To borrow and reinvigorate some recently less-than-popular phraseology - Mission Accomplished.

On my latest blog entry, Reunion Part I: Making a Connection, I decribed working with a small team of friends and co-workers to establish a wireless bridge network connection to enable the mobile medical command centers at Reunion Arena, now a Katrina Disaster Relief Center, to have access to the Internet. This was crucial, because this allowed doctors to upload and download Katrina survivor data to their respective hospitals. It will also help to allow to them to move from paper to keyboard in registering the identity of thousands of evacuees.

I also touched on the massive effort being put forth in these two Disaster Centers, Reunion Arena and The Convention Center, both of which sit on the same block in downtown Dallas. Reunion has essentially become the initial processing center in Dallas, and the Convention Center is the main housing for, as I said, what can only be described in population terms as a large town. You can just imagine this herculean effort being repeated in several major cities around the South and Midwest to house more than a half a million displaced citizens from the region, possibly more. At this point it's difficult to say how many 10's of thousands have been moved through Dallas, or are still there, or how many more are coming. I do know that on the second day I was there, we saw a wave of new evacuees, and a much more visible presence at every entrance comprised of Dallas Police, National Guard, FEMA, and Red Cross.

My boss, the genesis of this whole idea to extend our services to this disaster, took a few pictures on his camera phone of what the Reunion Arena has been converted into.

This Picture is of the floor of the arena, which is now filled with beds. We didn't want to get much closer, or take pictures of the people themselves, because theyv'e been ogled and prodded all day long. Just one of the many unfortunate side-effects of being an evacuee is that you lose individuality and privacy. I would not say they are being treated poorly, quite the opposite. I would just say that there seems no way to provide such a large number of people the simple dignities they've been robbed of in their former lives. So we refrained from bothering them as much as possible in our efforts. They had Katrina in their faces, they didn't need us, too.

My boss (John) put together a "fire team" of people overnight, beginning Friday. His iniital idea was just to install an Internet Access Tent, where survivors could get online, get news, send and receive emails to other family members, etc. He brought in people both inside and outside of our company, all with skill sets ranging from me (boneheaded organic forklift), to mechanical expertise (Brad, who provided some handyman know-how), to technical consultants (Mike and Pat, and others). They went out onsite on Saturday, and went to work finding out what they needed. When it became clear that SBC had already provided the Internet Access, they dug further, asking Facilities, SBC, doctors, Red Cross adminstrators and the like just what it was they needed most from a bunch of techheads. They answered - they needed a way to get the Internet outside of the building. The medical processing command centers were virtually cut off. They also just needed more PC's and laptops for existing connections.

This Picture, then, is the result of 72 hours of heated discussion and frustration and determination and innovation. More to the point, this is the product of many geeky inventive minds...this is basically a "bridge in a box". Not anything terribly new, but then again, it fulfills a lot of purposes.

For those of you that may not know what a "Network Bridge" is, here's a quick primer. If you don't keep up, don't worry, I just regurgitate this stuff, I don't know what it means either other than so many handy buzzwords that make me sound like I have a clue. Anyhoo - basically what they made was a "Brouter" - a network bridge and a router combined in one box. A network bridge connects one local area network (LAN) to another network (in this case, the Medical Command Centers to the existing SBC network) that uses the same protocol. But a bridge can usually only give one path to a another LAN. Where the router comes in is that it connects a network to one or more other networks that are usually part of a wide area network (WAN). In this way, several different access points were given via our one "bridge". Translation - people in the RV's could surf the web. That means they can use it to communicate the aforementioned vital data on survivors.

The idea was to make something portable, ruggedized and secure. Also something basically weathertight, that would provide room for multiple routers, and also connections for incoming and outgoing antennae. So Brad, John, Mike and Pat purchased a "Stack-On" Toolbox - standard fare in any garage in America. Brad drilled holes, through which they fastened the antennae to the wireless routers, as well as the box's single "Rabbit Ear", a high gain transmitting antenna. Once complete, all you have to do is line up the box in a rudimentary "line of sight" with the RV's, or where ever access is needed, and bada-bing, bada-boom - you've got high-speed SBC Internet floating over your head.

It had many codenames. "The Package", "The Football", "The Unit", "The Bag Network", "The Bomb"...although the latter we said under our breath - we were only surrounded by uniformed national guard, half of the Dallas Police Force, FEMA, and several other people that would simply not find it very funny to be talking about a tool box with wires hanging out of it as a "bomb." John made all the standard jokes about dropping in an alarm clock and maybe some talcum powder that would billow out ominously if the box were shaken in any way. But when a uniformed corporal from the National Guard started eyeballing us funny, we decided to save our snark for the bar. Cuz hey - who wants to get shot trying to be nice, right? So we did our due diligence explaining to the Fire Marshal, the National Guard, Red Cross, the Dallas Police, the Building Manager, and FEMA that this black steel box we were going to chain to their building was perfectly harmless. We jokingly considered putting "Not a Bomb" on a sticker...but that seemed just a tad too much explanation, and possibly like some goofy attempt at terrorist reverse psychology. So we just explained. And explained again. And then we shut up. What? You get 6 hours of sleep in 3 days and you'd have woefully inappropriate humor, too.

Day one was mainly requirements gathering and making purchases. Day two was more frustrating. They got it working, but one of the routers crapped out. We were getting intermittant signal strength. The good news, however, is that we were getting reasonable signal strength down on the floor of the arena, where Red Cross could take a laptop and start interviewing folks if need be. Day three, we were running out of time, however. They were talking about moving the busses across the street, where they could run hardlines. But this would mean relocating all of the processing. They were also talking about going to a much more expensive option - outfitting new laptops with Verizon CDMA cards for their PCMCIA slots, which basically turns the PC into cell phone that accesses the Internet over existing Verizon towers. That option would run $300 per card, plus $60 a month for whoever decided to foot the bill. It was impractical, but it would work, and work immediately. Our option, however, was growing stale the more we worked on it. Expensive and viable is still better than cheap and useless.

We worked all day, John mostly, to establish a connection. After 7 hours, he found the problem. The documentation that came with the new router was lacking a crucial piece of information, that he figured out on his own. It was getting on to be 5pm, and Al, our charities contact, was going to have to go home to the family. Finally, John looked at me over "The Package", and threw his fist out to bump mine to let me know he had excellent signal strength. It was working. "For the Hoo-Ha", he said.

Lemme 'splain. A few people have asked us "Why are you doing all of this - to get business?" Trust me, there's no business to be gotten from this. Moreover, it's a huge exposure - we could very well be known as the little company that failed to help, or provided a rickety solution to a problem. This wasn't about marketing or profiteering. Our company name never even came up actually, only Al's, which is a charity organization. No one even knows who we are, and no, I'm not even going to tell you here. So when we were asked that just one too many times, John and I decided exactly why we were doing this. For the chicks. For women. Yep. "For the Hoo-Ha".

So there ya go. It worked. It took 3 days, 3 routers, lots of coffee in the morning and beer at night, but it worked. We delivered "The Package", one desktop, several laptops, and may still give a few more desktops before it's over. Plus we've pledged our ongoing support to keep them all working.

They are still streaming in down there, and they still need all of our help and prayers. Though New Orleans may be emptying out, it doesn't help these people today, or tomorrow. Though they may have a cot on a hard floor, and 3 squares a day, what they've gained back in our meager understanding they've lost several times over in their own realization that their homes are gone, and their city, an entire city, has been washed away.

Let's hope they can put it right again. It will take a helluva lot more than coffee and beer, though, to figure that one out. It's going to take heart, and miracles, and one more important thing. You.

Give what you can.

DM out