Jury Rig #21

The tape vault.

I love to jury rig stuff. I hate to put jury rigged stuff in production.
That said, a while back we had to get creative.
We back up our linguistic information (and other stuff) to tape.
This requires 5 x LTO3 tapes a weekend.
One day we dismounted the Djell Powervault 124t jukebox from the rack to dust it out as our server room gets a lot of dust in it.

Sure enough suddenly the left side of the vault wouldn't work any more.
These tape vaults store 8 tapes on the left side, 8 on the right.

We had no backup tape drives, and no way to do backups if we didn't get this working.

After poking and prodding around, one of us discovered (I think it was me, but it was a while ago, it may have been one of four guys) that the LEFT side of the jukebox was technically identical to the right side... except for the plastic face frame.

Well, a few loosened screws quickly swapped the faceplates, and then, we were able to fully use only 1 side of the jukebox (which defaulted to loading into the side that was broken).... with the jukebox fooled into thinking the broken side was simply not used, we were able to do backups that night.


Since then we have a stand alone drive for emergencies, AND we have a SAN so we store to DISK first then to tape.

So a nightmare scare like not being able to backup, shouldn't happen again.

The tension was that in order to get a new tape backup here, would take us, (if rushed) a month due to shipping issues. We could NOT go a month without backing up...

It's that kind of thinking that really excites me... finding out how to fix a problem with what little resources you have on hand.

I LOVE that, but again, I wouldn't want to support something that was pieced together all the time.. so we do go back and fix it. the Jury rig should only be an emergency and temporary solution.

Skype

I would like to tell you about another thing that excites me.

without going into details, for health reasons a mom was not able to return here to see her own daughter graduate high school. Not only that, this mom had put years of her time into the youth here and this graduating class all held a special place in her heart.

But she couldn't be here to see it happen.

A few of us got together, and were able to setup a Skype video conference so that not only could she attend the entire graduation, virtually, but she could address them as is the tradition here.

So.. imagine the scene. The meeting house is full of people the stage with the graduates, the big screen comes down, and projected on it, this woman that no one got a chance to say "bye" to because she has now left finish. All the people who wanted to see her couldn't and suddenly THERE SHE IS!

The place was full of happy tears, as she addressed the graduates, he voice filling the hall. It was a modern miracle of technology for us here.

It was only a short few years ago that we didn't have email.

And yes, setting up skype on a laptop and connecting it to a microphone and a projector really isn't technically that difficult. Making it work through your firewall, routing the traffic over an isolated satellite connection that isn't live yet, and monitoring traffic to make sure you get the best connection....

isn't super hard.

But it was one of those things that really touched and helped a huge percentage of the people here. Gave them a chance to say goodbye, helped make a horrible situation less horrible. Helped unite a mother with her daughter.

THAT is the kind of thing I'm here to do. Not technology for technology's sake, but technology to further the kingdom of God... to uplift and encourage, to support.

THAT was a magical night for many people, including me, and it was magical for all of you too who enable us to be here and make these things happen.

Thank you for that moment.

Digicel

(the beginning of construction for a new cell phone tower that will give signal to us and several residents in two nearby valleys).

Background to help with the significance of this:
-the telephone company is a huge cash cow for the government who owns and regulates it.
-until recently they have not licensed any telecommunications companies to come into this country, (this includes internet/satellite/cell phone)

They opened the door briefly and through it jumped Digicel which competes against the telephone company run B-mobile.

Further background:
land-rights is a very difficult proposition here. Culturally a man can sell you the rights to use an acre of his land for say, a cell phone tower (a tower is what your cell phone connects to and gets it's signal from). But those rights tend to need repaying whenever the land owner needs cash. Say he sells you the land, in 5-10 years his son is grown, inherits the land, and now wants his share, only now, it's more money.. and so on and so on. If they get unhappy, they tear down whatever you put on the land.

So Digicel installs these fortress like towers. Tall cement block walls topped in razor wire, with huge generators inside in case they cut the power source. Digicel knows what they're doing, and because they can negotiate the tricky cultural swamp of land rights, they have towers all over the country now.

Which means, instead of it costing me $3.00 p/minute to call home, it will cost me $0.33 cents p/minute to call home, for roadside emergencies, what have you.

AND.... digicel has implemented GPRS, which means, for those smartphone owners (not many of those around here) you can get email and map information now.


What does this mean?
It means that technology that the U.S. has enjoyed for nearly ten years now, has finally begun to arrive here! And that means communication is more affordable.

AND that also means translation data will flow.

