September « 2010 « Hackers For Charity

Street kids have been on my heart for a long time. The fact is that most NGO’s don’t really focus on street kids because there’s no family unit to help guide them or to manage the funds from sponsors. It’s a complex issue because some street kids aren’t “homeless”, rather their parents put them on the streets because it’s good money. Tourists (especially girls) have a soft spot for the kids, and buy them things and take them to lunch, so there’s a contingent of street kids who live large, bouncing from one tourist to the next. My idea of a recreation center is still valid because kids need skills, but running a center during school hours will cause another distraction for them when they really should be in school.

Like I said, a complex problem, and it’s all but halted our progress to help them. Then this Sunday we helped out with a small church service for street kids held by our friends, the Davis family. The kids were with this program called ASCO (African Street Children Organization) founded by older guys that were once street kids themselves. Jen helped organize some games for the kids and our small family youth group (missionary kids mostly) helped out.

It was a great experience, and it made me think. I felt drawn to the kids and started wondering what I could do to help. My first thought was computer training. I approached two of the leaders (who were once street kids themselves) and pitched the idea of free computer training. They were excited, and wanted to sign up immediately but confessed that most of the kids wouldn’t be able to hang with video courses because of their poor English. I thought about translating some of our courses (maybe.. lot of work… we’ll see) but I left there feeling pretty helpless.

The next day, two guys came into The Keep to use the Internet. One of the guys, Moses, had these cool dreads. I helped them with their account and Moses asked if we built web sites. I told him we did and quoted him a price of UGX100,000/= (about $50, our going rate). Then he showed me some pictures and I find out he’s the founder of ASCO. I told him then and there that we’d do the web site for free.

Moses was pretty excited, and I felt pretty good.. for like ten minutes. The fact was, something happened on Sunday at that little ragtag “church” service. It was like I was being reminded of what, exactly we are doing here. It’s not to run a madly successful business to make money to spend on some down-the-road community project. It was, quite, simply, to help the helpless. To take a step towards those with the greatest need.

Then I get an email from Glenn, and it’s rumored that somehow (miracle) we managed to get funding (miracle) through a particular organization that will remain nameless for a recreation center designed to help out street kids.

When I wrote the proposal, I had envisioned building something from scratch. But now, months later, I’m convinced that I shouldn’t be reinventing any wheels. I’m pretty sure I’ll be coming alongside a passionate, struggling organization that gets “it”. Vague, I know, but given the timing of the Sunday service, the meeting with Moses and the email from Glenn (a span of three days) I think we might just be doing something with the kids from ASCO.

Enjoy the video.

I’m so thrilled to announce our partnership with Hacker Halted 2011! Hacker Halted is October 9-15, 2010 in Miami Florida, and it’s looking better than ever. With a stellar lineup of speakers and great events, you don’t want to miss this con.

It’s also a great way to support the work of HFC. Half (50%!) of all the proceeds will go to HFC if you register with this code: IHACKPROMO – 2879!

Please head over to the Hacker Halted web site at www.hackerhalted.com for more information.

Thanks to the crew at Hacker Halted for this creative fundraiser!

We had a great time visiting with the team from our church in MD. It was such an encouragement and so uplifting. We have had it a bit rough lately and it was just what we needed. I’m sorry it was such a short visit. But the team was gracious enough to bring a suitcase full of goodies from our friends and family. These suitcases are so precious to us and they’re always filled with stuff that makes us so happy. Thanks to everyone that helped make this a month to remember!

It’s the little things, like Peppermint extract and Old Bay seasoning…

All of us get pretty excited about junk food especially beef jerky, slim jims, OREO cookies, Goldfish crackers and candy like Starbursts and Candy Corn. We can’t get stuff like this here.

For Makenna, it was crazy socks, shirts, crazy gloves and trail mix that really made her happy!

Even the cat’s liking it’s chops… probably for the beef jerky…

Jenny loves Hello Kitty ANYTHING.

Pokemon and LEGO ANYTHING (even books) are a huge hit!

I got some great books from my parents, along with my Dad’s famous snoopy drawing!

