A former latin american exile writes about life..

Ok so I gave up a comfy boring life to go live in South America. Lots have suggested that I write about my experiences, so here it finally is.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Sprint: "Ignore your customers and they'll go away."

Years ago Sprint was considered cutting edge. I remember buying my first Sprint handset. It was about the same mass as one of today's camcorders but of course phone-shaped. It did not have a color screen - just black-on-grey LCD dots to form letters. If I recall correctly it was a Sony. Not Sony Ericsson but just Sony. It was "dual band" - but that meant that it had the ability to use analog cellular service as well as Sprint's new digital technology. Digital coverage was limited in scope and a purely digital handset was not a good idea if you ever went even a little bit out of the city.

GSM didn't appear in the marketplace until about a year later - a company called Voicestream did an even more limited buildout in our state.

Sprint's focus was simply adding customers. Add customers, advertise how great it is. But at the same time they added few towers and even fewer customer service reps. 611 was a free call - but your battery was not going to out-last the hold time. Want to call customer "care"? Plug your phone into the charger and be prepared to wait 90 minutes or more.

Dead spots on the network stayed that way. Hold times for customer service never got shorter.

The bills you'd get were sometimes incomprehensible. But if it was within a few percent of the price you were expecting - may as well just pay it. They sure could cash a check.

And they kept adding customers without adding towers. Dropped calls got more common when you'd start a call on one tower and be handed off to a tower that had no capacity for it. Did I mention that the dead spots on the network just stayed that way?

I dropped Sprint in 2001. Left the USA in 2003. When I returned in 2005 I asked around. "Sprint is still just as bad if not worse," was the word. I re-established a data service with them this year when the technology/price was just too good to pass up and the word was that customer service had improved as well as coverage.

Both of those are true - but Sprint's cost-saving business decisions to just add customers without capacity or support for the customers got them a well-earned bad reputation. I just read an article about how Sprint has fallen on hard times, having had a net loss of 614,000 customers.

It doesn't surprise me in the least.

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Thursday, February 28, 2008

scuba diving in a home office

I had a strange experience this morning. I'm making diet and exercise changes in my life. Living in the US you drive everywhere so your day has no built-in exercise (running for the bus, walking to and from the stop, etc.), especially if you work at a desk job.

So I went to see a nutritional consultant this morning. She took body-fat measurements with a caliper to determine a number. No, I'm not going to tell. Then for ten minutes you plug your nose and breathe through a tube normally while this machine measures airflow - and that tells you what your resting metabolism is. You do the test first thing in the morning before any caffeine.

Based on that she'll design various diet ideas and tell me what my target calorie intake per day should be and what the mix of carbs, protein and fat is. An exercise program goes along with that.

It was interesting in that "now I'm starting to understand how the people in hollywood do these body make-overs between films." There are consultants for everything! :-)

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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Expensive devices that tell you the obvious

Since starting a so-far successful small business, I spend a lot more time in my car.

Phoenix traffic is not to be messed with. It's not as bad as I recall in, say, Atlanta but then my travel patterns avoid the really bad spots. Unsolicited advice: with the real estate market crashing - if you're on the market for a first house or by some miracle you don't owe more on your current house than its worth don't even consider the far western 'burbs like Goodyear, Peoria, etc. Anyone living there loses two hours out of every day to traffic if they work downtown Phoenix or in Tempe.

A radar detector was a necessity. Photo radar vans are a scourge and that extra couple of seconds of notice via the Ka-band indicator on the detector is nice. But it also adds background noise because it false alarms on door openers, alarm systems and who knows what else. Some California highway patrol officers tend to drive with their radar system "always-on" so you get a nice heads up that the 5-0 is coming towards you.

Tonight it did something new that I didn't know it had in its repertoire. I could see the fire truck parked facing into traffic on the wrong side of the road, it had been there the entire time I was in the supermarket. When I turned out of the supermarket and was facing dead on at the fire truck - like 50 yards from it or less - it made a noise that I've never heard it make and it said "Emergency vehicle approaching."

Huh, that was obvious. (Yes, this stuff talks and makes other noises. With all the beeps and chimes and announcements you'd think you were shopping in some strange department store with an overly-active PA system.)

I'd been using my XM radio to occasionally check out the Phoenix traffic channel. However, you have to reach over to the radio and fiddle with it to change to that channel which is dangerous... Then you have to wait until they describe traffic in the part of the valley where you happen to be. On the northeast side of the valley I can usually decipher where they are talking about - but the other 3/4 is a mystery. It wasn't doing the job.