Scenario A: the translator takes his laptop, goes to his village, spends 2 months recording audio data, and typing in books from the Gospel. He has no way to backup or email his data, so he takes his laptop back to our centre to store it on servers and send it back to the U.S. for processing. Only on the way, he's held up, and they steal his laptop. 2 months of work gone. This is a SAD scenario and has happened more than once. Or say not held up but the canoe tips over, his laptop falls to the bottom of the sea. This has happened.

enter GPRS or other technology that reaches the village:

Scenario B: they do their work, they email it off, it's stored instantly and safe. No work lost!!! YAY!

This is why I get excited about technology. Not because it means I can do new (well old to me) and exciting things, but because it has a real life application that furthers the spread of the Word.

Satellite

helping to put together our new VSAT (satellite internet) dish.



I was the only one who didn't need a ladder!

Geek details: 3.7 meter, C-band (goes through rain better than our old KU-band)


I'm pretty excited about this, because it reduces the cost of our internet usage by about 25% in the long run. Which means I can upload more pictures for the same price, or the same for less money!

Also it means that our internet connection won't go down during the (near daily) rain storms we have.

It has been a lot of work setting up routing and testing the connection and working with our new Hong Kong based ISP to get things set up how we like them, but after 1 month of tweeking and working, TODAY we saw the best performance we have yet.

(1.2mb down, 512down)

We're growingly happy with the new technology, and it's a huge win for everyone who lives and works here. We will hopefully go LIVE with it very soon.

Holiday in Madang

I find it difficult to explain many aspects of living here in a way that you can truly understand them if you haven't spent time here.

Needless to say, making this place your home requires sacrifices and tensions that build over time to the point where you do need to take your family and escape for a brief time.

One of those tensions is always being watched. People looking in your windows, watching your every move, almost as if you were the circus come to town. So we decided we needed a break.

We drove 5 hours across some nice, some not so nice roads to get to Madang. A dirty little town with some gorgeous beaches nearby. We stayed in guest house and accomplished the one thing I've wanted to do for a while now.

We got a boat and went to a secluded island, no one around for miles, to watch, stare, giggle. No one but us and white sand!

It was a perfect couple of days.
We had a wild parrot join us for lunch.
We had white sand and perfect water.
We saw poisonous creatures in the water and promptly exited the water.
We snorkeled and swam in perfectly clear and warm water.
We adventured and found parts of the country we'd never been too before.
We made sand castles.
We found a place with actual waves.

But most of all, we shed all the pressures and stresses of living here for a few days and rejuvinated ourselves and our family. Upon returning home we discovered how truly in need of a break we were.

Now school break is here, and the kids don't have school. Chad is back to work and Kendal is working and preparing her class room for the next school year.

Many of our friends have gone. Most forever, some for a year or so. Part of the emotional strain of this loss was lifted thanks to our short trip to Madang.

If anyone asks themselves "the place looks like paradise, why should they need a break?" I would simply reply "please come visit us and you will know." I gaurantee you that if you spent 3 weeks with us you would return home exhausted, (but excited)and knowing the answer to that question.

We thank God for you all and pray for you daily. Thank you for enabling us to be here... even if that means taking a moment to breath in new life so that we can continue on.

We are definitely not short-timers here. We are working in such a way that we can emotionally and physically be able to stay here for many years.

Wives and Women

I wanted to take a moment and talk about my wife. Living here is hard on women. I will avoid all the psychological discussions about security and safety and vulnerability and such. Those are for another time, but are very real issues for women living here. I would like to talk about the physical and practical day to day. Living here is hard on women. The modern conveniences that make running a household more efficient are lacking here.

If you are a housewife, then you learn that it is hard to plan meals around a grocery supply that is unpredictable.

If you are a single lady, then you need to learn that you can't travel alone at night and are quite dependent on men to move around the country. (well any ladies)

If you do both work and take care of your home (as my wife does) then you need to learn to rely on others to get through the day and keep your home in a working order. Those "others" are nationals whom we hire as part of our community service here, and it means cultural difference and contact.

What happens typically is that when a new couple arrives here they go through culture shock. The guy tends to love a lot of things here. It's beautiful, you can 4x4 and do things that get you dirty. You can go to work with holes in your socks and it's the norm. But for the ladies with kids, dirt and staying clean avoiding infection is a constant struggle. Our kid have permanent dirt under their toenails.

It may sound chauvinistic, but from one very simplistic perspective, this is paradise for a guy who likes to get dirty and do hard work, and a sacrifice for women who like a tidy home. Even small things like fixtures and the niceties that make a home a home are lacking. Curtain rods? No.. we have wooden dowels, and if you can find or fashion some.. brackets to hold those dowels.

