Deadly Computer Blog

Ok, so, this is going to be a long, and personalish post. Now, this blog is only mostly not personal, but this story is just something i/we can’t and won’t let go away, and for that reason, i/we are telling it now. Because of various things that have happened, we had to wait until now to actually post it, but don’t worry, we have good memories for things like this. Anyway, on with the story…after the click:

Us four authors here go to the University of Hartford. Me (Steve), Mike (admin), and Anne Marie (ams), are studying for IIT (Interactive Information Technology) (i just changed my major, i used to be a civil engineer, more on that later). Chris (eb) is a mechanical engineer. With the exception of small little stupid things that happen at all universities, (food isn’t great, some rules are dumb, internet could be faster (can’t it always?)) we have had very little to complain about the school. All of that changed in January of 2007.

Over winter break, the Office of Residential Life decided that, we (me, mike, and Chris) were to be administratively moved from our room. Now, this was news to us, and we were very confused about all of it, and each of us made our own calls to the same people to find out for ourselves what was happening.

As it turns out, it seems that with the health and safeties they conducted over winter break, they found some things wrong with our room. According to them, the liquid cooling system that me and mike built for his computer was against “a lot of rules.” Just what these rules were, well, the only thing they could come up with was that the it was not professionally built, and therefore, not allowed. They told this to mike about the first week of January, 2007. Mike, Anne Marie, and Chris were staying at school to take winter classes. They gave mike 3 days to take it apart and removed, mike had it dismantled in 3 hours. He called the Resident Director down to the room, she looked it over, and said it was all ok.

Now, we also had cut holes in the closet ceiling to better cool it from the computers in there at the beginning of the semester, before we had the liquid cooling setup. We knew those holes were against the rules, and we had every intention of fixing them come May, but they wouldn’t let us. Someone from facilities was over the next day to fix the holes, and he even commented that these holes were actually made with the correct equipment, we had a Sheetrock knife, and we kept the pieces because we planed on fixing it ourselves in May. At this point, we thought our situation was over with.

We were wrong. About 2 weeks later Chris was in the room doing nothing when the RD came in with our new suite mate. Halfway through getting him settled, she said “why bother with all this if we’re just going to make you move next week anyway?” and took him to another room. Well, this got Chris curious, and he asked what she meant. She meant that we were being administratively moved out of our room due to repair damages that we apparently caused to the room. She said something about the electrical system being drained, but she really didn’t know what the situation was, she was really only a messenger. At this time, Chris called me, and told me what he knew, I called the RD, but it was 9:30pm, and she wasn’t there. I then called Mike to see if he knew anything else, and he had the same story to tell.

The next day was when everything went into high gear. I woke up early, and called the Resident Director, and the Associate Director for Apartment Living, who we will call Jason. Neither were there and I left messages. The RD was the first person to return my call. She said that due to electrical damage from a “device” me and my room mates built, we were to be moved from our room so that work could be done on the electrical system (these are the words she used, electrical system not the wires, the system of just our room, as you can tell, she didn’t know what she was talking about). I didn’t really get much from her except who to call to get more information, the head of Facilities. I waited till the Assistant Head of Residential Life to call, he was slightly better. He told me that there was many people from Res Life, Public Safety, Ra’s and so on in our room trying to figure out what it was. (Mike said that he was told they thought it was a Meth lab). He gave me the same reason though, but he added the server rack into it, however, being the non-tech person that he didn’t know what it was.

He saw the rack in our closet, saw that it had 3 computers on it, and that one of them had 4 tubes with neon green liquid going into it leading to a deathly-looking fan, and assumed that it was dangerous. He said that our “mainframe” computer setup was giving off too much heat, (that’s his reasoning for the holes in the wall) and that’s why we needed the extra cooling, and sucking up too much electricity. Mike explained to him that the cooling was to better over clock the processor and graphics cards of his computer, and that those were standard computers in there, using no more, and probably less electricity then the average Pentium 4 computer out there. We made a basic website to educate our accusers, and the people we asked for help on what we did, and why it’s not uncommon. It didn’t work as we had liked.

