Stuff I learned

the photo is for fun, lots of war wreckage can be seen in these parts.

For those that are concerned that my skill level might atrophe while here, I thought it might be fun to list out all the things I have learned since January.

In 4 months I have learned the following technologies that I have NEVER seen before:

-Packeteer - how to do packet shaping - We deployed it and I became the resident 'expert' on the topic... the deployment was so successful we were able to improve our network performance by a lot.

-PPPoE - I've only heard of it until now, and now I've setup a server and tested it

-Captive Portal - the concept was familiar, but now I'm intimately informed about this... think Starbucks hotspot.

-FREERADIUS - the leading radius server out there, and now I know it very very well.

-PFSENSE - having never used this box before, I'm very familiar with it now

-VMware VSphere - I'm an admin now on a cluster and have imported many vm's and we've together migrated to an 90% virtual environment!!!

-Net Scopia - a new application for video/audio conferencing that we're testing out.

Many of these technologies are currently leading in the industry, and many of them would be necessary skills for a network technician who wanted to work for say, an Internet Service Provider.

I however have no intention of updating my resume because I enjoy working in the Lord's employ. While learning and using these things has required a lot of my grey matter lately, I have enjoyed learning new things, and wanted to inform anyone who was concerned, that my Lord is keeping me challenged, and up to date. As He always has. I owe every one of my skills and abilities to His guidance. I will boast in the Lord for taking an average mind like mine, and jamming all this stuff into it, admittedly at times, against my will. But in the end He has made me a useful person and I do very much enjoy being useful.

nsswitch.conf

today I was configuring ldap authentication on freeradius for the middle A of the AAA model... anyway... I came to edit the nsswitch.conf file, something I haven't done for nearly a decade....

and this warm feeling washed over me, like a warm blanket,
and I realized ...'aaaaaah... I'm working in unix again. It feels like home.'.

total.... GEEK..... moment.

Arnotts

been having a long few days of experimenting with Captive Portals and Ubuntu.
CoovaChilli, and more.

So.. I decided to take a 2 minute break and enjoy...

a BUSH BISCUIT.

When was the last time you had a graham cracker?
Well these Bush biscuits (biscuit is Australian for cookie), are about the size of your hand, and they're thick, and dry and sweet.

And until you've eaten them for a few months, you don't really like them.

Still it's a staple snack over here for me... and something I enjoy with hot tea at 10am and 3pm.

That's right, at work a whistle blows and everyone is free to take a 15 minute tea break.

The last one I took was a few months ago, as I typically don't stop working for TEA because I'm knee deep in some issue.

But today I took 2 minutes, and ate a bush biscuit.

em tasol.
(that's all folks).

Iphone Jury Rig

My latest Jury Rig.

Cell Phone Sim Card

Trying to unlock an iphone 4 and migrate from an old (donated) iphone 2g.

The biggest problem is my iphone wouldn't' unlock… until today.
The second problem is our carrier here, doesn't make micro sims, which the iphone 4 requires.

Most people might say 'well cut it to match' but it's not that simple, Digicel uses the OLD sim cards… so here's what I did.


I live way out in the highlands where we can't get mail or …well anything quickly. So what to do when my new Gevey sim card hack came in the mail?

Well, first, I had to get a micro-sim to fit. Seeing as how mine wouldn't, I posted on the 'wanted' newsgroups and a neighbor actually had the RIGHT kind of SIM!! YES! I didn't have to wait a month to get a new one.

So I got it, and then compared it to my old AT&T micro sim and used my leathermans tool to make the cuts.



I had to make the TOP card look like the bottom card in order to make it fit into my phone. A few well placed cuts later and I did. Making sure to match up the lines of the metal portions.


I put the new micro sim into this device, the Gevey.

After going through all the steps to activate the Gevey it dawns on me that my new sim hadn't been activated or possibly was expired and I didn't know the number of it… and since my phone is not yet unlocked I couldn't make the necessary calls.

OOPS.
Now I have a microsim and no other working device to put it into to make the calls. NO ONE ELSE ON CENTER had a device that would take a microsim….




so…
I took the plastic card the original sim came in.



and cut a piece out of it
and shaped it like a regular sized sim (The top card in the top picture).



