Update from Arizona.

Tony ORourke — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 01:01:19 +0000

Wow has it been awhile since I logged on here and talked about whats going on in Arizona. We hit a heat wave out here and its in the 80's for the rest of the week. I have been really busy working on stuff at the club and really have become a member of the staff these last few months. The members here have really warmed up to me and I am starting to remember names of kids better. So I guess I better recap what has happened in the last 2 months.

December was pretty rough to start. I was doing a lot more direct service then I really wanted to do. I wanted to do things that I did not have a lot of time for due to the fact that I was so busy keeping an area open or something along those lines. My comrade in the computer lab has totally different habits when it comes to cleanliness in our computer lab and that causes us some troubles and some strife but we worked out a list of clean up chores to do at night and we also got some of our middle school aged members as helpers to make sure that we are looking good in the computer lab at all times. We were having a great deal of trouble trying to get the members interested in the programs we were running and it was starting to get to be a drag. What we thought was a problem with our program is actually pretty common when it comes to after school activities. You hope for the best and plan for the worst. The kids are not as interested in doing "organized" activities after school. Its a struggle for all BGCs.

I flew home for Christmas break and spent a week there. When I came back I had a winter break were we had less then 20 kids in the computer lab all day. This was a good opportunity for me to change the room around. The room was 7 computers on one wall and 5 computers on the other wall. I changed it to where the computers are set up in groups of three. It makes the room look more spacious. I think it is allows for more space for each member for their computer. This took the better part of two days because each individual computer had a carpeted divider. We also had alot of trouble with computers crashing after I changed everything around. I am not sure what is causing the problems but if anyone has MAXTOR brand hard drives in their computers be sure to back everything on your computer up. I have had nothing but trouble with this drives in particular. I have had at least 4 computers with disk errors in the last month. One computer had a power supply failure. Lots of these computers are booting and saying that there it no operating system. I do not know if this is do to shutting the computers off at night or if its due to changing everything around. I am trying to test the theory of making sure that the computers stay on at night. We are currently looking at making only 4 computers in the lab IE enabled. This is so that we can constantly monitor those kids who are on the Internet without worrying about not being able to see what they are on. This month we have been hitting the kids with new programs along with CAP and HACK. We added Sony Acid Pro to the mix for the teens and they really seem to enjoy mixing beats. For the younger ones we just started doing Movie Maker and we had a pretty good turnout for the first meeting of that. The members are started to get the idea the the computer lab is not just a place to come and play games on the Internet but also a place to have fun with other programs.

Couple other things I am working on right now is trying to get some new furniture for our computer lab. I would like to get the computer chairs with caster wheels. It would be nice to get a oval table for the center of our room that can be painted a bright color. I would also like to get our room painted something other then off-white. I would do anything to get the dirty walls painted. We also got some storage lockers and I am just waiting on our maintenance man to put the locks in them so we can have our valuable equipment locked up at the end of every night.

Alot to throw at you and I have pictures of how the lab looks now. I will post pictures later when I can log on to flickr. Right now at work it is blocked...along with everything else.

First two weeks

Tony ORourke — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 06:53:28 +0000

Well I did not update last week. I have been pretty busy with getting situated down this way. I had my motorcycle go down last week and I had to turn to peddling my way around town. Thank goodness Tempe is a "bicycle friendly" community. I can say I have never been in a place that consistently stays hot. We finally dropped down to the low nineties during the day. First day I came here it was 104 degrees. Arizona is a crazy place....you can drive an hour north of here and it could be in the 60s during the day.

Now for what I have been doing. I started work at the Boys and Girls Club of the East Valley-Ladmo Branch. I will have to get used to that because I am in Tempe and we have two specific branches just in Tempe. The North Branch and the Ladmo Branch. I have been trying to start to get some instructing going in a computer lab that has pretty much been a free for all. The Boys and Girls club has a very open policy. The members are allowed to float between areas if they wish. I have to try to get some instruction going while I have members in and out of the lab at will. I also have to deal with member coming to the lab when it is not their turn. It seems easy to get the instruction going but very hard so far to keep the students organized such that they will actually stay to hear what me and the instructor have to say. I am having a difficult time with the members being on Internet websites that they are not supposed to be on. Some of the older members were bypassing the filters with a proxy website. It seems as if its a thin line to toe but I am doing my best. I guess the hardest part is to get the members to understand that this is a place of instruction before a place to play video games.

Digital Arts Service Corps - Boys and Girls Club

Update from Arizona.

First two weeks