The HFC gear was so amazing! Jonathan sent a bunch of USB sticks and drives, each loaded with RACHEL downloads for our classrooms and WSUS updates! Tim sent us laptop batteries for our netbooks and Rob sent all sorts of swag from DEFCON. The IHC handmade bag is so cool and was filles with CISCO Aeronet PC cards for our laptops. Cool!

When Jenny came she brought real Korean ramen! What a treat!

It’s good to be missed and loved. =)

We’re running two failing businesses. The cafe and the training center are both fairly popular (the cafe is especially popular with the tourists and expats) but they’re both bleeding money. Every month, we pay for staff salaries out of our own money, and it’s running out. Donor support is still there, and that’s covering our living expenses, but it sucks to have to spend my gig money to keep these businesses afloat.

The Training Center is really struggling. We’re woefully short on customers and the customers we get are mostly “freebies”, members of the military or police force that we train for free. I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea of just training people for free since we’ve got a few months paid on the rent and the place is just sitting there, but I don’t know how to do that without spoiling all the equipment. It’s closer to our original goal for the center: training, not income, but I’m afraid that free walk-ins won’t respect the equipment. I thought about working with local churches and NGO’s to select candidates for free training and positioning them to manage and screen the students. This combined with our watchful staff might make things less risky. But even if I figured out how to make this beneficial to the people that need it the most, it still doesn’t solve the financial problem. We need to pay the bills. The answer lies in getting schools without computer labs to bring their students for computer training. Large groups could fill the gap. But despite marketing and advertising, it’s not happened.

Payday was last week, and we dug into the money left from my last gig and paid salaries, electric bills, plumbing bills and a host of other expenses. Two days ago I considered closing the center.I offered up a feeble prayer that something would happen, and set out to do what I do best: throw my own (insignificant) weight into the problem. I went to the center with an MTN USB 3G modem with the idea of offering Internet surfing at the cafe. People have been asking for it, so I caved and decided to give it a shot. I booted the system, slapped in the card, installed the built-in drivers and began to surf. Easy-cheesy. Things were looking up. Then I tried to share the Internet connection, which on Windows 2003 Server Web Edition (thanks to my MSDN gift from BlueHat 1!) is a royal pain in the grass. I poked at the Routing and Whatever thing in the Management Thingum and followed the convoluted rules and suggestions, but no dice. So I reflexively rebooted and things went bad quickly. All my network drivers fell out and explorer failed to run. No amount of recovery consoling would resolve the problem. Turns out that MTN thing isn’t compatible with 2003 Server. Yay.

Just like that the Center was down, hard. It was late, so I went home, even more convinced that the Center was finished.

Over night, I realized that I probably should have installed XP all along. I need Windows for the True Cafe software to run the cafe, but I needed 2003 Server to serve more than 10 web clients. I should have used XP with Apache. So yesterday I came to the center nice and early, prepared to reload the system. I sat down powered on the machine and pushed the CD eject button to put in the XP CD. The tray didn’t open. There was no power light. Then I remembered that we unplugged the CD and USB power to keep people from stealing our training. I bent over to open the case and saw our Analog Security System (below).

I asked Gerald (our manager) for the keys. He reached first into one pocket, and then into three others and then got That Look. An hour later, after turning the center upside down, he still hadn’t found the keys. I had backups at the house, but that wasn’t the point. Our center was completely exposed unless we replaced all the padlocks as well as the lock on the front door. Approximate cost: UGX 1,000,000/= or $500 or almost three months rent or four months salary for the entire staff. We just didn’t have the money to replace the locks, and every single piece of equipment was at risk with the keys missing. The only solution was to pull all the equipment from the center and close the doors. I packed up my gear and headed back to failing business number two for comfort in the form of a cheeseburger and a milkshake. I could definitely see myself drowning myself in milkshakes until we’re forced to close the doors there, too.

The hours passed by pretty slowly, and I was pulled back into my life at The Keep which is a story for another day. Depressed is hardly the word. It’s hard when something that seemed so right comes crashing down.

Gerald texted me a few hours later to tell me that the keys had been found. I was not relieved. Not only had I resigned myself to closing the center, but the work on the server had taken weeks and I knew that it would be no easy task to rebuild it.