But then I cut a microsim shape out of it, very carefully so as not to cut myself or ruin the 'adaptor' I was making.


THEN, I put my homemade sim adaptor into the phone's sim cradle, and snuggled in my microsim into it.. and put it into my old phone, and made all the calls necessary to activate the card.


Then all I had to do what pop it out and pop it into my new phone.


Bingo.

Tools needed:
-1 Leatherman multi-tool
-2 phones
thankfully no bandaids.

If I were in the states, I'd have walked into the closest Tmobile store and asked for a proper micro sim, and it would have taken me 30 minutes.

this process took me a little closer to 2 hours. But I prefer to call it being resourceful.

33.3

2010 HIV update.. 33.3 million people living with HIV in the world.

Does that number strike a chord in anyone?

here are some PNG stats on HIV and AIDS... this is all public record.


PNG
By Dec 2009 – 28,294 reported cases of AIDS (source: New Zealand AIDS Foundation)
An estimated 1,300 people died of AIDS-related causes in 2009
Approx. 2,400 adults were newly infected in 2009 – 200 each month
Approximately 800 children were newly infected in 2009 – 67 each month
Total estimated new cases each month is 267.
Currently 0.92% of the PNG ADULT population is HIV positive (lower than previously estimated due to improved sampling of the population, especially through antenatal clinics), although this is higher in the Highlands (1.02%) and Southern (1.17%) regions.
Estimated to be about 34,100 HIV+ persons living in PNG in 2009
Approximately 3,000 children in PNG were living with HIV in 2009.
Antenatal testing has greatly increased, from 17 centres conducting the testing in 2005 to 178 in 2009.

The rate is now higher in rural than urban areas and growing fastest in rural PNG.
HIV is reported in all provinces and districts in PNG.
Generalised epidemic – that is it is in all segments of the population, not just high risk groups.
Women are infected at a younger age than the men – but of those infected half are women, half men.
Currently PNG has the highest rates of HIV and other STIs in the Pacific area and for HIV is the 4th in the Asia-Pacific region (after Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia).
Reasons for the Spread of HIV in PNG
Gender inequality and violence against women
Forced sex within and outside of marriage is common
70% of women report being beaten by their husbands.
Women will sell sex for very little – buai, entrance to a video parlour or game room, cigarettes, alcohol or drugs and money. Some girls will sell their bodies for 2-4 kina.
The favorite age of girls (based on personal discussion with many men) is 14-16 years old.
Men and women both have multiple sexual partners – often concurrent.
Polygamy is a long standing part of the culture for men
“Big man” syndrome in which men gain importance by the number of women they have, especially younger ones.
Men often work away from home in logging or mining or as drivers. In Tari, 17 of 20 truck drivers hired in August of 2010 were HIV+. Prostitution is widespread.



Routes of spread in PNG
96% sexually transmitted
Risk of HIV from one non-traumatic episode of normal intercourse is 1:500 to 1:100. (Centers for Disease Control – CDC)
This increases 10-fold with anal intercourse (which occurs in PNG between men and men, especially in prison, and also men and women) (CDC)
Also increases if there are sores from an STI on either partner or is the sex was traumatic.
Risk is a bit lower if the man is circumcised.
Risk is much, much less if condom is worn and worn properly.
High risk areas are:
Markets (all over)
Wharf areas
Church camps, including and especially youth camps
Traditional Feasts
Shows and Festivals
Sports Tournaments
Schools
“6 to 6” stops along the Highway
Discos and nightclubs
4% mother to infant
HIV infected pregnant woman transmits the virus to her unborn baby in womb or during delivery 15-30% of the time
Most transmission occurs during delivery.
Transmission rates up to 45% have been reported in areas where prolonged breast feeding is the norm.
Medication to reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission is now available at birth (starting in labor) even if the mother’s CD4 blood count doesn’t qualify her for long-term antiretroviral therapy
Reduce transmission from breast milk by safe feeding:
Breast only for 6 months,
Then completely wean and feed with cup and spoon.
Bottle feeding is a killer in PNG. Bottle fed babies (even with HIV+ mothers) are more likely to die from infections they get through the bottle feeding than from HIV.


