new diet coke bottles

Went to buy lunch along with my customary diet coke and found that Coke has changed their bottle for diet coke in Uruguay. The bottle is now 100% non-transparent silver plastic. You can't see how much is left without trying to peer in through the opening and the bottle shows all the dirt thats been accumulated on it as it made its way from the bottling plant to your hand. Yuk.

what the heck is my cd player doing?

My new CD/mp3 player has a very interesting behavior when its given an mp3 “data” CD. It seems to read in a section of the file and then stop the disk from moving to save battery power.
It’s very weird to be listening to music and look down at it and be able to see through the window that the disc has stopped moving.

taxis and change

So this morning at 845 I decided that I’d need to cab it to work given that I had a 9 am meeting. Checked my wallet and found a variety of small bills but not enough for the cab ride, and a five hundred peso bill. Bummer.

Trying to spend a five hundred peso bill at times is like trying to hand someone a Kleenex that they know is full of the ebola virus. You can do it when paying bills or at the grocery store but most other places will not do it happily. The cashier will always ask you if you have anything smaller.

I flag down a cab – you can do that during the day in Montevideo, at night not so much – and ask him if he has change. This is not that I could really refuse to get in if he didn’t but so much as to warn him.

The guy drives slower than hell all the way downtown, which was irritating, but he was at least 70 years old and had the Parkinson’s-tremor thing going on in his hands… I figured slower was safer and I said nothing.

We get downtown and he spends like 3-5 minutes with me sitting there at the curb in the cab while he goes to get change. He comes back with the change (cab ride from my apartment to downtown is 97 pesos, the bus is 14,50 when there’s time) and says “Oh, I had the change, I just didn’t want to be inconvenienced later.”

I said nothing, there’s no point.

mansonry

I'm not sure what that would be, but that's how my drill bit is labeled. I bought one at the hardware store for hanging pictures. Had a choice of American made for five bucks or Chinese made for seventy five cents. Um, ok. But it says its suitable for mansonry, which is disturbing.

Hopefully I won't feel compelled to carve symbols on my forehead with it or stare at people like I'm on LSD.

(Of course they were shooting for masonry but their choice wound up being more fun.)

Hanging pictures

Let's see, going to hang a picture. We need the drill, or rather, to plug in the drill. But the drill is from the usa and needs 110v... wheres the big transformer at?

Hm., what's that, the closest outlet is 4 meters from where the picture is going to go? No problem, got an extension cord. Let's see... the outlet has a 3-in-line grounded plug and so does the other end of the extension cord... but the stepdown transformer has an american grounded plug. How to get from here to there...

3 adapters. 3-in-line to German "schuko" plugged in to the extension cord. "Schuko" to "trifasico" (same plug as in Argentina and China). "Trifasico" to a travel adapter that could accept either an american plug or a trifasico. Done. And if this was an electrical game of scrabble, double score because we kept the ground all the way through.

And *now* I can worry about where to put the pictures!

Its a beautiful sunny day. I hate to be at home but I gotta take advantage of the warm sunny weather to wash as much clothing as possible and dry it outside! But I have the skylight open (in Spanish, claraboya) and its letting the sun and a few bugs in.

Never rent an apartment with a claraboya. Imagine having a skylight in your house, except its not sealed and you can open it with a crank. This means that you have to be able to shut whatever rooms you heat because otherwise all the heat goes right out the chimney, er, claraboya. (and thats pronounced clahr ah bo sha, if you're sounding out words as an american would)

Super Mario Brothers

Luigi has somehow gotten out of one of the Super Nintendo cartridges. Seriously - saw the guy last night at the corner of 18 de Julio and Ejido, complete with the white coveralls and brush moustache. ;) The poor guy was the spitting image.

Well, here he's probably a pirate copy.

Twister meets the morning commute

Twister, anyone?

On city buses here, there is no white line to stand behind. The white line is a product of nanny states with an overabundance of trial lawyers. Here, if the bus is full, you just get on anyway. The driver and the other passengers expect it and there is zero concept of personal space. At times you can practically feel if the person behind you put on underwear or not, they pack in that close.

It’s not so bad in winter but in summertime it can be truly wretched.

If you don’t speak Spanish and you’re in such a situation, all of the people around you are likely to say unintelligible things to you – everyone is generally advising everyone else of their destination somewhat in advance so they others are not surprised when they proceed to climb over you to get out of the bus.

