[rescue] [OT]A boomerang of unusual dimensions.

[Mark M]

As you all may recall, Jay York offered up 2 sweet servers, one of which is
now resting in LSSM, the other, a v880, I retrieved.

Upon arrival at his place outside of Baltimore, I immediately spotted the
beautiful monster, staged at the garage(to the great relief of my grumbling
halper, a long time friend and co-conspirator). I texted Jay and began to
roll it to the van. He walked out just as I was mentioning that I thought I
recognized the asset tag "MCPHU 0760", Medical College of Philadelphia
Hahnemann University, which in 1999/2000 became Drexel medical college(it's
history, as well as Hahnemann University Hospital, now defunct, is
fascinating). My halper and I were both undergrads at Drexel at the time.

What's interesting is that I now work for Drexel as a unix nerd. What's
more interesting still is that my boss came to Drexel from MCPHU around
1999/2000 as the merger following the purchase happened. As I related this
to Jay, my halper popped the side panel to see what was inside, lo and
behold there was an interestingly engineered cooling baffle where trays B
and C would be, made from the ear of a shipping box, replete with original
shipping label, addressed to... my boss.

Neat, right? but the address wasn't my boss at MCPHU, it was Drexel main
campus, with his most recent previous title.

So now I know this machine was used by Drexel main campus, which meant it
was moved the 2.5ish mile difference from center city Philadelphia, west,
to university city/west philly. I mentioned the hostname to my much longer
tenured coworker who was able to dig up it's commissioning and
decommissioning (by my direct predecessor) 15 years ago... in our
current ticketing system.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to link it's decommissioning to Ken, as it was
returned to MCP after we decommed it.

In rough terms though, it was bought new in center city Philadelphia, moved
slightly west, then back to Drexel med, then something(s) happened and it
ended up in Ken's possession in NJ, from whom Jay rescued it to MD, then to
me, who lives in Philadelphia, in University City, and works for the
original purchaser. In 20 years, it's moved hundreds of miles to settle
around 3 miles from where it was originally unpacked.

I hope this story was enjoyable and not out of bounds of the list, I just
joined and would be bummed to get voted off the island. And thanks again to
Jay.

-mark