There are some of the rare homes here where a lot of expense and effort have been put in to making it feel like "America". Carpet is rare, privacy is rare, clean walls and floors are rare, and you have to remember not to leave food out or the ants will get to them.

Mice, ants, rat, roaches, frogs, crickets, and other creepy crawlies live in bounty here.

So that's the setting.

And that is why there are ladies here who suffer more than others. Some ladies cope with these things, some thrive in it, and some suffer greatly and can't wait for a chance to leave it.

My wife is one of the ones that thrive in it. She copes with those things that annoy, but mostly she thrives.

This picture above is new, but quickly becoming one of my favorites. There is something about seeing your wife shine. Something spectacularly joy inspiring to seeing your wife happy and doing well.

My wife has had a bad few months of physical illness and pain, but to see her at work is amazing. She loves these kids so much. Her pre-school class is filled with both ex-pats and nationals.. learning together.

My wife works with a fantastic group of staff. This place truly is an excellent place to teach because the families are heavily invested in their kids, and because the teachers all truly want to be here. (how could they not, it takes so much effort to get here and live here.)

With that kind of environment, the kids thrive as well and turn out to be very decent adults.

I wanted to share this picture with you, and give you an idea (not-so-briefly) because in this environment, to see a man thriving isn't so exciting. Men thrive here. But to see a woman thriving, enjoying, producing fruit, and smiling like this.... fills my heart up with so much gladness I had to share it or bust.

I am aware that some people investigating moving here read my blog from time to time. So I'll add this for those of you considering coming here. The litmus test for me regarding your wife's mental health, is this; When you go on family vacation, does she prefer camping, or a hotel with room service? Everyone enjoys a hotel with room service, but I mean, does she truly enjoy camping? Each husband here needs to keep tabs on his wife, ask her how she is feeling, don't leave her alone a lot at night, make sure she is safe and happy. In a majority of cases people are perfectly happy and get along great. The little things tend do tend to build up, and so while the husband is enjoying life here he needs to remember to be attentive to his wife so that she too can enjoy life here.

(this pic was taken on Wacky Water Day, which Kendal so much enjoyed, and the boy smiling in the front of it loves her to death and is also our neighbor... he prayed for her back every night for a month... I had to smudge some of the details of the kids faces because I dislike posting kids images online unless they are mine)

Why I dig My Job

Why I dig my job.

Turning absolutely useless and archaic technology BACK into production. This requires inspiration, creativity, and a willingness to look totally stupid. Wow I just described myself.

Problem: We needed to convert RJ45 ethernet to Fibre (multimode ST) and then go 100 meters then convert it back.


We had a box full of media converters that did just this, however some of them are labelled "may be bad" or "we think it's failing". And we couldn't get any 2 pair to work without extensive testing. Finally we made a pair work, but it meant we lost all of our spares, which in a place with bad power like this, we couldn't afford.

So we went digging through a box of old parts. I saw two technicians grab and toss these little thinnet to fibre converters. It was old, and useless and why haven't we thrown them away yet?

And I had this thought "why are we discarding these, we might be able to use them."

So I connected two together. On one end Fibre, thinnet male/female in the middle, and rj45 on the other end.

WOW, it's a really crazy piece of equipment. And I made 2 of them.. one for each end.

AND... because it's old junk, we've got a ton of it, which means plenty of spares, which means we don't have to buy more, which means we save money.

WOW!
that's completely and totally nuts from a geek point of view, and I love it.


Sadly, some testing proved that these little units eventually gave us some data corruption, but it was really fun laughing while we were doing this. I'm glad we didn't put it into production, there is a certain level of professionalism I wish to maintain.

South America in Gingerbread

my daughter did this for social studies, 4th grade

Valiant Foe

alternate title "So Long, Gofair."

We are battling mice in our house. We have battled rats, and roaches, and now are on the battlefront of mice vs men.

I earned the name "deadeye" when sitting at the table, I flicked my shoe into my hand and shot it across the room to slay my first victim.

"Aw, he's kind of cute?" says my wife. "it's a shame we had to kill him."

Not long after, while we sat talking, another mouse would come running out. I didn't lift a finger to harm him. Finally my wife says

"Honey, you should really do something about that mouse."
"Are ya sure? You seemed so saddened that I killed the last one."
"no, I won't be sad, what makes me upset is the thought that that little guy could crawl across my feet."

So I slayed the next one with a mouse trap.

