Monthly Archives: December 2004

$350 Million!

Asia

CNN’s home page is reporting that the U.S. has now raised their support to $350million. Now that’s more like it! That’s for the long term. The problem is what to do for the immediate problem. The water purifying ships and other vessels that are arriving around the Indian Ocean and planes filled with supplies are helping. Sadly there are still so many places that this stuff can’t get to – especially inland.

http://www.redcross.org

Cert Tests

Just Rambling

Darn – I just realized my test voucher for taking a cert test expires today. I figured I might as well go take that Web Services test cold. If I don’t pass, well, no different than throwing the cert away and if I do pass, I have an MCAD. Unfortunately, I think both of the local ctechs where I can take the test are closed. Oh well.

http://www.redcross.org

Resource for finding people in Chennai and other parts of India

Asia

from Anand M

I have been getting some comments from people trying to find information about friends in Chennai or India. I have started a new Blog called Tsunami India to help such people. If you want to know information about a friend, just mail me or post a comment in one of the blogs. If you know about someone being searched for, leave a comment in the appropriate post.

Do spread the news around, so that we can help people get in touch with friends and relatives.

http://www.redcross.org

Nieces and tablets

Tablet

One very bright spot this past week was visiting with my own “nieces”, actually the daughters of my cousin, Amy and Andrea. Their older brother has a fully outfitted Toshiba M200 – docking station and all, but they have never been allowed to touch it. So they were astonished that I let them use mine for hours and hours. Of course, they were thrilled with Math Practice and loved drawing, handwriting recognition and all of the coolness of it.



http://www.redcross.org

Yes – us geeks can help!

Asia

From Bali, Aceh Aid Bucket Brigade blog details the type of  skills that can be used on site:

Indonesian Language (essential)
Medical
Nursing
First Aid (wilderness/disaster first aid, not pre-hospital first aid, these people won’t get to hospitals)
Rescue and Evacuation
Emergency Sanitation (as in refugee camps, devastated/recovering villages)
Water Purification / Clean Water Systems

Also, they can use some technical help too

We are encountering some “desk work” that take up time we could be using to get medical supplies on planes, get relief workers into the field, coordinate with NGOs, etc. Things that don’t need to be done here. I mean work that could be “outsourced” to “virtual volunteers” (you?), such as updating our distribution list, and fixing it, making a database compiled from forms filled out by people applying as volunteers, maintaining specific lists, solving software problems by IM and email . . . .

We are doing lots of very important things here, that not many people in the world can do . . . in a language that most of you reading this will never need to learn to speak . . . so I think our time is crucial here on the ground in Indonesia . . .



http://www.redcross.org