Wild, wild times. I began this week in defcon 1 because three critical points: these are my first days as sysop in the Ports and Coast Engeneering Lab in my School; my group of Territory strightening and town planning(OTU) must deliver the 1st phase of our work about Pontedeume, and I have my first session as teacher in an basic linux short course that Benji and me teach.
And these are the facts:
Monday: I am still tired from climbing on Sunday again to the Castrillón, the street in the highlands of Coruña where lives Rocío, one of my mates in the OTU group. We meet Rocío, Silvia and me to coordinate our works.Then we decide to print the designs in our School. Rocío and me arrive eraly in the morning, and, Silvia comes with her sister Cristina that leave us in the Achitecture School in the Zapateira campus. We see the prices, the methods and delay of the laser printing there and we decide it would be the last option.
Down in Elviña campus again we try to print with inkjet printers in our school, but the only software installed in the PC of A3 printer (the printer is NOT connected to a net) is and old version of Autocad. But we work with Bentley’s .dgn format, because a) the original designs of the goverment were in this format, and b) I was working with .dxf files created by Qcad for GNU/Linux that Autocad doesn’t support neither.
We went to our classes, then I meet with Javi, the former sysop in the Ports and Coasts Lab. We worked in recovering the system shuted down by the electrical problems in the School.
We met again in the afternoon to work in Rocio’s home, and I decided to buy an A3 printer. I had been thinking about to do it, because I’ll need one to my final project, but we are in hurry now.
Tuesday: The OTU group meet after Road and Airports classes, then we go to buy the printer and A3 paper. As we passed by the office stuff shop, we buy paper and transparent plastic first, then we go to the computer shop I saw in internet they had an Epson A3 printer. Stinks, they have no A3 printer in stock, nor the another local in the city. It rains. We go to another shop near there, they promised me an HP printer on thursday, the same day we have the OTU critical session. We go to the bus stop, Rocio and Silvia go to Rocio’s home to continue the work. It rains harder. I will try to find the printer in another shops: two weeks in a great store, impossible in another little shop. Storm over Coruña. I remember Cibernet, a shop near bus station they have a HP 1280! I can’t believe it! I crossed the city.
First I check Linux compatibility at linuxprinting database, then I pay. Still raining, I call for a taxi to go to Rocio’s. It’s lunch time, we test the printer, it’s ok, we go down to the School, after two hours of class we go up the Castrillón to go on working. We find a lot of problems to print with Microstation. I get the last train to back to home. I make designs until three o’clock. I must go up at half past six.
Wednesday: I go to campus to test the computers to the GNU/Linux course. No dvd or cd works. I try with original ubuntu live and install cd, debian of the Computing Club, necromantux toasted by me and mandriva toasted by a friend. Different cd/dvd trademarks and origins, every crash. I’m nervous. School admins said me they will try new tests, they mail me.
I go to my Lab, we only need to configurate the apache web server, then fedora core 4 burns. We must begin again. I think it’s time to install debian. I talk with the chief, I promise it’ll be ok in two days.
12 o’clock, new climbing to Rocio’s. Silvia is there, they are working. They think they can print now, but we discorver problems with scale remains. Afternoon we can print in scale, but only on paper not over transparent plastic. We need to do it because we must the orographic designs over paper and communications, structure of cities… over transparent plastic sheets. We make some experiments, but printer on fire. I get the latest bus, I arrive to home at eleven o’clock. I’m very tired, I’m sleeping four hours each day. But I must go on.
Thursday: first day of the doom. I go to Rocío’s home at half past eight. She provides me some coffe. Silvia arrives, she and Rocio go to buy translucent paper. We print what we can (we spend half hour per design), and go to School again. We meet two hours before the critical moment to eat some sandwiches and talk about the town planning laws at Pontedeume.
We go to class, but we don’t decide to show our designs in public. Teacher Juan Creus select two groups and they must fix their designs over the blackboard. Then he shows them and us what is bad in the designs. Well, we can see our designs aren’t so bad as we thought. We loose the fear, then we show the papers to the teacher and make him some questions. And it’s fine.
More problems with cd’s and dvd’s in the short course class. Better media, low speed burning, don’t work.
I go to the Lab to install the web server, but I can’t find Javi, so I work alone. I won’t reboot the system this day. I try to install debian with the dvd’s that failed in the computer room, and fail again. Same problem in my laptop. There is a problem with ISO’s.
Friday: I could sleep six hours but I must get up early because the short course. I can’t teach how install Linux if I have no media to install it. I test my own dvd’s and it works! We decide I’ll burn the dvd’s, so it’s the main work in the day. I install debian and some software pieces in the web server and it works fine.
I have no time to lose. So I send sms’s to my mates in the Portiño group to know how many people will go in the afternoon. I have again some several problems, I must reboot the cell phone to connect. Sucks again! Only two mates will go to teach the children, I must go with them. But I introduce the short course in the first Benji’s session.
Two hard hours later, I go away to School. Course goes fine, I test the dvd’s I’m burning, and it works. I burn until late night.
Saturday: I get up at seven o’clock. I take the bus (there are no trains so early in weekend), and in the bus station I buy a debian sarge dvd that El mundo newspaper presents to their readers. I’ll use it too in my workshop. Desert campus, desert School, won’t improve with our only six students. But I get a coffee in the machine beacuse them.
And the moment of truth. We have little problems during the install of debian, and maybe my students (yeah, Railways and Transport engeneering teacher Dr. Bugarín is among them) could be saturated with lots of new informations (and a little sparse, with all the problems over the week I couldn’t give them some documentation). I’ll try to get off their fears next week. I talked about relationships between free software and civil engeneering. I wish will be interesting for them.
After lots of double coffees and redbull cans, after days sleeping only three or four hours, I’m going now to sleep. Please, don’t disturb 