Wow! What a week it's been. Let me tell you a little about it:
Last Monday morning we had a power failure. Now, normally that's no big deal. In fact, we have a lot of power failures around here. Sometimes they only last 20 or 30 minutes and sometimes they last for hours and hours. Last Monday's was one of the shorter ones, only about 20 or 30 minutes. The power came back on and all was well. At least I thought it was.
After power is restored, we normally have to reboot the computer server in order to get people back online. Well, it had been more than a few hours since the power was back, but I noticed that we still didn't have internet. I figured that people in the school office had been too busy dealing with school registration to reboot the server. So, I went over to take care of it.
I rebooted the server and waited until everything should have come back up. No dice. Then I went into our wiring closet and rebooted the firewall computer in case that was the culprit. Still no dice. Reboot the server again. Nope. Nada. OK, occasionally when the power comes back, things don't reset at the cable company and I was willing to believe that maybe that's what we were dealing with. I just decided to call it a night and look at things the next morning.
Tuesday morning, things were no better. Still no internet and still no server access. No server access means that people can't access vital documents. That's definitely not a good thing during registration time.
I attached a monitor to the server and logged what was happening. Darn! We're stuck in a boot loop. I wrote down the details so that I could relay them to Greg in the States and we could figure out what was happening. Then, I tried attaching my laptop directly to the cable modem to see if the internet was back up and running. Not yet. OK, so that leaves us with a broken server and a broken internet
Greg and I spent some time talking about the server, discussing plans to retrieve data and then reconfigured the firewall so that it would hand out IP addresses once the cable company had the internet back up. By now it was around 9:30pm.
Leaving the school, I was walking at a quick pace along the dark walkway in front of some of our classes. All of a sudden *W*H*A*M*!!! It was no longer dark. In fact, it was quite bright and I could see lots and lots of stars ~~ and I didn't even need to look into the night sky. I had kicked a large brick that is used to prop up some wire cubbies where our young kids put their lunches and sweaters. Ouch! And, I mean OUCH!!! Within three more steps, I knew that I had broken my toe. It was an all too familiar sensation.
By the time I reached Sandi's front door, I just stood in the doorway. She saw the look on my face and asked, "What's the matter?" I told her I had just broken a toe. I made it over to a chair and tried to catch my breath. Then, I asked Sandi for some ibuprofen right away. I needed to try to get some pain and swelling relief right away.
But I still had work to do. After a few minutes, we called the cable company and Brenda explained what was and wasn't happening with our internet. Finally, Brenda handed me the phone so that I could explain more to the customer service guy. My first words to him were that I didn't speak Spanish very well and would he please speak slowly. Well, you can imagine my surprise when, in wonderful English, he asked me, "Are you the computer technician who has already looked at the system?" When I answered, "Yes, I am" in English, Sandi immediately turned toward the phone, a bit surprised.
I had a great experience with customer service from the cable company. I mean, really great!! And I kept encouraging the guy to continue using his English. We left things that a technician would be dispatched the next morning to come out and check our modem and connections upstream.
After hobbling home with Sandi and Brenda's help, I buddy-taped my broken pinky toe to the next one. Yes, I'm fairly practiced in the art of buddy taping toes. I've broken various toes more times than I can remember. 5? 6? 114? I even took a Darvocet N-100 hoping that it would help me sleep through the night. Not even close. Ugh!
So, early Wednesday morning I was up and over at the bodega looking for a baston (cane) with Antonio's help. We found one fairly quickly and then I just waited for Trify and Erica to arrive. We were heading to Tegucigalpa to pick up school books and other assorted things. I also added some computer parts to the shopping list and hoped we'd be able to find what I needed.
Miraculously, we got everything we needed and even had lunch before heading back to Comayagua in time for me to teach my afternoon English class. We pulled in at about 3:40pm and a few people asked if we were going to cancel class. I told them "Of course not. Class starts at 4:00 and I have 20 minutes to get my things and come back." I think they were a bit surprised by that, especially since I was dealing with the broken toe, as well.
So there you have it: broken server, broken internet, broken toe. Although the server is still down, I've been able to retrieve data and put it on the local machines of each person who needs it. The internet is back up and running. Although it will be a 6-8 week process, my toe is healing and I'm no longer using the cane.
As you can see, there's never a dull moment when you're a missionary...
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