Obsolescence
I've been spending far too much time around magnets lately. Okay, not so much magnets as a degausser.
There've been boxes of media from old contracts at work. It should've been sent off to the customer or destroyed at the end of the contracts, but never was. Could be that someone couldn't get an answer from the customer or that nobody felt it was their job. For whatever reason, the stuff got shuffled around over the years until recently when it was decided that we just need to get rid of it and free up the space it's taking up. I got volunteered. None of it is classified, but it's possible that some of it could be considered sensitive, so it has to be erased. Getting rid of all of it is a slow process. I can generally only get 4 things done before the degausser gets too hot and shuts itself down for a while.
To say some of this stuff is out-of-date would be an understatement. Here's a sample of the media types in question:
There are a couple more types, but I didn't have any around for the picture. It's the reels of tape that really surprised me. One of 'em has a label indicating it was in use at the University of Texas in Austin in 1978. The thing was probably there and in use when I arrived at UT in 84. The UMatic tapes tend to have dates from the mid/late 80s, while most of the other stuff is from the 90s.
And I thought I was bad about hanging on to old obsolete things.
There've been boxes of media from old contracts at work. It should've been sent off to the customer or destroyed at the end of the contracts, but never was. Could be that someone couldn't get an answer from the customer or that nobody felt it was their job. For whatever reason, the stuff got shuffled around over the years until recently when it was decided that we just need to get rid of it and free up the space it's taking up. I got volunteered. None of it is classified, but it's possible that some of it could be considered sensitive, so it has to be erased. Getting rid of all of it is a slow process. I can generally only get 4 things done before the degausser gets too hot and shuts itself down for a while.
To say some of this stuff is out-of-date would be an understatement. Here's a sample of the media types in question:
There are a couple more types, but I didn't have any around for the picture. It's the reels of tape that really surprised me. One of 'em has a label indicating it was in use at the University of Texas in Austin in 1978. The thing was probably there and in use when I arrived at UT in 84. The UMatic tapes tend to have dates from the mid/late 80s, while most of the other stuff is from the 90s.
And I thought I was bad about hanging on to old obsolete things.