Old Equipment, and what to do with it
During the normal course of business, we in the IT business tend to find
ourselves inundated with surplus and unwanted equipment from time to
time. Quite often we hold raffles to give the good stuff away, or just
pile it up and send out a "first come, first serve" email.
Sometimes though...
Sometimes we find we have some equipment that doesn't work, nobody
wants to repair it and the facility guys don't want to go through
the hassle of getting rid of it. Well, at times like this we have to
resort to "alternate" methods of disposal. Enter Pole Mountain
in Wyoming, a Vanagon (as much for transportation as for a windbreak),
several firearms and lots of ammo. Pole Mountain is representative of
much of Wyoming in that it is far enough away from people that you can
shoot anything you want (practicing normal hunter safety rules, of course)
and much more windy than most places on earth. Chicago, with the moniker
of "the windy city" makes folks from Wyoming just chuckle and
shake their heads.
So, the process of disposal consists of loading up the vehicle, driving
north, setting up a target area, and burning through several hundred
rounds of ammunition. Here we'll see a few examples.
As we see above, we've laid out a couple of old X-terminal monitors
which have outlived their usefulness of holding down a storage shelf.
We've arranged them with glass facing the firing line so as to get the
most satisfaction when the lead starts flying. But first, lets prep the
firing line. That's me on the left wrangling the tarp to the ground. The
tarp is useful for catching spent brass and doing some prone shooting of
any rifles brought along. The Vanagon is blocking the wind here so we're
only getting about a constant 30 miles per hour on this side.
Now that we have the tarp held down with copious amounts of ammo and
hardware, it's time to get ready. Mike has chosen to break in his shiny
new Springfield Armory .45 ACP M1911-A1. Well, not exactly shiny as
it's a black model, but you get the picture. The .45 is a dang
fine firearm and fires the time proven .45 caliber round. Originally
designed in 1911 (hence the name) specifically for firing the .45 round,
its original use was in the Phillipines by the U.S. Army. The stopping
power of the .45 round was needed against the native Moros, who were
defending themselves against the .38 rounds previously in use by tying
off their limbs with wet rawhide strips thus letting them advance on
Army troops despite gunshot wounds to limbs they could not feel from
the tourniquets they had self applied. The knockdown and severe shock
from the .45 round was the perfect solution. Using the .45 in our
particular application is also a good idea as the offcast IT equipment
is particularly tenacious in sticking around alot longer than anyone
wants. This'll teach 'em.
Time to go to work.
Sometimes we find we have some equipment that doesn't work, nobody
wants to repair it and the facility guys don't want to go through
the hassle of getting rid of it. Well, at times like this we have to
resort to "alternate" methods of disposal. Enter Pole Mountain
in Wyoming, a Vanagon (as much for transportation as for a windbreak),
several firearms and lots of ammo. Pole Mountain is representative of
much of Wyoming in that it is far enough away from people that you can
shoot anything you want (practicing normal hunter safety rules, of course)
and much more windy than most places on earth. Chicago, with the moniker
of "the windy city" makes folks from Wyoming just chuckle and
shake their heads.
