Neither Rain, Nor Snow, Nor O’Dark-Thirty

The traffic is light along Loop 1 in Austin at this time of night. Most of the city has finished watching Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien and televisions have been turned off. People are sleeping.

A policeman manning a speed trap would probably conclude that the evening’s excitement has passed, he can pack it in. But were he to do so, he would miss the engine sound growling ever louder from the stretch down south. He wouldn’t be there to have his eyes widen at a streak of white as it flies past, or to gun his own engine in pursuit of another, obviously on a mission.

Ten minutes later the white apparition would come to a stop in a parking lot in Pflugerville, north of Austin. Its driver, a determined-faced woman brandishing a ring of keys, would stride with purpose to the door of the office that waits for her in silence.

The woman is WP-ORG’s Megan Klein, her mission is to fix an ailing Linux server. The time of day is not a factor, WP-ORG systems are down and Megan is well aware that downtime is not an option. So, she performs her duty and, a short time later, her mission is complete.

Before becoming one of WP-ORG’s two systems engineers, Megan (pronounced ME’gan) worked with Smithfield in North Carolina for several years on their National Pig Development (NPD) swine farms, developing breeding stock. She holds an animal science degree from Cal Poly Pomona.

Life’s fortunes led Megan to Austin in the late ’90s where she nurtured an interest in computer technology and acquired the “White Ghost” for transportation. Several years and 182,000 miles later, she and her chariot still charge headlong into the fray together. Along the way she attracted a husband, Ken, who manages to smooth some of the bumps in the road.

A key player on the WP-ORG team, Megan is instrumental in achieving as close to a 24×7 up-time record for the organization as possible. Now, how many other 501(c)3 organizations can boast this level of availability?

Megan and The Ghost

~ Dempsey