The first 2km or so of my commute this morning, I was standing right inside the bus with my back literally right on the front door, it was that full. You have to hang on real tight because it’s not a good idea to trust anything mechanical here, especially with your life. It’s not especially dangerous in general, but ya never know.

Two of the bus companies post capacities for their vehicles, but ignore them. The one I was on this morning doesn’t bother. And yes, they are private companies. Transportation is not a government business – this is a good thing or it would be very poorly run and overstaffed. Since it’s private, its just overstaffed. How can a city bus be overstaffed? Because there is a second person on the bus whose job is to collect the fares. Some buses have them, some don’t.

instructions entirely contrary to the manual, or, this is normal in a tech job

Had the pleasure of configuring a wireless access point (Linksys WAP11) this afternoon. What a breathtakingly shitty product thus far… After finally finding a power strip that had the right kind of plug for the nearest wall outlet AND magically had the right kind of plugs for the stepdown transformer, I got the thing powered up. (If you think electricity is complicated its even more fun when you’re working with USA products in a 220v country…)

But that was just the start of the fun. Download the manual from Linksys’ web site… Download a utility… connect with a crossover cable, configure my PC like the manual says.. .and nothing. Tried the reset button – actually, whaled on the reset button truth be told several times – and no change.

I was about to give up when I decided to look and see what else was written by people on the web and found one set of instructions for the same model product that were absolutely contrary to the PDF I downloaded from Linksys’ site – right down to the default network address and its password! So finally that worked although it pisses me off I spent an hour monkeying around with instructions that didn’t even apply to the version of the thing I was working with!

The worst was, it had to be done like yesterday. Visitors from a foriegn country here in the conference room with wireless PC's and no signal...

Going to go home now, take two Perifar (local brand name for ibuprofen) and then wait for those to kick in, then maybe go to the gym. Yiikes.

waitresses in the office

Does your office have waitresses? Mine does. The cubicle next to mine is being used to stage lunch for a meeting in the conference room. Both of the women are running around like a bat out of hell to get lunch served. It’s making me hungry.

stories that did not make the world newswires

Real quick while I am thinking of it… here are two news stories that did not make the worlds newswires. Both have to do with immigration into Uruguay.

First one – a Romanian couple is traveling in Brazil and gets robbed of all their cash and credit cards. They wind up in Montevideo and are advised by the Romanian consul to “steal something and the locals will just deport you.” Not a good moment for Uruguayan-Romanian relations.

Second one – a boat left Nigeria recently with four stowaways on board – they thought it was bound for Europe. Poor things… it was bound for Argentina. The stowaways were detected and Argentina was notified. The Argentine authorities radioed them back and said they would not be permitted to enter the port with the stowaways – so the ship’s captain put the four Nigerians in an inflatable raft and set them adrift 100 km off of Uruguay’s Atlantic coast. They were rescued by the UY navy and brought to Punta del Este.

I don’t know how the Romanians wound up but the Nigerians are going to likely be given residency and have received job offers from ranches in the northern part of the country. I hope they know what they’re getting into. Punta del Este is Disneyland compared to the rest of this country and if that’s all they’ve seen maybe they think they’re someplace like Europe. Supposedly some of the restaurants in Punta have been sending them food to the naval base where they are being held until the immigration matters are resolved and clothing has been donated too… I wonder when they will realize that, yes, they traded up from Nigeria – but not by as much as it would appear if you’ve only seen Punta del Este.

cheap drugs

So after work I resigned myself to go to the pharmacy and pay what I thought would be more than twice what the medical coverage charges for an inhaler... because the last time I bought one for cash it was nearly 350 pesos.

But then, I didn't have a prescription when I paid that much and they discount as an incentive to get you to go to the doctor. You can buy anything except "sicofarmacos" without a prescription - the "sicofarmacos" being valium, xanax and that ilk.

I went to a pharmacy that I'd been to before and knew was relatively cheaper than others. A friend that was with me wanted to go to San Roque right on 18 de Julio - yeah its a pharmacy but its like going to Neiman Marcus when you really need Wal-Mart.

