From: grarpamp <grarpamp@gmail.com>

Makers tho... ;) http://cbs6albany.com/news/nation-world/investigation-finds-inmates-built-co...

In 2002, I was held at USP Atwater, Atwater California.  In about July of that year, I began work at their local UNICOR (Federal Prison Industries) plant, which at that facility involved de-manufacturing (recycling) of (mostly) CRT computer monitors.   Many such monitors included audio amplifiers and speakers, as well as power supplies.  Sometimes such components got smuggled back to the prison units, and were actually installed into the cells AND USED! (Prisoners could buy small AM/FM radios from the Commissary.)   Not surreptitious in the least!   Imagine being in a prison unit,  which is normally silent except for talking, and hear from a cell a powerful sound of radio music.  The large majority of guards simply didn't care.  (nor did they have much reason to care, either.) Myself, I smuggled out neodymium-iron-boron magnets, which I liberated from computer hard-drives, and used them as door-closers.  (put between the steel doors and the steel door-frames, it kept the doors of cells closed against ventilation winds.)   One time I found an old-style neon-bulb in an older piece of equipment, smuggled it out, and impressed other prisoners by putting it inside a microwave oven, one lead parallel to a wall and the other lead pointing into microwave cavity.  When the microwave was on (with a load of food or drink, BTW), it was very bright!!!            Jim Bell                 "Techman of Atwater".