We prioritized moving and building the Shopbot; when a truck didn’t show up we moved everything in Tim’s SUV. At the end of day 3 the hardware and electronics are up and we’re only waiting for the electrician to run a long power cable from a 3-phase supply. The electrician showed up just as he promised on day 4 and with much love and attention by Nels, the Shopbot is fully operational and making stools and it’s own computer table.

In the meantime a truck did show up and the rest of the fablab was moved. There was a misunderstanding about the furniture timing so we were swimming in a sea of boxes and equipment lining the halls and floor with no tmp swap space. With much persistence by Keith and Carl, they were able to make clean spots in the machine room and move furniture and equipment into those spaces.

I’m sure it will be funny someday… later… in the future… after we’re done… but every time you make a clean space an Afghan lies down and sacks out. We have spent the days walking over sleeping bodies. As the machine room becomes more and more crowded with machines, bodies crowd in closer to each other. No amount of polite “uh, could you please move, I’m going to install this there” budges them more than a few inches, only enough for you to set down whatever object you’ve got.

Ramadan presents some other logistical difficulties aside from catatonic Muslims by afternoon time. We don’t want to drive the others crazy by eating and drinking in front of them so we try to hide in rooms out of sight. The first problem is the above mentioned sleepers - we can’t actually find rooms in which to hide. The second is that this isn’t getting enough cold water into people and I think we’re cooking Smari’s brain cells. By noon or so he turns the color that lobsters get when they’re boiled and begins to slur (more than usual). We’re lucky that it’s cooler than “usual” - only about 45 C or something like that.