I have only a few minutes here at WHO, so I can’t explain too much, but needless to say, we didn’t have Internet at the office today, and now I’m guessing that we aren’t likely to have it before I leave. So the next time I’m likely to have any kind of Internet will be my stop in Khartoum on Tuesday. I fly out on Wednesday and won’t have access again until Thursday night.
As mentioned in my previous post, we got access to the Internet late in the day. However, there was a bit of a problem when everyone tried to access it at the same time. About 30 minutes later the power adapter over-heated and stopped working. It was fun while it lasted.
So we went back to the Sultan house and watched Zoolander, another movie in the “desperate for entertainment” category.
For the first time in a week, we have Internet at the office. I really hope it lasts through the rest of my trip.
That’s all. I’m headed back to the guest house, maybe we’ll have Internet there too.
Started to Join Laptops to the network today. New problems are cropping up, but nothing that I can’t deal with. Good news in the evening, we found bottled water. The guy in charge of that stuff here bought 15 cases and promised to buy 300 more if the guy can find them. You have no idea how important that is and how happy everyone is.
Tonight we watched “Surf’s Up” and about 20 minutes unto it had to stop. The most incredible lightning storm arose and we walked out into the street to watch. Litterally lighting was zapping between the clouds constantly, leaving only a few seconds of darkness inbetween each flash. When we got boared of that we finished up the movie and went to bed.
Not much else to report.
I got the server working just fine. Not that I’m not having any other troubles, but at least that one’s behind me.
In the evening we took a walk up to the top of the “mountain”. Of course out here what they call a mountain is what most Washingtonians call a speed bump. Seiously, it was a small hill outside of town, maybe 100 feet to the top, 200 max. But from up there you can see the whole city, and you can see some of the nearby villiages too. I got some descrete video.
After that we sat down and watched “This is Spinal Tap”. Yeah, they’re desperate for entertainment around here.
See, I knew more would happen yesterday. That’s ok, I can tell you all about it now.
For the techies:
I got the server and tried to insall SBS 2003 only to discover that the laptop was using a SATA driver that SBS didn’t recognize. After slapping my forhead and saying “duh” I found the drivers and pressed F6 at the beginning of the install. That’s when it happened. It asked me to put my driver disc into drive A:. Drive A:? Who the heck has a Floppy drive any more? Well, that shot my server install plans full of holes. So here I am on Day 6 researching and downloading. I think I just might have found a digital angel though. Someone else posted the exact process to get around this. Check it out if you’re interested. And pray that this works.
For everyone:
After having some trouble with the server install and realizing that I couldn’t do anything else without Internet access, we started to head off to Save the Children for dinner. That’s when someone said Haboob and that’s when I saw a huge wall of brown. If you hit that link, it looked exactly like the first photo in the article. Not the least scary thing I’ve seen in my life.
We decided to make tracks over to dinner so that we wouldn’t get stuck in it. I’ve got some great video of the sand and the amazing amounts of rain that came afterword.
So we had a nice lasagna (inside) and headed home. The rain that night was incredible. I think it was the tin roof above me that made it sound like more rain than I’ve ever heard before.
Day 6 is pretty boring so far, so I’ll save that for the next time I get access. Might be a few days, might not.
So here in Khartoum it’s just a small office with two laptops and an OfficeJet Printer/Scanner/Fax thingy. They also have a DSL modem and a wireless router.
I know that some of you won’t understand half of what I’m about to say, sorry in advance. You can go ask a geek, they’ll understand (well, most of it anyway).
My first goal was just to connect my laptop up and get some desperately needed Internet (I was starting to have some serious withdrawal symptoms). So I immediately look at the back of the router and notice that the cable running into the Internet port is coming from a disconnected cable that used to come from the printer. The DSL modem is running into a LAN port. At this point I’m lost. I ask them if they even have Internet access, and they say they do. I couldn’t figure out how this was even working until I tried to put it back the way it was suppose to be. That’s when I realize that they were just using the router as an overpriced switch. Someone couldn’t get it to work the right way (probable because the modem and router were using the same IP range) and just plugged things in until it worked. Anyway, I changed the range on the router and now things are back to normal, even faster. 
The laptops are pretty normal, though they were overloaded with the “complete” OfficeJet software. All 600+ megs of trash that HP loves to install. So a not-so-quick download of the secret “corporate only” drivers, a little fiddling with cables and IP addresses and now they don’t have the trash, but they also don’t have to pass a USB cable back and forth to print.
Oh, and I almost forgot, every once in a while I hear a pop, fiss sound. That’s the US to Sudan power adapter that sparks when the power flickers (every 20 minutes or so) or when you touch it. Luckily we all have laptops and they have a UPS as well.
Ok, yes, I put ads on my blog. Don’t worry, it’s not about making money, it’s more of an experiment for my other blog, which I will now shamelessly plug:
theFundless is a blog for IT professionals in non-profit organizations or other under-funded IT departments. Ben (my co-author over there) and I will be posting bits of our vast experience in this realm.
<end massive misuse of podium here>
For the less technical among my readers, a “plugin” is a little program that can be added to another larger program to extend its abilities. In this case I installed a “countdown-timer” plugin to show when I’ll be leaving. Then while I’m on the other side of the earth, it will show when I’m coming back. Cool, huh?
This is a little strange to me, but it looks like I’ll be installing a laptop server. Most computer guys right now are saying “a what?”. But seriously, you tell me. You’ve got to install a server in a country that makes you pay through the nose to have anything shipped in. A country where power flickers on and off regularly, an area where you may need to evacuate at the drop of a hat (or grenade or whatever). Now think about it, it makes sense, huh?