Mason Reimert and Corey Livinghouse have been interested in technology for years. Both of them serve on Fleetwood Area High School’s student help desk, which aids staff members with tech problems. Currently, Livinghouse is interning with Fleetwood’s IT department.
The two run a complex tech lab out of Reimert’s basement with the help of Thaddeus Wingate, Wesley Seaman, and Gavin Milligan. Within their lab, one can find three servers, a phone setup with extensions, multiple computer setups, a 3D printer, Raspberry Pi devices capable of hacking each other’s garage doors, a TV hooked up to a backroom windows PC with two massive speakers, two industrial printers, and many more gadgets.
That may sound like a lot, but what is it all used for?
“We [mess] around, but we learn a lot of stuff,” sophomore Reimert said.
The crew uses their lab for whatever big tech project they’re working on. In most cases, they end up learning something new. According to Reimert, the server setup is very similar to the Fleetwood Area School District’s, which is what makes he and Livinghouse the most effective student volunteers.
How did they acquire all of this technology, and what are the specifications of all of it? Livinghouse and Reimert make frequent stops to Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore. There ,they have purchased slightly older tech in bulk cheaply. Sometimes the friends see it lying at the end of a driveway and pick it up. The six computers they have are under-powered, as they lack a dedicated graphics card. Corey’s solution is to slap an SSD in it so programs load faster. In most cases, that works. However, the mission statement the group lives for is “…quantity over quality.”
Best of all, if you call their tech lab and are put on hold, you get to listen to “Africa” by Toto. Each desk has its own extension, so calls can easily be transferred from friend to friend. Livinghouse is in charge of paying the lab’s phone bill, while Reimert pays for the email service provider.
Wingate, Seaman, Livinghouse, Milligan, and Reimert also run a YouTube channel called Good Kitchen. They have bragged multiple times that it won best YouTube channel of 8th grade back in middle school, but now a new challenge faces the group. As of 29 November 2018, the friends, including Andrew Loeffler, are pulling together a political outreach program hosted by Jeff Woodall, the Food Director. Their club is called Turning Point USA. Turning Point USA has been a national outreach program adopted by many American schools. It aims to bring in conservative political icons to speak at schools and boost voter registration. The program also highlights what it means to be American, no matter one’s race, gender, or sexuality.
For more information, contact Fleetwood’s TP USA President, Gavin Milligan at gmilligan@student.fleetwoodasd.org.
The Tiger Times 
Posted on January 4, 2019 by thetigertimes7
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