Some Shine Brighter...

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

I don't really know when it started...

This social acceptance of hyperbole and verbal exaggeration...not that I'm not prone to it myself from time to time.

"Folks, that was an absolute heroic effort on Tiger's part on hole 11."

"Did you see that concert? It was Awesome".

"That movie blew me away".


No, "heroic" is when 500 women and men run into a blazing skyscraper to save as many as they can, fully knowing they may not come out behind the safety of those they saved.





Awesome is the "Finger of Satan" descending down with such magnitude that it wipes out and kills every member of the community...their bodies found as far away as 60 miles in a lake...entire homes were picked up and thrown for miles...ripped right off of their foundations and turned to confetti. A demon that measured 3/4 miles across and produced constant winds of 320 mph.

That's "awesome"....albeit terribly so.








And "blown away"? I've seen "Blown Away"...in more than one sense.

You do not want to see "Blown Away".






So, sensitive as I may be to semantics and verbal communications, I worked at it a bit naming this site...and excuse the crappy formatting. I'm workin' on it.

From old man Webster himself:

Luminary: 2. One who illustrates any subject, or enlightens mankind; as, Newton was a distinguished luminary.

I could accept that...Linux Luminaries.

Linux Luminaries was a great title for this space on the Internet.

Our pattern is to present to you a family or child that has received one of our computers then highlight the "Walk a Kid Home" member who made that installation possible.

We're going to break from the norm from time to time...there is someone I want to bring to your attention. And if this guy isn't a Linux Luminary in the first degree, I'll buy you lunch.

His name is Andy Krell.

I first met Andy via an email he sent to me, telling me that sometime down the road, he would have some computers to donate to The HeliOS Project...but it would be a while.

That was fine...we were still working out our non profit status...a critical part of the negotiation.

When the stars and planets finally aligned almost a year later, Andy called me and said the stuff was ready to pick up. He emailed picture of the stuff his company, nFUSION Group, LLC was providing us.

Now remember, at this time, we were mostly dumpster-diving to get the stuff we needed, and were actually making it work...so when Andy asked me to come by and pick this up, well: let's just say that I wasn't sure of what to make of it.

What you are seeing here are 13 laptops, many less than 13 months old. We're talking laptops with individual retail value of 3K each, at least some of them. Alienware, Acer 8210's and 5720's (Acer's workhorse as far as I am concerned) and a top of the line Dell Inspiron. As well, he donated to us all of the Dell Dimension 8300's up see here. All working and ready to go.

But that wasn't all...Those boxes you see there? Those are not just keyboard and mice...those boxes contain pounds and pounds of up-to-date memory, video cards, usb devices of every make and model. There were some hard to find stuff too like ide controllers sata to ide gadgets. It was a geek's treasure chest.

I was stunned beyond belief. Everything aside from two of the acer laptops worked perfectly. All of them came with 160 hard drives and 2 gigs of ram. In fact, one of the only HeliOS Project presentations of a laptop that we were able to record...that was one of Andy's/nFUSION's laptops. We couldn't have given it to a better person.

Mr. Andy Krell...he's just not some guy off the street.

Andy is the CIO of nFUSION Group, LLC...now, I only mention this because Andy has done way more than give us some great computers...and oh by the way...he gives us great stuff on a fairly regular basis. When he preps them for us, he does so on his own time. So this guy isn't just some desk jockey. He runs things...important things. He keeps a multi-million dollar business alive and functioning where it counts...on the Internet.

The guys got some juice.

Which makes this even more amazing.

When the absolutely tireless and selfless Lynn Bender (you will see that name here soon) single-handedly organized Linux Against Poverty, it became obvious we were going to need top-tier techs to pull it off. Hundreds of computers were going to be showing up. Computers that needed fixing, diagnosing or repairing of some sort...we had no idea of the condition of any of them that would be arriving. We needed top of the line guys. Guess who showed up and took on the leadership role to organize the whole thing.

Andy Krell.

And Andy didn't just troop the line and bark orders...he unloaded trucks, he got his hands cut to ribbons on sharp edges and jutting screws, and he carried machines back and forth to their assigned places. His jouneyman skills were responsible for breathing life into dozens of machines I would have gutted for parts and through on the scrap heap.

So Linux Luminary...Ya Think? I think so.

I received a humbling email recently. See, I've became seriously ill recently. Diagnosed with Extreme Exhaustion Disorder. I've pushed so hard that my body has literally started eating itself so needless to say, I have to chill for a while. I am not going to be able to do the things I used to do for a long time. I wrote a blog entitled "Time to Face Some Facts...and in that blog, I stated that if The HeliOS Project is to survive, my role would be as manager for at least 90 days while I heal, and we would need dedicated volunteers to do the installs. It didn't take long for the first Linux guy to step up.

It was Andy Krell.

Linux Luminary bar none.

I owe you more than I can ever repay Andy. Bless you.

helios