Those boxes from Pennsylvania, $800 is $32 each. Those are post office prices.
How about pallet with cardboard and shrink wrap and ship on a freight truck line. Bet it's cheaper.
Better yet, I know someone who owns a freight line. We usually ship full truck loads with them, but I think it's worth asking about a couple pallets.
I'll let you know what they say tomorrow night.
Your resident gentleman of leisure.
amenditman
It's for his coffee .
It's an old Cuban trick, a few grains in a cup makes it smoother.
Try it you'll like it.
amenditman
Congrats to the Helios team for ramping up with its organizational status! That is great news!
Unfortunately, I have named a Director to HeliOS Project that has a bit of a twisted sense of humor. Salt in coffee is an old trick wives would pull on their husbands prior to them leaving on long trips, wars, supposed wars and business meetings and VFW bingo nights. just a few grains of salt in a male's coffee will render him impotent for at least a week.
Who has the twisted sense of humor?
Salt, slightly dampened, removes the tenacious glue backing from old "Powered by WindowsXP" badges.
It also acts as the final stage of triage for tequila shots when intel chipsets won't boot.
h
I must say, this is going to give me some good experience, especially since the wife and I also started a small production company recently - mostly based on FOSS tools, by the way, unless the wife demands Final Cut Pro. In any case, this should be a pretty rewarding experience and I'm happy to be a part of it.
Mushy intro aside, Ken, you sure cleaned up those work benches, eh? ;)
Does this project have a website?
I've found it. I guess this is the website:
http://www.fixedbylinux.com/
A lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband,wow gold dressed in a homespun threadbare suit, stepped off the train in Boston, and walked timidly without wow gold an appointment into the president of Harvard’s outer office .The secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods country folk had not business at Harvard, and probably didn’t even deserve to be in Cambridge .She frowned. ”We want to see the president,” the man said softly.” He’ll be busy all day,” the secretary snapped.” We’ll wait,” the lady replied.
For hours, the secretary ignored them,wow gold hoping that the couple would finally become discouraged and go away. They didn’t. And the secretary grew frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president. ”Maybe if they just see you for a few minutes, wow gold they’ll leave,” she told him. He signed in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance obviously didn’t have the time wow gold to spend with nobodies, but he detested gingham and homespun suits cluttering his office.
The president, stern-faced with dignity, strutted toward the couple .The lady told him, ”We had a son that wow gold attended Harvard for one year .He loved Harvard, and was very happy here. But he was accidentally killed. And my husband and I would like to erect a memorial to him somewhere on campus. ”The president wasn’t touched, and she was shocked, ”Madam,” he said gruffly, ”we can’t put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and died, this place would wow gold look like a cemetery.
“Oh, no“ the wow gold lady explained quickly, “we don’t want to erect a statue .We thought we would give a building to Harvard.” The president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun suit, and then exclaimed, ”A building! Do you have and earthly idea how much a building costs? We have over seven and a half million dollars in the physical plant wow gold at Harvard.
My father was a self-taught wow po mandolin player. He was one of the best string wow or instrument players in our town. He could not read music,wow po but if he heard a tune a few times, he could play it. When he was younger, wow or he was a member of a small country music band. wow po They would play at local dances and on a wow or few occasions would play for the local radio station.wow geld He often told us how he had 2)auditioned and earned a position in wow geld a band that featured Patsy Cline as their lead singer. He told the family wow geld that after he was hired he never went back. Dad was a very religious man. LOTR Gold He stated that there was a lot of drinking and cursing the day of his LOTR Gold audition and he did not want to be around that type LOTR gold of environment.
Occasionally, Dad would get out buy Warhammer gold his mandolin and play for the family. We three children: Trisha,Warhammer gold Monte and I, George Jr., would often sing along.buy Warhammer gold Songs such as the Tennessee Waltz, Harbor Lights and around Christmas Warhammer goldtime, the well-known 3)rendition of Silver Bells. "Silver Bells, buy Warhammer gold Silver Bells, its Christmas time in the city" Warhammer gold would ring throughout the house. One of Dad's favorite 4)hymns was "The Old Rugged Cross". buy Warhammer goldWe learned the words to the hymn when we were very young, and would sing it with Dad when he would play and sing.Warhammer gold Another song that was often shared in our house was a song that accompanied the Walt buy Warhammer gold Disney series: Davey Crockett. Dad only Warhammer gold had to hear the song twice before he learned it well enough to play it. "Davey, Davey Crockett,buy Warhammer gold King of the Wild Frontier" was a favorite song for the family. He knew we enjoyed the song and the program and would often get Warhammer gold out the mandolin after the program was over. wow gold I could never get over how he could play the songs so well after only world of warcraft gold hearing them a few times. I loved to sing, but I never learned how to play the mandolin. This is something I buy wow gold regret to this daywow po.
Dad loved to play cheap wow gold the mandolin for his family he knew we enjoyed singing,wow power leveling and hearing him play. He was like that. If he could give pleasure wow powerleveling to others, he would, especially his family.wow or He was always there, dofus kamas sacrificing his time and efforts to see that his kamas dofus family had enough in their life. I had to mature into a man and have Lord of the Rings Online Gold children of my own before I realized how much he had sacrificed.LOTRO Gold
I joined the United LOTR Gold States Air Force in January of 1962. Whenever fly for fun penya I would come home on leave, I would ask Dad to play the mandolin.flyff penya Nobody played the mandolin like my father. He could touch your soul with the tones that came out of that old flyff penya mandolin. He seemed to shine when he was playing. You could see his pride Final Fantasy XI gil in his ability to play so well for his family.buy cheap ffxi gil
Post a Comment