Hosstraders Spring 2006 - What a Blast!

Ted Roche tedroche at tedroche.com
Sun May 7 14:27:00 EDT 2006


If you missed it, you missed a great time. Let me tell you a bit of  
what happened from my perspective.

Pictures can be found at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/94283227@N00/141296192/in/photostream/

or http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/hosstraders/

or http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/gnhlug/

Ben Scott, Seth Cohn and I set up the booth and got the show running.  
Michael O'Donnell generous donations of a large box of cables covered  
nearly an entire table by itself, with "no reasonable offer" signs  
(soon replaced by FREE!) prominently displayed. Early morning bargain  
hunters likely found some SCSI terminators or LVD-SE cables at a  
wicked bargain price. MOD also contributed a box of Cat-5 that would  
wire the booth to the internet.

I sensed a difference in the attendees. Rather than ask us what this  
LY-nix stuff is, folks were telling us how much fun they had with the  
disk they picked up last year, or to ask us if we had Distro X for  
Platform Y, or just to chat at how Linux was taking over the world.  
Great to hear!

Bill McGonigle arrived late the first day (darned paying customers)  
cursing the UPS guy, but with a pair of WRT-54G access points  
strapped down to boards with directional antennas attached. We met at  
my house and rigged up one of the boards hanging out my second floor  
dormer window, and went to the fairgrounds to set up a second one.  
Bill strapped it to a tree and we struggled to run a fair amount of  
cable over roofs and strapped to trees to connect to the booth.  
Thanks to all for technical support and troubleshooting - Matt  
Brodeur fixed a badly crimped cable end, Ben Scott troubleshot the  
cranking ActionTec DSL modem that didn't want to let traffic through  
and - PRESTO! - we have an internet connection.

Bill McG: how about some specs on what equipment you used? I think  
folks would be interested. Also, if you'd put together a mini-HOWTO,  
maybe we can make it easier to do this in the future.

Mike Ledoux brought an impressive system (including a cute little  
MacMini he couldn't diss enough) and worked with Ben to burn distros  
for distribution at a nominal $1 a disc charge. Many attendees took  
advantage of the good deal and walked away with shiny new distros to  
play with.

Matt and Heather Brodeur brought an impressive assortment of Cisco  
switches, Linksys hubs, SCSI controllers, PCMCIA cards, and so forth.  
Folks found lots of good deals both at the table (I got a Courier  
v.Everything modem for a sweet price, a Symbol bar code gun and  
keyboard wedge for $2!) and at the other booths (a ThinkPad docking  
station for $25!)

maddog and dark rain clouds arrived simultaneously Saturday morning.  
Coincidence?

We had a bit of brainstorming session over what we might want to  
offer at future Hosstraders. We (maddog, Bill McGonigle, Ben Scott)  
kicked around some ideas about offering a kiosk/classroom offering  
"Check your email" or "Surf the web" as an adjunct to offering copies  
of distros, and perhaps offering the machines at a nominal price as  
well. We've been approached by several companies asking us for  
assistance in disposing of older machines. There's no doubt this  
avenue is fraught with peril - we could get stuck with some white  
elephants or useless toxic waste - but we might also get some free  
software into the hands of deserving people at little to no cost to  
them or us. I'd welcome further discussion on this one. Preferably  
before the night before!

Good times were had by all. Join us in the fall when Hosstraders  
returns to the Hopkinton State Fair October 6 and 7.

Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com





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