My team has done drops in 8 locations since Sunday. We've deployed over 40 PCs and configured over 20 more for another group to deploy. 5 of those drops were today, in shelters all around Fort Worth. We managed to get through the bureaucracy a few days ago and hook up directly with City of Ft. Worth Emergency Management IT, so today we were doing drops at shelthers they had prepped for us. SBC came in and dropped lines, and we followed them with desktops and laptops, then went to the next location.
Most of our deployments have just been base Knoppix installs, but I'm going to take a look at this image tonight. For now people have just been desperate to have browser access of any kind, so we've being dropping these as fast as we can, til we run out of machines or shelters to put them in. Base Knoppix has been great for what we've needed, which is a setup that will run on completely obsolete hardware we can mostly just power up and then leave behind, with instructions to reboot it if it has any issues and if that doesn't fix it, throw it in the trash. The deployments are starting to slow down, so if this image looks like it would work out I will get disks burned and go around replacing CDs over the weekend.
I don't know what I can tell you that would be useful, I'm kind of braindead after today. When the PCs work, the CDs are great. Our oddest and most successful drop today was a Best Western that had 200 refugees and wanted 3 computers. They directed us to the "Wild West Suite" and we had 3 machines booted to redcross.org in 9 minutes. Other drops went less well just because the donated hardware didn't all work and in some cases we had to just keep moving parts between machines until we could get even 4 working....
That's all I got right now. I'm taking tomorrow off for my kid's birthday, so I'll actually be able to keep an eye on this thread. Let me know if you have any specific questions. If I can get a build with the things I listed above, I'll update the CDs over the weekend.Oh, and I just got a lead on 20 more machines to deploy. I'm not sure I have a place for them yet, so if anyone in this area is desperate for them, post contact info here and I'll get with you.
And for those that are posting that they are trying to call shelters and getting run around, throw your phone away, you need to get on site with a van full of boxes. Walk in the door, through the metal detectors, and find the volunteer sign in table. Tell the person there you're there to install a computer lab and need to speak with a coordinator. If they don't already have a lab or need a bigger one you will probably be put in touch with their IT director almost immediately and they will be very happy to see you. This is really true of any volunteering you want to do. Don't bother asking if they need you, they do. The phone systems are too slow and overwhelmed for you to find anyone that way, just show up and they will process you.
Quote of the day: "Can we use these computers to to find family?" "Help yourself." "OH THANK YOU JESUS."