Then they got smarter. One attacked my daughter by climbing up the drain in the tub while she was filling the bath. We caught that one. Accidentally let it go while showing it to a friend. That's when I learned two valuable lessons:

1 - mice can Jump up to 5 feet.
2 - don't show your friend a mouse who can jump five feet in a crowded meeting hall.

After the panic settled and we were back home. Soon another mouse came, and this one was smarter than the trap. He'd get the bait and run.

So we introduced "glue traps" in 1 night I caught 2 mice. Who knew we had 2?

And then, just as I thought all was silent... "Honey, there's a mouse trapped in our bedroom."

And sure enough, the battle continues. Only this one was the papa of all the other mice because he was smarter, faster, bigger. Like all good sequels should be.

He was locked in our bedroom and had begun gnawing a hole in the wall to get out. I deployed the glue trap, but it was partially used as one of our friends accidentally stepped in it.
Here is my journal

Day 1 - the mouse appears in the kitchen, ignores the trap

Day 2 - the mouse appears in the hallway, no success

Day 3 - the mouse went into the bedroom and startled my wife, she trapped him in there, I am surprised he can't find a way out. I saw him, bold little guy, tossed a Nike at him, he's fast too. I must remember this encounter

Day 4 - Deploying the glue trap last night was no help, perhaps he smells the stench of death from his comrades. I will attempt a vigil.

Day 5 - I'm sitting waiting for him, it's been nearly 30 minutes, Nike in hand. There he is........... He climbed UP the power cord to my reading light, onto my nightstand, ran across my pillow, to my wife's (thank goodness she didn't see this) leapt to the curtain, swung across into the window sill and got stuck by the screen. I moved quickly, swatting smacking and closing the window to lock him in. Failure. I am convinced his only reason for climbing the drapes was to meet me eye to eye. Oh he is a worthy foe. I am deploying my last new glue trap.

Day 6 - it's 3am. I hear a squeak. Alas, he has been captured. But he does not leave us silently. He strikes one last blow. In order to remove him I have to turn on the light, which will wake my wife. Oh he is clever. I am all too sorry that at this hour I am unable to think clearly and I have fallen for his trap.

Day 6 - 7am. The mouse was taken alive and moved to a holding cell. The threat is over. I'm still apologizing to my wife for waking her. This mouse was good. I give him a hero's death and let him fall on his own sword. I provide a deli sandwiche toothpick for him, and leave him with a salute.

What did I do today?

Gonna get geeky here.
Before I do. A truck from about 5 hours away came in, full of heavy steel and such for us to install our new satellite dish!!! It took 6 men to unload all of the items together.

Okay geekiness.
What you see above is (from left to right) an ibook g3 installing Ubuntu 9.04 linux, an XO running OLPC (ubuntu linux) and an ACER aspire one netbook running Ubunto 9.4

One of the things we are doing here is trying to get our applications to run on linux on a low power type of laptop.

The ibook is an old one and I'm jsut messing around with that.
The XO is for a translator, and while slow, these are low power and as indestructible as a laptop that size can get. And the Netbook was jsut because Windows XP ran WAY to slow on the ATOM processor.

Today I've been formatting, unlocking, file copying, and pretty much hacking away at linux distributions to get them on all these three machines.

The end result?
2 little SDHC cards that fit in your pocket, handed to a translator who can use them to boot his little XO in the village running off of a car battery.

THAT is amazing to me. A tiny little SD card (the memory inside your digital camera) has the power to turn that little green and white thing, into a tool used to translate the Bible.

sometimes, technology can be really really cool, and at the same time, really practical.

I can assure you, if you've ever asked yourself "but why? Why do these things?" Out here, there are practical applications, because power is hard to come by out in the bush.

Technology in the 3rd World

this pic should give you an idea.

Today We Pour

We have been anticipating a new 3.7 meter satellite dish for our center. This will enable us to have utilize the C band instead of our current KU band internet connection.

Currently our internet connection is 2mb dl 512mb up KU which is blocked by rain and clouds and VERY costly. When it rains hard (every other day or so) we lose internet for a few minutes... downloads drop, etc. Having a download manager and uninterruptible power supply (UPS)is essential.

The concrete pad for the new dish pours today. Which means, I'll have fibre to run, and routing to configure, but once it is done, our network will be more reliable and eventually more affordable!

Technology is an interesting thing when applying it in this context. Maybe I'll blog soon about how low power computing is revolutionizing the way we do things.

This pic I took is of a neighboring dish that we used to get ideas from how to run conduit.

In preparation for this new dish we had to cut down 2 trees, both of which were about to fall over on a building anyway.

It is amazing to me that 2 years ago, this place had no internet connection faster than dial up. And now we will have 2 dishes.

