Saturday, Oct 10, 2010

Some random pics. Enjoy!

Here’s a photo of our sad little sounds setup at The Keep. Most of the equipment is borrowed and VERY Chinese (cheap). We can’t afford any sound equipment for our Friday night shows, but it sounds like some folks might have some sound gear they can donate. If you do, please let me know. We’re in desperate need of mics, amps, mixers (8 channels or more), mic stands, pickup mics, audio cables (of just about every kind) and even instruments (especially guitars).

Here’s me at the mixer. It kinda looks like I know what I’m doing. I really don’t. Sound Mixing for Dummies anyone? Our Friday show was PACKED. I was thrilled to have so many people show up for the performance. It really was quite amazing. I was "trapped" behind the mixer all night and didn’t get out much, but I was told that the owners of Flavours were in attendance. This is a big deal for us because their restaurant is a block away and people talk and create stories like we’re out to sabatoge them. The list of people talking includes our own staff, which we reprimand severely for such things. We have even fired staff for being involved in that kind of talk. We want our staff to be different and not be all caught up in the gossip and negativity. But the point is that there really is no animosity about Flavours. We do similar things (serve "real" coffee and food and offer Internet), but we are different in our goals and our missions. Anyhow, it was great hearing that they came and had a good time. I was in Flavours myself just two weeks ago meeting a friend, and I really enjoyed myself. I hope this help put the stupid rumors to rest. Ugandans, especially in Jinja can be so juvenile with their gossip and stories.

Here’s the room we used for the Internet cafe at The Keep.

Here you can see Gerald working on a laptop in the Internet cafe.

And here’s another shot of Fred and Gerald in the cafe. It’s a really small room. We had managed to get four stations in there. It’s just not enough. We’re getting more and more customers asking to use our REALLY FAST Internet, and lots of people come in with laptops and end up sitting at a table for eight, which causes seating problems for larger groups.

Yesterday, we decided to switch our rooms and put our coolers in this small room and use the front room for the Internet cafe. Everybody pitched in and the job took several hours. Here’s some of our kitchen staff helping to load the cools in the new space. This shot gives you an idea of how tiny that little room was… way too small for the Internet cafe room.

This is an under-construction shot of what we called "the tea room" at The Keep. This was where we kept the coolers and was pretty useless, as it was for staff only. I can’t believe I don’t have a newer picture.

This is a pre-construction shot of the inside of the room at The Keep.

And here is the fruit of our labours yesterday. We still have some cable to clean up, but you can see we have quite a bit more room. The server, printer, access point and three NComputing terminals are shown here.

Here’s another shot of the room with Trevor chilling out. We’ll have two more terminals on that table (one donated Mac Mini!) and the couch on the right is for people that want to hang out with laptops. We’ll have another table in here against the third wall for people that want to work at laptops. It was a big project, but I think it will be worth it. Now I just have to figure out how to throw the wireless from the WRT54G farther. The signal is not as good in the main restaurant with the access point here.

Oh, and I hung this nice tapestry yesterday too. Some of you may recognize this from my old office. It was a gift from my wife many years ago, and we brought it with us when we came back from the US in April. We had the metal hanging rod made locally.