<1% via blood transfusion or contaminated needles.
Blood transfusion of HIV+ blood is about a 100% risk of infection.
But the virus is killed on contact with air so razors and other objects are not infectious for long.
Risk from a needle stick – needle has HIV+ blood in it and a person is stuck – transmission of HIV occurs in 3:1000 such incidents.

Uh oh, the Sugar is Gone

Ramu, our sugar factory, has stopped making sugar.

News
Thursday 14th April, 2011

Ramu’s bitter dose

BY OSEAH PHILEMON
and SIMON ERORO

SUGAR consumers throughout Papua New Guinea stand to pay over 70 percent more for sweetness when imported sugar from Thailand arrives on the shelves of their supermarkets and trade stores within the next week.
The reason for this is failure by the Government to grant tariff relief to enable Ramu Agri Industries Limited (RAIL) to import sugar from Thailand under a relief arrangement until sugar production can resume at the Gusap factory.
RAIL general manager Jamie Graham told the Post-Courier in Lae yesterday that the company had asked the Government through Treasurer Peter O’Neill as far back as November last year for the tariff to be reduced from 70 percent to 40 percent.
The minister told this newspaper last week (see clipping) that he had given approval for a one-off partial reduction of tariff for Ramu to import sugar.
This had apparently not been followed through by government instrumentalities to have it gazetted in order for Customs to apply the lesser duty.
RAIL’s sugar production was affected by severe dry spell last year and vandals set fire to 700 hectares of the productive cane fields. When the company became aware that production was projected to drop by 7% and demand up by 15%, it made a submission to Mr O’Neill for the tariff reduction to ensure sugar consumers were not hard-hit with high prices of the sweet import.
Mr Graham said the government assured the company this would be done by January 2011but it reneged on the undertaking.
Mr Graham said late last week he was assured by the National Executive Council Secretary and the Treasury Department that Cabinet would make a decision on the matter this Monday but Cabinet did not meet as planned.
He said Thailand sugar arrived at the Lae port last week and was awaiting clearance. Yesterday morning Ramu instructed their customs agents to pay the 70 per cent tariff on the imported sugar and get it off the wharf. Ramu also had to pay for 10 days of storage and wharfage fees while awaiting clearance.
Mr Graham said the company could not let the sugar sit at the wharf while waiting for the NEC decision on tariff reduction as the costs of storage would increase significantly. He said the company imported 2000 tonnes of sugar from Thailand with another 2000 tonnes to arrive within a month’s time.
Any NEC decision now on the reduction in tariff will be “too late” and consumers will just have to wear the huge increase in the price of sugar once it arrives at the shops. “We have no choice but to pass on the increase to the consumers,” Mr Graham said.
The imported sugar was yesterday being transported to the Gusap factory where it will be tested to ensure it meets Ramu Sugar standards before being packed into the various packaging sizes and transported to wholesalers and shops to meet the outstanding orders.
Mr Graham said the actual price of the sugar on the shelf will not be determined until all the costs have been added up. For every K1000 worth of sugar, Ramu pays the government K700 (70 per cent) and this is why the price will shoot up sharply until the local sugar production returns to normal. Other costs to be factored into the price formula include wharfage, freight and repackaging.
Ramu had planned to import up to 8000 tonnes of sugar to meet the domestic PNG market in the interim. But good news is on the way.
Mr Graham said on Tuesday this week the boiler at the sugar mill was started up which is the first sign that sugar canes are about to be brought into the mill for processing.

The Word

ASKIM for tech

an ASKIM is a request for help.

I have a request for help for the readers of this blog.

We have a unique situation in that we are trying to find a way to authenticate all users going out over our network against a RADIUS (microsoft NPS) server.
We need to be able to either LOG their access... OR create a HOTSPOT type of environment where they pre-pay or post-pay for their usage in KB/MB NOT in time.


So far we've proven:
-pppoe server will authenticate against radius but will not log usage...
-hotspot servers like Antamedia don't log in MB they log in time.


If anyone happens to know of a solution that will log network usage in MB/KB and authenticate against radius, PLEASE let me know.

I suspect you'll be working for an ISP or some CHAIN of shops that offer paid WIFI.

it's a hail mary, but our research isn't coming up with the specific solution we need....

we're several weeks into testing out things to remove our current situation.

