"You didn't finish BEDA! You were so closed but then you FAILED!"
"You haven't posted anything in three weeks!!"
Yes, it's true, BEDA kicked my bed towards the end of the month. I had a big trip to go on, and blogging got pushed right to the back burner. I went to Tijuana the last week of April, and the first week of May. So, to finish up BEDAITMOM (Blog Every Day April In The Month Of May), I'm just going to give one big wrap up of our time in Tijuana and the following days/week.
So on Sunday, Kevin and I loaded (and I mean loaded) up a mission van, and headed out for Tijuana. A little back story, FFHM owns/runs a college dorm-type house, called the TJ House. It's not necessarily a dorm, but a place for kids to stay in TJ while going to college at the nearby universities. Kids who grow up at the mission here are given the chance to go to college tuition free, as long as they stay at the TJ House. Staying at the TJ House is also free. Right now, I believe there are something like 13 kids there, and 13 college-age kids need computers to do their homework. So that's where we came in.
We loaded our van with anything and everything we could think of...coming back to Vicente Guerrero to get a piece of hardware was not an option. Even if we didn't need it, we brought it. And yes, we came back with a lot of it, but it was still nice to have with us cause a lot of it did come in handy. We took monitors, computers, loads of RAM, a million old hard drives, optical drives, cables up the yin yang, and other miscellaneous items for building a server and re-building computers.
We got there late Sunday night after making a stop in Ensenada for a lunch. We listened to Jim Gaffigan and Brian Regan all the way up, and I'm surprised I didn't get in an accident from laughing so hard. Geniuses I tell you, geniuses!
Monday morning...our alarm did not go off, and we woke up at 1pm. Great way to start off a work week. Also, great way to show the TJ House parents that we're serious about our job and getting their computers done. We got up and ate, set up a new internet router so we cold have the Internet in our room so as to build the computers faster. My job was to build 6 computers from the ground up.
First, we gathered all the computers that still worked and would continue to work for years (hopefully), set them up in our room, and took them apart. I checked their specs - RAM, processor, hard drive, optical drives, and network cards - and replaced anything that needed changed, mainly just RAM and hard drives. Hardware-speaking, it was simple, just putting it all in, that's the easy part. It's getting to software to run with the operating system that is the real trick. It gets really difficult
when you're running 5 or 6 year old computers, where almost every part in them was originally in another machine. It's like dumpster-diving gone geeky. Anywhoozle, so the three largest time-stealers were:
1) Windows Update. All the computers were running XP, and when you're installing a 7 year old operating system as new, there are like million updates. Or, more like between 40 and 45, depending on the system. It was usually a mid-300 MB download process for most of the computers, and when you've got 5 computers running that on an already slow connection...that takes FOREVER! It did give us a little break, having to wait for that. Got to know the kids there, played some basketball, and of course, soccer as well.
Actually, the first night, three of the kids asked me if I wanted to go play soccer at the college with them. I was in immediately. We ended up not being able to play cause the field was already taken by other teams, but it was a blast to watch. And walking around Tijuana was just beautiful - at least that part of Tijuana. Great area of town.
And, continuing on...
2) The second time-consumer was getting all the drivers for the all the different hardware types we were running in each machine. Each little thing needs its own driver to talk to the operating system with, and starting from a fresh copy of XP, we had a lot of drivers to get. Thankfully, Kevin uses this wonderful site called DriverAgent (I don't mean to plug it...but it seriously is a life saver every day down here. It scans your computer via the browser, and in a matter of just a few seconds, tells you all the drivers you're missing, and gives you the file to update them. Amazing stuff.) So, that too had a long download time, and then installing the drivers and making sure they worked correctly. That site saved our lives.
And 3) User variations. There are 18 people living in that house: 2 house parents, their two kids (amazing boys), the cook (even more amazing! She whipped us up an entire plateful of the best quesadillas ever on her way out the door), and then the 13 kids. 18 people. 18 accounts. 18 passwords. On 6 separate computers. And then, inside EACH of the 18 user on EACH of the 6 computers, we had to connect them to 3 network drives, 3 network printers, get both Firefox and IE8 up and running, all the Office programs, 3 different messengers, and loads of other little things. And even all that doesn't include the 12 programs that we install right after the updates. Order of install: Operating system, Windows updates, DriverAgent, list of programs for ALL users (Firefox, VNC, Nero, DaemonTools, WinRAR, VLC, you name it), then all the users are created, next their passwords, THEN all the individual user configurations like printers and drives and stuff. The real reason for this is because of a little program we use: DeepFreeze. DeepFreeze is well...mostly self-explanatory. We build the system from the ground up, set all the users and their programs just how they need (or just how we want, depending on who it is haha), essentially get the computer to the point where there is nothing else to do. No pop ups when you open a program, when you log on, and no Windows notifications, just a simple, perfect computer. Then, we freeze it. After it's frozen, nothing can be changed. When the computer shuts down, it deletes any changes made during use. It shuts down after half an hour of inactivity. Reboots fresh as new every time. That way, no viruses, no spyware, no goofy hackers messing with the system, it's just clean, clean, clean. All the registry files created during use, I don't know, anything you do almost always creates random files here and there, log files, that kind of thing. It just gets rid of all that and keeps the system how it should be. The reason we had to get it all right the first time is because once you freeze them, it's not fun a fun process having to unfreeze them to change little things.
