"East Bay rant" (or, " 'You want me to PAY you $6?' ")
The set up: Incomplete stop, 13-year-old passenger unbelted, fine reduced to $400, can't afford it, 40 hours of community service.
"Do you have anything in computers, programming, web pages, etc?"
"Ah, here ya go-- the Alameda County Computer Resource Center."
ACCRC has nothing to do with computers, it's an electronics waste recycling facility. Yes, waste management. In the sun all day. Having to shower at the end of the day. I've had worse jobs, particularly one summer job in high school where I literally stood 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 10 weeks in front of a drill press, drilling 3/8" diagonal holes through triangular pieces of Lucite. Lost track of how many fingernails I ended up drilling through. At least lugging 40 pound CRT monitors around all day kinda sorta makes up for the time I can't go to the gym.
The rant: No, your shit-ass, 3-year-old computer that "works perfectly good" is most likely not going to brighten the day of some poor non-white in Oakland just so you can assuage your guilt about being rich enough to throw away 3 "perfectly good" computers. The copper in the power cord is worth more that that dusty piece of crap.
"This doesn't get shipped to China, does it?" Do you even know where the fuck China is? Or which "China" you're thinking of? Oh, yea, I forgot, you're an "educated" Berkeley resident, probably a Cal professor, or at least fucked one. Then you should know that we don't ship it to China, and that the economics of recycling are such that you shouldn't have to ask why we have to charge your spindly white ass $6 to NOT ship those 3 "perfectly good", 4-year-old routers still sealed in the original packaging to a landfill in India. Recycling your crap COSTS money, it doesn't generate it. Again, it's NOT going to Oakland. If you're really so poverty conscious, you can take it there yourself.
If you're really so cost conscious, think about this BEFORE you buy that new computer the next time your spoiled kids complain about not being able to SuperPoke their Facebook friends fast enough: what are you going to with that "perfectly good" computer in 3 years when your organically overweight brats can't SuperPoke fast enough again?
Shit, someone actually tossed out a working TRS-80 computer, complete with a data cassette deck, manuals, original box, all the cables and several software packages. That hurt.
And here I am attempting to enter into an industry that promotes such toxic consumerism...
"Do you have anything in computers, programming, web pages, etc?"
"Ah, here ya go-- the Alameda County Computer Resource Center."
ACCRC has nothing to do with computers, it's an electronics waste recycling facility. Yes, waste management. In the sun all day. Having to shower at the end of the day. I've had worse jobs, particularly one summer job in high school where I literally stood 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 10 weeks in front of a drill press, drilling 3/8" diagonal holes through triangular pieces of Lucite. Lost track of how many fingernails I ended up drilling through. At least lugging 40 pound CRT monitors around all day kinda sorta makes up for the time I can't go to the gym.
The rant: No, your shit-ass, 3-year-old computer that "works perfectly good" is most likely not going to brighten the day of some poor non-white in Oakland just so you can assuage your guilt about being rich enough to throw away 3 "perfectly good" computers. The copper in the power cord is worth more that that dusty piece of crap.
"This doesn't get shipped to China, does it?" Do you even know where the fuck China is? Or which "China" you're thinking of? Oh, yea, I forgot, you're an "educated" Berkeley resident, probably a Cal professor, or at least fucked one. Then you should know that we don't ship it to China, and that the economics of recycling are such that you shouldn't have to ask why we have to charge your spindly white ass $6 to NOT ship those 3 "perfectly good", 4-year-old routers still sealed in the original packaging to a landfill in India. Recycling your crap COSTS money, it doesn't generate it. Again, it's NOT going to Oakland. If you're really so poverty conscious, you can take it there yourself.
If you're really so cost conscious, think about this BEFORE you buy that new computer the next time your spoiled kids complain about not being able to SuperPoke their Facebook friends fast enough: what are you going to with that "perfectly good" computer in 3 years when your organically overweight brats can't SuperPoke fast enough again?
Shit, someone actually tossed out a working TRS-80 computer, complete with a data cassette deck, manuals, original box, all the cables and several software packages. That hurt.
And here I am attempting to enter into an industry that promotes such toxic consumerism...