Back (again) in San Francisco

Well, it starts being a lot of come backs...But i can't do anything about it, i'm just doing what i'm told. And last thursday, i've been told "Get in the car, we're leaving to Eugene, Oregon". And here we are after an ten hour ride. A damn beautiful state, Oregon, even if i didn't expect it to be so rainy... Reaching such a point that the sun's hidden at the very second we crossed the border. Ah green landscapes and wet climate remind me the Picardie, France, where i grew up. Nevertheless, we had a great weather for the ceremony day. Because yes we went there for the wedding of a friend of Mathias'. So four days fastly passed, with again a lot of encounters, and we're already back in SF. Without Mathias who flew away to Cuba.
I'm now alone in the office most of the time. So what do i do ? Audio editing for blueEnergy ! Dunno if i told you but when i was in Nicaragua, Maité Niel, one of the volunteers, gave an interview by phone on the french radio France Inter. So i made a version going to the essentials, by cutting all the gibberishes and the stupid replies of the presenter. For the interested ones, here it is. And now i'll have to start working seriously on my internship report, because my teacher wants it on June 5th...Too much work kills the work.

Ah, the Bay Area...

Back since a few days in this beautiful city of San Francisco, i quickly got back the american way of life : donuts, starbucks and subway. The weather's been nice with us on our come back, indeed we had a couple days over 90°F without no cloud, but it didn't stay long and the fog came back fastly. Definitely a pretty weird weather in here...But that was for us a smooth transition from Bluefields climat.
Yesterday occured a major event in San Francisco : Bay to Breakers. A freaking race across the city where about 1% of the participants are actually running, while the rest of them are walking costumed, drinking and doing tortillas fight. So i've been able to meet some of Mathias' former classmates and see the city boiling with these hundreds of thousands crazy people. Hard to get back to work this morning, but every issue can be solved with coffee, it's just a matter of quantity.
Talking about issues and work (it's funny how well these two words are matching) i've starded to seriously learn about Netsuite SuitScript, and this for the following reason : as the one receiving all the emails from people asking for info or support, i quickly realized that most of them are actually trying to sell viagra or gucci and rolex replicas. Thus i'm trying to find a solution to delete these spams automatically. I'm re-discovering programming joy...

Noticias de Nicaragua

Well, it's been too long, now it's time for me to write something on this page, just to make sure people don't believe i have nothing to talk about. Actually, that's the opposite, i've been so busy these days that i didn't find time to write. I'll thus try to make a summary of the facts of the week, and try to forget the least i can. So where do i start from ?First, about Netsuite, we had all the metings planed, and knowledge went from those who know how to do it to those who know what to do with it. Now with a bit of data in the system, we're going to be able to start doig interesting things. While i'm on the IT topic, we also talked about the creation of a database to handle the surveys in the communities, about the members, their gear and how they use it, but there is still some shadow areas on it, and that's why we called an expert, who works for Oracle i think.
And now, some general news about the actuality of bE in Bluefields. Thursday, the Inatec staff went to the casa bE to attend a presentation of the CERCA project : a building which would be cosntructed inside the school, representing the spirit of bE, energy autonomy, rain water filtration, and among others a bunch of hotel rooms, big dinig rooms, art galery. The aim is to promote Bluefields as the small scale capital of the energy, and to develop an ecotourism. That was also a chance to show them the brand new operator manual which will be dealt in the communities.
Then arrived the film crew : Xavier, David and Quentin, three french guys who're coming to shoot a documentary on the bE action, and now they're following us in all our adventures.
Busy ady Saturday since we started early in the morning with Bluefields cemetery where Colette made a speech as a tribute to Miss Nora, the woman who worked with her on her Rama language project, passed away in 2002. By the way there is an awesome view of the Inatec turbines from the cemetery. Then gathering at the Inatec for the ceremony ending the week of training of the operators i told you about, and where they got their diploma. Afterward ,each of them has been interviewed by the film crew.
To end the day, a little party was necessary, but not to long, because the day after we woke up at 7am to go to Rama Cay, a trip organized by Colette to offer another tribute to Miss Nora, by doing two presentations, one in the school in the morning, and another one in the church in the afternoon. A chance for me to re-discover this little island where people are piling up on each other, and to get back completely soggy after the trip in panga, by foot because the cabs are still on strike here, and the strikers are slashing the tires of those who would rather work.
This is gently leading us until today, when i stayed in front of my pc all the day, to change a little bit. That's already the end on this trip, and the day after tomorrow, we're going to Managua to get back to San Francisco. It's crazy how fast passed these eleven days, but that's not like i fi were going back home :)

Presentation at the Inatec

Today there was a big meeting at the Inatec for an historic presentation for blueEnergy, marking the beginning of class sessions given to local people for a clean and efficient use of the systems when bE staff is away. Thus a representative of each community within bE has a system came, and with them plus the employees and the volunteers, it's not been too hard to fulfill the classroom lend to us. Very interesting presentations, touching a wide panel of topics, from energy with a upcase E in general to the systems themselves, crossing safety signs and importance of accounting. The aim is to start getting autonom the communities owning a system.


It was also an opportunity for me to re-discover the Inatec and bE workshop which has changed a lot since the last time i came. Much more room and much more organization, and one more turbine.


Also some prototypes of a water filter designed by the bE crew. Nobody ventures to drink te water yet, but that's a pretty good start. If you'r interested, i invite you to read Stephanie's blog where she's explaining the different steps of the process to create such a filter.

Back to Bluefields

And everything has changed ! At least about blueEnergy, because the rest kept it the same way. Thus arrival yesterday at 3pm after a chaotic trip in one of those 20-sit plane where you feel like the pilot drank too much beer. In the new casa blueEnergy, the former small crew became a volunteer army, and in the backyard, there are like fifteen people working on Guillaume's house building, despite the hot sun of Sunday afternoon.


Construction is going pretty fast : difference between 4 and 10pm was already impressive, i can't imagine how it was the day before. Mathias and I are thus sleeping at Guillaume's, in what you now can decently call a house.
Today i installed an ethernet wire crossing all the place, to bring some Internet at G's. Longer and more exhaustong than it may appear... These days, a good part of the volunteers are working all day long on the creation of a powerpoint for some presentation happening in the next few days. So i can hardly gather interested people for my little lesson on NetSuite items. During this time i keep on learning by myself and try to collect potentially interesting information. SuiteScript APIs (javascript libraries) which are offered allow to manipulate all the data in the system. They look powerful and with multi-purpose, opportunity to investigate...

Help me !

Here we are, back in our little noisy office on Mission St, to start working seriously on Netsuite. First, creation of a beautiful email template to respond our dear visitors in lack of information or support. But in fact, i spend most of the time on the help center which is, i must confess, one of the most complete and useful i've never seen. Just one issue, half the features explained there are not available with our licence...I seem like learning a lot of things for nothing, but Mathias is negociating to obtain us these advanced features.