The Roes Garden

Being the head geek with eDOT means that I have to try and figure out ways of doing things that are on the cheap side. We still want to do things that look and work very professionally but we just have very tight budgets being in the missions world. Therefore, I just wanted to share with you some of the different open source and/or free software we/I use:

• Moodle - a LMS (Learning Management System) that we use to develop and run courses in. We also use it for several internal discussion boards.
• Wordpress - originally developed as a blogging system, it also is able to be used as a CMS (Content Management System). We use it for many of our websites that we develop for other groups.
• WordPressMU - a multi-user, multi-blog version of Wordpress that we use for our eDOT Teams website where we create a location for each team that comes on a short term trip to train them and help with intra-team communication.
• VMWare Server - a Virtual Machine server that allows us to quickly put up testing and production areas without interferring with our other areas and not requiring us to go out and purchase more equipment.
• Deki Wiki - yes, they have a free version. You just have to really look through their site to find it. This is perhaps one of the easiest to use Wikis out there. It has a great user interface and some great ways of interacting with our other systems. We use this to maintain documentation about, well, everything from server configurations to how to load a piece of software to documenting the projects we are working on.

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Ok, I’ve been a slacker and not posted in a little while but I’ve got a few things to post so hopefully, I can sit down and write them out. The first thing I’m going to post though is that I GOT TAGGED. Cheryl, who is the wife of my BFF back in the States, decided I needed to be tagged. So in following the rules (I’m becoming a good German boy), I now need to share 7 random and/or weird facts about myself. Those of you that know me, know I had to narrow DOWN the list to just 7.

1. From 3rd thru 12th grade I went by the name of Herbert. Courtney is actually my middle name. For six generations, the men in my family have had Herbert as first names with different middle names (except for my Grandfather and I) and all have gone by their middle names except my great-grandfather (his name was Adolf and it was the 1930’s & 1940’s - go figure) and myself. In 2nd grade too many kids made jokes about my name being a girl’s name (not entirely true) so I switched to Herbert in 3rd grade. In 12th grade, several girls found out my middle name was Courtney and said that was really cool and that they liked that name. So when I went off to college, back to Courtney it was. The power of women.
2. I use a Mac. Which might not be a weird fact except that I’m a computer professional and people think that “real” computer geeks only use Windows. Well, I’m here to tell you that there’s a lot you can do with a Mac and still be a real geek. Besides, with my Mac I can run OS X, Windows XP, Ubuntu, CentOS, etc. all on one box and it handles it pretty well. Now I’m not a “Oh, Mac is to die for and Steve Jobs is the ultimate” kind of Mac user. Depending on what you use a computer for, Windows may be the best solution for you.
3. My resume is the weirdest thing people have looked at. If I actually put down all my jobs since starting high school it would include (only a partial list): retail clerk for an outdoor equipment store, owner of a lawn mowing business, horse wrangler for a camp in Colorado, security officer for a theme park, sound technician, stage lighting technician, armed security officer for a private policing company, construction gopher, waiter, cook, bartender, dishwasher, host, busboy, customer service rep for an electrical motor repair company, computer equipment buyer, solutions designer for computer/telephony solutions, systems analyst for a software team, project manager for a software development team, Lotus Domino developer, Lotus Domino administrator, web developer, business owner of a Domino/web development company and now a missionary geek.
4. I like to dance when no one is looking. I’m seriously afraid that my wife will put in one of those hidden cameras and then post my dancing on YouTube or something. I didn’t say I CAN dance only that I like to dance (with no one watching is the key).
5. This goes with the dancing but I have a serious affinity to Techno, House and Dance music. I’m very inspired by the works of Andy Hunter and World Wide Message Tribe although Scott Blackwell and his Nitro label do good for me too. Its one of the few things that the French and I have in common.
6. Since moving to Germany, I have this strange habit of bashing the French. I mean its a beautiful country and I go over there quite often (its only 20 km away) but did you know that French people live there? The funniest thing to me is that you can tell this story about somebody doing something totally weird or ridiculous and then end it with - “oh, and they’re French” and that can be accepted as reason for them to act that way in my mind.
7. I’ve jumped out of a perfectly good airplane along with rock climbed, rappelled, kayaked, white water rafted, rode in a Nascar car at 130 mph, and other adrenaline junkie things. At amusement parks about the only thing I don’t like to do are things that go around in circles. That probably stems from the time I stayed on the “Swinging Chairs” ride for 10 cycles in a row (no one was in line). Oh, did I mention I’d just eaten?

