Computer Crisis

We had a computer crisis this morning here in San Pedro Sula with Gary's laptop which runs Windows 2000. He had made good progress on his project and wanted to start testing it, but needed to have his computer and the computer (Windows XP) of the person filling in the db to talk to each other over the network.

Once you start fiddling with network settings it is fairly easy to understand why you can earn a degree in computer networking. We could see her computer on the network, but couldn't read it even after we set up sharing properly and diddling with various settings.

So next we decided to put Gary's computer into the same workgroup as her computer. But when we actually did this, we got a funny little message saying something like "you are now leaving the Dallas network. Please talk to your administrator." Then it said you needed to reboot, so we did. But then, the disaster struck--Gary could no longer log into his own computer. It just refused all our favorite passwords.

Fortunately, Andrew's cell phone dials America just as easily as anywhere else, so I called the Center computer helpdesk (after first getting the swimming pool answering machine). Fortunately, we were able to convince the guy there that we needed the administrator password or we were going to be toast.

Shortly thereafter Gary did get logged in, and, lo and behold, was able to read the folder on the other computer. That made him happy and now he's making good progress on this project.

The End.

How Do You Eat a Bag of Water?

You bite it.

Preparations--Almost Panic

I Love Honduras !

Well, it is only 30 minutes past midnight, and we are packed and ready to go. I have a note to remind myself to pack a frozen loaf of zucchini bread. You know Andrew and Laura want that! Also some cookies Rachel made for them.

Today went quite smoothly, at least for me. I wrapped up some stuff at work, took the girls shopping, made dinner for a last minute guest, and packed.

Gary had a few moments when ten people wanted his time all at once, so it was a bit more stressful for him. But generally speaking, he doesn't get flustered, which is nice.

If you think to pray for us, pray also for Rachel and Doro, repainting her apartment without my supervision. Let's hope they don't spill a bucket of white paint on the brown carpet, or any other disasters like that.

I hope to have some internet access in San Pedro Sula and be able to post once or twice from there.

Preparations -- Leisurely

We leave for Honduras very early Tuesday morning (Thanks, Michael, for your willingness to takes us so early). We are starting to get ready, but on a leisurely pace. Tomorrow will be the day for panic preparations. So far we have:

• Put address/phone/email labels on the insides of the suitcases.
• Packed two old hardside suitcases with children's books, for transshipment to Ethiopia when Andrew goes again (very heavy!).
• Prepared a first draft of a "Things to do/People to call" list for Rachel and Doro.
• Printed out a hardcopy list of my email addresses and snail mail addresses.
• Reinstalled the OS on Gary's aging laptop (well, we didn't do this ourselves, we took it to the computer help desk).
• Installed a bunch of software on said laptop: Office, Skype, Firefox, XML Spy, Lotus Notes, AIM, some security software, etc
  
• Collected a bunch of stuff to take to Andrew and Laura: sun screen, CDs, picture hangers.
• Bought a book about Central American birds.
• Read a little about the Mayan ruins at Copan.
• Read the World Factbook page about Honduras.
• Oh, and I can't forget to mention that Gary has gotten a good start on creating the Access database. Lucky for him, one of our office coworkers actually know how to program in Access, so he has been helping Gary quite a bit.
  

As for Rachel, she's baking some cookies to send to her brothers and Laura. If we don't eat them all first.