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Thursday in Shell

It's the middle of the morning, and I feel like I really haven't done that much today. My day yesterday didn't come together until the end of the afternoon, so there is still hope.

Yesterday I came in and turned on some computers I had turned off on Tuesday evening. This seems to be the season for lightning storms, and we had a big on Tuesday about 7 PM. I ran over from the house and turned off all the servers, unplugged phone lines, and the HF antenna. Wednesday morning when I came in, my test server wouldn't start. Bruce and I spent some time looking at it, and after about an hour, came to the conclusion that the power supply was bad. Not sure how that happened, whether it was related to the storm, or just the fact that it was a year-old-made-in-China power supply. At any rate, later in the afternoon I decided that instead of trying to order one from Quito, I'd see what I could find in Puyo. I've never been to Puyo to purchase computer components before, but I know several people in Shell who have. I didn't have anything to lose, so gave it a try. Sure enough, they had the power supply I needed. It wasn't a very big place, but I saw one or two other items I might buy from them in the future. In fact, I may head down there today to buy some USB/PS2 riser cards for three of my computers. They are older cases, and without these cards, I can only use serial mice. I'm looking forward to being able to use USB optical mice on all our computers in the hangar. By 5 PM, I had the new power supply installed and the PC was up and running again.

Yesterday I was also able to get the Makuma server to work--but this time in Shell. By 5 PM I had the Codan radio, modem, and power supply from Makuma, as well as the server. Things were still not working properly, so it seemed best to me get everything back here to Shell so we could check it all. The only thing we wouldn't be able to check from here is the antenna, but we could send a tester out. When I test the server here, it connects to our Shell server via a modem, with a special cable between the two modems. That cable represents the radios at either end fo the connection, and allows the to modems to transfer data. When I set the server up that way, mail transferred, so I immediately suspected the radio or antenna. This morning Bruce confirmed that the sensitivity on the radion was off. Way off. So we'll be sending in a spare radio. The first flight of the day left, and with it the server. They only had room for 40 pounds, and the server weighs 20. The radio unit weighs 39 pounds, and I hope to get that on a second flight today. Whew! I'm starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel!

The plane that left with the server also had on board Lois Holmes, who uses the HF radion system there in Makuma. She's really going to be happy to have e-mail again. She has a son-in-law who is over in the middle east, and now that we are at war, she really wants to be able to stay in touch.

In addition, Dan and Brian are headed out to Cumay to pick up HC-BXB which has been stuck out there since last Friday after a prop strike while taxiing. Brian is a second year student from Moody's aviation program, and his training to be a mechanic. He's taking some time off from school, and working for us here in Shell for three months. They had to put a replacement prop in the plane, and since it doesn't really fit, they took off one of the back doors and let part of the prop stick out. Then they took off. And promptly landed again--they had forgotten the keys to the plane they were to bring back! Good thing they remembered so soon!