(Strangely, we see Wal-Mart ads here on DirecTV on the Argentine-originated cable channels but I digress... very weird watching the little spanish speaking smiley face rolling back prices. I shudder to think what they pay their employees in Argentina, and wonder who they smuggle in to work illegally to clean the stores )

But anyway I was all set to pay like 350 pesos (more than USD$10) for the damned inhaler and instead it came to 142.

I was elated, because my health coverage would have charged me like one hundredsixtysomething. Little things... Lesson learned... go to that particular pharmacy, first, everytime, before you go visit the noquis at CASMU.

What are noquis? In American English its written as the Italians write it "gnocchi." In Uruguayan Spanish a "noqui" is a government employee. It's not a very nice thing to say. CASMU ain't the government but its organized (if you can call it that) similarly.

Ah well, enough droning on about me and my asthma. Need to put another layer of clothing on because its cold in here! Going to be six degrees tonight or less. (No, celsius. And you're on the damn internet so open another browser window and find a converter if you're curious what that is in F)

Chau.

healthcare, or lack thereof - CASMU sucks

If you ever happen to work in Uruguay and have a choice of which "mutualista" (private hospital, think HMO) to pick... DO NOT PICK CASMU. Overly bureaucratic and will go out of their way not to help you.

I have a prescription for an asthma inhaler dated 13.5.05 and they won't fill it because they say its too old. That means that my options are buy a ticket and see a doctor again (loss of minimum four hours) and then pay the 160 uruguayan pesos to fill the prescription, or just pay a pharmacy like 400 pesos for the inhaler.

Having no time to see a doctor anytime this week and needing an inhaler... I have no choice. CASMU sucks.

The gym...

Having recently ended a relationship, I live alone. So I spend my time outside the office working out at the gym, among other things.

Now there are one or two USA-style gyms in Montevideo, but they are on the other side of the city where the really rich people live and they have USA-style prices. Sure, you can pay a hundred bucks a month... but why?

I live in the Prado neighborhood of Montevideo. It's a nice, quiet area with a variety of people - so its inexpensive. My gym costs ten bucks a month.

It's not a huge place, not fashionable, but serviceable. Pretty much all of the equipment has seen the inside of the inside of a muffler shop to be welded back together. Nautilus, it ain't. This is not one of these places where there is a different special machine for each muscle group. The focus is mostly on free weights, which I always found to be pretty intimidating at the gym in the USA. But living in South America is all about being open to new things... so that's what I'm doing. The only problem thus far is that I haven't quite connected 100% of the names of the exercises on the workout card with the exact exercises... I just know the routine.

Ah, there is one USA-type machine... but it looks damn near pristine and never touched. It could be because its got a sign on it that says "solo damas" - ladies only, please.

It ain't no fashion show. Wear whatever ya got. It's going to get dirty. In the USA its customary to wipe down the bench or whatever... not here. Also, the weight machines such as they are, don't have pulleys or anything like that, it's all chains and they're greased. So forget about wearing your best workout gear because its going to get fucked up.

But I like it. These are real people with real lives and slowly the ice is breaking and I'm going to try to get to know them. Should be interesting.

The service is amazing for ten bucks a month though. Any question about anything, they help right away. I get more personalized attention and more service from this place than I ever did at any health club in the USA.

the working world

In general: The want ads advertise jobs for men and jobs for women. Ads specify age ranges and really whatever the employer wants, it's all good. They want young people because they work cheap, put in long hours and don't have any bad habits.

Kinda hesitant to identify who my employer is but suffice it to say the office culture is quite different from in the USA. The first thing that you notice is the near absence of women, workplaces are very male-dominated.

Companies have to pay, by law, between the first and tenth of each month and no later than the tenth. Pay is a combination of cash and "tickets." Tickets can be spent on food at the grocery store (very much like food stamps in the USA welfare system and equally restrictive, which is sort of a pain in the butt since its your money that you earned but that's how it is) or on restaurant food or on bus fares. They are not interchangeable, you have to specify how you want your tickets allocated between the three types.

Companies don't really have benefits like in the USA. What's available is dictated by law... they have to pay a social security tax that pays for your membership in a private hospital (think HMO - sort of) and that covers some little pittance for your retirement. If you make more than X number of pesos you get signed up for something called an AFAP and that pays you another pittance at retirement age. I'm not sure how all thats going to work because supposedly Uruguay and the USA have a "totalization treaty" regarding social security (I think thats what its called) so I'm not sure if I will collect anything from BPS (UY social security) or if it will somehow count as USA social security "credits."

