We’re running two failing businesses. The cafe and the training center are both fairly popular (the cafe is especially popular with the tourists and expats) but they’re both bleeding money. Every month, we pay for staff salaries out of our own money, and it’s running out. Donor support is still there, and that’s covering our living expenses, but it sucks to have to spend my gig money to keep these businesses afloat.
The Training Center is really struggling. We’re woefully short on customers and the customers we get are mostly “freebies”, members of the military or police force that we train for free. I’ve given a lot of thought to the idea of just training people for free since we’ve got a few months paid on the rent and the place is just sitting there, but I don’t know how to do that without spoiling all the equipment. It’s closer to our original goal for the center: training, not income, but I’m afraid that free walk-ins won’t respect the equipment. I thought about working with local churches and NGO’s to select candidates for free training and positioning them to manage and screen the students. This combined with our watchful staff might make things less risky. But even if I figured out how to make this beneficial to the people that need it the most, it still doesn’t solve the financial problem. We need to pay the bills. The answer lies in getting schools without computer labs to bring their students for computer training. Large groups could fill the gap. But despite marketing and advertising, it’s not happened.
Payday was last week, and we dug into the money left from my last gig and paid salaries, electric bills, plumbing bills and a host of other expenses. Two days ago I considered closing the center.I offered up a feeble prayer that something would happen, and set out to do what I do best: throw my own (insignificant) weight into the problem. I went to the center with an MTN USB 3G modem with the idea of offering Internet surfing at the cafe. People have been asking for it, so I caved and decided to give it a shot. I booted the system, slapped in the card, installed the built-in drivers and began to surf. Easy-cheesy. Things were looking up. Then I tried to share the Internet connection, which on Windows 2003 Server Web Edition (thanks to my MSDN gift from BlueHat 1!) is a royal pain in the grass. I poked at the Routing and Whatever thing in the Management Thingum and followed the convoluted rules and suggestions, but no dice. So I reflexively rebooted and things went bad quickly. All my network drivers fell out and explorer failed to run. No amount of recovery consoling would resolve the problem. Turns out that MTN thing isn’t compatible with 2003 Server. Yay.
Just like that the Center was down, hard. It was late, so I went home, even more convinced that the Center was finished.
Over night, I realized that I probably should have installed XP all along. I need Windows for the True Cafe software to run the cafe, but I needed 2003 Server to serve more than 10 web clients. I should have used XP with Apache. So yesterday I came to the center nice and early, prepared to reload the system. I sat down powered on the machine and pushed the CD eject button to put in the XP CD. The tray didn’t open. There was no power light. Then I remembered that we unplugged the CD and USB power to keep people from stealing our training. I bent over to open the case and saw our Analog Security System (below).
I asked Gerald (our manager) for the keys. He reached first into one pocket, and then into three others and then got That Look. An hour later, after turning the center upside down, he still hadn’t found the keys. I had backups at the house, but that wasn’t the point. Our center was completely exposed unless we replaced all the padlocks as well as the lock on the front door. Approximate cost: UGX 1,000,000/= or $500 or almost three months rent or four months salary for the entire staff. We just didn’t have the money to replace the locks, and every single piece of equipment was at risk with the keys missing. The only solution was to pull all the equipment from the center and close the doors. I packed up my gear and headed back to failing business number two for comfort in the form of a cheeseburger and a milkshake. I could definitely see myself drowning myself in milkshakes until we’re forced to close the doors there, too.
The hours passed by pretty slowly, and I was pulled back into my life at The Keep which is a story for another day. Depressed is hardly the word. It’s hard when something that seemed so right comes crashing down.
Gerald texted me a few hours later to tell me that the keys had been found. I was not relieved. Not only had I resigned myself to closing the center, but the work on the server had taken weeks and I knew that it would be no easy task to rebuild it.
I went back to the center and spent the next four hours rebuilding the server. In the end I decided it would be a Good Idea™ to install Deep Freeze to keep the system configuration locked down. I installed it. Then I realized that I would need Data Igloo to allow True Cafe to keep it’s logs and data, so I installed that, too, but realized I hadn’t set up another partition for dynamic data. I used partition magic to slice up the C: drive (which took an hour thanks to a necessary DEFRAG) and rebooted to install Data Igloo. That’s when things went south. Deep Freeze went into a perpetual frozen state, the tray icon went missing and nothing (I mean nothing) would unfreeze it. Another hour of web surfing later, and I realized I would have to start over. Repartitioning after installing Deep Freeze is a Horrible Idea™. As I packed up my gear I couldn’t help but wonder if I was really trying too hard to save the place. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to save it. Maybe I was wrong about this thing all along. “If only I could get some sign that I was supposed to keep going,” I remember thinking.
That’s when the messenger came from my friend Bobby from the Source Cafe and Kibo Group. He had a letter authorizing seven students to take classes at the center and offered a down payment of UGX 200,000/=. It would be the single largest group we’ve ever had at the center, and I took it as a sign that despite what’s going on, we should press on.
So today, I’m reloading the server at the center again. It’s not fun, but today’s reload seems different somehow.
I can’t help but remember that feeble prayer in the midst of the crap yesterday and the series of events that changed my mind about closing shop. “Slowly by slowly” (as the Ugandans say) I am realizing that there’s something here in Uganda that’s bigger than me and for whatever reason, God’s called us to be a part of it, especially when all the signs point to giving up
It’s just not coming together, and when payday came, we once again dug into our pockets and paid salaries.
Your a giant among men
Why are you mucking about with xp? I have been praying for you. OH well. Just late and I read your post.
Man, that was rough to read and it frustrates me that i cannot snap my fingers and make things perfect. I gotta say there’s a reason the new students signed up and i’m sure there will be more to follow – word will spread :) Things will look up.
On the Windows stuff … *whew*, absolutely no tellin what it’s up to and why it’s misbehaving. I’m glad you kept at it though. Is there anyway to relieve some of these issues by putting any and all Windows setups (browsing, teaching, etc.) on top of a solid virtual server (*nix-base) setup? That might provide at least a steady, solid base and the guest OSes could come, go, die, be recreated, reconfigured, wiped, setup, and on and on without ever troubling the base.
Keep the faith and keep up the good work – it’ll work out :)