I picked up Jason (%00Handle / @jkentakula) at the airport yesterday. His flight was delayed nearly 24-hours and he was a great sport about it, but it turned out we really needed that extra time. We left Jinja at 6:30am to get to Entebbe by 1:00pm (we had some errands to run before picking him up).
First to drop Jen off for an MRI, then to the ortho to get Declan’s braces adjusted. That’s actually a nice way of saying we had to remove the torturous syringe that had been poking a hole out through his cheek for the past two days. WE finished with the ortho, then picked up Jen, went to grab breakfast at around noon and picked up a shoulder brace for Jen. Traffic was awful, and we were late getting to the airport, but we kept in touch with Jason and the timing was about perfect. Jason had only been waiting a few minutes. On my way into the airport I ran into the guy who did our shipping, clearing and forwarding three years ago. He wanted to donate a dairy cow to our program (?!) and wondered if we needed any help shipping stuff into Uganda. Random.
The ride back to Jinja was uneventful (in a good way) but we spent most of the time talking and geeking out.
Jason had no agenda, which was really cool, but before he came he had done his homework and pinned me to the wall on some really specific questions about how he could help and he was prepared in some really specific ways that matched his abilities and opportunities with our needs.
He had an affinity for leather work after an introductory class in middle school, so he invested in the first industrial tool for our leather shop: A Tippmann “Boss” lock stitching machine. This is the cream of the crop for saddle makers who need to stitch serious leather with a “lock” stitch that won’t come undone when a stitch breaks. This thing is AWESOME! It takes us so long to hand stitch that we can’t really make bags and other items because it takes too darn long. We spent the afternoon putting it together (it really did take two engineers to figure it out!) but once we got it together, the machine worked like a DREAM. It was wonderfully constructed, simple and required NO POWER. This is a game-changer for our leather shop.
Jason spent a lot of time with Johnson, our lead craftsman, and got to see first-hand Johnson’s perspective about the leather program. I’m sure he’ll report on that, but from my side, I can say that it was exciting having his input and his excitement is infectious.
Jason also knew that we struggle with bandwidth, so he talked to some friends at Bluecoat, his former company and they agreed to help out with a donation of a WAN accelerator. This is a HUGE deal for us because it will help our Internet “experience” at the Keep, the CTC and the hackerspace. We’ll be playing with that today.
But the most exciting conversation we had was about the hackerspce. That will be an entire blog post, so I’ll have to wait to report on that.
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Jason was kind enough to bring coffee syrups – something very hard to find here – for the Keep. Entebbe customs was curious about all the “liquor”.
The Tippmann Boss in early stages of building.
Jason and Johnson with The Boss.
Jason working on the flatbed accessory.
Jason is blogging here (http://nullhandle.blogspot.com/) if you want to keep up with him.
