In preparation for Shmoocon, I’ve designed a new shirt to help us raise some much-needed capital. I designed it based on the Shmoocon website design. This is the back design. The front will sport the typical “i hack charities” slogan. I’ve taken a real gamble on these shirts by ordering 400. I need to sell 100 of them to break even. Here’s hoping.
Click for Larger Version
It’s been a busy week. I did home internet installations for two clients who have recently relocated to Uganda. One is supporting the Uganda Baptist Seminary and the other is supporting the UAPO. These were relatively small projects, just hooking up 3G routers and antennas for their small home network. It’s simple work, but so necessary. It’s amazing how many people come here and have no idea how to get fast Internet. Both clients came in through word-of-mouth. The other relatively big job was hooking up Internet and an nComputing cluster for Water Missions, International. This was a bit more involved as we’re load balancing multiple 3G connections and extending some of their desktop machines to support multiple users with nComputing. Here are some photos of that installation:
One Shot of the nComputing Install
Another shot of the install
The 3G Router setup
Here are a few more photos of the outside of Water Missions:
Water Missions Uganda's new home!
Fred sporting his backtrack shirt outside Water Missions!
The rest of the week was a bit ordinary. I worked on a few laptops for various non-profits, worked on a logo for the new HFC T-Shirts in preparation for Shmoocon, worked on the end-of-year finances and worked the sound for music night at The Keep. Since we were in an off-week, we had a Karaoke night, which was only lightly attended but was a real blast. I even got into the act with Jailhouse Rock (Elvis), House of the Rising Sun (The Animals), I’m a Believer (The Monkees) and Chantilly Lace (Big Bopper). I have my dad to thank for even knowing what those songs are. According to field reports, I do a mean Elvis and and equally mean Big Bopper. If anyone asks me to do it at Shmoocon, I won’t… unless of course I’m taunted with a charitable donation. =)
It was a decent week. It’s good to be busy again.
More soon.
I’ve been back from vacation for a while. Then I was in Beijing speaking at a conference. Then I was back to Jinja to…life. Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. Truth is, I was “lost” as the Ugandans like to say. I’d like to say I am “found” but all I can say is that I’m back. There’s work to be done, and at least I have my head on my shoulders well enough to get some work done.
Today was interesting. I was up at 3:45am to open The Keep for the NCAA BCS Championship game live on ESPN. I’ve never been a sports fan, but because of the fact that we run an “American” place and we have ESPN on DSTV Africa, customers are asking for American sports. So we’re showing the NFL playoffs, and the XGames, and the BCS Championship.
Because of the 8-hour time difference, we’re up pretty early to catch the live games and it’s been pretty fun. The game was amazing this morning (sorry, Oregon) but it was even more exciting because at halftime, power went out all over town. So I scrambled to get a UPS in place, and an hour later, we scrambled for a generator. I’m glad we went through the effort. The game had an amazing finish.
We watched the Seahawks upset a few nights ago and that was pretty intense also.
I know, it doesn’t sound like work, but I was the barista and the waitress and the hostess for the morning. I rather enjoyed being behind the espresso machine again. It’s been so long since I’ve done anything besides computer work at The Keep, and I realized I missed it.
I’ve been looking in from the outside for too long. This restaurant, along with the (dwindling) donations from the States and the far-too-sporatic speaking gig are our bread and butter… our livelihood. I’m trying to focus on it a bit more.
So I’ll open before dawn for football, pull shots, run the soundboard for our musicians and even slog through the decidedly non-glamorous laptop repair when I need to.
It’s still better than the 9-5 in the US. I’m still pretty sure about that.
Speaking of the US, I’ll be at Shmoocon in DC! SANS is flying me out and I’m not sure exactly what I’ll speak about, but I have twenty minutes. Should be interesting. I’m excited to see everyone again!
I just realized my “sionara” post never went out. It was longer than this will be. We’re on vacation. I’m not answering emails, or comments, or even (most) phone calls sourcing from East-Africa. Sorry for those that thought I was eaten by a grue. We drove to Nairobi, then through to Mombasa. We’re back in Nairobi for a while now. In total, we’re gone for 2+ weeks, and I’m trying to stay offline during that time. It’s been relatively easy, since I haven’t had Internet in most of our locations. Our vacation is cheap, funded by some gigs I did a while back, and much-needed. We’re over a week in and I’m still so tightly wound I think I’ll pop. Sucks, but I’m trying.. See you guys when I get back I guess..
