Hackerspace Expansion!
“Many hands light work makes.” Jim D. told me that. I’m too ignorant to know who he was quoting, but I reckon it’s true.
It started at 0700 on Saturday, the 24th day of July, 2010. I was tasked with porting the hack.rva wiki from it’s current location to a new one with better access control. It was built in about fifteen minutes and hardened enough in about half an hour. I told hack.rva via the mailing list. Fifteen minutes later John and others had joined the fight and we had the majority of the wiki ported by 1000. At 1130 I rolled to the space to throw my hands in with the others in an effort to expand our space.
Will was already there, working on a project of his own design; a diagnostic breakout of some kind that would help him troubleshoot failing window relays in his ride. Flux was flying and the whole place fairly reeked of solder fumes and madness. It smelled like impending victory. At 1230 he had to break for a lunch appointment for some lads from his old campfire.
As soon as Will departed, Carlisle rushed in struggling under the weight of a cooler that was filled to it’s upper edge with sodas and waters and other means of hydration and tools that we would definitely need. If a thing is worth doing, its worth doing right. Soon the space was alight with wild-eyed hackers and makers that all shared a lust for a larger workspace and a higher order of organization. In a frenzy of scrambling hands and feet, all of the dead, near-dead and soon-to-be revitalized tech was moved away from our work area. Following this, the relocation of the wall began. There was some initial deliberation as a solid plan of attack was formed. Then screwdrivers, electric screwdrivers and drills began driving and screwing and drilling away.
One team was making short work of the wall while another began to assess our lighting needs and available options. A team was dismissed with a list of parts consisting of Corey, the half-mad getaway driver, and I, the harbinger of the list. Lowe’s was our scheduled port of procurement. The team departed.
In the space, snags were appearing in some of the most inconvenient places. A distress call was made and a line-item was added to the list. Longer drill bits were needed to defeat the wall, and we weren’t about to be stopped by something as simple as Newtonian physics. Corey found his way to the aisle of bits and deftly produced one of the proper shape and function. The list fulfilled, we rushed out the door with loaded carts. Filling the car as hastily as we could manage, we jumped in. The immaculately tuned engine roared to life and the smell of roasting tires filled the parking lot as we made a desperate attempt to evade the long arm of loss-prevention.
Upon our arrival at the space, we were greeted with cheers of approval. Tools and various apparati and unsundries were handed out to eager makers waiting to accomplish their tasks. Luke, the light-bearer for the moment, inquired, “How ’bout that chain?” Chain? Rats! We had forgotten the chain that was needed to hang the fluorescent fixtures. We hung our faces instead, in shame. Luke dismissed us, and we were off for another grand caper.
In the meantime the other denizens of the space had all they needed to wire up the rest of the lights. A less-than-structurally sound ladder was extracted from the lobby cave on floor One. Let it be known that there are isn’t a coward among hack.rva, but we all can read, and the ladders 250 pound weight limit was enough to dull some of our eagerness to mount the rickety wooden beast and handle the work that waited on the ceiling. Luke, Jim and a few others that I can’t recollect as Corey and I had only recently arrived from our latest bout of chain-thieverings, had mustered the cojones to summit the ladder, with some folks footing, and begin the truly arduous task of threading wire, strapping conduit and mounting boxes and outlets to the ceiling, into which we may later plug the newest round of fluorescent lamps in.
Some were footing ladders, some were reorganizing and others were putting the finishing touches on the wall. It took the better part of three hours to handle the electrical work, up to and including testing. Our final task was to reorganize the tech. This consisted of shifting everything but the library to another part of the space to be inventoried at a later date. At 1900, we parted ways. The Work Waits!
* There was nothing stolen in the process of writing this blog entry, or in the process of expanding our space. We’re not on Lowe’s most wanted list, but rather their faithful and loyal VIP customer list.
** Further imagery can be found in this picasa album.
This Saturday, from 10:30am to 04:00pm, is the Introduction to Python Programming class by Clint Grimsley. We’ll be covering a wide range of topicalities and tools to help everyone get started in a language that’s equally suited to rapid application prototyping as well as full scale application development and heavy data-lifting. You too can learn the language that helps companies like AstraZeneca, Honeywell, Industrial Light & Magic and Google keep their operations running smoothly. We’ll also be covering how python is used pervasively throughout certain operating systems and applications to provide application programmer access to functions that you thought always required user intervention.
