I Have a Mac

Who does not know that Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011? iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iPad, the development of these familiar devices all overseen by Mr. Jobs. Back in 1989, the Mac SE/30 was the fastest and most expandable of the black and white compact Mac computers.

A local computer shop in Troy, Ohio, owned by Jeff Grote, donated this machine to the Computer Information Technology program. Students were awed, many wanted to purchase it after seeing similar Mac's for sale on ebay for up to $500. Sorry, not for sale. I plan to set up a Mac Shrine, dedicated to the memory of Steve Jobs. Wow, wow, wow. We will just play with this machine, and venerate that corner of the lab.

Thanks, Jeff, and Mac fanboys, this is for you.

Take a Picture

This is a picture of the wiring going to the power switches and LED's inside a computer. What's the point of taking pictures of these things? Well, if you have a reason to take apart a computer and you hope to get it put back together again, you either have to have a picture perfect memory of each wire, cable, cards, slot, connection, or a users manual for that particular computer. Or, you can take pictures. Most people don't have picture perfect memory, user's manuals are okay and easily obtainable for a mass produced computer, but why not just use your camera or smart phone and take pictures along the way?

I recommend to students that they use their phones picture-taking function and just snap away from beginning to end while they disassemble. When it is then time to assemble, where they are unsure they simply look at their pictures and put back the same way they took apart. Sure way to get a successful boot after disassembly/assembly.

Dirt! Dust! Enemy!

This is an inside view of a computer that was pulled from a lab at Upper Valley Career Center. Older computers either go to auction, are recycled or are adopted out of inventory for use by the Computer Information Technology program for student use in hardware, software and operating system labs. The fuzzy, white stuff visible in the photo above is dirt. Not your typical brown, backyard type of dirt but more your particles blown in through ventilation system and kicked up from carpet type of dust/dirt. Computers pull "fresh" air in to help with cooling the chips on a motherboard and dust/dirt collects inside.

Students learn from technical sources that dirt is the number one enemy of computers. Dirt clogs vents, can gum up fans, and contribute to over-heating in computers. We have seen much worse than what is pictured above. If you have dogs, cats or live in the country with open windows your computer might look much worse than this. We have seen computers where you could pull out gobs of dirt. The owners wondered why their computers were over-heating or power supply's were burning out. Dirt. Dust. A need for cleaning and routine maintenance.

A Guy and a Gnome

The guy is Bart Meersschaert, Strategic Solutions at EskoArtwork in Dayton, Ohio. Bart visited the Computer Information Technology, Interactive Media, and Digital Print programs at Upper Valley Career Center in during the first week of October to give a demonstration of some of the software that is used in packaging design.

Esko provides software and plug-ins that aid large corporations around the world in their design process. Bart visited our programs two years ago and students from the three programs mentioned above learned a great deal and enjoyed the polished demonstration that he gave. He aught to be good at demonstrations, this is what he currently does for a living. His educational and professional background is impressive...and his presentations are entertaining and very informative.

Hope you come back every two years, Bart!

Windows Version 7 Action Center

Last post highlighted Windows Version 8. Students that have viewed Version 8 criticize it saying "just a phone operating system pretending to be a true operating system. We'll see. The image above is what one sees after a Version 7 Install. The user is guided to the "Action Center" where the security settings can be configured. While free, downloadable anti-virus, anti-malware, and other anti-bad things security software like Comodo, AVG, Avast software are popular, many users are turning away from security software like Norton and MacAfee and are just relying on Windows-provided security like Windows Defender and Windows Security Essentials. You might get a Mac or use Linux and avoid the whole discussion about security.

Windows 8 OS Preview

Microsoft recently unveiled a preview of the new operating system they are working on. What is interesting about this new operating system is that it will run on all devices; desktops, laptops, microcomputers, mobile devices, everything. That is innovative, and when you think about it, users will probably find comfort in working with a familiar interfaces when moving from one device to another.