Ok, so now I’ve got to choose the 7 people I’m going to tag:

1. Laura, a fellow eDOT’er and our web developer
2. Ted, another missionary who works with GEMStone Media
3. Kristi & Steve, GEM missionaries in Romania
4. Mutating Missionary, I just really like her pictures
5. John & Amy, some more missionaries with GEMStone Media
6. Kelly, a missionary in Slovakia
7. Matt, a missionary who focuses on missionary teens

I have fulfilled my commitment. I am finished.

We just sent out a Newsletter email that had a link to the Photo Album and that link does not work (but brings you to the home page). Sorry about that but you can click on this link if you do want to get to the Photo Album. Our apologies.

While Krista and Alex were reading a book one day where one character calls another “Sweetpea”……

Krista: “Sweetpea? You know I call you Sweetpea sometimes too?”

Alex: “Don’t call me ‘Sweetpea’! Call me DEATHDRONE!!!”

Now ends the age of innocence.

Ok, I’m not going to get technical on you but this last week we had finally decided that we needed to buy new phones in our house. The batteries were not lasting that long and we couldn’t have more than one person on the phone at a time (which is a problem when you use your phone for mainly talking with family overseas). So on Sunday we set up this great new phone and after translating the manual from German, we got it all set up, batteries charged, phone numbers entered into the “phone book”, special ringtone selected, etc. So we plugged it in and Alex really wanted to be able to call Grandma and Grandpa on the new phone so we dialed in their number and we heard nothing. We tried several times and nothing. No ringing nothing. So we dialed my handy (also known as a cell phone) and sure enough my cell phone rang but when I answered, I could hear stuff on the handy but not on the phone. So I called from my handy to our home number and the phone rang, we answered and it worked perfectly. So what is the deal?Well, after re-translating the manual (again) and then searching online for an English version of the manual, I could not find the issue. Now the way things get set up here in Germany when you have a high speed DSL line (mine is 16 Mbps download with a 1 Mbps upload - sometimes 1.5), you can not plug your phone directly into the phone outlet. This extra pull on the line causes you to loose your Internet connection. So our phone is connected through our DSL Modem/Router called a Fritz Box. So to test to make sure that the phone was the problem, I connected it directly to the phone outlet and well, what do you know - it worked find. So the problem was between our phone and our Fritz box. Did I mention that our Fritz Box only has German in it? So after translating all of the configuration pages on the Fritz Box setup, I still didn’t know what the problem was. Long story short (too late!), I upgraded the software for the Fritz Box and the phone started working just perfectly.

Now it has come to my attention that during all of this, that when we were so excited to call Grandma & Grandpa with the new phones that we forgot to look at the time we were calling them. As you might have guessed, we called them right in the middle of church time. Did I mention we that we remembered that they were traveling so we called them on my dad’s cell phone? They were traveling so that they could visit some new churches in our denomination and there was a good possibility that they were sitting right up front when we called and since I just now got the phone so that we can call out, I haven’t been able to speak to them about what happened.. So let me take this time to say to my Mom & Dad, I’m sorry for calling you during Sunday services and I am hoping that you had your phone on vibrate. Of course, my Dad probably didn’t have it on vibrate because who would ever call him during that time - everyone knows he’d be at church!

[Update: Mom & Dad were in a Sunday School class and had just been introduced when his phone went off. Better than when he was speaking in the church service!]