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I'm back in town

I'm back in town again. I was up to Quito on Thursday to pick up a work team of nine guys from Oakhurst, CA. You can find out what they're up to at their web log.

I'm up in Quito.

I'm up in Quito. Ron and I are up here to pick up the work team from our church. They arrive this afternoon. We drove up yesterday and took a three hour side trip to the parking lot on the slopes of Cotopaxi. From the parking lot we hiked a half hour up to the climber's hut. We drove to about 15,000 feet, and hiked even higher. Still didn't make it to the snowline. I'd like to make the climb to the summit in June. We'll see.

This morning we took the trolley down to Old Quito, hoping to buy tickets for the train. There's a train that goes from Quito down to the Cotopaxi National Park. You can ride on the roof, and that's what we were hoping to do with the work team on Saturday. Sadly, the tickets were all sold out. We'll go to the momument at the Equator instead.

Ron is off shopping for water heaters for one of our MAF houses. I'm going to head over to the home of one of our MAF families here in Quito and work on there compupter. There's always something to do. At 2 PM we'll head over to the airport to pick the work team up.

Greg and I couldn't

Greg and I couldn't solve the problem yesterday. I was glad I had stayed up for the night, as there was a flight to Makuma in the afternoon, and the computer went out. It's been faithfully connecting to our server by HF radio every three hours. I know the Holmes are very thankful for that! I finally headed home at 10 AM for a few hours of sleep. I was up soon after 1:30 PM as I had a new MAF family to set up with e-mail, and then a school board meeting in the afternoon. I slept well last night!

I tried to take the day off today, and I think I took most of it to myself. I did have a few more fires to put out, but I think we're finally in a stable situation. Good thing too, as I head up to Quito tomorrow for four days.

Going home for breakfast

Going home for breakfast now. Still have one issue I haven't resolved. I could send the server out the way it is, but I'd like to get this one last thing. I'm waiting for Grey in Haiti to get online so I can chat. He'll probably be able to help. He's my http://www.thehoffmanfamily.com/ hero.

And now I'm still

And now I'm still up in the middle of the night. I struggled and struggled with the radio e-mail connection after dinner tonight. And before dinner. I finally found a very simple and obvious mistake about 2 AM. Now I'm trying to figure out why the connections won't set up automatically on the schedule we've set up. This isn't good. I have a board meeting to chair this afternoon. I need to get this server done, as there is a flight to Makuma today and I need to get the machine on the plane. I feel like I should be saying tomorrow, but it's really today.

I'm getting a lot

I'm getting a lot done today on the 'new' server. Using my documentation it's going a lot more quickly than it did over the past year when I initially put this e-mail system together and tweaked it. I'm really glad I've kept comprehensive notes and instructions on everything. Today I'm working on getting the radio e-mail component going. Need to get that done as soon as possible so that the Holmes family out in Makuma will have e-mail soon.

Slept well last night.

Slept well last night. Even after I had the mail server running, and things under control at 5:00 PM, I still didn't go to bed. We had invited Joel over for dinner. He's an 18 year old friend of one of our Quito staff, and he's visiting here in Shell for a couple weeks. So we took him to a restaurant in Puyo for dinner. I finally made it to bed by 8:40 PM and managed to fit in thirteen hours of sleep.

I've been tinkering on things today. Washed the truck we've been using for the past six months. Checked the front brakes. We'll need to replace the pads in the next month. Got a few more e-mail users connecting. Managed to get the HP laser printer going again. It stopped working properly on Friday. I just added a backup hard drive and a backup script to the server, and that is working. That way the server will make a routine backup each day at 4 AM. I think I may head off for a short bike ride now. An hour on the bike would do me good.

Well, I've been up

Well, I've been up 33 hours with one hour of sleep so far. I'm getting there. The new server is up and running, with all user accounts created. My secure tunnel to Redlands is enabled, and I'm ready to start exchanging mail. That secure tunnel means that our e-mail is encrypted between here and our office there in Redlands.

Making progress. Hope I

Making progress. Hope I don't have to stay up all night.

Well, here it is

Well, here it is after midnight again. I've finally got a backup drive formatted and am now running the backup I so desperately need. Uh, hold the phone...it just finished. I've got to get to work...

I was up again

I was up again until 2:30 AM last night. Began working around 9:30 PM, so it was quite a night. Did manage to get a boot CD going and get Win98 installed on Dave's notebook. Didn't make a lot of progress on the mail server. I'm in the process now of making one last good backup before I jump ship. I've got to move to another machine temporarily until I can buy a new server. I've had enough.

And to top it off, I got a call from Quito. The computer I worked on until 2:30 AM on Monday night is now acting up again! Agghhhh! What next?!

Over at the hanger

Over at the hanger with a pot of coffee, some tunes, and working on a move to a new drive in the e-mail server. Hope to install a fresh system and restore all user files from backup. I'm also working on installing a new drive in Dave's notebook. He needs that done before he heads to the States for three weeks so his wife can use the computer for e-mail. It involves making a CD that I can boot from so I can partition and format the new drive before I install Windows. This is all new to me.

OK. I've got a

OK. I've got a plan to get the Makuma server going. I'm going to have it brought back to Shell tomorrow, since we have a flight out there. I'll work on it over night, and then send it out again on Friday as there will be another flight. As long as I can figure out the problem in less than 24 hours, that should work well.

We have hot water again. I was taking a shower this morning and started smelling a strange odor. I asked Ellyn to go check, and sure enough, flames and soot were erupting from the water heater. So we shut that off and figured we'd better ask Ron to help with that. But he was heading to Ambato today to pick up some building supplies. So before he left I caught him and we discussed the problem. I figured I might be able to remove the burner/jet and clean it up myself.

