Relief-Work

The last few days have been the kind of frustrating IT days you can have anywhere. It’s just that here I’m sleeping in a classroom, showering in a portable shower unit, and eating wilderness fireman food in between the continual IT hassles. As has been observed countless times through history, this job would be OK if it weren’t for the customers. They have this expectation that things will work, and when they don’t they come find us and ask us to stop everything and fix our network. Of course, usually we have already noticed that things are broken, and have already stopped everything to work on the broken stuff instead of the new projects we were hoping to get done. ...

First, be sure to read the Radio Response website. I am the primary author there, so reading that is as good as reading this. Except there I have to be a bit more professional and circumspect. A few days ago I moved to Bay St. Louis. The work was really heating up down here for IT generalists (as they charitably call people who aren’t allowed on towers…). The cynic would also point out that once the Bay St. Louis team’s lodgings were upgraded to include air conditioning I consented to go to Bay St. Louis. ...

Super-fast update, since I am in the middle of stuff here, but also realized I haven’t written in a while. I have visited Bay St. Louis. The destruction there is incredible. I have not seen the water front, just the wind and flood damage several hundred yards inland. Our team is kicking butt here, but it just takes so much longer to get things done than you can possibly imagine. It’s frustrating, but we won’t give up. It’s no one’s fault. We are now tied into the systems here so that we are no longer being actively prevented from working by the authorities. Now it’s simply a complex situation, and you have to work around problems one at a time. ...

Yesterday, I worked my first full day. So I’ve been at work 1.5 days. In that time, two new people have come in. I made a minimal system to get people up and running, and tried it out on the next two after me. I suspect that as I start working in the field it wil fall by the wayside, but at lesat two people know what new people should get told. ...

My first day was half a day because I got here and got put to work after noon. I spent the first while getting the lay of the land, the people, etc. The Bay St. Louis team was getting loaded up to head south, so there was some work to do there. Once they left it calmed down quite a bit. I identified two needs and a guy named Alecs and I self-organized into a little team to chip away at them. We need a single public website, and also a single internal place for a couple web apps people have thrown together with Ruby on Rails. We could also use a better “new volunteer arrives and gets to work” process. So those are the things I am working on. ...

I arrived in Ponchatoula a little while ago. I can tell I am going to like working with these guys. The trick now is to find a job and start doing it. I think perhaps I will start the same way I did in Guatemala, by drawing a network diagram of the staging area here so that I know how things work (and so that the next guy knows too). ...

I dropped in on Cliff McCarthy in Dallas for the night. Cliff and I enjoyed dinner and chatting, then a big shopping trip at Walmart. Came in way under budget on food and water, so either I am going to starve, or I was being pessimistic when I budgeted. Cliff reminded me that not only is everything bigger in Texas, but everything is cheaper too. Which might explain why every one in Texas is bigger too! ...

I am in Flagstaff right now. I will have dinner here, then hit the road to get another hour of progress eastward then bed down for the night. I will hit the road again at dawn. Random data from the road: gas in Bakersfield was 3.35. The higest I saw was 3.65, on the border with CA and AZ. On the AZ side of the border the gas was $2.99. It is inconceiveable to me that within 10 miles the price changed by 66 cents! ...

Leaving Redwood City about 7:15 am. Next stop, Albuquerque.

I’ve gotten in touch with some great guys who are installing WiFi in shelters in Louisiana, and have decided to make a trip out there in my car to work with them. Being outside the Palo Alto area will likely disrupt my attempts to get placed with Red Cross, so I plan to drop by the Red Cross office today and have them stop my application from going onwards. When I check in to the farm where I will be staying in LA, I will also check in with the Red Cross there and let them know that if/when it makes sense for me to transition from tech work to shelter work, I’m ready to do so. ...