Friday, September 16, 2005

Worries of a labcom

Yesterday was a really really bad day for me. Had a row with one of my batchmates .... The culprit was neither him nor I, it was the whole ug2 batch.
I don't understand why r ppl stealing RAMs, graphic cards,etc. from the labs? There are two types of stealing currently going on :-

1. Stealing from one PC of lab and putting into another PC of lab: This is the most common type of stealing and is creating a hell for we labcoms(UG2). Every hour RAM goes missing from some PC and the owner then asks us ... This is exactly what happened today. Someone stole the RAM from the PC beside me. When the owner came , he asked me. So,what do I do ? .... Its not possible for me to open the cabinet of every system and see who has put an extra RAM into his.( it can be done without opening the cabinet also, but only if u can login into it, which requires password). I can check all the PCs once a day ... but not every time(almost 4 times a day) a owner ask for his missing RAM.
So, I made a temporary arrangement for the owner(whose RAM was missing), i.e took out RAM from one of the PCs that was not being used at that time. But just 15 mins later, the owner of this PC also came. Now he started accusing me and we had a row over it. What can labcoms do yaar ? We can't sit in the lab 24hrs guarding the PCs. We are just co-ordinators.

2. Stealing RAMs from lab PCs and putting into room PCs: This is less frequent but more serious. Two batches have already been fined 8K and 16K for thefts. I don't want that two happen to us also. If one can pay 1 lakh(approx) to be in iiit and can purchase a 35K PC, then what attraction does he/she finds in a 1.5K RAM. Also almost all ppl in room have 512 MB RAM. The full 512MB is rarely utilized even if u play very high demanding games. Then why the need for more ?

Solutions:-
Don't think that labcoms are just sitting idle. We(I,GN Aditya and Mohit Jain) already had 3 meetings with Prof. Vikram Pudi regarding thefts. We suggested putting locks in every cabinet. That was the best solution we could think of.(If anyone has better soln, plz let me know). Then after discussions with faculty, Prof. Pudi decided to implement doors with swipe cards in all labs. But what can swipe cards do if the ug2 students themselves are stealing ?(Prof. Pudi first thought that students from other labs or outsiders are stealing and the cost of locks for all PCs in iiit labs is equivalent to swipe card system). So we met him again and suggested plastic locks(like what we have in teaching labs PCs) which are cheaper. Now on Monday we have a meeting with all the faculty. Hope we get locks soon. In the meantime Prof. Pudi has assured us that he will provide some temporary seal to us.
Lets hope for the best.....

PS :- 1. We are also talking with faculty about keeping the lab open during night. Lets see what comes out.
2. Feel free to give any suggestions regarding betterment of our labs.

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

abe swipe cards for opening the cabinets?? :0 or something else? seems quiet interesting. go for it yaar, dekhen to sahi what mechanism has come from the side of our most innovative prof.

Anonymous said...

btw can't u change the links to not be underlined. it ate up the underscore between the two words of my identity X-(

Turbo said...

Swipe card for doors. When u swipe with a valid card , the door will be unlocked ... like in ATMs. And the cards given to ug2 will be valid only for ug2 lab door. Most probably, we wont get new cards, the existing id card would do. Whatever, we rejected it as it does not solve the problem.

About underscore, it is appearing fine in my mozilla firefox in windows. Also, i want underlines with links .... u know it.

Anonymous said...

I think that swipe cards will be the correct stuff..Its excellent mechanism..but it will not be of much help coz..you need to question a lot of ppl..you cannot assume someone to confess rite?..so it requires a lot of effort..and 512 MB Ram for the rooms are doing fine..we never think that our pc is slow..we only worry about net for most of the time..and all room pc's use DDR ram while lab pc's use SDRAM.Don't ask me how I know that?(one of my labcom friend told me)

Anonymous said...

well dat was also the problem with us but it just ended after an inspection was carried out. well plastic locks also cant help. in ur lab u r not inspected by a security guard to enter the lab. if one can manage screw drivers and all the stuff then he can also manage for a blade or a knife ...
better to hav steel locks for the boxes ...

Anonymous said...

Just buzzed.