I stopped trying to use that and just listened to my usual music or the uncensored comedy channel (something I keep reminding myself I *cannot* turn on at the office)... From time to time I'd just wait or be delayed.

So I bought a GPS. I wanted a decent screen size and the ability to have meaningful interaction between the computer and the device - the ability to upload updated map data. It started out with the USA and Canada for detailed maps. Then I bought detailed map data for all of Mexico. A trip into Tijuana on foot is one thing, by car is quite another. But with the device to guide, it's not so bad. (Just have to be really careful to hide everything when you park, park someplace with security and TIP THE SECURITY GUY BEFORE YOU LEAVE YOUR CAR.)

Well the GPS was an offshoot of a Costco membership. I discovered the concept of "points of interest" and uploaded a file to the gizmo that has the location of every Costco outlet with a gas station. Their gas is usually as cheap in price as Arco (the lowest priced chain at least in Phoenix) but without the scammy 45-cent debit card fee that gets tacked on at Arco. I was heading out on a road trip and decided that I wanted a really exact answer to the question, "Are we there yet?"

The GPS came with a source of somewhat useless data - an MSN data subscription. The FM receiver that picks up the silent data signal (available in most major cities - this does you no good if you live in Montana) gets information about local weather, movies playing at nearby theaters and traffic.

All of this is fed into a device you're really not supposed to mess with while driving. One cannot turn this device on without "agreeing" to a warning that says that the information displayed on the screen will distract you from the road and that interacting with the device while in motion "can cause injury or even death." But hey, when you're stopped at a red light - or as is often the case in the Phoenix metro area - you're stopped nine blocks back from the red light and not going to go anywhere for a long time, you futz with it.

It will display the temperature where you're located. You could also get this information by rolling down the window. Thankfully, this is one of the few pieces of information that it does not speak.

Thanks to another web site that had other points of interest, I get a monthly update of where all the new traffic red light / speed cameras are installed. Upon approaching an intersection that has red light cameras, it chimes and keeps chiming every so often until you've passed the "threat."

Sometimes it will speak very important information. "US 60 East is closed five miles ahead. Exit immediately at the next exit...." Then the device proceeds to detour you around the highway closure.

At other times, not so much. I was on the 101 going back to the office and I came over a small hill to see that most of the cars had their brake lights on and traffic was jammed. Just as I stepped on my brakes it said, "Warning, slow traffic ahead." Well no shit...

The reaction of people with whom I'm talking on the phone (that's what one does to pass time in the car, right?) varies. "You're kidding that the inside of your car makes all that noise, you're inside a store right?" to "Who is that bossy bitch sitting next to you?" The devices have female voices, what can I say.

In an ideal world it would learn the routes you drive and not chime so frequently about a red light camera only 1 mile from home. In an ideal world it would say "Warning, slow traffic ahead" before you went over the top of that hill.

But it's nice to be routed around traffic so efficiently. I just hope the cumulative time I spend assembling and disassembling the system for each trip (keep it in view and your glass is going to get smashed) doesn't outlast the amount of time all the wizardry saves on a day-to-day basis.

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Monday, February 25, 2008

US TV star crap I usually don't buy into but this is FUNNY

I find Sarah Silverman's humor quite funny. Her TV show, not so much. It had potential.

But these two gems from youtube... holy crap. The first one is safe for work with headphones, the second is not safe for work at all. I usually don't follow who's supposedly dating who in Hollywood - other than to marvel at how LA County seems to have a whole different set of laws that apply to celebrities. They get away with murder. Right, OJ?



And the response...

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Saturday, February 23, 2008

Yellow fever outbreak in Paraguay - government officials vaccinated first and at home?

Note the wording of the health minister - he says "reject" and not "deny." It's not a translation error, the words are quite different. Damn right the politicos and the wealthy got house-calls with vaccine while most others wait in line, that's how it works in this part of the world. It's about how much cash you got, where you are on the political food chain and most importantly *who you know*.

The protesters' suspicions are probably 100% correct and also culturally normal.

American readers: please note the difference between 'Paraguay' and 'Uruguay'. All they share is a last syllable and a border, they are two quite different places.

"Protesters have closed roads and started fires amid news reports that health workers were vaccinating certain politicians in their homes.

'I categorically reject these kinds of irresponsible allegations,' said Health Minister Oscar Martinez Doldan.

Meanwhile, some people have endured long waits for vaccines in sweltering heat."

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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

dinner with happy ending - free

A group got quite the surprise with their bill when they demanded it after poor service.

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Hong Kong Speedpost inbound again...

