Bill Schrull
I have often said that traveling to East Africa is an adventure. That’s because Cathy and I have delayed, bumped, canceled, and some other things I can’t remember from airline flights. The usual suspect has been in-country flights. But this time, it started at JFK when I checked in for the flight to Dubai. Just before the ticketing agent was going to print and hand me my boarding pass, I got a phone call from an airline representative. He explained that there was a problem with the connecting flight from Dubai to Nairobi and that I should not check-in for my flight to Dubai. Apparently, there was an unexpected labor strike at the Nairobi Airport that morning, which caused a cancelation of the connecting flight.
So here I was, stuck at JFK with no ride available to go home. I thought quickly and asked if I could just get to Dubai and book a later flight to Nairobi, hopeful that the strike would be a temporary problem. It took a little negotiating, but it was agreed that I would go to Dubai on my original flight, take a hotel room there, and see what happens with the Nairobi issue.
The flight was excellent, as usual, with this particular airline. During the flight, I communicated with Cathy about the issue and used the inflight Internet to research hotels near Dubai airport and keep tabs on the labor strike in Nairobi. Happily, the labor union and Kenyan government worked things out quickly and ended the strike while I was flying over the Atlantic. I am now rebooked for an afternoon flight tomorrow (9/13). And there is a silver lining, too! I’ll meet with David Shepley this evening (Fr. Joe’s son). He lives in Dubai, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to visit with him.
I will post again when I get to Kisumu, my final destination in Kenya, for the first three weeks of my trip.
Hi all,
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been preparing computer equipment, which I’ll deliver and install at Bishop Okullu College in Kenya. Currently BOC has a thin client network of computers that all run their MS Windows sessions from a main Windows 2016 Server that is running on a Mac Mini computer. The Mac mini is getting older, so it’s time to replace it. In the picture I’m displaying here, I’m showing two small but powerful PCs. These are nicely equipped with i9 Intel processors, 64GB of RAM, and 1TB of SSD disk storage. Underneath the PCs is an ASUSTOR 6 solid state disk array with 6 500GB M.2 NVME storage drives, which added up with RAID 6 redundancy comes out to 2 TB of storage. What will we use this for, you ask? To house the Windows Servers (2016 and 2022 versions) that will run the entire network of thin client computers. If you are confused, no worries. I’ll be posting about the installation when I am there and will explain simply how the setup works. Suffice it to say, it’s going to improve their systems significantly.
I am grateful to St. Paul’s Church, Brookfield, CT, for their generosity. All the equipment and such were purchased from mission budget funds the church provided for the project.
I’m also looking forward to training the young I.T. staff member, Robert Onyango in this new technology. He is a fast learner and is always eager to gain more knowledge in computer systems.
That’s it for now. I’ll keep posting once I get closer to my departure date of Wednesday, Sept 11.