Currently we're running an ISA server and we want to get away from it.

thank you

The Case of the Missing Cream

"Imagine if you will, a world without Ice-Cream"

A small town, in the middle of Papua New Guinea holds a school book festival and promises that the class who wins the most points in the reading competition will have an ice cream social.

The 6th grade class was so excited that they won, and when the day for the ice cream party came.... there was no ice cream.

*dramatic music* dum dum.. DUM!!!!!!!

Who took the ice cream? Where did it go? Did it accidentally get sold? Why is there not more?

All of these questions required a Nancy Drew like investigation.
The road was out, the bridge was out, the freezer truck couldn't make the 3 hour journey into town to buy some ice cream.

But the ice cream was ordered and in stock, where did it go?

They first discovered that the ice cream was sold, as the DO NOT TOUCH, FOR 6TH GRADE BOOK FAIR!!! signs were overlooked.

But later that was found to be untrue.

Nearly a month later, while doing maintenance on the store freezer the tubs of Dairy-Free, Pseudo Ice Cream were found!

Soon the 6th graders will be rejoicing as the mystery has been solved. Just in the nick of time, as 6th grade graduation is only weeks away.

SCBA no U

A few years ago I volunteered on our local branch fire team. At the time I joined there was very little training and we had no gear, but we had a Japanese fire truck.

Since then we've had a fire marshall dedicated to getting gear donated, and we've fought a large house fire.

Today, I've been trained on the operation of the fire truck (pumps, hose maintenance, water usage), proper use of a fire hose, we have turnout gear now and they actually found some that almost fit me well, and the most recent addition to our collection of gear:

SCBA. Think SCUBA without the Underwater... Self Contained Breathing Apparatus.

Yesterday I got trained in how to connect everything, how to put it on, how to breath with it.

I've never been certified to dive, but if you have it's a similar procedure, and we're VERY glad to have this stuff now, so that we can actually enter a burning building without causing harm to ourselves.

Although we pray we never have to, we train as if we will.

Tomorrow we'll be doing a full gear exercise. We have 2 minutes to put on all our gear.

Then after that we'll be doing blacked out exercises where we have to go into a building and find a person and pull them out. We've done this before but not in full gear.

You'd be surprised at how hard it is to find a dummy, in pitch black, in a room you've never been in before, with a partner... and then pull the body out.


Sometimes I marvel at what God is doing in my life.
Who knew years ago that by 2011 I would have actually driven a fire truck and fought a fire, and been trained in all this stuff!

I had been certified in CPR, Infant CPR and AED's (difib units) years ago and found out that I can be recertified here by our clinic nurses.

I'm constantly amazed at the opportunities you have here, to serve and to learn new things... and then be able to use them to support the community.

Giaman Ren

pronounced
(Geeyah mon rain)

Giaman means 'liar'
Ren means 'rain'

Giaman Ren is when it starts to rain, anywhere from light to moderate rain, but then within a few minutes it goes away, typically while the sun is still out.

Giaman Ren is something you learn to detect when you've been here a while.

For example,
If you've only been here a short while, you may find that on a sunny morning you put your clothes out on the line to dry by the sun (because we don't have dryers), and then a few minutes after sitting down, all your hard work complete, it starts to rain. You immediately jump up and run outside and gather all your clothes to avoid them getting even more wet.... come in side only to find out the rain has stopped.

You have just been duped by Giaman Ren.

But if you've been here a while like we have, you hang your clothes out,
sit down, look at the rain and say 'I'm hoping it's Giaman Ren'... and enjoy sipping your cool water for a few minutes, and then when the sun stays out and the rain goes away you take another sip enjoying the satisfaction of knowing you didn't waste the last 3 minutes of your life.

Of course, if it ISN'T Giaman Ren, then you'll wind up getting soaked while you bring the clothes in, but sometimes that's a risk well worth taking.

Techno God Stuff

sorry for not posting, life is very very busy here for the next 2 weeks as I'm responsible for getting translators' laptops joined to the new wireless network we rolled out.

Two quick notes I thought were cool.