Thanks to Chris Duke (for shipping the gear), Keith Parsons (for donating the sound gear, screen and projector), “SpiritInBlk” (for doing all the legwork to get the PC’s donated) and the HFC shipping team (for hours of hard labour and moving equipment), and some heroic maneuvering at Entebbe airport, we are now in possession of a pretty sweet shipment.
This is just the thing I needed to give me a bit of a kick in the butt. It cost us about $1250 in clearing and taxes, and may cost us more if we need to cover shipping costs, but the fact of the matter is that we needed an influx of equipment.
Our “music nights” at The Keep have been a real hit. They have attracted lots of new customers and provided a stage for local artists who might not otherwise have had a platform. But we’ve been getting by with borrowed and beaten equipment, and the sound has been rather mediocre. This is a big deal because most of the customers we have in are from developed countries and know bad sound when they hear it. It wasn’t fair to the artists, and on some nights it wasn’t kind to our guests.
I was just on the brink of buying new equipment when Keith’s gear showed up. When I opened the package I was blown away. The Bose Pro 440 speakers are not only slim, but they have amazing sound and they are outdoor speakers, designed to withstand wind, rain, sleet, dirt and dust. They should do very well in the dusty conditions here.
Keith also sent an amazing mixer with lots of power and six channels. We had been limping by with four before this mixer showed up, and I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to run all the mics and instruments our artists require.
But that wasn’t all. Keith also sent a massive 10-foot DA-LITE projection screen and a DLP projector which we hope to use for community music nights. (I’m also considering running some IT conferences here in Uganda because we have everything we would need to have a track of talks, presentations, the whole works.)
The massive stack of PC’s was another great pick-me-up. So many people worked so hard to get these machines (legally) liberated from a certain company, and it was really rough work. It required manually labour, a bunch of driving and storage, and the all-too-common nudging that corporations seem to need to donate old gear to an org with the word “Hacker” in it. The GX260′s are missing hard drives and memory, but we hope to use these as RACHEL boxes for schools and villages in the area.
I’m so blessed by the support of everyone that worked so hard (physically and financially) to pull this together. Thank you all so much!
In the back you can see the stack of 37 DELL GX 220′s. On the bottom left you can see the (dusty) outer cases of the Bose speakers in their travel casses. The cases make the speakers practically indestructible. The SAMSON mixer box can be seen right behind the speakers.
The DA-LITE screen was so massive that it barely fit in the main room at The Keep. It’s designed for conferences and is big enough for a keyote talk in even the largest rooms. The Bose speakers are on either side of the screen.
Another shot of the amazing Bose speakers.
I’m in love with the Bose stealth black goodness.
When I left to come to Uganda, I was really worried that HFC would die when I left. After all, I was the one doing all the running, setting up at conferences, pushing our work, etc. But over the past year, I’ve been pleasantly surprised to see that many volunteers have stepped in the gap to continue the work of HFC. One such group is shown in the photo below.
Shown from Left to Right is David Dodd, Jeff Debrosse, Chris Simpson and LLew Browne. These guys did an awesome job coordinating and staffing the booth at toorcon, and their efforts resulted in an $843 donation. Most importantly, these guys helped spread the word about what we’re up to.
I can’t thank these guys enough, and I’m glad so many of you came by the booth and hung out with these guys at toorcon.
Thanks again!
Some people get a bit wigged out when I get “all spiritual”. Well, this particular post is “all spiritual”. It’s undeniable.
A week ago, we had a very sad meeting with our staff of The Keep. We told them that the money was gone. We let them know that we did not have enough money to pay their salaries for next month. We’ve been covering expenses (electric, water, supplies, etc) from profits for a while now, but we haven’t made enough to pay salaries. It’s all been out of pocket. Well, the pocket was empty. Hence the meeting.
We told the staff it would take a miracle to keep us open. We asked them to pray along with us, and we would seek a sign from God that we were to keep going. It was God, after all that dropped miracle after miracle on us to even open the place, but if it was His timing to shut down, we were prepared for that.
Three days later, I was on Skype, and an old friend asked for our bank account information, saying he wanted to wire us money. I was surprised and humbled by the gesture and by my friend’s charity, but at that exact moment, I was multitasking, so I didn’t think too deeply about it. Then he told me the amount, and my spinning brain ground to an immediate halt. The donation was the single largest donation we’ve ever received from anyone. No single person or corporation has ever donated more, and this was from a friend of relatively modest means. It was enough to cover staff salaries for about the next eight months.