We recently spoke to one of the cell phone providers in the country who is interested in mounting a Tower near here AND providing GPRS/EDGE technology (at about 80cents p/mb). If their business base for GPRS gets high enough they will consider going 3g after their initial equipment purchase is paid off. So we might see 3g cell technology in the next 3-5 years!

What this means is that our translators can stop carrying around radios and modems and heavy, costly equipment and start using netbooks, XO's and cellular modems.

It really is exciting to be a geek sometimes.

Anyway.. so while we were on our way to check out this new dish, we were alerted that there was some tribal fighting on the way. I was driving. Sure enough we see a bunch of men huddled on the road ahead. I stopped, prepared to drive backwards, but they were jsut guys helping another person out of the mud. Although each of them had either a bow and arrow or a machete, none of them were fighting at the time.

After 2 years of living here, seeing a man walking with a bow and arrow, or a bush knife (machete), doesn't strike me as unusual. I wonder if it'll be odd to see people walking around WITHOUT knives in the U.S. (-;

Birthday

Turning 8 requires:
inviting all 15 boys from your 2nd grade class for a water birthday party
15 boys
100 water balloons
24 hotdogs
24 home made hot dog buns
15 water guns or ketchup bottles
8 different water games
1 ice cream cake
1 pinata made from an Oats container

2 hours of fun.
-------------

It was enjoyable, even though work, to get this party to go well. Kendal and I are a good party team, and today, Sydney joined the ranks with helping out as well. It was a blast.

It was a fun ending to a tough week. Kendal's back is hurting again, news is she compacted one of her vertebrae, so she'll go in cycles as it expands again. Hurting bad, then not hurting, then hurting bad, for a while until it is completely healed.

Email servers were giving us a LOT of problems this week, and I worked several long nights and early mornings and even weekend days along with others trying to get things back online.

But now, the party is over,cleaned up and we are relaxing.

This picture above is Calvin using a soaker gun I got in the U.S. over 5 years ago and brought with us here for some silly reason. He couldn't find his and I had mine loaded and waiting in the wings... he REALLY enjoyed making this photo.

Tv and Stock Take

This week is stock take across the entire centre.
The above picture is a new stock take system we rolled out this year that enables laptops to wirelessly connect to their database for stock take. Over the year it has cut down on the length of time it takes to do stock take, which also cuts down on how long the store is closed.

In a few minutes I'll be speaking in front of the High School assembly on a few topics related to network use. I have 15 minutes to cover 3 topics.

Later today, a video crew is coming. They flew here from the U.S. to cover the aviation department but will be picking up some footage of our computer department as well. I most likely will never see the footage, but we may be used for future information and recruitment.

So all in all, a busy day.

Pooch porch or doggy deck?

Our Dog is very social, he whimpers outside this window during family movie night. So I built him this doggie deck so he can come up and join us, and often he does... people find it interesting, almost zoo like to walk into our living room.

Girl fort out of mini bamboo

Jury rig I found telephone batt. 3aa

New toy at work

for a long time we've labored to keep our storage needs branch wide, to 330gb as that was our old JBOD (just a bunch of disks) configuration.

This month we got this new toy, a 14TB SAN. The sad thing is that because we're low on staff, I won't have a lot of time to be configuring this bad boy until things lighten up. The good thing is that once it's up, the integrity of our data will increase dramatically.

In other words...
now that we have more space, people won't have to keep chapters of the Bible on their laptop hard drives, which tend to get stolen.

Now the data can reside in one place and be backed up. This is something we've been pushing for for 2 years now.

I have found it is difficult to change the mindset of people who have not worked in professional environments. The idea of having central data tends to scare people until you add words like RAID, BACKUP, CRISIS RECOVERY... and then they calm down.

There is still very much the mentality of "give me a knife and a laptop and I'll go into the jungle and get stuff done!" I love that mentality... I love those people!

But what I try to do is when they get back, pry the data from their hands, and put it in a nice safe place (-;

Little Things

Yesterday we were able to spend a lot of time in prayer.
In the midst of all the troubles around us, it was SO wonderful to be able to spend some time saying out loud to each other the things God HAS done for us.

God is so magnificent in the way He orchestrates things. Little things all around have been happening to encourage us and to remind us that God is in fact working.

This week, has been a short work week due to the long Easter weekend (yes here we get 4 days for EASTER not ..spring...) and during that time we were able to accomplish a major email migration (still on exchange but now Exchange 2007)...

Tomorrow I'll be playing guard for a yard sale. My main job is to stand around and look menacing.

I love all these little odd jobs that come up. It keeps life interesting.