I got a google voice phone number...

I finally got an "invite" for a Google voice account. Unfortunately the only numbers available in the Phoenix metro area are area code 623. I don't live anywhere near there and I don't WANT a 623 phone number, thanks...

But I got a neat number that spells something and is in a somewhat meaningful geographic area (to me at least). No, I'm not going to post what it is.

The service looks to be very useful for getting around international text message charges to Canada :) T-Mobile charges like 15c per international message and this is free. Haven't tried to use it through the Windows mobile internet browser yet but that will come.

Shit economy + airport = :)

Ok, I suppose its a bad thing that the airport is utterly uncrowded on the evening before a holiday weekend. But it is! It's kinda nice.

still around :) ... in... ARIZONA!!!

Damn, it's been awhile. Obama was my last post - and he's been in office long enough that I dislike him already. But that's another topic.

I lost my friggin' mind this afternoon and bought a pair of rollerblades. I'm traveling up to nor-Cal soon and my friend up text-messaged me a week ago as a followup to the voicemail he just left -"Oh, and bring your rollerblades!"

WHAT rollerblades, I was thinking... they got left in Uruguay with a whole hell of a lot of stuff when I moved out of there. Besides, the last pair was THOROUGHLY worn out - I think I'd been through five or six bearing replacements and at least three stoppers. I know for sure that along with the rollerblades I left behind a new-in-package stopper designed for those 'blades - I bought 'em in 1993.

Damn, I wrote several paragraphs about WHY I bought them in 1993. That's off topic ;)

Anyway, its been five years since I've been up on ANY kind of wheeled footwear. HOLY CRAP! I thought it would be very simple but um, not quite. First of all I had the dog with me. I had this idiot idea Shaggy would pull me and it would be sort of chill.

NO. First of all descending the stairs was not as easy as I'd remembered it being. I live on the second floor so I had no choice.

Shaggy didn't quite know what to make of me being four inches taller OR moving quite so randomly. Suddenly I was able to move MUCH faster or slower than normal. As such she held way back and it was more ME pulling HER. Note to self: do not try to walk dog and rollerblade at the same time. I walked her long enough that she did what every good dog should do THE HELL OUTSIDE :) and then cleaned it up.

I climbed the stairs again to let her back into the house and then it was ON - there had been little glimpses of the previous skill I'd had years ago but the dog was slowing me down.

Perhaps that was a good thing. (The slowdown)

I went around the block as fast as - indeed, faster - than I dared ;) "Faster" is relative, I suppose - but I didn't KNOW I was going faster than I wanted to be until I'd gotten there. I kept thinking, "OK, it's June 30th... you have two hours until you have full health coverage again - WHY DIDN'T YOU WAIT?!" But that thought only crossed my mind when I damn near fell.

(Yes, in 1 hour and 14 minutes from now I have what passes for healthcare coverage in this country. But that too is the topic of another post...)

Ah well, I can go out and practice one more time tomorrow night before the weekend. :)

Inauguration day

I got up at 5:30 mountain time to start watching coverage of the inauguration. The crowd is unbelievable considering that it's 19 degrees (f). Watching it in high-definition really adds a LOT to this type of programming.

The presidential car looks like a monster in terms of security. All of the windows are quite visibly bullet-proof glass. It appears there is a visible gun-port on either side of the car.

There have to be more than a MILLION people there. I've been to DC a couple of times and the mall is FULL!

But the best part of all of it - eight years of Bush/Cheney are OVER at noon today. I tagged the post as "You can't fix stupid" but today is an exception. The fix is in at noon.

techno-shy Americans venting about the coming analog TV switchoff...

You'd think the world was ending to read all the whining in the newspapers.

Complaint: "We got the coupon and installed the box and now we don't get nearly as many channels! We 'had to' subscribe to cable or satellite."

Response: The manuals for the converter box make it clear that you might need to change your outdoor antenna. Furthermore those who 'had to' subscribe to a pay service could have uninstalled the converter box until the 18th.

