[ale] invitation to a tour of Free Bytes

[Watson McKeel]

apologies for the lengthy post...

Hello all, 
   This is my first post to this list. My name is Watson McKeel, and I am a
volunteer at a nonprofit here in Atlanta. It's called Free Bytes, and I'm
sure some of you have heard of it before. For those of you who haven't, Free
Bytes has the mission of refurbishing old PCs donated by companies (and end
users) and redistributing those machines to schools, other nonprofits, and
religious organizations that don't have the funding to buy PCs of their own.

I am writing this letter to the list because of two main reasons:
1. You can be a hero at the company you work for when you tell them that
you, through your ingenuity, creativity, and "can do" attitude, have found a
way to get rid of those old machines the IS/IT dept doesn't know what to do
with. You will get the machines out of the techs' hair, AND (the bosses and
bean counters love this part) the boxes can be counted as a tax deduction
for fair market value! That's right, you just took problematic scrap and
turned it into a tax write-off! dang...

2. You (yes you) can volunteer. There are several reasons to do so:
    a. you get a warm fuzzy from the sense of
        having helped your fellow man.
    b. you get to polish your hardware skills
        to a razor fine edge (come out some
        sort of hardware ninja, no lie...)
    c. you get to be a part of a pool of knowledge
        that will allow you to teach as well as learn from others.
    d. just recently, the idea has come up to put
        together a LINUX/UNIX lab. This lab would
        handle projects such as router boxes for broadband
        (CoyoteLinux, LRP, etc.), and server boxes for special
        requests from nonprofits who need such things.

OK, having said all that, I would like to propose an open house type tour of
Free Bytes for any who would like to see what it is I am talking about.
(This is just a tour. No pressure to volunteer. Life can be busy, and you've
got to look out for number one). I just need to know what date and time to
have it. The best way to agree is to vote. So, I set up a mailbox for just
such a purpose. 
Proposed times:
     Monday    August 5th,  7:30PM
     Tuesday   August 6th,  7:30PM
     Thursday  August 8th,  7:30PM
     Saturday  August 10th, 1:00PM

vote here: 

freebytesvote at mindspring.com

Please cast a vote only if you're planning to attend, as it will be seen as
a RSVP. Voting ends on Monday evening with the event to occur the following
week. I'll post the elected time on Tuesday.
Also, there is a map that exists in pdf format so you know where to go.

http://www.mindspring.com/~univac/FreeBytesMap.pdf

That's it. Hope my post wasn't too long, and hope to see you in a couple of
weeks! 

Watson 

ps 
organization website:  http://www.freebytes.org


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