[NPMUG] Goodwill CRC update, April 10

[Robert A. Donaldson]

Dear Mac friends:

Many thanks to Charlie Hutchens, John Hamill, and Dave Sevick for  
joining me at the Goodwill Computer Recycling Center yesterday.

It was a slow day with a reduced crew for Good Friday. We spend most  
of our time helping Goodwill's Kilobyte disk erasure service in  
removing and securely wiping hard drives from last week's Mac donation  
from the Charleroi School District. That task is completed and we'll  
be putting refurbished hard drives into those machines when the hit  
our work benches in the next couple of weeks.

Despite spending most of our time on another floor at Goodwill, we  
managed to refurbish five Macs and de-manufacture five more. Our all- 
time total of refurbished Macs is now 1,825.

We'll have another work day next Friday, April 17. As the  
ComputerWorks store is currently well-stocked, we'll be doing some pre- 
sorting of our inventory to better manage our workflow, and prepare/ 
clean our keyboard inventory. We'll be limiting our refurbishing to  
just what comes in the door and machines already on the bench. And  
there's a lot of RAM to sort through...

As a gentle reminder, please note Goodwill has finally re-instituted
the security procedures they were using in the Lawrenceville facility
before the CRC moved to the South Side. Security cameras have been
activated, and the metal detector at the exit has been switched on and
staffed.

Entry is only from the South 26th St. entrance. We cannot enter the
ComputerWorks Store and go through the back door as we used to.

We are asked to stop at the reception desk at the main lobby to sign
in to get a volunteer badge, then sign in to the log book at the CRC
entrance at the metal detector. The log book now has a separate tab
section just for our members to sign in and out.

We followed these procedures when we were in the Lawrenceville
building, and it's taken Goodwill some time to re-install all the
devices to cover the area with video surveillance.

These measures are to make sure data on disk drives does not get out
of the building before the drives can be securely erased or destroyed.
Goodwill is serious about this, as everyone should be. Any incident of
data from the drives they are entrusted to wipe or destroy getting out
would destroy the credibility of their operation, and lead to people
sending computers elsewhere for recycling.

So please, check in. It takes two minutes, and we're not in any hurry.

Hope to see you there!

Robert A. Donaldson
radonaldson at mac.com
(H) 412-922-3303
(M) 412-477-9188