June 26: Day in the life (14 hours)

This is a really long post, and it’s stream-of-consciousness sometimes, but it’s gritty and real, and ended up being very funny. Unless you’re me.

7:00-8:00 Wake up, get ready, get out. Drop Declan at Rugby practice. Yes, rugby. The boys are just learning the basics, which I realize is more than I know.

Rugby Training

8:00-8:45 Open the Keep with Jen and Declan. Sit down to do my quiet time, and realize my pen has walked away. This happens whenever I leave a pen on the table at the Keep. Our waitstaff ends up walking off with it to take orders. I look around the Keep. No pens. So I head into town to buy some pens. Nothing is open, except one supermarket. I buy a dozen cheap pens (the only kind they have). I return to the Keep and find out most of them work. Better than average.

8:45-9:30 Actually finish my quiet time. There was an important theme: God loves me. I really needed this because most of the times I’ve gone astray it was because I was looking for love -to be needed, cared about- but I was always looking in the wrong spots. I got hit with 2Cor 5:17 right between the eyes. The old is passed away, I can be a new creation.

Also, “Envision a redheaded, heartsick twelve-year-old standing over his collapsed kite. Envision a square-bodied man with ruddy skin placing his hand on the boy’s shoulder. My dad surveyed the heap of sticks and paper and assured, “It’s okay. We can fix this.” I believed him. Why not? He spoke with authority.” Then, “So does Christ. To all whose lives feel like a crashed kite, he says, “It’s okay. We can fix this.” Your world may look like a pile of worthless sticks. Take heart. The hand of Jesus is on your shoulder. You are blessed with a life-building Savior.” Wow. I so needed that.

This was a good start to the day.

9:30-10:45: I ate breakfast with my friend Josh at the Keep. We talked about lots of life stuff and jammed on education for a while. We talked about MOOCs and BRCKs and technology in education and tech/skills incubators. Lots of great food for thought. I’m really thinking about making the training center a real incubator. The time has come.

10:45-11:30 Met with Britney Christie from befreerevolution.com. She and her team came into the Keep (thanks to our friend John), had a meal (they they raved about.. this made us VERY happy) and caught a glimpse of our leather work. She runs BeFreeRevolution.org. They, “serve in slums of Kenya and Uganda instilling avenues of opportunity for full circle success. We empower men and women with trades coupled with feeding, education and counseling programs in nearby schools and orphanages. We believe that love works and life can change through encouragement, service and consistency.”

Their interest in us? They resell crafts in the US from craft ministries that are really going above and beyond to change the lives of the craftsmen and women. There’s a lot more to it than that, but they bought just about every journal we had in stock. It was a big bump for our leather program. We could have sold the journals for much more in the US, but this was a good, valuable and natural connection.

Journals

11:30-11:45 Another unscheduled meeting, this time with Robert Ries, who runs a ministry called Jesus Wept. He was thanking us for the free training at the center, and inviting us to the opening of a “prayer garden” he had started. Nice guy. Cool-sounding ideas, although I’m not sure at all how else we can help besides offering training, which is where we left it.

11:45-12:15: A couple more impromptu meetings, I’ll leave out the details for now. These kinds of interactions are very normal, and although they are time consuming, they are critical to what we do here: connecting with people, hearing their stories, figuring out how we can love them and help.

12:15-12:20: Lunch at the Keep. Yeah.

12:20-1:45: My adventure in cyberspace begins. So Josh at the center comes to me and tells me that several machines in the CTC need reloading. He’s asking if we have Windows disks and if we have Adobe Photoshop CS5, Illustrator CS5 and Dreamweaver CS5 software. We have paid good money for the training for this software, but we’ve never had a legitimate license because, well, it was more expensive than our computers. Normally, I’d have my tech do this, but he’s currently in prison for theft, with a trial pending this Monday. But I know for a fact that we have scarcely a single legitimate license of Windows because most of our machines are outdated and have been reloaded, despite the fact that many have OEM stickers on them. Since I have no idea how to convert those stickers to software, I decide it’s time to bite the bullet and buy licenses. I head to techsoup.org.

