Jail To Jewel

Hello All,

I am pretty well settled in at Help of Ojai's West Campus. It is not everyday when jails are converted to community centers! Many volunteers have been hard at work making the transistion from the feeling of a jail (bars cut out), painting, flowers carefully nurtured, and a new sense of openess abounds. The campus has 47 acres and is actually pristine, with well established, mature winter oaks and the sound of many birds along the creek beds.

The infrasture took me by surprise. The main buildings are connected with 12 strand multimode fiber and the offices have cat5 termination blocks in the closets with dual jacks in each end point location. Cool.

Since we are a non-profit we qualify for many very inexpensive buys through www.TechSoup.org . Check them out. Cisco routers and switches. Microsoft licenses on the cheap. Many, many software wonderfull offerings.

We are in the process of bringing up a server in both locations and aquiring the electronics for the edges and the lab I will be building. 24 PC's with public access. A natural gas trolley will stop at the site and makes the rounds around town, 25 cents!

Sorta "build it and they will come" philosophy but attraction and promotion is in my task list. I'm having fun with this!

Best to All,
Jim Mora

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