[sdiy] 300-400 student hours of work, tossed out by our custodial staff

[Benjamin Riggs]

Shit hey. I'm only a lonely tech at a uni, but knowing how some of the
academic staff keep there offices (we had one security guard report a
break-in, it was then realised all the papers spread on the floor were just
his filing system) that if it's not in the designated rubbish bin, it
shouldn't get chucked out. It sounds like a sorry mistake that shouldn't
have been made.

A great teaching asset lost. Are you running the classes again (I enjoyed
the first set of online lectures)? Some new projects maybe?

Ben.

-----Original Message-----
From: synth-diy-bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl
[mailto:synth-diy-bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl] On Behalf Of Aaron Lanterman
Sent: Wednesday, 11 April 2007 11:52 AM
To: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
Subject: [sdiy] 300-400 student hours of work,tossed out by our custodial
staff


Most of you know that in the Fall and Spring 2006 semesters, I taught a 
special topics class on the Theory and Design of Music Synthesizers. (If 
any of you have ever been curious to see how I lecture, most of my 
lectures from the Spring semester are up on the website in RealVideo 
format. You probably only don't know that if you've recently joined the 
list.)

The final project consists of designing, prototyping, and constructing a 
modular synthesizer circuit. I had two boxes, one containing the projects 
from the Fall and the other from the Spring. I was fortunate to be able to 
show these to Paul S. in person a few weeks ago ad get his feedback.

My eventual plan was to mount them all in a nice case with a nice front 
panel, and put it the Music Dept. so that Tech students could make music 
for years to come with circuits my students designed and built.

I showed off the circuits when I spoke at our graduate seminar. Since my 
parking deck is some distance from our main classroom building, I left the 
boxes under a table in our mail room, planning to come back on another day 
at night when I could park closer and get the boxes without fear of a 
ticket.

On Monday, I went to retrieve the boxes of circuit boards, and they were 
gone. Further investigation revealed that, on Friday, the custodial staff 
mistook them for trash and threw threm out.

I was willing to go dumpster diving to retrieve them, but it turns out it 
had already been compacted and shipped off; contemplate hundreds of 
dollars in parts and around 300 to 400 person-hours of time in 
construction and debugging, crushed and hauled off to a landfill.

The designs are still documented in reports and schematics (I still need 
to post the projects from the Fall), but the wonder of the students' 
unique first-effort constructions is now lost.

I am beyond angry-beyond-comprehension and gone to 
depressed-beyond-comprehension; want-to-punch-someone-and-scream has now 
gone to crawl-in-the-corner-and-cry.

- Aaron

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-

Dr. Aaron Lanterman, Asst. Prof.
and Demetrius T. Paris Junior Prof.  Voice:  404-385-2548
College of Electri. and Comp. Eng.   Fax:    404-894-8363
Georgia Institute of Technology      E-mail: lanterma at ece.gatech.edu
Mail Code 0250                       Web:    users.ece.gatech.edu/~lanterma
Atlanta, GA 30332                    Office: Centergy 5212

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