UNLV and TigerDirect Encourage Charity
Well, the latter encourages charity. The former simply knows how to encourage it. Here’s a quick video from the TigerDirect Build Your Own PC Race for Charity event, one the many parties and events I’ve attended at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show. The event name is pretty self explanatory; participants build a mid-range computer to be donated to a charity of their choice. Participants are timed, with 1st place being awarded an additional $10,000 USD to donate. This year, due to overwhelming interest in the event they were also able to award the person in 2nd place an additional $2500 USD to give to the charity of their choice. But before the race could begin, we we’re treated to a performance by the cheerleading sqaud from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Now the year prior, the winner was declared within 7 minutes. This year took far longer than that, and far longer than any build off in the history of the event. After 10 minutes and 10 seconds a winner emerged. Stephen Fung from FutureLooks.com was victorious, and beat out the other contestants. This includes Will Smith from Maximum PC, three time winner Charlie Demerjian from The Inquirer, and the infamous root of all evil John Chow. Here’s the final scoreboard.
Unfortunately Stephen’s victory was short lived, as the judges had to look over his PC to verify it was assembled correctly. Apparently the pressure of the clock got to him, and he forgot to connect the power on his optical drive. That’s not quite as bad as Charlie, who forgot to connect power to his floppy drive. Seriously, that is a kick in the bits. Why was a floppy even included in the build? They are so very rarely used these days. John Chow also forgot something is his assembly. All three contestants were assessed a 60 second penalty, and after the dust settled it was actually Will Smith who emerged victorious. The final scoreboard looked something like this.
- Will Smith (00:10:31)
- Stephen Fung (00:11:10)
- Charlie Demerjian (00:11:46)
- John Chow (00:12:32)
Stephen was still happy as he won $2,500 and the PC he built to be donated to his charity of his choice, which in his case was the B.C. Children’s Hospital. He also received a nifty looking glass trophy.
Next year all these guys better watch out, because I intend on participating in the build off.
No comments yet.