Right now there's a package on a plane over the Pacific. Hopefully it's got the proper cellphone in it... I was sent a GSM900/1800 phone (useless in the USA) by accident. Supposedly the quadband version is in that package. Friday or Saturday I may make the switch from Windows Mobile and see whether its worth it to have two phone numbers active in one device - if it even works...

The idea is to try to get my US SIM to work on a foriegn network along with a local one. That way I can have the best of both worlds - a local number for cheap inbound and outbound calls as well as be roaming at the same time. Fingers crossed...

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FINALLY the right XM feng shui for my office

Generally throughout the Phoenix area an XM receiver will work indoors. XM is a satellite radio service intended for the US and Canada, delivered from two satellites. The standard antenna works just fine throughout the US, Canada and Northern Mexico. People get the signal as far south as Trinidad in the Caribbean by putting the standard antenna on a satellite dish and aiming at one of the two XM sats, although you have to have an address in the US and Canada to subscribe, it's a copyright issue.

It works indoors in major cities either because you just happen to have line of sight through a window (not likely) or because of the repeaters that are scattered all over the urban area to keep the signal from dropping when you pass through a tunnel, under a bridge or are in some area where you don't have line of sight to the satellite.

Outside a major city you're generally out of luck indoors as there are no repeaters.

At my last workplace I listened to XM all day long. It picked up a repeater signal and worked great.

In my current office it had been another story until today when I happened to try again. Looks like a ground-based repeater has been added near here because with the antenna pointed "just so I get mostly drop-out free reception. Previously I could hear like 20 seconds at a time with 20 seconds of silence in between - I wasn't getting a good signal from any direction.

It works now!!! I hope it lasts... it will mean one more thing to keep track of since the subscription is on a postage-stamp sized cartridge that I have to move between the office and the car. The cartridge is unique to my subscription I guess and the signal cannot be received without it being present in the receiver.

I'd love to be listening to the comedy channel but that'll be a weekend-only thing, it's far too dirty for the office. Someone would freak.

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Toshiba drops HD-DVD format, one customer a little too excited...

..."I came right away," said Takayuki Hara, who was eagerly looking at the latest Blu-ray players at Tokyo's Bic Camera electronics store as soon as he heard the news of Toshiba pullout."

I thought *I* was passionate about the latest gizmos and gadgets but this guy has me beat.

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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

There are still kids in the streets but you'll be able to get 30 channels on your cellphone...

I will translate the press release from Ancel, the state-owned cellular phone company in Uruguay. It's actually pretty neat that they're making the latest technology available... to be fair the US has kids in the streets too. Just not quite so visibly.

Uruguay finally decided what its going to do about digital television broadcasting. I was glad to see they went with the rest of the world and chose something called DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting). It's not the standard that the US, Mexico and Canada use - but all of Europe and most of Asia have decided upon DVB. Japan does its own thing, and Brazil decided to do a variant of the Japanese standard that only works in Brazil.

Result? DVB set-top box hardware is dirt cheap due to mass production. In Brazil the cost is still quite high. Uruguay made a great decision going with DVB.

But my subject line was about cellphones. There are several flavors of DVB. There's DVB-T (terrestrial) which one receives with a rooftop antenna for your TV/set-top box. DVB-C (cable) - digital cable European style. DVB-H (handheld) - or TV on your cellphone. There is also a DVB-S (satellite) and a DVB-S2 (satellite but more useful for high definition TV).

The only ones of these standards that have made any penetration into North America - and quite unofficially at that - are DVB-S and DVB-S2. Dish Network uses them as do the satellite trucks used to collect TV news.

So Uruguay has decided to deploy DVB-H in Punta del Este. It's a good market to deploy it - it's going to have the best possibility of compatible handsets being there.

It could be deployed in Montevideo but I'm quite certain it would cause deaths or injury. The deaths/injuries would either be caused by TV-watching pedestrians walking into traffic or by TV-watching bus riders not using headphones.

Anyway, a translation of Ancel's press-release:
"ANCEL launches for the first time in the region a digital TV service in DVB-H.

From the next 25th of January, Punta del Este will have this service that permits direct TV reception on portable screens, like cellular phones.

To experiment with this service, Ancel already has new mobile handsets available.

The system to be used is the European Digital Video Broadcasting - Handhelds, better known as DVB-H, that was recently approved by the Executive Branch (of the government) as an official standard for digital mobile TV.

This technology permits the users to see excellent quality of digital audio and video signals on cellular phones that have the ability to recieve DVB-H.

