Office views & scary scaffolding

alex October 13th, 2008

I’ve not posted up many photos recently, so here are a few I took last week of my office…

Wondwossens desk (server in bottom right corner)

Wondwossens desk (server in bottom right corner)

My desk

My desk

We’ve actually now tidied the office up a little bit, and I have another chair - one which has a back to it! I’ve mentioned before that it’s dusty here, well this is the state of the server that’s on the floor in my office:

I had to blow the dust/dirt out from the USB ports to get them to work, I’ve not actually looked inside the machine yet, but judging by these pictures, it’s probably not in a great state. It’s a relatively new machine too, and if we don’t get it cleaned up and moved I guess it’s not going to last too much longer. The server room downstairs is still in the process of being built - so the floor is thick with brick and plaster dust (whilst still in use as a server room), so I’m reluctant to move the machine until that room is completed.

Finally the view from my office window:

This is the scaffolding on one of the new office/residential they’re building at the Uni. Just on our campus there must be 5 or 6 new buildings going up. All the scaffolding in Ethiopia is just bits of wood nailed together - this photo was taken about 3 floors up and often you can see it all swaying around even in a light breeze.

2 Responses to “Office views & scary scaffolding”

  1. # Terri O'Sullivanon 15 Oct 2008 at 4:14 pm

    Hi Alex

    I was a VSO in MU from 2003-05, I wrote the proposal to the World Bank DIF fund that got the funding for the distance education project :) Happy that it’s still going!
    Another ex MU VSO who was my colleague came across your blog and sent me the link.

    I’m now back in Ethiopia, working in Addis. I know some current VSOs so I guess I might run into you sometime.
    I attended a meeting of an ICT SIG recently, which comprised people from various universities who are involved in the ADRCs - one was Samrawit who works in the Arid Campus of MU, in IT. She’s trying to set Moodle up there - seems there’s a lack of communication in the university as she wasn’t aware that it’s already being used for this project.
    I can give you more contacts & info if you drop me an email…I believe St. Marys college here in Addis are using Moodle also for distance learning and I know a guy who’s helping get it up and running in Kotebe Civil Service College.

    Say hi to Wondwossen for me - I think he’s the Wondwossen who was one of my students there :)

    Terri

  2. # alexon 16 Oct 2008 at 8:50 am

    Hi Terri - yes I’ve seen your name on quite a few documents etc so thanks for getting in touch. I’m going to send you an email soon - so long as the connection stays up! Cheers, A

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