I sign up for an account. OK, no sweat. Email confirmation, and boom. I’m rolling. Then they say I need to sign up our non profit. OK, I rifle through our paperwork, sign here, type this stuff out, and mail it. Cool.

Then I search the site for Adobe software. All I can find is this Adobe Creative Cloud stuff. OK. So, tech soup tells me, “TechSoup .. hopes to make some of Adobe’s new cloud-based products available to organizations some time later this year.”

Hmm. Ok. Not promising. But they do offer, “a donation of either one Adobe application suite or four individual Adobe products within a fiscal year (July 1 to June 30).”

Well, that won’t work. We have 25 machines now and we’re updating to 40 very soon. So I’m redirected to Adobe’s site where I choose a store. Since Uganda’s not on the list, I have to lie and choose US. I find “Creative Cloud Student and Teacher Edition” which seems to be what I need, and find it’s $20 PER MONTH. Wait, what?!? So to license all our machines, we’re talking $800 a month. That alone exceeds our entire operating budget for our center. WHA?!?

More research tells me there’s a “VIP Plan for training institutions”. OK, no prices. So I “find a reseller”. Again, no Uganda, so I choose CDW. There’s no link, so I Google “CDW Adobe Cloud”. But that got me away from that less-expensive-sounding VIP thing. A few more clicks through CDW reveals that they don’t sell old single licenses anymore. So I click the Creative Cloud links. And I’m told that it’s good and it looks shiny. And has lots of benefits, but no prices. GUH!1!!! A few more links tells me that I can call an 800 number (uh, nope. That will cost more than a one-month license) or I can chat online with a sales rep, or send them an email for a quotation.

They tell me to contact Abode to sign up for the “Adobe Value Incentive Plan”. It’s “free and easy”. Sigh.

So I go back to Adobe, to http://www.adobe.com/volume-licensing/education/adobe-value-incentive-plan.edu.html and read more about the VIP thing. It tells me it’s good and it looks shiny. But this page looks familiar.

FRODO
[smiles] Nothing ever dampens your spirits,
does it Sam?

[Sam smiles back, and then looks ominously
towards the clouds over the Internetz.]

SAM
Those rain clouds might.

[They continue trekking through difficult
terrain, often huddling underneath their
cloaks.]

SAM
[Looks around] This looks strangely
familiar.

FRODO
[Exasperated] It’s because we’ve been
here before! We’re going in circles.

SAM
Ah! What’s that ‘orrid stink? I’ll warrant
there’s a nasty bog nearby. Can you
smell it?

FRODO
Yes. I can smell it. [Drops to a whisper]
We’re not alone.

Huddled beneath my cloak, I eyeball the “Find a reseller” link. There is nowhere to sign up. Clearly I do NOT qualify for VIP status.

So I find this Adobe non-profit link (http://www.adobe.com/volume-licensing/non-profit/eligibility-qualifications.edu.html). OK, it appears that we qualify. But.. how do I sign up? There’s no links! The only link I see that isn’t circular is for Abode TLP (http://www.adobe.com/content/dotcom/en/volume-licensing/non-profit.edu.html). Thank you, yet another acronym, this one for “Transactional Licensing Program for Nonprofits”.

I click. I read. It is good. It looks shiny. And guess what I need to do to get it? FIND A RESELLER. GWARRRRGHHHHnnnnnmmmpppph!

So I fire off a Bing search for “Adobe VIP sign up” because Adobe has now made me inexplicably mad at Google. I find all the pages I’ve already seen, and one new one, a link to the “Adobe VIP Program Guide for Education” PDF. I feel like I might be close. It would make PERFECT sense for Adobe to hide the secret to VIP enrollment in a PDF, cause that would sell more copies of Acrobat. I click. I read.

I read “Institutions enroll in VIP by contacting their Adobe Authorized Education Reseller and providing the following information: Market segment, Institution name..”

Adobe’s telling me to go back to CDW, who I guess is “my” “Authorized Education Reseller”.

This is NOT GOOD. THIS IS NOT SHINY. I get the ominous feeling I am not alone in this dark place.