At this point, I called my dad and had him call Jason, and the head of Facilities, who we will call John. Jason gave him the same story. John told my dad that he didn’t see the room, but only saw photographs taken. He said that he didn’t think there was much wrong with the room, and most likely, he would just get someone over there to change the circuit breaker, and told my dad it would take a day, two at most to do. With this information, i called mike to spread it. I rested a little easier now, but i was still pissed off.

When i talked to Jason, he said that he would be more then willing to put us back into our room when facilities were finished fixing the “problem,” as long as we didn’t badger, and harass him, and facilities with questions, and updates and so on. Well, apparently Jason has a very short patience, because after my dad called, and mike’s dad called, he said that we “harassed them too much, and he doesn’t think that we should be moved back together again. Well, we were pissed off at that as you can imagine. You know, there are 3 people living there, each with their own parents, each wanting the story themselves, and not some 3rd, or 4th retelling of it through parents, to kids, to friends, to parents, because as you can imagine, the facts get exaggerated that way.

At this point there was not much we could do except lay off of asking about it until we returned to school in 5 days. When we did come back, we set up a meeting with the Vice President of Student Affairs, we’ll call him Peter. Now, before i start to get into that, i need to tell you about some other things that happened in this lovely day.

But, before I could go and meet with Peter, i spent all of Monday waiting for the Hartford Police to show up to take my statement because my car was stolen from campus, on the first night back. Not only that, but two cars including mine were stolen that night, both from opposite sides of campus.

Anyway, Peter seemed to think that what we did was completely wrong, and not allowed. He seemed to believe that we would be called in front of the Judicial board. Well, as a side effect of this whole event, we read The Source, the Student Handbook, and we know it back to front. We didn’t do anything wrong. He thought that antifreeze was not allowed on campus, well, there’s nothing about that in The Source. Anyway, he told us a bunch of things, and nothing much happened with that meeting, turns out that he was useless.
Because of the meeting with Peter, and waiting for the police to come (they didn’t show up until 7:30pm, 9 hours after i originally called), i wasn’t able to go talk to anyone about changing my major. So instead of going to classes on Tuesday, i went to go see people about changing majors. Nothing bad there, except the fact that the entire College of Engineering, Technology, & Architecture is a horrible school, but that’s for another post.

Anyway, I refused to live in the room i was being moved to for many, many reasons. So, thinking that we’d be back in our real room in a week or two at most, Anne Marie, Michelle, and Vic said they’d let me sleep on their couch in their apartment, (i also had an invitation to spend nights at another friend’s place, which i wish i took up, but for various reasons, i never did).

After a two weeks, my dad called John, to find out the status on our room repairs, guess how far they got…nowhere. Well, as you can imagine, we weren’t the most happy after we heard that. And since RD is basically Jason’s pawn, and Jason hates us, we decided to go above him, to The Director Of Residential Life, who we will call Earl.

My dad called Earl once, to find out if and when we would be allowed back in. He wasn’t there, but his secretary called back and told my dad that he said “we would be back in our room when repairs were done.” This appeased us because as far as we knew, we weren’t gonna be allowed back in. So we let it sit for another few days. My dad called again, still didn’t get through to Earl. So he called John back. He was useless again. This was the beginning of March, approaching 4 weeks out of our room. The second week of march came, my parents called Earl, mike’s parents called Earl, things started happening. We were told that by March 7th we would be getting emails as to when we could go back into our room. 11 am March 7, 2007 came, still no email, Mike’s mother called Earl, 5 minutes later, our emails were there.

However, RD was conveniently “in meetings all day and couldn’t let us into our room”. So we waited outside her “office” for about 45 minutes, she passed by, we approached her, she gave in, and brought us to our room. We looked it over, there was no visible repairs done on the room at all. Nothing, at all was done. They kept us out of the room for 5 weeks, just for fun. Now, sure, they probably checked the electricity, but that takes a day at most, the least they could have done was repaint the walls from the holes we made, and cover the holes we had from hanging things on the wall, but no, they didn’t do that.

Finally, after over 5 weeks, we were allowed back into our room which we loved so much. There was not so much as a “sorry about the inconvenience” or “hope this doesn’t happen again” or “we are all ass-holes, you did nothing wrong” when we finally moved back in. Isn’t the school great?