[sf-lug] little electrician help?

[Christian Einfeldt]

As some of you know, there is a nice experiment in FOSS in education
unfolding at a public middle school in the Western Addition in San
Francisco.  They have paid for a Linux file server; they have FOSS boxes in
the classrooms for kids to use for googling and basic word processing; and
they have a Linux edubuntu thin client lab.

But we are kind of feeling our way along with the Linux thin client lab.  We
are really just a bunch of novices trying to provide them with a Linux lab,
for the most part.  One example of our newbie status is that we apparently
overloaded the electrical circuits in the room to which our thin client lab
was moved this summer.  And so now our bright shiny little Linux star is
down due to the fact that we can't find the circuit breakers.

The principal has said that she will call out the San Francisco Unified
School District, but we shouldn't expect a reply in less than 30 days.  We
think that we have found the circuit breakers, and we flipped the switches
back and forth, but no joy.

The problem actually only exists with half of the thin clients on the
network.  The server and half of the boxes are on a different circuit, so
that when the circuit when down, we lost only half the thin clients.  Well,
about 60% of the thin clients, so over half.

It would be kind of sad to have gone to all of this work to get this lab up
and running, only to have lost it due to something as banal as a power
outage.  If there is anyone in the Bay Area who would like to help with this
effort, we would really appreciate it.

It's really sad that our school system is so badly underfunded.  But 75% of
our students come from households below the federal poverty guidelines.  The
kind of inspiring thing about our school is that this underfunded school
came in first last year in academic testing.  So the kids and teachers are
doing their best with a really limited situation.

Thanks either way in advance.
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