Katrina Day 1

After my short night, I was really dragging Tuesday morning but excited to find out more about the mission. I had a 15 minute drive down to the main Red Cross warehouse to meet the rest of the Intel team. Of course, thanks to the Austin freeway system, it took about 30.

I signed in with the front desk, had my photo taken for an official Red Cross badge (more on that later), and did intros with the other Intel volunteers. Sites represented included Santa Clara and Folsom (CA), Raleigh (NC), Hillsboro (OR), Chandler (AZ), and Rio Rancho (NM). In general, they were all technical staffers, but I was surprised to learn that some were from the sales force. I wasn't, however, surprised to learn that I was the only finance person. In general, I tried to mumble that part of the intro. "Hi, I'm Matt from mobile chipset *cough*finance*cough* in Santa Clara." Gotta keep my rep, bro. I never did a count, but there were probably about ten Intel volunteers on site. There are others already out "in the field."


After a brief overview from the Intel lead (the Red Cross overview was delayed to tomorrow to wait for a few stragglers arriving tonight), we got a tour of the facility and a highlight of its mission. Then, it was time to get to work. The first job on our to-do list was to unpack, inventory, and load the Red Cross software image onto the thousands of laptops donated by Intel and Dell (although we only worked on Dells today). The unpacking process was very manual labor intensive, but it had to be done. Then, we connected them, 112 at a time, to a private LAN and used Ghost to multicast an image. Then, they were off to get packed for delivery to the hundreds of individual field sites. These PCs primarily get used by the Red Cross for their administrative functions and for evacuee communications (personal email, etc).


A pretty uneventful day, but we did get 700+ PCs ready to go for shipment tomorrow. We have a few hundred more to get through in the morning, and then it'll be time for the next line on the list. As a mere worker bee, I have no clue what that will be, but the Intel lead did say that we would likely eventually be scattering the team out into "the field" to assist with PC and network setup. Sounds like that might happen towards the end of the week.

So far, a pretty dry account of the trip. I'll try to get into some more commentary in my next update, but my lack of sleep last night is really catching up on me....

Katrina Day 0

In the weeks before I left, it seemed like this trip was coming together in slow motion. I exchanged email after email with the organizers before my participation was settled. Just as the trip loomed, we were all put on hold as Rita threatened Texas. After her unexpected turn to the east, we got the request on Saturday to attempt a Sunday/Monday departure. I had a few loose ends to tie up on Monday morning, so I scheduled my flight for Monday afternoon.

Flying through Phoenix, I didn't get to Austin until around 10:30pm. After picking up my car (a 4x4 SUV, a first for a rental for me), I spent about 45 minutes making the 20 minute drive to the hotel. I've lived in California for three years now, and driven in many other huge cities in the US: New York, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco. But, Austin takes the cake for the most confusing, bizarre highway system I've ever seen. It seems like every trip involves a few U-turns... BY DESIGN! I'm not kidding-- I really can't explain how bizarre it is. It looks like it works pretty well once you know what you're doing, but it's a nightmare for visitors.

In any case, I was settled into the hotel room by 11:30 or so. They had booked us into Embassy Suites. The setup is great-- bedroom + living room/kitchenette. Not really sure how many days I'll be here in Austin (vs. other sites), but it will be easy to do it in such a spacious suite.

Huge mistake of the night: turning on the TV "just for a minute" while I was sorting out my luggage. The Tennessee/LSU game was being rerun on ESPN-- I missed it while I was flying to TX. Long story short, it was 3am before I finally turned off the light. The 7am wakeup really hurt....