But whatever, Bush is going to piss all the money away in stuff that makes his friends rich, like Iraq, so may as well live in the now... and before all you republicans get all indignant, I agree with you on a lot of fiscal issues if y'all weren't so goddamned obsessed with whether and where I go to church or what happens in my bedroom. Less government my ASS.

I digress... ;)
In my office, there's no obnoxious collection for coffee like in the USA - it's available if you want it. So's fresh fruit and bottled water. So I spend a bit less on breakfast.

You're also free to risk death boiling water for mate' - this isn't a nanny state full of trial lawyers after all - they have several little heating coils available that can be submersed in a thermos or mug of water to boil it. The things are available for about a dollar apiece in any store and basically its a little exposed heating coil with a short cord with a plug for the 220volt wall outlet. If you plug them in when they aren't submersed, they pretty much just explode instantly - suffice it to say they don't have any safety certifications from UL or CE or anything like that. And if you touch the thermos while the thing is inside, you might get a big shock. But that's how people boil water.

What's mate'? A type of green tea. Everyone in Uruguay drinks mate'. Topic for a whole other post.

Punctuality for meetings and such is definitely not quite the same as in the USA. Five or ten minutes late is the norm.

And your co-workers will say things to you that are perfectly normal in their culture but when you're listening to them and not thinking in that language (i.e. translating) you sometimes say, HUH? A co-worker closed a phone call with me and he said "un abrazo." Or, translated, "hug." Or if they're translating themselves and ask things in English... a female co-worker asked me, "Will you come to my box after lunch?" (Cubicle in Spanish is caja, which literally translates as box.) It took me a few minutes to compose myself and agree.

I could make a zillion other observations but I don't really want to join the ranks of the guy who worked a bit at Google or the pot-smoking ex-Mormon girl (both got fired as a direct result of their blogs), especially since the odds of getting another job are a little bit like the odds of getting directly hit by lightning. ;)

Abitab

What the hell is Abitab? Well if you've ever lived in Chicago you will know what a currency exchange is. For those who live their lives as much as possible in cash, a currency exchange is a way to pay your bills, register your car, buy money orders etc.

Abitab is a sort of currency exchange.

The postal service is not widely used by businesses to send their bills. I'm not sure why this is, all international mail I've ever received has resulted in a delivery of either the package or an invitation to go talk with customs about it... But there is little national mail traffic. The one company that sent me a bill via mail had to resend a copy twice for it to reach me.

It should also be noted that electricity, telephone, and water are government monopolies. None of those government monopolies use El Correo either - they have their own employees deliver their bills. Thus, this little country of less than 4 million people has four de facto postal services.

Ok so the bills labor-intensively arrive. How to pay them? Write a check and pop it in the mail? Nope. We've already established that popping anything in the mail is a good way to have it disappear. Now about that check part...

First of all, you probably won't get a checking account the first time you ask for one. You have to be an existing customer with a good history and good salary, and then its still a subjective decision. The accounts usually have fees associated with them and checks generally are accepted even less than credit cards. Fourth... no place wants your check... heck, most places don't want your credit card!

Abitab is also wired. Privacy issues aside, national ID cards can be handy. They can punch your number into their computer and properly credit your Visa card, your cable bill, your internet bill etc. The true geeks would scoff and say, oh, its just some kind of batch business process that just looks smart.... but they can look up your balance. (Which now makes me realize that they just have a version of EDI implemented and down pat, and probably a shocking amount of data about everybody replicated everywhere by modem... but it sometimes looks pretty "real time" when you're at the counter.)

So rather than mail checks or spend an hour with your financial software thats online with your bank, here you go to the ATM and get cash and then take that pile of cash with your pile of bills to Abitab. Your pile of bills is turned into a sort of blade runner meets arts and crafts project in front of your eyes as they scan two bar codes on each bill and then meticulously print two areas of the form front and back in a little printer, which is no small feat given that absolutely every form they handle is completely inconsistent from any other. It gets even more fun when you've printed your bar-coded payment slip for your Visa bill on the laser printer at the office and the form is then totally nonstandard and not even perforated, then they gotta get out a scissors.

When its all set and done they hand you back all the folded and printed receipts with your receipt for your points and maybe a little printout showing exchange rate information.