In the first step of the tests 5 channels will be transmitted. (Channel 7 Cerro Pan de Azucar, Canal 5 TVEO, Canal C5N de Argentina, Television Nacional de Chile y Record de Brasil) - but DVB-H can transmit up to a maximum of 30 simultaneous signals.

Ancel is a pioneer in bringing this technology to Uruguay and to the region. Count on it, with the help and technical collaboration of Nokia."

Ok, well this is all well and good. If it puts Canal 5 TVEO on one more screen clearly its a success in my mind - Channel 5 was never really clearly visible from any location where I ever lived or visited. Didn't matter if it was Salinas, Pando, Montevideo - it was visible but snowy. Channel 7 would already be available in analog form in Punta so that's an easy one to add... and I bet the other three are chosen because they have largely local content and are thus easy to license.

The service may be free to begin with, but I'm sure that when they add ESPN and TyC, the big sports channels - there's going to be a cost. The budget of the "average" Uruguayan is stretched pretty thin as it is. It'll be interesting to see how they package it when such premium channels become available. Nevermind that the handset is going to cost a fortune.

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Monday, February 11, 2008

talking to someone who is pretending to understand you

For over a year, I was that person. The first 8-12 months in Uruguay, I often times didn't have a clue exactly (if at all) what was being said to me. I relied on tone of voice, facial expression, context, and listening very carefully for words that I either for sure understood or possibly could guess at.

I was at a neighbor's house the other night. The primary language spoken in that household is Spanish but I figured this cousin of theirs who was younger than me probably spoke English. I was trying to fix something on their computer - the poor bastards bought a machine with Windows Vista on it. Lost cause. I keep telling them to run the restore CD and sell it as quickly as possible, then pre-order a machine with XP. But that's not my point.

Anyway I was frustrated with the computer and it takes some additional thought to talk with someone in Spanish so I figured I'd switch for a few sentences I couldn't quite process fast enough. The 13-year old daughter starts laughing. "He doesn't understand you at all, he's just pretending."

So I had a chance to ask how another person gets by in a society where they don't understand the dominant language. And the responses were the same. I listen for words I know, I watch the facial expression and tone of voice, and smile and nod when I think its appropriate. It was interesting to hear from another person going through the same thing.

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An "orientale" in Texas - not wasting any time

For those of you who aren't familiar, Uruguayans sometimes refer to themselves as "orientales."

A good friend of mine from UY is in Texas since yesterday morning and has already gotten laid twice. He confirms that yes, so far, everything IS big in Texas.

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Sunday, February 10, 2008

VD Cake

I had occasion to attend a valentine's day party tonight. Dateless, of course. I have a dog. When my lawyer and I are through with my last ex I'll consider dating again.

EVERYTHING in the USA revolves around lawyers and lawsuits. It's part of the price of admission to the economic opportunity. Anybody dreaming of a green card should consider how much privacy they have where they live now and weigh that against the insane entanglements you risk by living here. Your access to economic opportunity comes with a complete and total loss of personal privacy that you cannot even imagine. You'd do very well to maintain ties such as bank accounts etc. with your home country -- but follow the labyrinth of laws that encumber you as a US resident with foreign accounts. Just having them raises a red flag and the system considers you guilty until you prove your innocence.

But the party was good for a laugh... They had a cake that nobody could quite seem to cut. A picture is attached. For the record, that IS frosting at the tip and not any kind of discharge.

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Saturday, February 09, 2008

Holy shit... Ride the light, but pay per photon....

I went online to check my Qwest bill this morning. Remember those Qwest commercials from the 90's where they showed that dude in the motel where he could order every movie ever made on pay-per-view, and their slogan was "Ride the light?"

It's ironic that Qwest has NO plans to bring fiber to the home like Verizon FiOS and deathstar, er, AT&T u-Verse. (I would bet a million rupees that the u-Verse name was selected in part because its easily pronounceable in Indian English because that's where you're going to call for customer service...)

But I digress. When I lived in Uruguay, especially on the farm where my boyfriend would make long phone calls during the day... I lived in FEAR of the ANTEL bill arriving. It was almost never under $1000 pesos, or at the exchange rate that time, about 40 bucks. But when you consider that teaching english I was making maybe 200 bucks in a month... that was, well, excessive.

I got a Qwest bill today that reminded me of how excruciatingly expensive those ANTEL payments were if you expressed them as a percentage of your monthly income.



Either my dog ordered a bunch of PPV movies, or my October-through-January bundled-billing screw-up finally got resolved. My bills got really LOW because they kept providing but stopped charging for one of the services. After two months I called 'em. As expected, here's the ugly surprise.