The US government and TV broadcasters did sort of a bad job explaining an important point - but the average person whose eyes glazed over at the word 'antenna' probably would not have followed this at all: the digital signal on the air in most markets is decidedly weaker right now than it will be on the 18th. Broadcasters don't have the resources to transmit two equally strong signals. Those who 'had to' subscribe to cable or satellite - were they to hook their converter box up to a proper antenna - might well discover all the channels they had plus more. Their 'having to' switch to cable or satellite was in all likelihood unnecessary. They should not have listened to the employees at big box stores who got slightly better performance reviews for that month or quarter for signing up those cable or satellite subscribers.

Complaint: What do you mean we have to re-scan from time to time to update the on-screen guide? How can we possibly be expected to remember to do this?

Response: The newspaper reporter either wasn't quite detailed enough OR the reader didn't process that the only reason you'd re-scan was to look for new channels. The guide updates itself. The "How can we possibly be expected..." bit - whining. Putting it another way: "Waaaaaah, it's change. We can't possibly change."

Complaint: We didn't know about the coupons for the converter boxes! Once we got them we had a hard time finding them in stores! And worse yet - people bought them who don't really need them!

Response: You had to be blind or deaf not to see the public service announcements about the converter boxes. The PSA's explained how to get the coupons. Once you got your coupon you had six months to use it.

If you waited until the last minute you probably DID have a hard time finding them in stores. If you wait until February you probably WILL have a hard time finding them in stores.

It's also true: plenty of coupon-receivers and buyers didn't really need the boxes. They've had no problem selling those boxes at full price on eBay.

I have two that I probably will never need. I had just as much right as any other American to take advantage of that subsidy - that's capitalism! :)

The morning of the 18th I'll put the boxes up for sale on the bulletin boards in the laundry room where I live, or at the supermarket.

Some say a solution is to put off the switch. In my opinion the switch should have been moved forward to one week before the superbowl. It would have given the US population a whole lot more incentive to read and understand the instructions.

Phoenix winters are not one bit like Uruguay

Well, on the face of it that would sound like a perfectly obvious statement. Tonight it SORT OF felt like early Winter in UY. We've had quite a bit of rain lately so the humidity is way higher than normal - but for just a moment there was a waft of woodsmoke smell in the air that was vaguely like Eucalyptus. Just for a moment though.

But no, not really. Probably one fireplace out of the hundreds in the area had something vaguely Eucalyptus scented burning in it - but on balance it just smelled sort of like a house fire. Nothing like that going on anywhere near here so its probably the creosote-product-type things people burn in their fireplaces. It's a log shaped roll packet but that's where its similarity ends. You're not even supposed to open it - if you did you'd probably see that you'd bought some tightly-rolled old newspaper impregnated with sticky coal tar.

Actual wood is DAMN expensive. So on balance there was really quite a STENCH in the air from all the fake logs being burned up. It was about 8:30 pm, which is usually when I do grocery shopping or cook dinner - but most couples would have long since finished with dinner, put the kid(s) to bed and lit the foul-smelling thing in their fireplace.

Fireplaces here are definitely more decorative than functional. Most of them cause a net EXIT of heat from the house making it MORE expensive to heat with the furnace already installed. There are gas fireplaces but I don't know of anyone who uses theirs. It's essentially a burner of natural gas with a fake "log" insert that makes it look like a smoldering fireplace. The log insert puts out very little in the way of heat. They're a great way to have a zero-maintenance fireplace that you can literally turn on with a wall switch - but you get a huge gas bill.

Yes, heat IS necessary out here in the desert. The most common is a natural gas furnace that's integrated with your air conditioning. Heat pumps are common too (i.e. an A/C unit that can be reversed and provides heat into the house) because this far south they're economical to run. They're certainly not the split system things like I had in Uruguay - that type of air conditioner really never caught on here. They're available but NOT from mainstream stores and generally EXTREMELY high priced.

Indoor propane heaters - the style with a tank in the back and two or three ceramic burners - are unknown here. I'm sure our "nanny state" forbids them. The tanks are readily available for gas grills but the heater unit, I've never seen. It'd probably be more likely to tip over on a carpeted floor. I saw them for sale in Mexico earlier this week - although the asking prices for just about any appliance there are pretty high compared to what I saw in Uruguay for the same item.

Reason 5082 why I dislike living in Arizona: online newspaper anonymous comments

It's absolutely disgusting to read the comments posted with online newspaper articles. Just about every US newspaper participates in this trend. Some police the commentary better than others. The Arizona Republic does precious little to police their site.

