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What's Happening?

I feel like I've lost motivation to post here. It's fun to let you know what is going on when interesting things are happening. But that doesn't seem to be the case lately. Nevertheless, life goes on. Monday I drove up to Quito with Chad and Curtis. They were going up for appointments with the DAC. Curtis had several tests to take on Monday, Tuesday, and this morning. Chad also had a couple tests to take, and a check-ride. Chad is working getting his permanent license. He was on furlough when the other guys finally got their licenses all worked out, so now it's his turn to jump through the hoops. In addition, he has some extra tests because he needs to get his instructor pilot license and his instrument instructor pilot license. I was up there to work on the LAN and some of the computers at the Avant dorm, where four of the MAF kids live while they attend the Alliance Academy. They had several problems that needed my attention. Fortunately I was able to figure out all of them. I headed back to Shell on the bus at 8 AM Tuesday morning, in time to work a few hours in the afternoon.

Today was a fun day, as I worked on a variety of things. I finished installed OS X on a Macintosh G4 for Dawn. Tonight I grabbed the last update for that, a 100MB file. She'll be very happy with the improvement, as she was using OS 8 prior to this. It's hard to find a web browser for OS 8 that works well with the web sites of today. Speaking of old stuff, I also configured an old PCMCIA modem card for Patricio. It's a 14.4 K modem card, but I could only get it to connect at 2400 bps!! Fortunately he doesn't get all that much mail, so I think he'll be OK. I also put a limit on his account, so he won't be able to receive messages greater than 100K. That way he'll survive when his friends send him large Powerpoint forwards. They are fond of that sort of thing around here. I also helped Oscar update his subscription of Norton Antivirus. I paid for that on-line with my credit card, since he doesn't have one. But, we were't able to finish the subscription renewal for reasons I couldn't figure out. I'm waiting to finish working with tech support on that one tomorrow.

Finally, I worked with Reinaldo on a Powerpoint presentation. He had come in with his laptop, wanting some help with a message that kept popping up. Reinaldo is from Colombia, and is a missionary to the Woarani indians. He was given a nice laptop last year, but the OS is in English, so he sometimes needs help figuring things out. Once we took care of that message, he showed my the Powerpoint slides, and asked about adding a sound track to that. After I told him I could do that, he brought me the CD, and I went to work. In the end he had five CDs, each with the Powerpoint file and the soundtrack, so they can easily be played in any computer. He'll be sending them to the US to a supporter and several other churches. He showed me one more project he's working on, and now I'm helping him with that too.

I guess that about covers it for today. Thanks for being interested in the work that goes on down here. Oh, I should mention that Bruce and Dale went out to work on the south repeater today. They are fighting an on-going problem with the equipment, one which I won't try to explain. Suffice it to say, it's a pain to have to hike four hours up a jungle mountain and a couple hours down each time this problem happens. I heard from Steve that when they arrived at Visui, the airstrip used for that hike, there was a large trench going across the runway! That meant they had to land at Makuma and start the hike from there, adding several more hours to the hike up to the repeater. My guess is that they didn't get home tonight, although at 6 PM we still had a plane out flying. If they made it down the mountain, it was probably as far as Makuma, where there is almost always a hot shower, a hot meal, and a soft bed waiting for pilots or hiking MAF guys who happen to be stuck out there for the night. I'll let you know more on Thursday.

One final thing--today is Taylor's tenth birthday. We're having his party on Friday night.