This is the downside of those convenient bundled packages that sound SO good in marketing terms but are executed SO poorly by billing software.

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Dual-SIM GSM paperweight :(

Turns out they sent me a GSM900/1800 model. Translated into English - the nearest GSM network that has an 1800 or 900 signal is maybe in the Caribbean.... So it's not useful locally. It'll get sold when I go to Uruguay, it'll be perfect for someone who bounces between Ancel and Claro coverage because both those nets are '1800.

But I ordered another version... they swear its quad band. I really want that Dual-SIM holy grail.

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Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Another trip to Uruguay in the works...

It's that time again. It's like mid-way thru my project and I'm itchin' to meet the team as well as get a little bit of vacation.

At the rate I am going, I will not have room for CLOTHES in my suitcases what with all the STUFF I'm being asked to buy here and bring with. (Of course, I ain't givin' it away.... the recipients will pay me for it.)

But that's part and parcel of such a journey.

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Those impossible-to-open Microsoft boxes...

Ok, you know that new box they switched to for Windows ME 2.0 as well as Office 2007 stuff? The one with the rounded corner?

I could not get the box to open. I'd ran across one late last summer and it took me the better part of 15 minutes to figure out the mechanism, but today - I was pressed for time. (I have time to write this now because I'm downloading the 600meg update for office....)

I had two products to install. Messed with pulling the tab - which pulled RIGHT OUT - no success there... Inscrutable irritating box, meet floor. Box, hope you're comfy because here comes Mr. Adidas. Problem solved.

The second box was opened in the regular fashion since having cracked open the first one, it refreshed my memory on how the mechanism works.

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Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Hong Kong Speedpost ROCKS

I have occasion to order stuff from overseas from time to time. I am truly blown away by the efficiency and level of detail that is being provided about this package....

It's the dual-SIM GSM phone inbound. So the seller sends me a tracking number.

I use Google to find the Hong Kong post office. Or rather, The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China Post Office. ;)

I find where to enter the tracking number and it comes back as follows:

Outward Speedpost

Item Number: xxxxxxxxxxx
Posting Date Posting Time Drop-off Point
4-Feb-2008 16:18 Kowloon East Post Office

Date # Location Delivery Status
4-Feb-2008 Hong Kong Item posted and is being processed.
4-Feb-2008 Hong Kong Processed for departure.
4-Feb-2008 Hong Kong The item left Hong Kong for its destination on 4-Feb-2008
4-Feb-2008 Hong Kong The item left Hong Kong for its destination on 4-Feb-2008
5-Feb-2008 United States of America Arrived and is being processed.
5-Feb-2008 United States of America Pending customs inspection.
5-Feb-2008 United States of America In transit.


Ok so that's cool. But it gets better. The US Postal Service has EDI setup with Hong Kong!!! (EDI=electronic data interchange) I guess I'm not real surprised since so much stuff comes from China... I'm thinking, no way is this foreign tracking number going to come up with anything.

Oh no, even more detail:
Detailed Results:

Inbound Out of Customs, February 05, 2008, 8:51 am
Processed, February 05, 2008, 8:13 am, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94128
Inbound Into Customs
Inbound International Arrival, February 05, 2008, 6:29 am, SAN FRANCISCO
Origin Post is Preparing Shipment
Foreign International Dispatch, February 04, 2008, 10:40 pm, HONG KONG AIR MAIL CENTRE, HONG KONG
Foreign Acceptance, February 04, 2008, 4:18 pm, HONG KONG

And it lets you enter an email address so that you get sent future activity - like when it gets delivered :)

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Iran outlaws dogs

Insane. Just insane. They ARREST people in Iran for owning and walking dogs.

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Sunday, February 03, 2008

Spanglish on a road sign in mexico

"Se prohibe grafitear." Um, ok...

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Saturday, February 02, 2008

Digital TV in fits and starts in the USA

The UK government has been incredibly good in communicating to their citizens that good old analog TV is going away.

What do we get here in Uncle-Scam land? Only within the last year did we finally mandate that new TV's have to have a digital tuner. There's a "coupon" program that you can supposedly use to get a converter box to receive over the air digital TV. You just have to be one of the 18% of households who don't get cable/satellite or have a TV set with rabbit ears out in the garage.

The problem? The converter boxes aren't really in stores yet. People don't know how to get the coupons. People who don't need coupons because they're part of that 82+% who pay for a TV service - will mistakenly sign up and get them anyway.

Perhaps this was what this press release (US citizens, your tax dollars paid for this!!) was about.

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