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Western District Youth Hall and Computer Center
Journal: January - March 2002
See Pictures from Building Renovation
December 17 – January 1, 2002 - Paul leaves for holiday in Niue. The Center is open only sporadically in his absence. The Server begins to act strange. The Start menu does not function and there is an error message that “the registry is full” and policies are not downloaded upon logging in. Dave Parsons has been medically separated from the Peace Corps so Paul is the only palangi working now at the Center.
January 2, 2002 - The Server problem is remedied by restarting the computer.
January 3 – The digital camera arrives in the Center. Installation is attempted on two computers and is unsuccessful. Computer 5 dies; no drive can be booted. The hard drive is corrupt.
January 4 – The digital camera installation is attempted twice more, the last time with success. Either steps were done in the wrong order three times in a row or there somehow requires a direct connection from the camera to the USB cord and only then the connection to the Docking system can be attached. Dean comes to take Computer 5 in to town. Malia and Telesia come in for the final session of their first class. They agree to teach another class and supervise the Center for two hours after each class.
January 7 - Classes are delayed this week because of Prayer Week.
January 8 - Systems and Solutions replace Computer 5’s hard drive with a new one. The WDYHCC Web page is up! www.oocities.org/wdyhcc
January 9 - The Server stopped communicating with other computers and the Start button became ineffective, similar symptoms as 1/2/02. Resolved again by restarting. Dean brings Computer 5 out to Kolovai. Paul successfully ghosts it. When it is restarted it goes extremely slow and sometimes freezes before Windows is completed loaded. The hard drive makes a loud sound when it is working. The wrong hard drive was installed. Adobe Photoshop cannot print on some accounts on Computer 2, saying there is a disk error.
January 11 Paul takes Computer 5 in to town on the bus. Systems and Solutions puts in another drive, this time a new one.
January 14 - Virus updates. W5 is returned with yet another hard drive. It is ghosted again.
January 15 - The Fakava sisters begin their second class of “Introduction to Computers”! One computer is not able to log onto the network. The server begins acting really slow. W1 is no longer able to contact the server. The network goes down. The server is restarted and there is a message that says “disk boot failure” and will not load. After restarting twice (with the restart button), the same message appears. Arg! The server is down.
January 16 - Miraculously, the Server starts up fine. It is later suggested that the computer needed to completely power down before it could restart again. A possibility for the problems that occurred is that Paul was working on the Server while students were logging on and off, the server was overburdened and stopped functioning. Paul gives an “Introduction to the Internet” seminar.
January 17 – Computer 5 will not load Windows. There is an error that says a file in System32 is corrupt or missing. This may have been because McAfee’s firewall was tested and then removed (because of unsatisfactory results). An emergency repair disk is made on Computer 4 and tried on Computer 5, without success.
January 19 - Computer 5 is ghosted yet again.
January 20 - W5 has the same problem that it did on 1/17. It is ghosted again, this time from an image from another machine.
January 22 - Somehow one of the ceiling fan blades was bent making the fan severely (and possibly dangerously) wobbles. Faleaisi bent the blade back, helping a little, but the fan still wobbles.
January 23 - An estimate of 30 magazines donated to the Youth Hall and 30 pens donated to the Computer Center have walked away. Intentional and unintentional “borrowing” (theft) is a common problem in the WDYHCC, and according to many business people working in Tonga, a common problem in this country.
January 25 - When a youth attempted to use the phone without paying Jose, the on-duty supervisor, tried to take the phone away, dropping in on the group and breaking the wire. The phone will now be off limits to all personal calls.
January 26 - It was WDYHCC’s busiest week, yet only one person came in on Saturday evening.
January 28 - Updated Virus definitions and checked the spIE web page tracking program on all computers. Someone had looked at pornography on Computer 3 for fifteen minutes two weeks ago and someone on the supervisor account stayed on the four hours (they are allotted half hour each per evening) last week.
February 2 - spIE has detected that some users are looking at pornographic Web sites and some supervisors have been spending more than their allotted half an hour per day using the Internet. Supervisors will be met with individually to attempt to alleviate these problems.
February 4 - The Internet ran very slow today. There is a theory that this is due to heavy rainfall disrupting the signal transmissions in saturated ground lines.
February 5 - Three magazines were donated to the Center today. By evening they were all stolen. There has been a sign posted in Tongan that states that this behavior is not appropriate. To no avail.