It's obvious why the newspapers do it: viewers will "stick" to the site longer with more page views - meaning the ads associated with those pages are viewed more. But the general public just doesn't have a lot constructive to add to most stories.

"Burglary Suspect Gave Police False Age, Identity" was simply the headline. Four pages of hardly 'intelligent' commentary follow. Comments range from "at least he wasn't another latino," to overtly racist, jump around to how criminals and gang members are in the military and then wind up with this little gem:

"(inappropriate term) ALL OF YOU SORRY SACK OF (inappropriate term) CUM GUZZLIN (inappropriate term)!!!! YOU DONT EVEN KNOW HIM LIKE THAT TO BE JUDGING HIM AND TALKING (inappropriate term)!!! ALL OF YOU ARE STUID FUKING RACISTS ASSES!! HOW ARE YOU GOING TO READ A STORY AND COMMENT AND ASSUME LIKE YOU KNOW HIM PERSONALLY AS A FAGGET OF THE GAY COMMUNITY AND EX BOY FRIEND I DONT LIKE THE COMMENTS OR THE (inappropriate term) IM READING AND FOR HIS MOTHER SHE IS PROUD HE HAS ACCOMPLISHED MORE THEN YOU OR YOUR (inappropriate term) UP FAMILY HAS IN YOUR LIFE. AND ALSO IF IT WERE YOUR FRIEND OR FAMILY MEMBER UP HEAR YOU WOULDN BE SO QUICK TO JUDGE OR TALK DOWN ABOUT HIM!!! AND AS HIS FRIEND DONUT SAID YOU OTHER TWO SORRY SACKS OF (inappropriate term) COME FORWARD AND MAN UP YOU WANT TO BE MAN ENOUGH TO GO INTO SOMEONES HOME BUT YOUR NOT MAN ENOUGH TO TAKE THE FAULT FOR IT YOU SORRY SACKS OF (inappropriate term)!!!!!AND AS FOR LAWRENCE IT DONT GOT (inappropriate term) TO DO WITH SKIN COLOR YOU (inappropriate term) DUMB ASS WE DONT BE TALKING ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE SHOOTING THEM SELFS OR DOING COKE AND METH AND SLEPPING WITH THEIR OWN FAMILY OR DOING STUPID (inappropriate term) LIK COMMITING SUICIDE OR SHOOTHING UP FUKING SCHOOLS!!! SO DONT (inappropriate term) JUST ASSUME BECAUSE HE IS BLACK IS THE REASON WHY HE IS STEALING SO GO TO HELL YOU (inappropriate term) BITCH!! AND AS FAR AS DALG1 DONT CALL HIM A LOW LIFE SCUM BECASUE YOU DONT KNOW HIM DO YOU BELEIVE EVERYTHING THAT YOU READ????IF THEY SAID DALG 1 WAS COUGHT JACKING OFF TO CHILD GAY PORN WOULDNT YOU WANT PEOPLE TO BELEIVE THE FIST THING THEY READ?? NO I DONT FUKING THINK SO!! AND HE IS NOT SCUM SO YOU CAN CUT THAT (inappropriate term) OUT BEFORE THE WRONG PERSON READS THIS AND SCUMS ON YOUR FACE!! SO FOR ALL OF YOU WHO HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY AND WANT TO HAVE HIS NAME IN YOUR MOUTH BEFORE YOU KNOW HIM OR EVEN KNOW WHAT THE REAL STORY IS HOW ABOUT YOU DO WHAT YOU DO BEST AND SWALLOW IT AND GO (inappropriate term) YOUR MOTHERS (inappropriate term)
SINCERLEY YOUR AMERICAN FAGG!!"

Wow. A simple article about a black kid that robbed a house degenerates into that lovely drunken illiterate rant. Welcome to Arizona! Half the population here could have written that. This guy should be writing copy to attract tourists to the state or even better, the announcements on the Amber Alert signs over the freeways.

The paper should track this guy down - he'd make a perfect instructor for a "Creative writing for douchebags," course. Learn to write in ALL CAPS and make sure that each sentence has a subject and at least three things to offend EVERYONE.