What's in your closet: The electronic clutter that surrounds us
Connecting state and local government leaders
While moving to a new office, the Lab uncovers long-forgotten, even mysterious, devices. Don't you have them in your office, too?
I try to be a very organized person. It’s a skill you simply must hone to run a busy test lab on tight deadlines, or your career will be a very short one. But this week the GCN Lab is moving from its current home in Falls Church, Va., to a brand new facility in nearby Tysons Corner.
The miles involved are pretty small, fewer than 10 I think, but moving an entire lab 100 feet is almost the same Herculean task as moving it 1,000 miles. And moving is a great way to find out that you’re not quite as organized as you thought.
I’m amazed at the amount of electronic clutter we’ve found in the dark corners of the lab. We've come across everything from UPS devices that blew up to IP telephony systems that came in for review but were never sent back because their owners went out of business. Odd testing tools like an oscilloscope and a fish tank (for immersion tests) suddenly showed up alongside a hair dryer (for testing line-power during fluxes), a data vault that was literally run over by an armored vehicle (the data is still intact, though the frame has seen better days), a burned-out computer emitting a strong smell of ozone thanks to a dramatically failed overclocking experiment, and some type of electronic device with wooden (yes, wooden) sides that looks like it came from the Eisenhower administration, and whose dials look suspiciously like it’s grinning evilly at us.
Nobody can remember what that wooden-sided device does or why it came into the lab. We are currently daring each other to plug it in and see what happens.
Looking at my beautiful lab right now, it seems like I should be sifting through the rubble searching for survivors with a rescue dog instead of trying to organize any type of detailed test plan.
So I’ve not written very much this week. Revising Albert Einstein or lamenting the fate of the HP TouchPad tablet will have to wait for another day.
But I did have a thought. I’m pretty amazed that my organized workspace almost seems like a facade now. I’m wondering how many of us have a lot more electronic baggage than we think. From dead fax machines that never quite went away to busted printers to reams of paper-based reports that will never be read again (and may not have ever been read to begin with), the sheer volume of junk is staggering. Perhaps the modern workplace is more prone to this type of thing?
So let me know what you think. Look around your office and see if there are things that probably should have been removed a long time ago, electronic or otherwise. And no, your cubicle mate doesn’t count!
But if you find some odd things, let us know about them, and I’ll see you all next week from our newly organized lab. And this time, I really, really mean to keep it that way.
NEXT STORY: Apple iPhone 4S gets smart, talks back