On furlough I had to learn 2 new tricks:
1 - cracking a safe. Our safe battery died as we hadn't used it in 3.5 years, because we left it in the U.S. So I had to learn how to look up the safe schematics, and find out how to open the door with a dead battery. Not too incredibly hard, if you have the thought to look it up.

I mentioned the story in passing to a friend, who today was sitting next to the finance manager here who happened to ask 'no one here knows how to open a dead safe do they'. to which he got the response 'Chad Owens might be able to help you'.

So I got the request 'I hear you crack safes!' I replied 'no, I once opened 1 safe and it was hardly cracking, but let me see if I can help'.

Within 20 minutes the safe was open.

Thanks God for that experience on furlough.

2 - I had to learn to unlock an iphone while on furlough. When I got back one of the doctors here who rely on a smart device for their job, said 'Chad, I had this phone but it won't unlock, can you help me?'

And because I had been blessed with friends who donated an iphone to me as well as taught me how to unlock it, I was able to the doctor unlock his previously broken phone.

So...

I give thanks to God, for giving me those two small experiences and turning them into a way I could be helpful here to people outside of my normal day to day job.

Wow, God knows... He knows WAY ahead of time... and it's cool.

Skype

My latest headache here is skype.
Our internet connection shared across 500 accounts, is 400kbps download speed.

Compared to your connection in the U.S., well yours is least 5 times that probably more, and NOT shared to 500 people.

2 years ago, a few people were using Skype. Today nearly everyone is using it. But my internet connection hasn't improved and it's killing my network. While I was on furlough the decision was made to run it through our web proxy.

We run a proxy here for many reasons, not the least of which is web caching.

As soon as that happened people started complaining of wierd slowness.

Then I returned from furlough.

I started investigating all these wierd slownesses.

People began to complain about Skype not working all the time. I'd be caught in the hallway, called at home on weekends, asked to 'drop by and help'.

It didn't take long for me to put 2 and 2 together and realize Skype was killing my network.

Thankfully God saw this coming and saw fit to get two packeteers donated to us. So I've been pouring through the training manuals and I setup a lab and now, I'm a novice at it, but I'm able to do traffic shaping and keep skype at a low standstill.

Unfortunately there is no way to divorce the skype protocol over proxy (port 443) from the proxy itself and so even though skype is failing it's still killing my proxy server.

Skype is a wonderful tool for communication.
It's a horrible protocol for a network administrator with a limited internet connection and a proxy.

So... I need to find a way to completely kill Skype... everything else suffers until I do.

The only way I've found so far is through a Cisco router running the latest ios, only I don't HAVE a cisco router.

So until I can remove the proxy, or otherwise find a way to stop Skype, people here are going to be complaining about slow internet connection.

....
then it hit me... what about a non-technical solution... simply ask everyone to uninstall skype! See what happens? See if it will work! Do I dare ask the community to uninstall the software that enables them to , albeit choppily, speak to their family?

Enter Digicel.
We now have a cell phone company here that will let us call several world regions for about 40 cents a minute, which isn't too horribly bad.

Anyway,
I'm happy I found the cause, now I need to find the solution. But of course it works that way because you rarely are seeking a solution without first having a problem.

Chile today Hot Tamale

Quotes from my son's report on Chile (4th grade)

'in Chile in 1992 the population was roughly 14 million people. i have no idea what it is today."

"The area of Chile is 292,258 square miles or 756,945 square kilometers for anybody that isn't American"

"Spanish is the main language spoken in Chile. I suppose it is because Spain ruled Chile before September 18th, 1818"

Bibliography:
"I got all of my information from the 1992 World Book"

Fiber

We run fibre under the ground to various buildings as our network backbone. It's Multimode 100mb fibre. We run it because that's what we can afford. This new bit of fibre we had donated to us is actually quite hardy underground, and less likely to break.

As is our habit, we install a network cabinet wherever fibre is going to terminate and plug into a switch (cisco). But we don't have any fibre termination boxes so we make our own.

We take a plastic hobby box, which is simply a plastic box with a cover, then we drill holes in it... sometimes we grind it down a bit so that the nuts will fit on the barrel connectors... then we put the fibre barrel connectors in, terminate the fibre with our handy dandy fibre termination kit (no we don't fuse them, we use some tyco bits that use gel inside, very easy to do) measure the signal, and we're a go.

