Friends help you move. True friends help you move racks.

[unixronin]

With the aid of captoblivion, we made a roundtrip to Virginia Beach and hauled back a truckload of free hardware.  darthgeek was scheduled to be bringing his van, but his wife and daughter came down sick yesterday and he couldn't make it.  Fortunately, through ingenuity, mindless exertion and generous application of ratchet tie-downs, we managed to get everything into and safely secured in captoblivion's pickup.  We scored two Digital 72" full-cabinet racks, three Alphaserver 4000s (at least one of which is incomplete, but at least one looks runnable), and 10 DEC Storageworks disk arrays, all for the effort of loading and unloading them.  We mainly wanted the racks.  The included Alpha hardware is gravy.

Said loading took us about two hours.  Unloading them and getting them into the trailer took almost four hours, including paring down the surface of the front deck with a hatchet (the trailer's subsiding faster than the deck is) and removing a large chunk of the deck railing to that we could get the front screen door open all the way, instead of it hitting the rail at 60° opening.  (It was a really stupidly designed railing.  We may or may not replace it with a better one.)

I'll take a full inventory tomorrow or Monday,  Right now, I'm exhausted.

---

Update:

Comments

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Wow. Now you _really do_ have more computing power than God!

[arasirsul.livejournal.com]

Naah... I'm pretty sure a bunch of racks full of Alphaserver 4000s get their collective clocks cleaned by a modern Athlon 64 or two. I don't think you go after a bunch of racks of DEC hardware because you need the horsepower...

On the other hand, when it's all set up, he should have a bigger electric bill than God. :)

-JDF

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Only if we're crazy enough to actually try to run it all. :)

(I figure I'll see what I can stuff into the one best-looking 4000 and see if I can get it working with one disk array to boot from, so I can use it to learn Tru64 on. We mainly wanted the racks, so that I can rack a bunch of the stuff I already have and reclaim some space.)

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I've got one of the mini-desktop Alphas in storage; one of these years I'll figure out how to boot the damn thing and put Debian or OpenBSD on it.... unless somebody else gets into the area and decides he wants more Alphas.. :)

Nice icon, JD. :)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Could probably actually afford to run that. ;)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

We already did before.  ;)  We had more powerful machines than these already.

(Besides, just between you and me, I don't think God uses computers.  But you didn't hear that from me.)

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

So, is that a good birthday present?

Happy birthday, kind sir.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, actually, I'm thinking of buying this (http://downwardspiral.net/forsale/waster/waster_01.jpg) (detail (http://downwardspiral.net/forsale/waster/waster_02.jpg)) with the $50 that our out-laws gave me as a birthday present, which will feel more birthday-ish. It's almost the exact same dimensions as Dyrnwyn, 48" overall/37" blade instead of 48" overla///38" blade, which will make it perfect for practice. A change of pace from katana bokutoh.

Someday I'd like to get a proper steel longsword much like this....

[felinecanine.livejournal.com]

Those racks go perfectly with the wood paneling in the background. That whole picture reminds me of a different era.
OK, I suppose the paneling is older, but not in technology years.

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

That isn't wood paneling. That is cardboard with wood paneling stickers on it. :-p

[jmkelly.livejournal.com]

It makes an interesting combination with the just-visible couch.

Happy birthday, geek god!

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Thank you. :)

[captoblivion.livejournal.com]

I feel compelled to point out that these two racks are now not only the dominant feature of their living room, but together are now the tallest and most stable structure in the entirity of Pitt County. I would beg you NEVER EVER EVER try to plug them in. I fear for the wildfires that you would cause from the resultant overload at the local electrical transformer.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, considering that (a) nothing is connected together right now, and (b) there isn't a NEMA 5R30 outlet in the livingroom, I don't think that's too likely to become a problem. :)