Why exchange-rate information? Because your credit card is one account with a limit set in pesos but tracks purchases in pesos and dollars at different interest rates. So when you pay your Visa bill you have not one minimum payment to make, but usually two if you have balances in both dollars and pesos. People are generally paid through peso-denominated savings accounts and take their money at ATM's - but even though the ATM's can dispense dollars and pesos, you can't withdraw dollars from your peso-denominated account on most of the machines.

And it takes the same hour you would have spent with m$ money... How 'bout that.

taxes for being sick

What a country.

If you're one of the lucky ones to have a job, and you're sick, your employer will require you to get a medical certificate to "prove" it.

It's a pain in the ass and contrary to my instinct, after all in the USA if you're sick you just call your employer and tell them so, they don't get picky about documentation for a couple of days. And go to the doctor in the USA? Pay the co-pay and still get a stack of bills and the "explanation of benefits" (i.e. what your so-called insurance didn't pay).

But whatever. Here, the process of going to the doctor is a little different. In Uruguay you are a member of a private hospital. The really rich people pay the really expensive and ostensibly (well, unquestionably) better quality private hospitals that are not available through social security. Those who have jobs or are self employed with all the proper papers have social security coverage which entitles them to membership in a private hospital. If you ask three people which ones are the "best" you will get three different answers.

Mine is called CASMU. It's either owned by or affiliated with the doctor's union, not sure which. But everything revolves around these frickin' tiny little slips of paper.

So if you're sick you have two options to get your medical certificate - you either call a doctor to your house or you go to a clinic. Of course since neither the doctors making house calls nor the clinics handle money for the co-payments, you go yourself or send someone to a place called Abitab. You present your cedula (ID card) or have your friend take it with them, and they buy an "ordene" - a ticket thats good for the service. (You would send your friend if you don't want to leave the house and want a house call - they exist here - but thats a much more expensive service.)

I could write a whole other posting about Abitab, and probably will. Anyway, you pay the 46 Uruguayan pesos (or 300 for a house call) and show your ID (they verify your coverage online), they print you the order and you go with that to the clinic. You have to know which doctor is at which clinic at what time and on what day, and clinics are not generally staffed by receptionists nor do they usually have telephone numbers listed. You just go and its first-come-first-served.

Visiting a doctor is a trip when the discussion is not in your first language. Think about it - did any of your high school foriegn language classes prepare you to describe WheRE or HoW it hurts? Nope, thought not.

I have been sicker living here than I ever have been at other times in my life. I suspect its a combination of a totally different set of viral/bacterial bugs living in a climate where it never freezes to kill everything! So I have had a few medical certificates written for me.

But this particular time the doctor I visited was a stickler about the law - and the law says, that when you're sick and you've had to leave the house to go visit the doctor and get the medical certificate - that supposedly you have to then go back to Abitab and buy a "timbre profesional" which is a tax stamp that makes your certificate valid. No stamp, no validity - but its not you or your employer who gets fined by the taxman, its the doctor. So she made a big deal about writing "not valid without stamp" on the certificate.

I am generally a law-abiding person but will not state one way or another whether I subsequently purchased a stamp.

First post

Wow, finally did it. Friends have been bugging me to do this so here it finally IS.

Why?

Long story. Maybe someday I will post it here. Suffice it to say it started in a bar in Minneapolis. Anyway, after a few bumps and a lot of interesting experiences and a few more bumps... I live in Montevideo, Uruguay. The last place I called home was a farm outside Montevideo, and before that a suburb of Minneapolis. The difference is huge.

I am not here for religious reasons, nor do I care much for missionaries because they tend to ask for and get money that people would do better to spend on food or clothes.

In this country of 30% unemployment I somehow managed to find work and am employed at a local technology company. It's as fascinating at times as it is frustrating.

Thanks to globalization, a lot of aspects of living here LOOK exactly the same as in North America. City buses are reasonably modern. Show me a grocery store and I will show you its "discount card" in my wallet. You can recharge your prepaid cellular phone from some of the ATMs. McDonalds is, while not yet ubiquitous, here. But the culture is super different...

First thing an American needs to learn, or re-learn is... ladies first. Always. It's not like that in urban areas of the USA and public spaces very much have a first-come first-served eat-or-be-eaten rule to movement. Here.. boarding the elevator, getting on a bus, going through a door... ya better wait for the women or someone's going to say something to you.

