It has been an intensley frustrating few days, but there are a few reasons to be hopeful.
OK, firstly the mobile phones are working at Djuma again!! This is huge. It means that Herman doesn’t have to keep driving up to Gowrie gate every so often to make contact with the outside world. Also, Pete Braat has cut his break short by one day, flew from Cape Town to Nelspruit this morning, and is about 30 minutes out of Djuma right now.
Herman has managed to establish that the microwave link that gets our main Internet connection to Djuma (not the link that the LIVE stream goes out on) is ‘fried’! It would have been right in the path of the lightning bolt. A new one has been configured in Hoedspruit, but the technician wjo needs to bring it to Djuma and install it, is stuck on the wrong side of the Blyde river and is having to sandbag a crossing to get to us!! More on that in a few hours …
The main issue of course is our stream line to Pretoria. Well, after hours and hours on the phone I have finally managed to achieve a consensus that the Matis node is the problem and not our router … phew! As a result, Telkom is now trying to dispatch a technician from Nelspruit who will then replace the interface card in the Matis node, and with a bit of luck the stream will ‘pop up’ on your desktops moments later. :-)
WE know that you are all waiting around the world and hopefully it will not be for too much longer, although i do suspect that it will only happen tmorrow morning (hopefully in time for the AM drive). I would also like to apologise to our brand new client; SomethingTV for the delay of the launch of WildEarth.TV on your platform. WE promise to make it up with the best wildlife channel in the world … it’s in our nature.
I agree with RandyW, as I also have been catching up on housework, mending, ironing….YUK!
But am I impressed with the dedication of the WE Team.
Thank you Herman for all the trips to the Gate and the work, trying to find the “problem”.
Thank you Pete for interrupting your leave to rush back for us. I hope you did not miss something too important.
Thank you to everyone behind the seens and the technitions, even re-
routing rivers to get the job done!
Graham and Emily, thank you so much for all the sleepless hours managing all this mess and still
keeping us up to date.
Love you guys-
Judy
NE Florida
What is so amazing about all this is that you manage to maintain such first-class communication to everyone “out here”. We appreciate it more than you can imagine and wish you the best of luck in finally getting things sorted out. Wishing you a few days of extra sleep to make up for things!
Thanks for all you have been doing to get things back in shape.
I miss you all and hope to see you up again soon. I am getting some paper work done in the meantime so for me it is probably a Blessing that you are not on for a few days. I hope you can all relax and know everyone understands that these things happen.
And one other thing-the photos of Karula’s cubs are fabulous. Yeah to whoever took them!!
Oh, bless your hearts! We miss you all so very much. Take care of yourselves though and get some rest too! I’m sure a lot of us feel helpless and wish we could do something. We’ll be waiting for you.
As a Systems Engineer with some field experience, I can understand, but I can only imagine what the challenges must be like in your area. Keep up the great work!
Hope you get it fixed soon. We miss it but understand. All things happen for a reason. We take so much for granted. We don’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone. We’ll be here when you get it back on.
Oh, bless your hearts! We appreciate you and miss you so much. Take care of yourselves and get some rest. We’ll be waiting for you.
It’s good to hear you are getting a leg up on the problems. As a result of your detailed posts I am getting a lesson in the geography of South Africa – I go and look up each place you refer to.
Thanks to Herman and Pete and Graham and Emily and everyone else who has been working so hard to get this fixed. As you can see, we are all “hooked” on WE and having pangs without it, but we appreciate all your efforts SO much! Please DO get some rest and take care of yourselves, too! Meanwhile, it’s been enjoyable looking at the archives – they are wonderful. WE’s people are the best – it’s in your nature!
WE know you are doing your best.
It’s great to hear that things are starting to fall into place. I just hope you all are able to get a bit of rest during all of this. Meanwhile I am being forced to clean my house. Horrors!
RandyWI