Amazing Installfest

First of all, I would like to thank NTR. Without Stan and the whole crew at NTR the installfest would not have been the great success that it was. Thanks Stan, Chuck, James, Marcel, and the thrift store lady.

It's 7:30 am the Yoda Van is loaded and ready to go. Time to go to Wawa and Dunkin' Donuts and grab the cream cheese and coffee. Fire up irc chat - bam - Lyz must have been waiting for someone to arise - Lyz explains that she would not be able to attend. Bummer. Totally understand. All the preparation that Lyz performed was vital to the success of the event, it is truly a shame that she could not attend. I hope that all the blogs, mailing list, forum entries, and hopefully photos, give her and everyone who could not attend a glimpse of what they missed.

Grab Randy (aka Teddy D Bear) and Teddy and head down Broad st. Alex and Gabby arrive, followed by Stan and Kevin. Its ON.

James, one of the NTR employees that I had met on a previous visit arrives. He's excited. After 120 hours of work all NTR employees get a computer. When I had met James, he had just purchased a Red Hat Administration guide because of previous talks with Kevin, and looked forward to attending the installfest to watch. Well today Stan would be giving James his computer; a g4 Power Mac. He was truly excited.

Stan opens up the workshop and the preparation begins; the only thing that we really had to do was setup the greeting table (great job Gabby and Alex) and verify that all the tables had a working network connection. Everything was perfect - 10 tables setup. It seems that as soon as we were setup, people started to arrive.

(Please forgive me with the names, I remember faces and computers and setups, and there was a point in the day when; bam; there were people everywhere coming from all directions. As I try to recreate the goings on, I apologize if I miss you, your computer, or the setup)

Owen was the first arrival I remember. He heard about us via PACS and came on down. He didn't bring his computer. No problem, he lives in NE Philly and thankfully had enough time to go home, get the box and return.

Musa arrives with his uncle. Musa has two laptops, his and his fathers. I begin to work with Musa, as kevin takes his uncle. His uncle has a legacy laptop (very similar to an Acernote that I had) and kevin goes to work with a puppy install. This was a tricky install, no cd, pop the hard drive, put it in a desktop with a 2.5 to 3.5 converter and install os. Pop out and put the hard drive back in the laptop and pray. Sometimes it just doesn't work, but the uncle was cool with it and checked out the NTR laptops and was going to get one of those as soon as possible.

Rich G shows up with his linux box that has a sound problem and Randy gets to work on that.

Dave from PACS shows up with a laptop and Alex goes to work.

Ben shows up after the SAT's followed closely by Chris F. The troops have arrived. Another gentleman shows to help - don't know him at all but he was great.

I am about to finish with Musa's install and he's on the cell phone telling his wife to bring down the desktop and call people and tell them to bring their boxes. WOW.

Marcel, one of the NTR employees, comes in with a box. Young kid, very interested, so we start on his install. Smart kid, young and interested. He basically does his own install; Ubuntu is a little too overwhelming for his box, so I switch him to Xubu and he does his own. Install completes, and he spends the rest of the day theme-ing up his install, setting it up the way he wants, and helping me with installs. We created an Ubuntero!

Joe T and Christina arrive and get busy helping.

I see a bunch of people I recognize, the 2 mac brothers, and the beryl concrete driver with the disco HP from PACS. A lady from MALT ( I think) and Owen returns with a HUGE desktop (got enough room for expansion, Owen?)

Musa's wife arrives with the desktop. She has a Mary Kay cosmetic business, so I get her setup and show her that Ubuntu has all the software that she needs to run, manage and promote her business. She calls her sister-in-law and another friend and tells them to get down here. Her nephew Christian is with her and I tell him that when his mother and friend arrive that he's going to do those installs. He's ready for the challenge! Nice family. Their daughter was there all day and was amazingly well behaved.

Chuck from NTR gets a chance for him and Randy to start the external drive install and James comes in with his MAC.

While James is patiently waiting for someone to get started on his Mac, Stan gives him a desktop and a laptop to install Ubuntu on. James successfully completes the desktop, but can't get the cd to read on the laptop. Good job James.

There is a guy, I don't know him, who installed on his laptop, and then on a new drive on a desktop. All by himself, just wanted to do it at the installfest in case he had any problems. Good job that guy, way to go; glad we could be your security blanket.

Terri, Wes, and the young man (Michael, I think; decaf coffee drinker) from Malt arrive and Kevin and Alex start to assist them.

Now Joe Mac aka Joe Terranova, starts to perform the install on James' G4. During this time I see Kevin and Joe muttering something about Jobs and Woz, and their hardware platform. What year is it? What time is it. Sudo. Sudo who.
PPC, not for the feint-hearted. Joe Mac summoned all the lessons from his previous Tang Soo Do training and eventually beat the Mac. Kamsahamnida!

Christina goes from Ubu brown to Prince purple.

Tom the construction guy from the northeast who saw Kevin's flyer that I posted on Cottman ave at the former Coffee Tree Rest shows up. I had been wondering who took the tabs off that flier, if they registered, etc. Everyday on the way to work I pass and watch that flier. Saw tabs missing, and actually got to meet the guy who grabbed a tab.

Vinay and his wife, the linux wife, come down from Downingtown. He is instructed by his wife to have linux installed on the Dell laptop. (good woman)
Ben immediately starts to attack the machine.

Rich S, Pacslinux sig leader, shows up looking for help with one of his boxes, and Chuck from Ntr starts to help Rich.

Now to the parking lot, to release a few of the attendees. The parking lot is crammed, Musa's family is back to pickup their pc's, and people have to leave.

Tom the construction worker is being done by the guy that I still don't know, and Ben has to go to plans b,c,d,e on the dell. The Dell proved to be a problem, and Ben had to leave. Ben passed the Dell to me. Too late in the day to struggle with a problem PC, asked Vinay to bring the dell to PACS and I will finish what we started.

Clean up and go.

Big thanks to Stan's wife for letting him play with us so late, and I hope we didn't mess up your date night.

What an event! I hope that if you could not attend, this little play by play, as I can remember it, helps you get a feeling for the day we had.