So, I decide to settle for the free version of CS2. So our students can be out of touch with reality, and I can feel good that I’m not using pirated software.

I log into my Adobe account. I can’t remember my password. I launch Kali, take a deep breath then power it off. I ask for a password reset. It never comes. I sign up for a new account. It tells me I’ve got an account with that email. I request a reset. It comes. I click. I change the password. It logs me out. I log back in. All this for a crappy old version of Photoshop CS2.

I’m greeted with, “Adobe has disabled the activation server for CS2 products, including Acrobat 7, because of a technical issue. These products were released more than seven years ago, do not run on many modern operating systems, and are no longer supported.” It requires, “Microsoft® Windows® 2000/Windows XP. Intel® Pentium® III or 4 processor”.

Dogpile (because now I’m mad at Bing and Google) tells me I just need to:

“Right click on the executable
Select Properties
Click on the Compatibility Tab
Use the drop down menu to select XP SP3 mode
Check the box for Run as Admin
Click okay
Run the installer”

And then this anger boils up in me. I mean, am I seriously about to install crappy old CS2 so my students can learn seven-year old programs just because I’m not able to figure out how in the world to pay (a REASONABLE PRICE) for something newer? No.

Adobe Photoshop is one of my favorite programs of all time. I love it. I advocate it. It’s fun. It is good. It is in fact prodigiously shiny. I want to teach people how to use it for FREE.

But GETTING a modern legitimate copy of Photoshop has now become infinitely more difficult than actually learning the product.

For the briefest of moments, I am tempted to call/chat/email CDW but Adobe has officially wasted an hour of my life that I can never, ever get back.

Somewhere in the world, there is a person, or a department or a management team within Adobe that is paid to combat the problem of piracy. They can not, for the life of them, figure out why so many people pirate their software. They come up with nifty ideas like this pay-per-month Cloud Thingum but still, people are ripping off their stuff. They can not figure it out.

This Might Have Something To Do With It.

Since I’m now mad at the world, and every major company and search engine on the planet, I crank up my Ugandan circa-1990 bandwidth and call up two old friends: Excite and Lycos.

They tell me I’m a click away from my problem being solved.

http://msxml.excite.com/search/web?q=torrent+photoshop
http://search.lycos.com/web?q=torrent+photoshop&keyvol=00bc5c615d55f527abee

Gerf.

1:45: Exasperated, I start packing up. I notice a customer craning their neck to find wait staff. There is none to be found. I continue packing. The customer looks around again, sees no one, gets up and gets himself a menu. We’ve had this discussion. The wait staff needs to attend to guests. They are the only guests. There’s no reason for this. We find our wait staff on the phone. She’s been suspended for this already. I find her and lean into her. This is her job. This is what we pay for. She needs to take it seriously. I am disappointed, and I am mad at the world (Google) right now.

1:50-2:30: Jen and I begin to leave the Keep. I’m on the bike, she’s in the truck. She stops me to tell me that the parking attendant ticketed her. I take the ticket from her. This is a Problem. These guys aren’t supposed to ticket us. We’ve been through this so many times. The parking on the sidewalk at the Keep is private property. They can’t ticket customers parked there. I find tickets on other customer’s vehicles. I take them off and find the parking attendant. I tell him he can’t do this and he tells me it’s his job. His boss told him to do it. I hand him the tickets and he won’t take them. Instead he writes new tickets and puts them on our customers vehicles. I take them off. He writes more.

It is then that I realize I have my Hisatsu with me today, and a sword mounted on my bag within proper over-shoulder-drawing range. I inhale. I look at the parking attendant. He blinks. I don’t. He walks away. I call my landlord. He gives me a number to call. It is an auto mechanic. He has very little English and is confused by me but more than willing to fix my car.

I hang up and look at the sky. It’s blue, and it’s bright. It’s hot, and I’m starting to sweat. It is Thursday, and I’ve lost my towel. Seeing no sign of an Intergalactic demolition force, I realize that this day will certainly continue, whether or not I know where my towel is.