The thing that’s the most interesting about this situation is that I didn’t tell anyone other than our employees that we were in financial trouble. I didn’t post it to the web, and I didn’t go publicly asking for help. We just prayed for a miracle, and a sign that we were on the right path, and it came decisively and suddenly. It was crystal clear. So The Keep will stay the course.
In the mean time, I’m fully confident that the work permit issue will work itself out as well.
I’m catching up on the blog, but I’ll have to do it in pieces. Here’s some tech stuff I’ve been working on over the past couple of weeks.
This shot worked it’s way into my Kenyan No-Tech Hacking talk. This is a pile of papers sitting in a corner after I crossed through Nairobi customs at the airport.
A closer shot revels thousands of pages of travel documents, passport and traveller information and more. I could have taken the papers as easily as I took the picture. But I didn’t think it would leave a good impression my first time to Nairobi.
This shoulder-surfing session took place in a very prominant Kenyan government building. This shot also appeared in my Kenyan No-Tech hacking talk. There’s so much info in (the full-size version of) this picture.
Some papers hanging out of a desk in the same government building. These shots were all taken from the reception area. I could have some real fun in Africa.
We worked on an nComputing setup for the Uganda Baptist Seminary.
Here’s a good shot of the driveway…
… and the seminary grounds. What a beutiful place.
Paul was a volunteer working with UBS. Not only did he mule some cradlepoints over for us, but he also lent a hand with the nComputing setup. Really nice guy, and sharp tehnically, too. He works for AT&T back home.
Here’s Paul running some cables. He crimped a tom of cable for us.
Here I am either praying for or installing the cradlepoint.
Here’s a shot of wht the UBS Internet setup looked like before…
And here’s what it looks like now. Not only is it pretty but their speeds are about ten times faster. We’ll see how they like it.
Here’s two of the nComputing stations…
and three more sitting alongside the server. This nComputing stuff is saving charities a ton of money in Uganda, slashing their hardware and maintenance costs in half.
A friend of mine had an accident with her Mac’s magsafe connector. Normally, there’s a good deal of solder magic that will fix a slipped magsafe connector, but not in this case. The board was snapped clean in half. I don’t have the feintest idea how I would fix this.
I’m also doing a bit of light data recovery. Shops in town are bringing us the hard drives they consider long-gone. Right now, we’re doing pretty light recovery, but thanks to Paraben and EnCse, we might be getting some better gear. If we do, we’ll have a niche in the market here, and we’ll be able to make some money and also help out the locals with cases. Right now the police capacity for this work is practically non-existent.
I also got to work on an original iMac. This G3 was soo cool to play around with. It ran really well considering it’s age, but the owner wanted OSX installed on it.
It was a real hassle. First, I had to upgrade 9.2.1 to 9.2.2, then apply a new firmware. After that, the DVD OSX installers wouldn’t boot (?) so luckily I had an older copy of Tiger on CD’s, which the G3 seemed to like. I still can’t get beyond Tiger though. I have no idea why, but the machine doesn’t boot from DVD, even though it reads them just fine. There’s no way I could have done this without decent bandwidth (at The Keep) and those CD’s. I really need Mac software. If you’ve got any, drop me a line. We’re doing a lot more Mac work. I charged 60,000/= for this job (about $30) which is fairly expensive, but no one else in town would have been able to pull this off. And yes, that’s about a week’s salary for an HFC employee, so it was worth the few hours I spent.
My friend Chris sent me this article. It really was food for thought. But I’m not exactly sure which of the two applies more to me… Like I said… food for thought. Thanks, Chris. Things are looking up a bit. More later.
I’m in Kampala preparing for the Open Source Journalism Conference (http://linux.or.ug/node/682). It’s an interesting experience because I’m speaking, but I’m also helping setup for the conference. I setup the sound equipment for the con, helped move tables, made an intro movie and all sort of other odds and ends. I am starting to feel some love towards anyone that sets up and runs a conference. It’s a ton of work. It’s 1:30AM and I’m not sure we’re done yet. In fact, Kyle and Simon are starting to get loopy.
We had dinner at a place called the flaming chicken where we had kebabs and rice, drank Mint tea and smoked double apple Shishas. I felt kinda human again, and it reminded me of Jordan. I’m really tired but excited to be giving a talk to more than 15 people. We could have something like 70 people tomorrow.
Did I mention how much I miss conferences?
