Changes

I’ve been on the ground in San Antonio for 6 hours now, and things have changed dramatically. Without going into painstaking detail, things are pretty much done here. And, no, I’m not that good. Between people fleeing the shelter, red tape, and other local involvement, Kelly is pretty much taken care of. I’m a little disappointed because I was really looking forward to this particular project, but this also opens a whole new set of doors. Just to make sure everyone is clear WE ARE NOT DONE. Even though Kelly is no longer at the top of our list, we are all re-deploying tomorrow morning for the "Ground-Zero" area. We’ll be heading to Mississippi, some place named Lyman. Map says it’s near the Alabama border. Things have been going VERY WELL for the people already there, and they are totally overwhelmed by the amount of work to do. So we will NOT have the same problem there that we did at Kelly. The people in this area are people who were not evacuated, but have still lost everything. There are whole cities and towns of people with destroyed homes and businesses, also with no way to communicate to their loved ones. We’re essentially doing the SAME JOB we were tasked before. The difference is that we will be doing many more, but smaller, installations where people are directly. The honest truth is this is what most of the guys were hoping to be doing in the first place. Kelly was a big, organized event with a lot of publicity, which contributed to the problem. EVERYONE wanted a piece of the action, and red tape and politics prevailed. Out in the areas where people are hurting, wallowing in the devastation, there aren’t these problems. There’s no red tape, no resistance.

This really is where all our hearts are, and we see it as a "win" to be able to go there directly. Speaking of the team.....these guys are something else! Right now we have an entire floor of a dorm at a Catholic university. Think we’re in a girl’s dorm. There’s pretty much no one in this building, so we were given the top floor. Whole room to myself - much nicer than the one I had at OSU. Bathroom and everything. The guys are still working hard on the equipment. A bunch of wireless gear was shipped here - several thousand dollars of donated long-range access points and bridges. Everyone pretty much seems to have "expert" status on this stuff. They’re configuring and testing everything now. Doing stuff like trying to see how many dorm rooms the signal can penetrate. (quite a few - they’re rated for several miles) They’re all networking/VoIP people. I seem to be the only architect/systems guy, so it will be interesting to see how I fit into the new team. I was looking forward to my original position as Systems Team Leader, but whatever job I end up with, I’ll do my best at. Chances are we’ll all be doing a little everything.

Tomorrow morning I’m leaving San Antonio with the Project Coordinator. Not Josh, the guy in charge of Kelly, but Claudia, the Project Coordinator for all of P15’s stuff. She asked me to accompany her to the new site before the team leaves so we can begin to assess the situation and make plans. The idea is to have some sort of plan in place before everyone shows up so they can get right to work. We’ll be driving about 600 miles right through the middle of the devastated areas, so I should be able to get some pretty interesting pictures. Oh, on a total side note, Texas is NOTHING like I imagined. I pictured a rather barren desert-like place, flat with lots of oil wells. Flying in I thought we made a wrong turn. Flat it is, but there are trees everywhere. It’s really quite green. It’s around 90 outside, with CRAZY humidity. Thunderstorms abound. Well, even though my clock says it’s only 8:40, it’s 10:40 here. I should start setting up camp if we’re going to be getting up at 6 AM. Want to talk to the guys a little more and try to figure out how we’re going to tackle this new problem. I’ll be sure to get some updates out either as we’re on the road or once we arrive. Thanks for your continued support. I hope I explained the change in plans well enough, but if any of you still have questions, feel free to contact me.

- Matt (currently in: San Antonio, TX)