[Tfug] TUSD Tech Nightmare, UofA surplus auction..

[Bowie J. Poag]

Heh.. Really.  Two magnesium '040 cubes, one slab, two monitors, one MO 
drive, full set of manuals, even a friggin NeXT window decal. There was 
a point where me and other people were making so much money off of 
UofA's stupidity, i'm surprised the media didn't get wind of the surplus 
auctions and do a piece on the sheer volume of money wasted there. Dumb, 
dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. I mean, if I can pull in $2000 one *month* on 
eBay from stuff I paid about $50 for...something's wrong.

Seeing the UofA on one hand hike their tuition rates while, on the other 
hand, literally throw money away....it just makes you wonder what the 
hell they're smoking. I can't imagine the board of regents sitting 
around a conference table saying to themselves "We can't POSSIBLY save 
any more money! ANYWHERE! We NEED to hike our tuition! Quick--More 
Badminton and Cheerleading scholarships! To the Batmobile!"

I'm kinda glad I don't need to skulk the surplus auction anymore. It can 
be disappointing in a wide variety of ways. :)

Cheers,
Bowie



Shawn Nock wrote:
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> What you are describing below is not corruption, rather it is a purely
> philanthropic scholarship program for local needy Unix geeks.
>
> I picked up 1 of my two NeXT machines (a 25MHz slab), and my Indigo2 at
> U surplus years ago. I personally love the "fire sale" qualities of the
> surplus office (everything must go!). Recently I've noticed that most of
> the stock is simply old beige wintel boxes (going for way too much
> money). What happened to computers with substance and style?
>
> Peace,
> Shawn
>
> Bowie J. Poag wrote:
>
>   
>> Even the UofA has it's issues. I used to *routinely* pick up NeXT 
>> workstations from the UofA auctions. $10k-$15k Unix workstations who's 
>> function could have easilly been replicated with a simple X terminal. 
>> And besides, why NeXT?  When I worked for UofA, there was a woman in our 
>> department that had managed to get her own SGI o2 gumdrop workstation, 
>> which, at the time, was about $12k. A massive hot-rod graphics 
>> workstation. Her justification for buying it? "It looked user friendly, 
>> like my Mac at home". When she found out it wasn't a Mac, it just 
>> collected dust in her office. A couple grad students ended up using it 
>> as an X terminal to contact a bunch of antique RS/6000's I maintained. 
>> Nothing I could do about it but shake my head in disbelief at how 
>> financially irresponsible (and occasionally corrupt!) the department was.
>>
>> Ahhh, the stories I could tell you over a beer.. :)
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Bowie
>>     
>
>
>
> - --
> Shawn Nock (OpenPGP: 0xB64200E1)
> Unix Systems Group; CCIT
> University of Arizona
> nock at email.arizona.edu
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