I call back the landlord and he doesn’t pick up. Then I spy an aging Local Chief (government official) I know coming out of the Keep. He asks how I’m doing and I spare the details about Adobe and instead tell him about the parking thing. He offers to go to the head office with me.

We talk to the “bosses” and they try to shake me down by selling up “parking permits to protect our sidewalk spaces”, “at $20 a month, negotiable”. The LC immediately raises his eyebrows and begins negotiating for me, in Luganda. I open my mouth to protest, but before I can make a sound, they agree to $15 a month and look at me, happy that the matter is resolved. I make a sort of squeaky croaking noise from the back of my throat. I hear the sound and realize my mouth is still open, and that sound was the death rattle of a long forgotten but quite important protest/monologue.

I blink, gather my whits and inform them that I am not, under any circumstances buying a permit to “protect” my own sidewalk. This has an absurd mafia protection thing going for it, although I’m sure the mafia never really got anyone to pay protection for a piece of sidewalk.

The boss stands up and says, “Let’s go have a look at that sidewalk.”

And with that, we travel back to the Keep to have a look at that sidewalk.

As soon as the boss sees it, he tilts his head back slightly and releases a breathy “Ahhh” sound.

I’m tempted to answer with “Ahhh?” but realize that this is WAY too close to a Monty Python skit in the making already so I just blink. It’s my new fallback.

He explains that the problem is that people might park on the street and block us in, then it becomes his problem. That’s why he wants to sell us a parking permit for the street space so no one will park behind us. “Fifteen bucks a month is reasonable”, he explains, “as long as we contract him to paint the lines.”

In the end, the boss agrees to go away, leave us alone, and instructs the latest parking attendant to also leave us alone. But this took Herculean effort and I know for a fact that we’ll repeat this again, sometime soon.

I buy four books of parking ticket from the parking attendant (they get paid on commission) and shake his hand. Things end amicably.

2:30-3:00 Then the LC pulls me aside. It turns out he was in the Keep because he heard his granddaughter was reprimanded for being on the phone. In the next thirty minutes, I explain our policies and our desire to give our employees a step up, training them to a higher standard so they can get a better job if they ere want it. He tells me about all the jobs he’s had in literally the past 50 years and how my plan makes sense. I find him to be quite endearing, transparent and wise.

3:00-4:00: Finally home, I get in a workout because if I don’t I’ll likely start saying very bad words.

4:00-4:15: A quick shower.

4:15-4:30: I begin to plan for the World Cup game at the Keep. I ask our day guard to work a few extra hours to help do bag checks at the Keep. He agrees, then a call comes in from our night guard, scheduled to arrive at 5:00 for his shift, that he’s not coming because he’s “over WORKED”. Last week, we asked him if he could put off his rest day for a day so another guard could go to the village to rebuild his burned home. He agreed. Two months ago, we fired this night guard for not showing up for his shift, or calling 30-minutes ahead saying he wasn’t coming. He begged for his job back, we took him back on a “last” chance, and told him he needed to change. He agreed to a four-hour warning, and not to miss any shifts.

I text back the night guard and tell him he has to work. He agreed and he didn’t give proper notice. His response was, “God knows my fate”. Then he turned off his phone.

Now, we have no night guard and we are short-staffed at the Keep for a major event.

4:30-5:15: Furniture arrives at the house and we need to move it in. (We sold our old furniture because it wasn’t working out for the needs at the bed and breakfast.) As I’m moving the furniture, I start to not feel right. I don’t know what it was, but it about floored me. Stress, bad eating, don’t know.

5:30: We head to the Keep to prepare for the US-Germany game, airing at 7:00PM. We find the place packed. We had planned to eat dinner early, but it was too busy. I immediately start working security.

5:30-9:00: We work at the Keep. Jen’s on cashier, and I’m doing other things with a focus on security. We were far beyond capacity and served 120 people in just over two hours. Given the high profile of the event, we had to watch the customers cars, and screen guests at the gate. We closed the gate twice since we were over capacity. It was a solid 3+ hours of running around, helping, serving. Our staff did an amazing job. Everyone had a great time.