MT Blog, Sat. Mar. 28, 2009
James here, reporting on the events of today's Mindtriggerz session. With the first day of Fayette County Public Schools Spring Break came a record-breaking day for numbers. More on that soon.
The morning started out with Jerome and I heading over to the lab and setting up. Andy let us in and we found him in there, front door open. Setup took most of the hour, and Becky arrived at probably a quarter till ten, quickly getting down to work disinfecting the keyboards and mice.
Literally, at the crack of ten- maybe even a couple minutes before, people started showing up. I retreated into the backroom to work on some stuff while Jerome and Joyce started to teach. Around eleven thirty, things started getting pretty hectic. Jerome headed out to drop off the first of the two computers while Joyce taught and I made sure the computers didn't completely fry. After Jerome's first run, things got even more hectic. The lab was truly at maximum load- imagine nine computers and put two people at each of them, and you had what it looked like for a while. For some reason several computers starting acting. It seemed that the more people there were in the room- not even how many people were using them, but just the volume of people has some kind of weird effect on the systems. Especially our KY Trade computer. Tux kept acting up. Maybe because the kids weren't typing fast enough :)
A little before one, it got drastically silent as everybody disappeared. Joyce and I sat in the lab, her playing the Car game and me watching, until Jerome got back. At that point, we shut down all except our Ghetto-tastic sector and started packing things away. An emergency came in and Jerome had to go fix a computer out at one of the houses. When he got back, having heroically solved the situation, we packed away the final set of computers, broke the rest of the way down and bugged out.
All in all, it was a highly productive day at the Cardinal Valley Lab, one that will go down in the projects books as a record day, with how many people we had there- first, second, third timers, plus two more computers going out.
Hopefully, we will have good luck and continue our highly productive weeks.
As usual, we'll be back next week, same time, same place, at the lab, doing business as always.
Peace.
<3
-James
Showing posts with label Cardinal Valley Park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cardinal Valley Park. Show all posts
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Failed monitors and latent power surges
As always, we were particularly glad to have Chris join us this Saturday. Sporting a new car and excellent school grades he helped James create our newest Mindtriggerz Instructional Video that can be viewed here:
After their adventures in film production, Chris and James proceeded to repair two additional computers - replacing non-working components and passing the machines off for Jesse's dad to load Ubuntu and the educational software suites.
While Jerome delivered two more computers to recipient families, it was discovered that the monitor I worked so hard to polish up (see our last post for sordid details!) decided it didn't like being clean and performed an epic fail just for its new family. We played a quick switch-up and are happy to report that Danisse now has a completely operable Mindtriggerz computer! (Later we learned there exists a bent pin that James is certain he can repair with a pair of pliers and some brute force)
Meanwhile at the Cardinal Valley Park Training Lab, the incredibly lovely and perfect Sarah showed up on break for the weekend from Ball State to help instruct kids and families. She was joined by the precocious and multi-talented April as well as our infamous hippie chic Joyce who all took a breather from computers to play some basketball with several of the children. Sarah's dad even stopped in for a bit and I think she may have let him play "Tux Type."
We'll be sending the Mindtriggerz Project information to a wider span these next few weeks releasing it to the Kindergarten students at Cardinal Valley Elementary. The aim is to place these 40 plus computers before the first of May so that ALL of us can resume work at the Dunbar Memorial Garden for the Spring and Summer.
Til next time, as James would say: "peace."
<3
After their adventures in film production, Chris and James proceeded to repair two additional computers - replacing non-working components and passing the machines off for Jesse's dad to load Ubuntu and the educational software suites.
While Jerome delivered two more computers to recipient families, it was discovered that the monitor I worked so hard to polish up (see our last post for sordid details!) decided it didn't like being clean and performed an epic fail just for its new family. We played a quick switch-up and are happy to report that Danisse now has a completely operable Mindtriggerz computer! (Later we learned there exists a bent pin that James is certain he can repair with a pair of pliers and some brute force)
Meanwhile at the Cardinal Valley Park Training Lab, the incredibly lovely and perfect Sarah showed up on break for the weekend from Ball State to help instruct kids and families. She was joined by the precocious and multi-talented April as well as our infamous hippie chic Joyce who all took a breather from computers to play some basketball with several of the children. Sarah's dad even stopped in for a bit and I think she may have let him play "Tux Type."
We'll be sending the Mindtriggerz Project information to a wider span these next few weeks releasing it to the Kindergarten students at Cardinal Valley Elementary. The aim is to place these 40 plus computers before the first of May so that ALL of us can resume work at the Dunbar Memorial Garden for the Spring and Summer.
Til next time, as James would say: "peace."
<3
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