Friday (02/19): If you watch a computer person work, you would probably get bored to death. All we seem to do all day is sit at a desk and stare at the screen. Ask me if I love what I do, I would normally give an emphatic “YES!” (When I write about Saturday’s work, I may not be so emphatic… stay tuned.)
Three things happened Friday. In the morning, we were still trying to figure out what to do about fitting 10 lbs in the 5 lb bag. That is, how we were supposed to fit a “RAID” drive setup into the server Omonge had picked out before he left when it was physically too small.
Jeff tried to take the good motherboard out of the too-small case and put it into the larger-case where the bad motherboard (we thought). Kind of like my dad who decades ago bought a VW bug with a good engine and bad body and another with a bad engine and a good body. In this case, our attempt was like trying to but a deisel engine into a Ford mustang; square-peg round hole situation. I wish I'd gotten a picture of two servers all torn apart so you know that we don't alway just stare at a computer screen.
The answer? We eventually got Omonge on his cell phone and described the problem. He simply decided to drop back to a less capable hard drive setup. As you’ll hear about in my write-up about Saturday, I’m hearing from other US workers here and seeing for myself that Africans seem to act now, plan later. Generally a bad idea.
The good news is that the server we thought was dying earlier this week, after we'd cleaned and reassembled it, booted up fast and seems healthy now. We’ve been trying to stress-test it to verify this. If this keeps working, we may actually use this server in place of the original server that was too small (previous paragraph).
I was invited to Kipp’s home for lunch which was another nice experience. Kipp looks like an older person but whose youngest is 17 and oldest is probably in the low 30s. I rode with him in his beaten up Toyota truck quite a ways across town. What a busy city! As someone said to me today, there is no structure to traffic (auto, bus, bike, pedestrian, person-pulled cart). I don’t really know if I’ve seen much structure in any area yet.
We had a very traditional lunch of chapati (tortilla like), lentils, sukuma wiki (kale), and rice. Dessert was watermelon and bananas, served with tea. Kipp shared his story about his falling and breaking his leg (compound fracture) as a young man near his village, which is ~9 hour walk from the closest road. He suffered 4 days without medication before they carried him to the hospital, jarring his broken bones over the rough trail. He spent 6 months in the hospital and still has a very pronounced limp. He is thankful for the accident. While in the hospital, a missionary brought him a Bible in his tribal language and Kipp came to love the Lord Jesus because of reading God’s Word in his own language.
The afternoon was spent moving printers over from a soon-to-be–shutdown server to one of the new ones I set up. We also spent time preparing for tomorrow’s (Saturday) special project installing the new network switches. Bruce set each of the seven switches out and configured each with their own unique address and declared them ready for installation. NOT, in hindsight…
Because Serge and Olivia were out with his mom at friends until very late, I hard boiled eggs and made an egg salad sandwich. I love ‘em. Boiling a pot of water in Africa is very similar to the US. Just gotta be able to read the Swahili directions.
Oops! Forgot to take my malaria pill today!
Three things happened Friday. In the morning, we were still trying to figure out what to do about fitting 10 lbs in the 5 lb bag. That is, how we were supposed to fit a “RAID” drive setup into the server Omonge had picked out before he left when it was physically too small.
Jeff tried to take the good motherboard out of the too-small case and put it into the larger-case where the bad motherboard (we thought). Kind of like my dad who decades ago bought a VW bug with a good engine and bad body and another with a bad engine and a good body. In this case, our attempt was like trying to but a deisel engine into a Ford mustang; square-peg round hole situation. I wish I'd gotten a picture of two servers all torn apart so you know that we don't alway just stare at a computer screen.
The answer? We eventually got Omonge on his cell phone and described the problem. He simply decided to drop back to a less capable hard drive setup. As you’ll hear about in my write-up about Saturday, I’m hearing from other US workers here and seeing for myself that Africans seem to act now, plan later. Generally a bad idea.
The good news is that the server we thought was dying earlier this week, after we'd cleaned and reassembled it, booted up fast and seems healthy now. We’ve been trying to stress-test it to verify this. If this keeps working, we may actually use this server in place of the original server that was too small (previous paragraph).
I was invited to Kipp’s home for lunch which was another nice experience. Kipp looks like an older person but whose youngest is 17 and oldest is probably in the low 30s. I rode with him in his beaten up Toyota truck quite a ways across town. What a busy city! As someone said to me today, there is no structure to traffic (auto, bus, bike, pedestrian, person-pulled cart). I don’t really know if I’ve seen much structure in any area yet.
We had a very traditional lunch of chapati (tortilla like), lentils, sukuma wiki (kale), and rice. Dessert was watermelon and bananas, served with tea. Kipp shared his story about his falling and breaking his leg (compound fracture) as a young man near his village, which is ~9 hour walk from the closest road. He suffered 4 days without medication before they carried him to the hospital, jarring his broken bones over the rough trail. He spent 6 months in the hospital and still has a very pronounced limp. He is thankful for the accident. While in the hospital, a missionary brought him a Bible in his tribal language and Kipp came to love the Lord Jesus because of reading God’s Word in his own language.
The afternoon was spent moving printers over from a soon-to-be–shutdown server to one of the new ones I set up. We also spent time preparing for tomorrow’s (Saturday) special project installing the new network switches. Bruce set each of the seven switches out and configured each with their own unique address and declared them ready for installation. NOT, in hindsight…
Because Serge and Olivia were out with his mom at friends until very late, I hard boiled eggs and made an egg salad sandwich. I love ‘em. Boiling a pot of water in Africa is very similar to the US. Just gotta be able to read the Swahili directions.
Oops! Forgot to take my malaria pill today!
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