| | Durham Herald-Sun Sunday April 6, 2008 'Geeks' tackle hard drives 
Mark Dolejs/The Herald-Sun Zach Alexander (right) works on an issue with a computer’s CD-ROM drive during the Geek-A-Thon at N.C. School of Science and Mathematics on Saturday. The three-day event, sponsored by the Kramden Institute, is held with hopes to refurbish around 250 computers, 40 of which will go to Habitat for Humanity. Kramden Institute |
By Matthew E. Milliken : The Herald-Sun
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Apr 6, 2008
DURHAM -- For some people, it's a can't-miss proposition.
You get to fix computers. You get to help others. And you get a T-shirt that says "geek" in large letters.
That's the payoff for participants in Geek-A-Thon, a regular event held by the Kramden Institute. For high-achieving middle-schoolers and select Habitat for Humanity families in households without computers, the payoff is a functioning digital device, complete with mouse, keyboard and monitor.
The three-day Geek-A-Thon 13, which wraps up today at the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics, is expected to ready more than 200 computers for use by a mix of students and Durham Habitat for Humanity families.
The event is hosted by different organizations every three months or so. After setup on Friday, volunteers -- perhaps 50 at any one time -- work on Saturday and Sunday on machines donated by individuals and businesses.
Monitors are typically processed prior to each Geek-A-Thon.
DeWayne Williams, a 46-year-old IBM product developer who volunteers as Kramden's technology director, said the institute could use any manner of help at its Geek-A-Thons.
"It doesn't matter what level of skill a person has. We have jobs here at Kramden for people who want to volunteer," Williams said.
Williams' first Geek-A-Thon was in 2005. He brought his son Jason, now 13, to the event because the youngster had run out of things to work on around the house.
Nineteen-year-old Durhamite and UNC student Emily Koballa and her 16-year-old brother, Riverside High School junior Sam Koballa, have volunteered to refurbish machines at eight and 10 Geek-A-Thons, respectively.
"They had a Geek-A-Thon at Riverside, and I thought it was cool and I wanted a 'geek' shirt," Sam Koballa said.
Emily Koballa got started at the prompting of her brother. "I thought it would be a cool volunteer experience," she said.
It's helped both siblings learn about computers, it's an event they can do together, it's made their parents proud of them and it earns them free shirts.
They said the oddest Geek-A-Thon setting was a recent one at ECPI College of Technology in Raleigh, where the refurbishing space was populated by dummies used in health care training.
"They were kind of creepy because they stared back at you," Sam Koballa said. One of the dummies ended up wearing a geek shirt, he recalled.
Royce Feng, a Science and Math junior from Cary, was participating in his 11th Geek-A-Thon on Saturday. He got involved because SAS, where his mother worked, hosted one of the events.
"She just thought it would suit me because I was building my own computer at the time," he remembered.
Feng has streamlined the refurbishing process by writing a final check program that can cut computer test times to five to 10 minutes, a savings of at least five minutes over the old process.
"It basically simplifies the process as well as speeds it up," Feng said of his program, K-test.
Across the room, Science and Math senior Safiyyah Hassan of Taylorsville was sporting thin rubber gloves at a table covered with razors and bottles of cleaning fluid. Her station was one stop in a process that included hard-drive erasure, hardware checks and new software installation.
"All we've been really doing is cleaning [the computers' exteriors], but I've enjoyed it because I know the purpose of the cleaning," said Hassan, participating in her first Geek-A-Thon.
Since Mark and Ned Dibner founded Kramden in their basement in mid-2003, the organization has given away thousands of refurbished computers to students in Durham, Wake, Orange, Granville and several other counties, as well as a few hundred computers to children of North Carolina-based servicemen and -women posted to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Dibners -- Mark is a 56-year-old biotech consultant, his son Ned an 18-year-old Jordan High School senior -- put their names together and then spelled them backwards to get Kramden. They hope to expand the organization, which now has three full-time employees, by launching a laptop refurbishment program and by planting branches across the United States.
More information is available at www.kramden.org. |