Computerworld explains that the transition from windows, icons, menus and pointing devices (WIMP) to multi-touch, physics, and gestures (MPG) is the next generation of computing here. Mike Elgan, writing for Computerworld, explains the basic idea of this new operating system in saying, "Windows 8 will combine the gestures and eye candy of tomorrow's touch tablets with the clunky mice and keyboards of yesterday's PC's.

Dumpster Diving

With all the construction going on at Upper Valley, cables and wires are being pulled out of the ceilings that haven't seen the light of day in over thirty-five years. Rob Grillot is a former student at Upper Valley and now works for the company that is doing the work of peeling back ceilings, walls, flooring, heating, cooling, ventilation and just about everything but the cinder block, cement floors and windows. Rob gave me a few lengths of old Type 1 cable that were part of the original construction of the building. Type 1 shielded copper cable was used, I believe, for telephone, and other data transfer. It had long since been replaced by newer cable standards but had just been left in place in the ceilings until about a week ago.

We used these small pieces of cable to investigate the waste stream, recycling processes, and how the copper within the shields is reused. Mr. Harris, environmental science teacher, and I combined on a lesson in which we learned that copper is selling for over $3.00 a pound and big-time machines are being made that will process cable like this old Type 1 and spit out little rubber and plastic pellets and shredded copper. Check out this link to a company called Rictec. Rictec makes the machines that process e-waste and turn it into commodities that will be used for new cables and other products.

The picture above shows KJ and Casey dumping the cable into the contractors recycling dumpster after we had completed this lesson. Thanks, Mr. Harris for sharing your science lab and resources with us, and thanks to Rob Grillot of Ohio Valley Integration for providing the cable for our studies.

Welcome to the Blue Labs

In cleaning out our hardware room, each junior student tagged their assigned computer after making sure it was in shape for their senior year. They were to be stored in a leased trailer and returned to us in the fall in our new location within the school. In an unexpected turn of events, we were promised newer desktop units for our lab work and decided to pull the DVD drives, Hard Drives, and RAM from these older units for their usefulness in future labs. These computers had already been stacked on pallets, shrink wrapped, and were slated to go to the waste recyclers.

The aisles in the blue labs are wide enough for fork trucks and moving in and out large machines like CNC's, lathes, and automobiles. This was where these pallets were being stored temporarily and where we had to do the work to retrieve the needed components. With newer computer units coming and now plenty of back-up components, we'll be all set for up to 28 junior and senior students.

Brad and Chris and I worked hard and fast but I still needed some additional help from Derrick (not shown in the video) to get this done. Unfortunately this impromptu recycling caused me to forget that I had a staff meeting to go to. Oops.

Laptops in the Dining Commons

We have had to relocate our classroom and lab to the dining commons for the last two weeks of the school year. There are construction projects under way at Upper Valley and we had to vacate our lab so that the construction crews could begin tearing out, tearing down, storing and recycling.

To make this work for the last two weeks, we load tool kits, laptops, curriculum materials onto a cart and set up in the dinning commons to complete labs.

We have some older laptops, some that don't boot, but nevertheless provide experience in removing hard drives, batteries and SODIMM. This older unit presented a challenge to Brad and KJ and they figured out how to cooperate in removing the hard drive. Good job, guys.

Walk-a-thon and Bowling on Seniors Last Day

May 20th was the last day of school for the Seniors. We hold a Walk-a-thon to benefit Miami Riverside Special Olympics. We raised close to $700 for them by walking the 2.5 miles from the Piqua Water Treatment Plant along the Miami River up to 25A and on to Brel-Aire Lanes.

The video is over 11 minutes long, don't feel obligated to watch the whole thing. The final couple of minutes of this video are dedicated to Mrs. Lucy Bailey. She is a long-time business teacher and is retiring now. Some of her fellow teachers got a little long-winded with well-wishing, one even gave a speech of sorts. My salute to Mrs. Bailey did not make it past the cutting room floor. Cutting room floor is a term that started with film video editing but is still used by some people even though almost all video is now digital and editing is done using software.

The producer, director, videographer, video editor all in one, Nate Stump, apologized appropriately for leaving me out. No problem.