Now, you may be wondering, what's the point of having a computer if it's just going to delete everything you do when you sign off??? That's a valid question. I have a valid answer, in the form of...network drives. One of those time-hogging tasks was connecting each user to their own specific network drives. A network drive exists on a server, hosting the network and acts as the portal for the Internet that each computer runs. When you do something, find something, create something, and want to save it, you save it to the network drive on the server, that way when the computer restarts, it wipes the cache, you get on the next time and your file is waiting for you on the server. It's that simple. So now, any one of the 18 kids there can use any of the 6 different computers, cause they're all identical and any file of theirs that they want, they can get by grabbing it off the server. It doesn't matter if someone is using a computer you used last time to do homework, cause you can get on the one next to them and have the same access to the same files. Kevin worked wonders with that.
Now, you may be asking, well, what the heck, where did that fancy server come from??? That is all thanks to Kevin. The mastermind. He started building a brand new server from the scratch on Monday...then Wednesday discovered he did something wrong and had to start all over again. By the next Tuesday night, he had the server up and running, coded it from nothing to awesomeness. And not just the server for the internet, he also had all the 18 separate network drives, an Internet log-in service for each user, and a timed-use program for the Internet. I didn't understand the half of it, but I do know it was incredible. The guy blows my mind. Servers are not things you build on your lunch break. No, no, you take a lunch break from building a server. In fact, you take many. And if you work with us, you take many, many, many, food breaks. We like food a lot. And working within inches of the pantry was not a particularly grand idea, but telling us to eat whatever was also not well-thought out. I'm sure they're wondering what happened to the three boxes of doughnuts Sean brought down.
So.................yeah. Wow. That was a ton of tech talk. And to finish off the tech talk, in a nice nerdy fashion, we worked nights, rather than days. Got up late, stayed up late, to the likes of 5am, 6am. And all was still, not a sound in the house...not even a mouse...besides the jaws of and Kevin and Tobin....
Also made great friends with a lot of the kids at the TJ House, love em all. Israel is one of the sons of the house parents, and he's seriously like the cutest little boy you'll ever see. I have a picture of him below. I think he's like 11 or 12 or something. But seriously, just listening to him talk makes me want to hug him forever. Cutest voice, totally soccer baller (I predict pro by 19, or less), and yeah, just is hilarious. All you have to do is stare at him for a few seconds, and he'll give you a big smile. I do that to other kids, and their parents want me removed.
The day after we got there was that fateful day where that wretched "swine flu" went public. I feel terrible just acknowledging it, saying it's name. Anyone who's anyone knows it never existed. Mexico's entire economy was sent to the ground because of this "swine flu" thing, even though I have yet to see it. The resorts of Mexico, you know, the big names, Cabo, Mazatlan, those people, had empty hotel after empty hotel after empty casino and so on. Thousands upon thousands of people out of jobs. All because somebody decided to put a fancy new name on some non-existent disease. Does anyone know the total number of deaths caused by "swine flu"? Anyone? I for sure don't, but I do know it was veeeeery few. Not to take away from the families of those people or anything, but the common cold kills more than 36,000 people a year...and we brush that aside, hence the name. Duh! But no, new name disease on the block, better freak out! The chances of even contracting swine flu by coming in contact with someone who already had it was something like less than 1in 10, AND after that, the odds that it would kill you were astronomical. It was crazy. All the while, Egypt proceeded to kill ALL 300,000 of it's pig poulation. yes, that was the correct number of 0s. 300,000. Can you imagine how much bacon we just lost??? That's despicable! Essentially, if you haven't gotten my point of how I feel about this, here it is, all summed up in one website:
www.DoIHaveSwineFlu.org
That's that. Anywho, where I was going with that was that Monday morning, the Mexican government (and by government, I mean president) canceled school all across the country. For something like a week and a half, two weeks. It was crazy. So, the kids at the TJ House were off school the entire time we were there. It was wonderful! But also not so much, because a lot of the kids went back home because they were off school. Thankfully, a small group stayed behind, remained at the TJ House for their time off, and we all had a blast. Couldn't have asked for a better group of kids to hang out with for a week.
Manuel is my basketball partner, I think he was 21 or something. We had a lot of long range competitions. He's got the strangest shooting technique, but hey, he made a lot of shots. Whatever works for him! He was really cool. He didn't know a spot of English, I was low on my Spanish, so we got along great.
Ezekiel, I didn't get to know too well. We went to church together on Sunday morning, sat down in front-ish. He was really cool. Spoke english pretty well, but he was quite funny.