But oh, no! The server locked up again sometime during the night. So I spent the whole day troubleshooting the computer that stopped working on Monday (it's really dead) and trying to get the current machine to be a bit more stable. Still no success with that, as it continues to be a problem tonight.

I finally headed over to the house to fix the water heater about 4:45 PM. Then I saw Ron was back, so went to help him unload the van. The we worked on the water heater, and about 6 PM we were making hot water again. Ahhh! I'm really looking forward to that hot shower tonight! And then I think I'll spend the night trying to get a working server put together.

I'm back in Shell.

I'm back in Shell. Made it, just barely, on the flight to Quito. I had just enough time to get the e-mail server back online here before the plane was ready to take off. I hit the ground running in Quito and worked on the computers in the office from 4:30 to 6:30 PM. I had some maintenance and software upgrades to take care of. After dinner I began work at 7:45 on the Ross's computer. They had problems with it a few days ago and tried to re-install Windows. When it was all said and done they thought they had lost most of their data and e-mail wouldn't work. I wiped the drive clean, installed Windows and other programs, but then when I went to apply patches to Internet Explorer, the original problem returned. So, after removing the patch, I was running OK again. Then, since I had found and saved their e-mail, I tried to get that restored. And I ran into problems with Outlook Express to the point it wouldn't run. So back to re-installing Windows98. Also had to install a CD burner for them so they could backup their files. Whew! By the time it was all put back together, including all e-mail messages and addresses, it was 2:30 AM. I dragged myself upstairs to the guest apartment and hit the sack.

I was up at 7:30 to head to the hangar with Mike so I could fly back to Shell. I was willing to take the bus, but he said he'd fly me, as he knew I needed to get back to Shell soon. The reason? At 6 PM last night, while I was in Quito, the e-mail server locked up. No e-mail or internet access for the MAF families or clients in Shell. Yikes! The problems just keep on coming. So we were in Shell by 11 AM today, and I was able to get the server back online without any problems. Mike flew a flight into the jungle, and that really helped out the guys down here. And then at the end of the afternoon there was a sick child that needed a flight to Quito, and Mike was in the right place for that. So, travel wise, the plans worked out perfectly. I had allergies in Quito this morning, and still do. I 'm glad I didn't have to ride the bus with allergies.

Oh, the other thing that is broken. The Makuma server, which connects to the Shell server via HF radio, isn't functioning. I've been working with one of the missionaries in Makuma to change the times that the server connects to Shell. We've been communicating via e-mail on an alternate system. After all the necessary changes were made, now the server in Makuma won't connect at all to our server here! I'm still not sure how I'm going to take care of that problem. With only one pilot and plane flying, it won't be easy to get out there myself. And it seems we've run to the end of our rope with me giving the instructions by e-mail. Maybe then can send the server to me on the next flight? We'll see

A few more poeple have trickled in this afternoon needing help with computers. I've taken care of some, and others need to wait until tomorrow. I'm a bit gun shy right now, and when people walk towards me I wonder if I should go hide before they tell me they have a problem with their computer!

What an AWFUL morning!

What an AWFUL morning! We were told on Friday the power would be out from 0800 to 1300 today. No big deal, we'll just crank up the generator. But after it was up and running I was having problems with UPSs on the computers, and then find out the line output is varying quite a bit, going as high as 121 volts. Then, John tells me he's going to shut down generator 'cause it's running low on fuel. So I shut down my two servers. But when he tried so start it up, it won't turn over, and the battery is too low. She he heads across the street to start up the big diesel generator on the MAF base. OK, powers back on. Meanwhile I'm trying to get a couple 'new' drives into Tomas's computer, as his went belly up last week. After fighting for over an hour, I finally get two drives in there and get them formatted. Now I discover that my http://www.thehoffmanfamily.com/ e-mail server won't boot. There is some sort of hardware problem going on with the memory of the mother board! So now I've got to get that figured out. And to top it off, I was hoping to get on the plane to Quito this afternoon. Oh, and they're stuck in Ambato because of the weather. Hopefully it will clear and they'll make it down, but I'm not holding my breath. It's been cloudy and raining since about 9 AM. So, it seems it can't get much worse! Just gotta' keep my chin up and trust that the Lord knows what's best.

Well, we're almost a

Well, we're almost a week into this new year and here I am again. Guess that's a long enough break from this.

What a huge rainstorm last night! And a lightning strike that sounded like it was in our back yard. Fortunately I had all the electrical things unplugged, which always makes me feel better when I see those flashes outside. I just hope I don't anything fried when I get over to the hangar this morning.

By the way, New Year's Eve was fun. We walked up through town with a couple other MAF families, and took a look at the old man displays. Then at midnight people were burning their old men effigys in bonfires. After that we came home and lit off about fifteen big bottle rockets. Can you believe we even got carried away and shot the last few through the tops of the trees in the 'jungle' behind out house. Couldn't do that in California! Here it's too wet to start a fire if you want to.

It looks like I may head up to Quito this morning by MAF plane. There's a bit of work for me to do in the office there, plus I need to help one of the MAF families up there with their computer. It crashed over the weekend, and although they've got the OS up and running again, they can't connect to MAF headquarters in Redlands with their e-mail client. The MAF families get their mail from the MAF server in Redlands, since they have reliable ISP access there in Quito.

Down here in Shell I've been trying to get a new e-mail server ready. But I'm running into hardware problems, and I can't get Red Hat 7.3 or 8.0 to load on the machine. I can get Windows 98 and Red Hat 7.1 on the machine with no problems. Not sure what the problem is, but it's driving me nuts. I'm also working on doing some testing for the IT guys in Redlands on a simple install for a server that they can manage remotely. Not that we need that here, but I can help them out with some of the testing.