And Then There Was Silence/Darkness

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

Box 'o RAM

Sparse crew today at Mindtriggerz the Liverpool lab edition - it was a blustery, cold day and we don't blame anyone for not "getting out" in it. James helped Jesse's dad set up at the Valley Park training center and before the clock struck 10:00am a young man was there with his granddad for his second day of instruction! Four families came a few steps closer to getting their own Mindtriggerz computers and we are ever-grateful that Mrs. Weck sent Mr. Weck to "go help Jerome" today. When I stopped in to help break-down this afternoon there was our wonderful "Papa Weck" assisting a mom and daughter with the Pac-Man like spelling software.

But I am getting ahead of myself. At Liverpool, while James was busily designing our new "RAM b0x0rZ" I was reformatting floppies as fast as I could. Enjoying the thrill of the new drill bit, James designed this awesomely functional and absolutely gorgeous holder of spare RAM in our endless effort to keep things neat and tidy around the lab. There were some additional concerted efforts and we did manage to clean up a rather cluttered area of our work stations (and cabbage a very old system). When our newest Mindtriggerz Director showed, we inundated him with queries of "what is this" "what is that" and well, Jon arrived in the proverbial nick of time.

By the time James and I returned to the Park Shelter Joyce was already dissassembling the lab computers, she swore she'd been there the whole time and we just hadn't seen her. There is something about an aversion to keyboards or is it speakers? but as always, her presence is greatly (GREATLY) appreciated.

We have plans to distribute about 50 flyers next week to the apartment complexes in the Park vicinity. Jesse's dad wants very much to have the 40+ ready Mindtriggerz systems distributed before we commence work at the Dunbar Memorial Garden in a few weeks. I am hopeful we can - especially since we are quite literally running out of storage space at our houses.

We'll be showing our stuff at the Fayette County Public School's "Science Technology Engineering and Math" fair on March 14th - hopefully this too will draw attention to what we are doing as well as the how's and why's.

This is our work, we do it for each other and we do it for Jesse. Never forget you, desu.

<3

Four down, thirty-six to go

Jesse's dad delivered three Mindtriggerz computers this Saturday to the families who completed their training, the fourth was delayed as our little Harvard prodigy was ill. I felt a certain melancholy in letting them "go" - or perhaps it is more the reality of what we are doing and why. I know it is good work but some days it is just very hard.

Incredibly, in a couple of the homes Jerome visited there were old non-working computers tucked away in closets. One dad asked if we could fix his old machine and Jerome responded: "We only fix computers for little people, not big ones" and then was given the old computer to be donated to Mindtriggerz. Jesse would love the irony in this - we give a computer and take another one in its place.

Joyce was our "runner" hustling back and forth between Liverpool and the Park loading systems into her car for Jerome to deliver. Laughing all the way. James was here along with Jon and while the guys replaced parts and diagnosed my dysfunction (one of the machines I couldn't get to boot was due to the fact that I'd plugged the monitor into the wrong port - ha ha, yeah), I cleaned speakers and mice and demonstrated not only how I make the machines sparkle to "like new" but also the ultimate results of my comet/windex mix. Sandpaper hands, an abrasive unto themselves.

When Jesse's dad delivered the infamous STICKER MANIA monitor last week to be cleaned I was like "no way, no, can't do" but then after checking the quality of the resolution I realized I had to fix it up. I joked about stickers being the bane of a mom's existence then buckled down to work. I suspect this monitor had been stacked away somewhere for quite some time, there was a great deal of dust and embedded grime but after fifteen or so minutes of buffing it with my steel wool knuckles, well, I finally got it clean.

Actually, it took a lot longer than fifteen minutes and much more than my sad cracked hands. I scraped each sticker with my fingernails (now all shredded to the quick) and had to bring out the big guns for the large plastic hook attached to the side with the dreaded double sided rubber adhesive. I won't go into too many details as to the plethora of cleaning products I unsuccessfully tried but finally I discovered the magic potion: Guardsman's Citrus Spot Remover. It was an "omg" moment and as is evident by this post, I am very proud of myself for the monitors pre-placement renewed condition. There are a wide variety of "things" I am not so good at anymore but it seems cleaning is not one that I've lost just yet.

For me these systems are a demonstration of my continued love for Jesse, and Jesse loved "shiny." So they will be.

<3