Jorge is the resident geek/hacker...but hacker in the good way. There is one computer science major there in the bad-hacker category, but Jorge is not him. Jorge is this amazing 22 year old geek who hacks just for the fun of it. He'll get through Kevin's system and just look around and not do anything. The other hacker will get in the system and reset the router, provide wireless for the rest of the students, log messenger conversations, and change all sorts of stuff. But not Jorge. He would hang out with us while we worked and talk, trying to get any sort of info out of us so he could hack it when we left. Who knows if he's succeeded yet, but no worries, he won't do anything. Just a great guy. Loved him. And he spoke English fluently, so it was wonderful. Deborah, Jorge, and I are going to be buddy buddies this summer on college break.
And then there are Isabriana and Angelina, two of the older students. I didn't really get to know them that well, but we had some good laughs. That's the best part...just cause you can't communicate ALL that well, you can still laugh and have an amazing time. And we sure did. Walked to globos, got tacos (which I will never forgot, because ever since that day, they've made fun of me for one thing...pronouncing a Spanish word correctly! Why?? Why do I deserve that?? Come on!
And lastly, but not least, my CSI/basketball/Phineas&Ferb/Wendy Wu/whistling buddy, Anali. I got to know her the best because well, she had perfect English and likes to whistle. And if you don't know me, whistling is my second life...well, maybe third, after juggling. Anywho, yeah, we had some good whistling concerts going. Watched plenty of CSI and Phineas and Ferb, great shows. The latter, more so than the former. Gotta love the Disney kid's shows. Anywho, yeah, we're great friends now. She's great, has a good sense of English humor.
In other news, I had ordered a video camera a couple weeks ago and was waiting the arrival of it on the truck. the thing is, the truck drives from San Clemente, CA, to Tijuana every day. It brings down donations and mail and stuff, loads it in the truck at the TJ House, then every Friday, heads down to the orphanage. My camera was scheduled to come while we were up there, and I'm buddy buddy with Sean the Truck Driver, so he called me and told me he had my package at the warehouse in San Clemente, unpacked it, and stuck it in his back pack so it would go to me, and not be put on the truck headed for the mission. I did in fact get it, and it's wonderful. I'm just learning the art of video editing now. I've got a few different programs, still figuring out which one I like best, which one goes best with the camera, which resolution to film in, and which resolution to render and export the film in. It's a lot more work than I thought...goodness.
And, lastly for tonight, a story from my inbox. Thursday morning, I got this email from a Senior Print Project Manager for Honda Motorcycles...a wonderful guy named Steve. I had no clue who he was, I just knew he was well...important is what it seemed like. Lives in LA, and is a hardcore off-road dirt-biker. Probably other things too, but he sent me a link with some pics, looked like a total blast. Anywhoozle, he sent me a message saying that he read my blog (NO WAY?!?!?! People read my blog!!) and that he was looking for a local restaurant (and a very good one at that). He's a Christian, and just a really cool guy (as far as knowing people through 10 emails goes). Said we'd go get tacos when he was here, which is amazing, cause I DON'T HAVE ANYONE TO GO WITH!! Everyone left. I'm the only one under like 25 or something. I don't know. Speaking of everyone leaving, I just thought of another story.
Last night, Kevin, Heidi, and I went over to Andrea's and Ricardo's for a Settlers of Catan board game party...which ended up being a 5 hour game. We got back around midnight, and we parked the single's car where it always goes - as far away from my trailer as possible. So, naturally, to get to my trailer, I walk by a ton of trailers. I was in need of a fork to eat my Top Ramen with, so I thought of a great plan. My friend Kelcie just left a couple weeks ago, so as I walked by her trailer, I decided I would just jack on of her forks since she was gone now. I opened the door (not so quietly, especially for midnight) and walked in. Heidi started yelling at me, "Tobin, what are you doing!? Someone lives there!" I, in the know of course, politely tell her that it's empty, cause Kelcie left. And then Kevin joins Heidi...so I stop and walk out and they inform me that someone had just moved in that afternoon, someone named Candis. Oooooops. And, even better, I was on Gmail today, and this message from Kevin pops up: "...So, you really freaked out Candis last night."
Hahahaha...oh man, she is going to hate my guts for a long time. Someone barging in on her while she's sleeping at midnight. Heck, if someone did that to me I'd...wait...well, that can't happen, cause I have yet to be asleep before midnight. BUT! This morning, Fernando and the House 6 parents' kid randomly came up in the computer room and woke me up at 11:30. On a Saturday. Really??? Uuuuuugh. So I mumbled and grumbled at them and pretended I was sleeping still until they left. They asked me about my computer sitting below me, about my shoes, clearly confused about how I was feeling about talking at this moment.
And, well, I think that is just about it for now. I'm still working on the whole video side of things. I've got footage - some good, some not - it's just the editing is quite the process. No promises of when, but I'm still working on it. Any recommendations for anything? Want to see anything about life here at the mission? Tacos? Church? Sala? Meals? My house? Garbage run? I don't know, any suggestions? Now's the time!
Speaking of time, it's time for bed.
Goodnight to all, and to all a buenas noches (doesn't quite have the same ring to it).
My cute little buddy, Israel.
No explanation needed. Oh, the wonders Digg discovers.
