25 May
2010
25 May
'10
9:45 p.m.
It has become very clear that both Tony and I have some grave reservations
about TNMoC, VCF & BP. He by experience and me by observation.
I am horrified at the way he was treated. List members were trying to get
him to go because of his standing in the classic computer community. Yet he
had already gone there, volunteered and been insulted, charged for entry and
given no respect whatsoever. They clearly know even less about the community
of computer restorers than they do about computers.
Will somebody who knows these people explain what they have done and at
least get an apology for Tony.
In the light of this revelation, those who wanted him to attend should think
hard about going themselves.
No wonder he did not want to go!!!
Rod
-----Original Message-----
From: cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Tony Duell
Sent: 25 May 2010 21:17
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Anyone off to VCF-UK?
Hangf on a second. Are you seriously suggesting that I should not only be
able t fix their machines and give my time freely for so doing, but
should also be a fund raiser. Because I don't beleive anybody is going to
be equally good in both roles. As you may have guessed by now, I am not
the sort of person who is going to be good at spining a story to get
donations. I'm the sort of person who's happiest with 'scope and logic
analyser.
One reason for having a club (or whatever you want to call it is that
different people have differnt interstes and skills. And by putitng all
the skills together, things get done. If I want to do everything myself,
well, I've got a couple of hundred machines here to work on.
> All I can say is it was like that when I
voluteered at BP. With a couple
> of twists. Firstly, there were no spare parts
(not even common things
> like fuses) kept in stock. And secondly there was no budget to go and
> buy such parts. So if you wanted a part you took it from the nearest
> machine (!). Secondly, the policy, as docmented in some of the
> explanitory texts, was that when a machine was donated it was plugged in
> and turend on to see if it worked. I think you
know my views on that.
> It's one thing for a non-knowledgable e-bya seller to turn on an old
> machine to he can sell it as working (if it does) and get a higher
price.
But a muesum
should take rather more care than that!
Did you offer to help raise funds for missing parts? Did you offer to
improve their documented policy and process?
Seems to me that you didn't like what you saw, assumed *somebody else* was
in charge and that they had "got it all wrong".
Do you know what's better than pointing out problems? Offering solutions.
You seem to make the assumption that there were malicious Powers That Be
I don not believe it was malicious. Just clueless.
conspiring against you and your firmly held ideals.
I'd be happy to wager
that everyone was involved in a learning process. That there were no big
pots of money being poorly allocated, and spent on executive lunches when
things like fuses were desperately needed.
I never said there were. But they were charging the public an admission
fee. That money had to be used to pay various expenses, and if there
wasn't enough to maintain their exhibits properly then IMHO there was a
degree of mismanagement. Not fraud, I do not believe for an instant that
anyone was pocekting the money, but mismanagement.
And it was certainly very bad practice to just take parts from anotehr
machine. Oh,m sure I do that all the time in my workshop -- but then it's
my machine and I know what I've done. It's less amusing to come back to a
machine in the museum after a couple of weeks, find fuses missing and
nobody knows what happened to them (it's particularly unamusing when you
spend an hour trying to find a fualt as a result...)
-tony