Today was to be a major step forward in making the computer lab at Socorro School usable in an educational sense. "Was" is the operative verb. "Wasn't" is what we experienced.
This morning we did the chicken bus thing and got to La Antigua by 8:45 a.m. Since Linda had a blister on her toe, we decided to take a tuk-tuk to the school. Once there, we were admitted by the housekeeper, reported to the office and obtained the key to the hugh padlock on the lab door and began booting the computers that we had successfully worked on the previous Friday. That was when things started to fall apart.
On Friday, I had noticed something called "Deep Freeze" on one of the lab computers. I also noticed a small icon in the tray of all the functioning computers that I was unable to access. This morning, when the nine functioning computers had booted, I noticed, to my chagrin, that they were in exactly the same state they had been before I had worked on them the previous Friday. In other words, I had successfully failed to accomplish anything that Friday.
This being the case, I began to try to disable this "Deep Freeze" program. Since I don't have Internet access in the lab, I had to do it by using my wits. Since every attempt to disable this "Deep Freeze" program failed in Windows, I booted my trusty copy of Puppy Linux, a mini-Linux distribution that loads into memory, but contains a large number of tools and capabilities. It allowed me to access the C: drive, so I searched for the location of this "Deep Freeze" program and changed it's name in such a way that it shouldn't be able to run when I rebooted in Windows.
Rebooting once again in Windows with "Deep Freeze" hopefully disabled, I once again loaded the Avast anti-virus program and Advanced SystemCare 3 and ran both of them while we had our lunch. Once they finished their job, I once again rebooted.
Evidently, I didn't manage to achieve my objective, because upon rebooting, neither program had been retained. It was as if nothing had changed.
Faced with a lack of knowledge of how to deal with this situation and total frustration, we decided to call it a day at 1:00 p.m. Unfortunately, we had dropped our laundry off earlier that morning and couldn't pick it up until after 4:00 p.m.
Standing outside the school and not looking forward to walking all the way across La Antigua to get to where we wanted to go, I decided to paraphrase Shakespeare: "A tuk, a tuk. My kingdom for a tuk-tuk!" Evidently it worked as one almost immediately came down the street.
We headed for our favorite Pollo Campero, where we each had a cono helado suave while we figured out how we were going to spend the next three hours. We needed to go to the mercado and get some fruits and vegetables, but didn't want to lug them around for all afternoon. I needed to go to the Bodegona (this is the actual name of the store, which I've probably mangled over the last two weeks) for a CD, so that I could burn a copy of Clonezilla, a Linux-based hard drive cloning system I'd used in my lab back in Burlington. We went there first and picked up the CD for only Q3.25 (40 cents). That done, we headed over to Parque Central, found a bench in the shade and spent the next two hours reading Spanish, while beating off the vendors with our walking sticks (just kidding). Actually, all you have to do is say "no, gracias" constantly.
At about 3:30 p.m., we headed over to the mercado, where we found the produce we wanted and were willing to lug home that day. On the way back, since it was almost 4:00 p.m. and since we had eaten lunch at 11:00 a.m., we dropped in at McDonalds for one of their Big and Tasty combos, which actually live up to their name in Guatemala. Currently, McDonalds is running a scratch card promotion tied into the World Cup (fútbol, i.e. soccer), which is taking place later this year in South Africa. The big prize is one of eleven trips to the World Cup in South Africa, which I didn't win. Instead, I won a hot apple pie. Well, it's a start.
Leaving McDonalds, I decided to go to an ATM and get some cash, as our weekend had been rather pricey, for Guatemala, that is. What I found were long lines that made me remember that Monday is pay day in Guatemala and every bank and ATM in the country has long lines as workers withdraw the money they need to pay bills. I decided to wait until Tuesday afternoon to get what we needed, since we had enough for what we would be doing until then.
Our next stop was the street where we catch our bus back to our apartment, where I left Linda while I retrieved our laundry. When I returned, we quickly found a bus heading for Alotenango, which is on the road going right past our apartment. When I paid the ayudante, I told him that "Necesitamos salir el lejos fin del cemetario" and he nodded. Sure enough, when we started approaching the cemetery, one of our fellow passengers reminded me that we would need to get off soon. The ayudante, then crawled over the top of the bus, entering by the back door to help us off at our stop, which was exactly at the road to our apartment. As he was getting back on the bus, so it could depart, I told him that "estan el mejor" (they are the best), which caused him to smile.
Back in our apartment, it was time to put our produce away, work on our blogs and video chat with Susan. Tomorrow we go to Melotto School in Chimaltenango, which means a 5:00 a.m. start for the day, so we can take the 7:00 a.m. bus heading to Panajachel. I'm hoping that we can finish up this project for the time being. We might have to go back, however, as the school has applied for a computer donation from the Spanish embassy. If they get them, I hope they're not junk!