Above is a pic of one of our home made fibre boxes.

We've made them out of anything we can get our hands on. The last one we installed was made out of an old radio enclosure that we drill holes in. (a bent aluminum box).

For Coffee fans

for all my coffee loving readers out there... today as I stepped outside of my office I saw this truck. The Coffee Industry Corporation truck. Without that context the translation of the slogan on the side is sort of humorous.

'yumi lukautim kofi na kofi bai lukautim yumi' in an almost latin like turn of phrase this means:

'You and Me look out for coffee, and coffee will look out for you and me' In this context it means protect or watch-out for.


This one is almost completely English so you should be able to understand it. (-;

Today is 4

Today is the anniversary of our 4th year here. We arrived in this country on this day 4 years ago.

It was right before our 2 week meeting we hold every 2 years. We barely knew our way around, we hadn't started our jobs yet.

Now we're settled, experienced, been doing our jobs for a while, have experienced many different things, met many different people, seen many new Bible dedications.

It honestly seems like longer than four years in some respects. And in other respects much shorter than 4 years.

Next week conference starts again, and I am responsible for the networking portion of it. We're ready, the team is trained, the equipment is in place...

you can pray for us as those 2 weeks of conference is when we come together to decide on our leadership and strategy for the next 2 years.

Slip Slidin'

For those who may have thought our kids are 'missing out'. They aren't. Here we make our own fun. Sure they may not have access to arcades and malls and 7-11's but they have tons of home made fun, which I think, is better anyway.

Every now and then the high schoolers pull out a big long thick piece of sheet rubber and roll it down the hill. At the bottom they put old mattresses. Then then run water and soap down it and let the kids have fun. Here's a few pics.

So Saturday afternoon, while I was doing chores and my wife was doing chores, the kids walked up the dirt road a bit, and had an hour of slippery fun.

Indians

So my son comes home last night, typical boy, and says 'oh yeah, tomorrow I'm supposed to wear a costume to school and you're supposed to bring dinner'.

WHAT?

My wife is already under a lot of pressure right now, this was a bit too much so she said 'your teacher should have given us more warning'. And so my son's reply was 'well she told me weeks ago, I just forgot'.

So we replied,
there will be no food, and any costume you wear you have to dig up on your own, we do not have time for last minute stuff like this.

While alone my son came to me, wearing his made up custume of shredded rags and said 'dad I'm supposed to be a native south american, and I need something for my head that makes me look like an indian'.

So I replied 'well if only you had a Cleveland Indians cap.' as a joke.

His face lit up, and he said 'I DO!!!' and he ran off

Apparently a year ago my daughter found a baseball cap at a yard sale here, and picked it up for him. He wore it rarely in the sun, because he wasn't an Indians fan.

But he came back wearing it and was happy. Thank goodness because I'm sure many of you know how unhappy a child who doesn't have a costume for school can be.

That silly little cap averted a possible family crisis! (-;

Cargo Cult

Two friends of mine are new translators and recently got back from a several month stay in their village. They were not expecting people there to know about Christ, obviously, otherwise they would not have become missionaries to go. But what they found was a bit surprising. They had been told about cargo cults before. We all have heard about them. But apparently in this particular language area, there is a very strong cargo cult.

Cargo cult is a term that can mean a variety of things. The core of the idea is that there a religion has been built around the idea of how to get stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo-cult

In this particular area, they have a complex structure of beliefs that revolve around stuff. So what he found was a very attentive audience listening to him talking about the Gospel because they believed that because he had white skin, he was an emissary from heaven to teach them all about how to get more stuff.

No one wanted to offend them, because if the white saints leave, then they will never unravel the secret to finding more stuff.

Their system is so ingrained in them, that they in fact have no problem believing some basic tenants of the Gospel because they, from the perspective of a cargo cult, only make sense.

They don't reject the Gospel, they simply see it as more evidence that the white people understand more about life in general and therefore they want to be more like what they understand Christ would be like.

It makes for a very difficult obstacle to reaching them with the TRUTH. However, one thing works in my friends' favor. They have a seeking heart. They desire to learn, and know and understand!

Pray with us that this cargo cult mentality will find the Truth, and that our friends will have the wisdom to know how to pierce it with God's truth.