February 6 - Computer 5 is dead again. Same problem. This time the partition is deleted first before being ghosted. Eventually, the same problem occurred again. Maybe the problem was McAfee Virus Scan. The program was un-installed and re-installed.
February 7 - The 9th ‘Introduction to Computers’ class finishes today. The Fakava sisters are taking next week off because Malia is getting married.
February 8 - The Pentium IV computer (ordered in September, yes September) is working and was delivered by Systems and Solutions to Tupou High School so Tate could assist Paul in installing new Server software.
February 11 - Deleted partition again on Computer 5 and loaded everything fresh without ghosting. Same problem. Downloaded virus updates and checked Internet logs on all other computers. Jose started evening computer classes in Nuku’alofa and will not be available to work regular hours. To retain supervisor privileges he will need to work a later night shift (after 9:30 PM).
February 12 - A meeting was held by the town committee (made up of village elders) in the Youth Hall. A puzzle that the youth had been working on was mostly dismantled in the process. Who may use the Youth Hall may be an issue to deal with in the future.
February 14 - Malia Fakava gets married! Computer 5 gets taken to Systems and Solutions again.
February 19-22 - There is a storm with gale-force winds that knocks the power out for four days. All classes are postponed to next week.
February 23 - The new Server is finally installed! (Five months after it was ordered). Compared to the great difficulties of setting up the first Server, the process goes very smoothly. The current settings are much more efficient, although Group Policies and Internet still can not be shared at the same time.
February 25 - The settings for the new Server continue to be set. The partition for the Operating System (C: drive) is too small. All Internet Explorer temporary files, Outlook Express Email messages, and Adobe Photoshop scratch disk files need to be routed to another drive. Internet is sluggish even though the connection reads 48 kilobytes per second. The attempt to ghost the old Server fails.
February 26 – Malia heads the new class of ‘Introduction to Computers’ with a record seven students enrolled. The Internet is so slow (at times, stuck) it is unusable. See picture.
February 27 – The old server is successfully ghosted (and installed in the slot of Computer 5, which means the problematic computer – still in town – will now be called Computer 8) with an image that does not include the gargantuan Encyclopedia Britannica (it is installed afterwards).
February 28 – The Internet works fine today. But, will it work tomorrow? Since Malia now lives in Havelu, she will receive $10 for gas money every two weeks. Power Outage tonight closes the Center early.
March 1 – Sione Ketu’u informs Paul during a meeting at the TCC that they were testing expanded bandwidth earlier in the week at that was the cause for the Internet slowdown. He also said the WDYHCC will serve as the prototype for a wireless, leased-line Internet connection in April and May.
March 2 – The Server was inexplicably off along with its UPS Back-up. Do you need to turn the UPS back on every time there is a power outage?
March 6 - Paul hosts another ‘Introduction to Internet’ Seminar
March 7 – The Web Site is submitted to numerous search engines.
March 8 – The Digital Camera sometimes does not turn even though sufficient battery power remains. The slide over the port on the bottom must be closed for it to function properly, just remember to open it when downloading new pictures.
March 9 – The Server was off so it is assumed that there was a power outage last night and the UPS backup and the computer’s software automatically shutdown. There was error accessing the modem driver. It was necessary to turn the modem off and then on again to get it back online and go through the Hardware Installation wizard before it came back online.
March 11 – Had to turn the modem off and on again. Downloaded virus definitions. Checked spIE. Updated Journal and Materials compilation. Will give a copy each to Havili Movete, Tate Goodman, The Resource Center, Mijal, the future Kolovai PCV, and the Center itself.
April 16 – Mijal arrives at the WDYHCC. Computer 8 is down.
April 20 – Computer 8 is back up after hours of unsuccessful attempts. Finally successful with emergency boot disk.
April 21 – Bought mortein and eradicated the mild wasp colony that was developing.
April 24 – The computer committee meets for their annual meeting which now becomes bi-monthly meeting. In attendance, Pauhulu (briefly), Havili Movete, Lute Taholo, Maikale Lewin, Semisi ‘Apai and Meliame Pahulu. Issues discussed include changing internet companies, offering more classes and reviewing financial. Committee decided to meet in mid-June.
April 27– Downloaded virus definitions on Computers 2, 3, 4 and 6. Checked spIE. Updated Journal. Returned in the afternoon to power outage. Called power utilities, but no answer (yes, it is Saturday). Power returned within an hour and reboot successful.
May – Project continues, but staff determines to retain journal offline