Starting Work
We went and visited both Strathmore University and Alliance Highschool today. Strathmore was holding some sort of function, so we weren't able to meet any of the faculty. The facilities looked good and they had a decent internet connection. Plus, their IT staff said that we'd be able to hook up our own laptops to their network, making our job much easier.
Alliance is another story. They have about 30 computers in one lab, but only about half will boot up. Every computer we looked at had driver problems, was infected with viruses, or was riddled with spyware. I have no clue how these machines have spyware on them without being connected to the net.
Zahir and I worked on getting Java and our course material installed on them. The majority have USB ports, so we were using a USB drive toc opy file over. There are several with neither USB ports nor CD drives. None of our laptops has a disk drive, either. We ended up using one of their machines as an intermediary. Unfortunately, our version of the JDK wouldn't install on the only machine we were able to copy it over on.
We're going to go to an internet cafe tomorrow to download different JDK versions, anti-spyware software, USB drivers, and windows bootdisks. Then we're going to try to salvage as many Alliance machines as we can and try to get Java working as many as we can for next week. We shipped five Linux boxes out before we left, but they may not arrive any time soon. We've also got a couple laptops that students can use in the meantime. Alliance is also moving several machines over from another lab, but we don't know the state they're in. We have 45 students and no working machines, so have our work cut out for us before class starts on Tuesday.
Alliance is also a ways outside of the city and we ended up waiting for a cab for a while. Tomorrow we're probably going to try catching amatatu, which is basiscally a private mini-van that runs along set routes. They cost about a tenth of a cab. I'm also going to try to get my cell phone unlocked so that I can use SIM cards for different cellular networks.
Alliance is another story. They have about 30 computers in one lab, but only about half will boot up. Every computer we looked at had driver problems, was infected with viruses, or was riddled with spyware. I have no clue how these machines have spyware on them without being connected to the net.
Zahir and I worked on getting Java and our course material installed on them. The majority have USB ports, so we were using a USB drive toc opy file over. There are several with neither USB ports nor CD drives. None of our laptops has a disk drive, either. We ended up using one of their machines as an intermediary. Unfortunately, our version of the JDK wouldn't install on the only machine we were able to copy it over on.
We're going to go to an internet cafe tomorrow to download different JDK versions, anti-spyware software, USB drivers, and windows bootdisks. Then we're going to try to salvage as many Alliance machines as we can and try to get Java working as many as we can for next week. We shipped five Linux boxes out before we left, but they may not arrive any time soon. We've also got a couple laptops that students can use in the meantime. Alliance is also moving several machines over from another lab, but we don't know the state they're in. We have 45 students and no working machines, so have our work cut out for us before class starts on Tuesday.
Alliance is also a ways outside of the city and we ended up waiting for a cab for a while. Tomorrow we're probably going to try catching amatatu, which is basiscally a private mini-van that runs along set routes. They cost about a tenth of a cab. I'm also going to try to get my cell phone unlocked so that I can use SIM cards for different cellular networks.
posted by Steve Weis at 4:51 PM
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