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First Operational Day

We got up just before 7 AM, so that meant I slept less than three hours. We had our first clients today. Not many, but I think the number of people using the system will slowly increase as people find out about the service and where we are. We had to spend some time configuring the network, and of course that didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. I ran three more network cables, so now we have locations for nine computers or IP phones to be plugged in. The wireless hot spot isn't working the way it should--keeps stopping and then we need to reset it. We should be able to replace that unit with a much better system at the end of this week. I'm waiting for more of the system to arrive here on Thursday.

We signed up seven users, half of them the Swedes, Belgians, and French here in camp. We had a visit from the head of OCHA (United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), and he was happy to see we were up and running. This afternoon and evening I worked on the UPS battery inverter with Elias. Near midnight we had it wired correctly, and it tested out OK. When we went to plug in again, and start using it, we blew a fuse on the camp generator. At that point the camp was pitch black, and we were done for the night. That's not bad, as it was 1:30 AM and I needed to go to bed anyway. We recieved a cell phone text message from the US, and both the MAF office and the internet service provider were wondering why we were off-line. Not much we could do but to wait 'til morning and tell them when we had power again.