Second thing is... the people that look old are OLD. I don't know why such longevity. My own parents are 60-ish and have seemingly incredible health problems. Here, the years between 60 and 70 are just more years to work... you're not truly old until you've hit 75 or 80.

Third... they think Americans are universally fat but turn a blind eye to the mirror themselves. Ok, so processed food will add weight especially if you eat it in super-size portions... but so will natural. Imagine eating a sandwich that is a piece of beef with no fat trimmed and that piece of beef has been soaked in egg and then in spiced breadcrumbs and then deep fried. But deep frying is not good enough... at the same time that piece of meat is in the oil an egg is being fried on the grill. When the meat leaves the deep-fryer it is then placed on the grill with the egg. The whole thing is served on a bun like a hamburger with a variety of condiments that always includes mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is practically a beverage here. Another favorite is a hot dog that has been wrapped in bacon, fried and then served with melted mozarella cheese. Naturally mayonnaise is added to this as well! There was one guy who frequented a roadside stand near the farm and ate two of these everytime I saw him there - but washed it down with a diet coke. Go figure...

Fourth... if you are tall be careful in the street. This here ain't no nanny state with a bunch of rules and there are lots of things set low to the ground.

Fifth... most of these people are po'. P-O, po'! The minimum wage is about USD$80 per month. They likely work 160 hours a month for that eighty bucks, too. The work force is relatively young. Looking at the classified ads is an interesting experience. Employers advertise whether the job is for a man or for a woman, the ages of the applicants they will consider, and generally stuff that would make a politically correct yank horrified. But that's how it is here. Literally any question can be asked during a job interview.

The disparity between wages and prices is astonishing and contributes to...

Sixth... Children live with their parents a long, long time. Multiple generations of the same family under the same roof is the norm. It is very expensive to set up your own apartment and its cheaper (and normal) for people under 40 to live with Mom and Dad. This ain't like the USA where parents buy ya luggage for your 18th birthday! But the fact is... if you are young and unskilled you will be making that eighty buck a month salary and there is no way you will be able to afford the hundred bucks a month that an apartment would cost you (not including electricity and telephone which will add up to another hundred bucks a month!).

Seventh... the birth rate is high. I don't know where they get pregnant living at home with one of their parents, but it happens. Perhaps it happens quietly? I don't know. But pregnant women are ubiquitous here. Ladies first goes double or triple for a pregnant woman!

Eighth... it gets COLD here in winter. Yeah there are palm trees, lots of them, and they are beautiful - in the summer. When its 1 C and the wind is blowing horizontal rain drops and has inverted your umbrella for the 3rd and perhaps final time in the life of said umbrella, the palms just look absurd. Cold is expensive too. Yeah, if you're here as a tourist you have no idea what it costs the owner of your hotel to keep your room warm. Suffice it to say, its expensive. Electric space heaters are a big fat no-no because electricity is more expensive here than in Chicago. You buy propane, heat only part of your home, wear layers, make dinner a lot in your oven, who knows...

Ninth... relax about the idea of crime, at least the Romancing-the-Stone type of lawlessness that lots of people think is pervasive in all of South America. Uruguay ain't Venezuela or Colombia. There are no guerilla forces here. (If there are guerilla forces here anytime soon, they will be driving BMW's and Mercedes and organizing via SMS because the general population just cast a resounding rich-people-go-to-hell vote and put a left wing national government in power, then for good measure elected mostly left wing governments of the Departamentos.) There were only a couple of kidnappings last year and those were the kids of rich locals, not foriegners. Do worry about your wallet or your car radio, but only to the same extreme as you would in New York City.

Tenth... it doesn't look like suburban anywhere. Wal Mart has not yet arrived. Lots of commerce is between people in their neighborhoods and local merchants. Every single store is a unique experience. Just about everywhere in MVD is pedestrian-friendly. And counterfeit is everywhere too... fake name-brands of all kinds can be had as well as the latest movies and games. It's not just on the street its in brick and mortar stores too! Bring two playstation II's with you if you come to visit - one to sell and one to get chipped using the proceeds from the sale of the other. Your second PS2 will fetch an astonishingly high price compared to what you paid for it and you can use that to stock up on a stack of all the latest pirated games.

That's all thats on my mind for tonight. Going to veg out now and watch baseball on DirecTV. ;)