I went back to the center and spent the next four hours rebuilding the server. In the end I decided it would be a Good Idea™ to install Deep Freeze to keep the system configuration locked down. I installed it. Then I realized that I would need Data Igloo to allow True Cafe to keep it’s logs and data, so I installed that, too, but realized I hadn’t set up another partition for dynamic data. I used partition magic to slice up the C: drive (which took an hour thanks to a necessary DEFRAG) and rebooted to install Data Igloo. That’s when things went south. Deep Freeze went into a perpetual frozen state, the tray icon went missing and nothing (I mean nothing) would unfreeze it. Another hour of web surfing later, and I realized I would have to start over. Repartitioning after installing Deep Freeze is a Horrible Idea™. As I packed up my gear I couldn’t help but wonder if I was really trying too hard to save the place. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to save it. Maybe I was wrong about this thing all along. “If only I could get some sign that I was supposed to keep going,” I remember thinking.

That’s when the messenger came from my friend Bobby from the Source Cafe and Kibo Group. He had a letter authorizing seven students to take classes at the center and offered a down payment of UGX 200,000/=. It would be the single largest group we’ve ever had at the center, and I took it as a sign that despite what’s going on, we should press on.

So today, I’m reloading the server at the center again. It’s not fun, but today’s reload seems different somehow.

I can’t help but remember that feeble prayer in the midst of the crap yesterday and the series of events that changed my mind about closing shop. “Slowly by slowly” (as the Ugandans say) I am realizing that there’s something here in Uganda that’s bigger than me and for whatever reason, God’s called us to be a part of it, especially when all the signs point to giving up

It’s just not coming together, and when payday came, we once again dug into our pockets and paid salaries.

Tim sent us a bunch of really sweet machines, but for whatever reason the power supplies keep blowing. So when the supply in The Keep’s pfsense box blew, I had Fred replace it with one from a backup machine. He was working pretty quietly in the back room until he suddenly burst from the room kicking his foot and grunting. We had no clue what was going on until we saw a mouse scamper across the floor. It turns out the mouse had made a home inside one of our machines and had a party inside. He chewed through just about every piece of insulation and plastic inside the machine, including every single cable on the power supply we needed to salvage. Right when I though I had dealt with every single computer threat, I shouldn’t really be surprised to find another one.

That’s not confetti. But the food and the colors seem to suggest otherwise.

The ants are as much at home as the mouse was.

This once was a SATA cable.

Just a typical trip to Kampala. Spectacular wrecks, massive unexplaned plumes of smoke and ridiculous prices.

We wanted to surprise Declan with some Legos for his birthday. This small set’s only about $125!

This one’s about $250! Guess we’ll find something cheaper. =O

About $65. New prices for used books.

This is the "His Grace Internate Cafe". Oh dear.

I’m proud to announce Hack3rcon, the official Hackers For Charity conference. In this day and age, it’s hard to justify another conference. But the fact is that small, local “minicons” are critical to our community. They’re great paces to network, meet new people and learn without the expense associated with the bigger cons. Hack3rcon boasts great speakers, excellent events and a great heart — proceeds will support the efforts of Hackers For Charity.

The con will take place on Oct 23-24, 2010 at the Charleston Civic Center, alongside CharCon, a gaming conference that will interest many of you as well. Tickets are $40 for the whole weekend.

We will have an HFC booth set up where we’ll be selling shirts, vinyls and thanks to Muts and the Offensive Security team, we will giving away BackTrack 4 RC1 DVD’s.

Hack3rcon will focus on low-level tool-centric “how to” talks and not high-level awareness. Current Speakers include:

1. Dave Kennedy a.k.a. Rel1k
2. Adrian Crenshaw a.k.a. Iron Geek
3. Dennis Boas  **classified**   =)
4. Martin Bos a.k.a purehate
5. Pwrcycle
…and many others.

Lee Baird will be facilitating a Hacker Village, where you can get  hands-on training through instructional labs from an experienced mentor.

Irongeek will be running a capture the flag contest for you to try out your skills for a chance to win a fully loaded netbook.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn, network and have fun while doing something positive for the world around you.