Hi all. I think I’ll keep this post short tonight and then hopefully get some more time to write tomorrow when I have more time.
Today I spent a good part of the day at Lake Tanganyika College. In the morning I worked on cleaning up one of the Nettop PC’s we had supplied a few years back. It needed a full clean off of Microsoft Office, which was not working properly and would not uninstall either. Once that was done, I attented to reinstall it, but found that the system would not respond correctly to the install procedure. So after a while of messing with that, I decided that a clean install of the operating system would probably be the best thing to do. That’s where some of the fun begins, because I needed to setup and install disk or USB drive to attempt and new install. Getting the operating system (Windows 10 in this case) proved to be a little difficult. Something about the install running from a CD/DVD drive was not working well with the computer. After a few attempts with that, I figured that going with and install on a USB Drive would be the next logical attempt. So I took a break for lunch. Lo and behold the first rain of the raining season began. 
And I mean rain, heavy rain. I was fortunate to be under cover at the LTC Cantina when the storm hit, but by the time it was over, the electric power went out. I gave it about and hour to return, but no dice. With that, I drove back to the compound and gave it a rest until after dinner. We had an 5 PM engagement coming up at Murusi Church with dinner following, which I’ll write about tomorrow.
Right now, I’m here at our home waiting patiently for the USB Drive installer setup to complete and writing to you. Let’s see, it’s 9:35 PM our time right now. The installer download shows 89% complete. It took over and hour to get to that point, so hopefully it will complete before 10PM.
Tomorrow we have some time to relax in the morning. Bob Cutting has been having a great time here with us. So far he has spent most of his time observing things with some time to time speaking and engagement with the churches we have visited. We’ll do some more of that tomorrow and then on Sunday we’ll get to the cathedral for an early morning (6:30AM) service and then rush off to Musagara for another worship service there.
That’s it for the moment. Look for more postings tomorrow.
Bill
So today I spent the better portion of the day at Lake Tanganyika College working on the computer systems. The first thing up was the new Mac Mini server setup. Mac Mini’s work pretty well as Microsoft Remote Desktop Servers when setup and equipped with VMWare Fusion. The advantage to using them is that they are small, light weight and easy to carry in my backpack when traveling over here. I actually physically installed this new server on Tuesday. I now had the time to make sure it was fully functioning with all of the software they need teaching various applications like Microsoft Word & Excel.
Along with this setup, the existing Mac Mini server also needed some updating. Why two Mac Mini’s you ask? Backup! The unit I brought with me is a replacement for one that failed during the past year. I’m bringing that failed unit home to have repaired. So now they have two servers again for redundant usage. The existing unit had Windows Server on it with Microsoft Office 2003 . Office 2007 is the current Tanzania government standard for teaching the applications. I updated that server to Office 2007. And on the new server we have Office 2016 installed so they can be looking forward to the new teaching standards that will eventually be established.
After the server work was complete, I worked with Bon, the main LTC computer support person, to get the 10 new Dell-Wyse thin clients setup. To give you some background, 12 years ago when I first came to setup the colleges computer network, I installed 10 Wyse 1200 thin client PC’s. They were still using most of these units. That’s an amazing use life span for most computer equipment. The problem is that the old 1200 models are a bit slow now and they don’t work well with the newer wide screen monitors that are available these days. The new model is very fast and works very well with all of the newer equipment and monitors. Bon did most of the physical installation of the new clients and then we went to work setting up session logins for both the Office 2003 and Office 2016 Remote Desktop servers. All of these setups went well. I’m very pleased at how all of the server and client installations went today. Tomorrow, I’ll work with Bon on some other computer issues with me. And I want to train him on doing backups of the Mac Mini’s.
This evening before dinner, we went to visit “Good Shepherd” church along with another smaller church nearby. These were small gathering of just some of the choirs and church leaders. Bob, Cathy and I gave our greetings to the churches and learn a bit about how the churches were doing. The second church (who’s name I don’t remember right now) had only the foundation and walls done. They are looking to get a roof soon since the raining session is closing in on them. The cost for the materials is about $2500. I’m hoping I can do something when I get back to find folks who would help fund this modest roofing project. The diocese and the church community itself just don’t have the money right now to spend on the materials. Seriously, be thinking and praying about it. If you feel the Spirit leading you to donate, call or text me at (203)733-5085. I can’t help but think that it would not take many of us to drum up that amount of funds in quick order.
Until tomorrow,
Bill
Mungu ni mwema!