dude, where's my car?

When I landed in Phoenix on Friday night I decided not to try to hassle with finding my car at the same time as I was hauling all the luggage. Yeah, I got incredulous reactions from a couple of people I mentioned this to - but I really did not want to be bothered with it. Yes, I really did misplace it. Or rather, I misplaced the little slip of paper that they'd given me way back the beginning of this month when I left it. Some might say - how could you be that stupid? Anyone who would say that doesn't know me very well. ;) Besides, after a three week business trip trying to remember to collect receipts for my accountant I have a grocery bag full of little slips of paper.

Distances in Phoenix are huge. I had the cab drop me where I thought it was. Three hours and 3 liters of water later I'd found it. I knew I'd parked in a covered lot and vaguely what the logo of the place looked like.

I was wondering... have I missed it behind some large SUV? I've never succumbed to the idea that you should drive everywhere in a giant truck. What if I don't find it? Um, go home and try again tomorrow? Buy another?

I expected to have to explain myself quite a bit more than I did. Nope. The few employees who asked what I was doing didn't really find my errand out-of-the-ordinary although one had a rather unlikely suggestion. "You could probably get a list of all the companies that have shuttle service from the airport and then just call them all."

She meant well. First of all, it violates my first rule of travel: "One should not make one's lack of planning or timeliness someone else's emergency." This definitely fits the "lack of planning" category. Secondly it's not realistic. I traveled for a year out of this airport and I know full well what it's like to try to use the phone to reach a company whose primary place of business is a minimally-staffed wide open space. I know from experience that phoning, even for a ride, can be frustrating.

My dog was happy to see the car as well. But then, she always is.

dual-SIM GSM phone, US-functional version :)

On arrival home I picked up mail. That included a package from China with a tri-band GSM phone. Previous phones had arrived and turned out to be GSM900/1800 - no service is available anywhere in North America fitting that description. This phone, from a different vendor, is GSM900/1800/1900.

Anyway upon unpacking the phone it was obvious that it came from the same manufacturer as the others - the menus were pretty much the same.

I put my T-Mobile SIM on one side and a deathstar prepaid SIM on the other.

SUCCESS.

So far...

I need to see how it works over the course of a day or two. I'd read on the internet that deathstar (if you're having trouble guessing what I mean, visualize ATT's logo and think back to Star Wars) has *some* 1900 MHz coverage in Phoenix.

Both phone numbers work just fine to make and receive calls and send/receive text messages.

The manual includes helpful warnings -

"Please put the mobile phone on the place where the child can not touch."

The whole manual is written in that, er, style. It's not easy reading.

flying from Uruguay? no more than 100 grams food for carry-on...

Flying back out of MVD was easier than via Buenos Aires. The airline has this big list of food you can't take onboard but I didn't notice any fine print that said 100 grams was the limit.

However, I bought 5 alfajores in the airport and put them in my carry-on bag without thinking much about it. They aren't liquid, right?

Anyway when I got to security the national police officer manning the x-ray machine went right to that and was going to take them all. I argued "But they're dry and not liquid."

She was nice enough about it. She left two. She also offered that I could go back out and eat them all. :-) Um, no.... alfajores for dinner is not quite what I had in mind but I kept that to myself.

a new spin on feeding the poor

I was having lunch in a restaurant downtown MVD yesterday and vaguely noticed that the waiter was cleaning the food off of plates onto just one plate on one table. Didn't think anything of it. I had my lunch and was nearly finished when one of those lottery-ticket sellers came through.

Much to my surprise the waiter pointed him to that table. The guy ate the entire plate of scraps that had been accumulated. I've seen a lot of things but that one - WOW. I think only one other patron took any notice of what happened. It was a nice thing for the waiter to do.

hot water?

This is called a "sun" by the locals. (They say it and it sounds like "soon.")

You plug it into a wall outlet after immersing it in water. Don't get the order the other way 'round, it burns up pretty fast in air.

It heats water in minutes and is extremely dangerous. You can buy them at most any neighborhood grocery store.

99 red balloons

A moderate to severe marketing earthquake happened in Montevideo over the last weekend. CTI Movil is now the "Claro" brand name.

The main office of CTI had a makeover - maybe Friday or Saturday night. I'm not sure which but it was an overnight change. Their resellers quietly swapped logos after the main office changed.

This morning (Monday) as I walked across Plaza Independencia there were a small number of strangely-attired young actors marketing the new name and then this evening Claro had rented the Teatro Solis (complete with putting up a huge video display and laser lighting) for some kind of reception. It was totally high-class bullshit - you'd have thought an awards show was happening there.

The Claro logo is a red sphere - Evidently they bought thousands of red balloons with the logo. That probably explains how Bartolome Mitre between Teatro Solis and the Peatonal Sarandi came to be full of them. The outdoor bar patrons were milling about with hundreds of the things around their feet and the occasional loud pop as the balloons were either stepped or ashed on.

I've never seen that many red balloons in one place since the 80's.

(Tuesday evening the 25th of March I took a couple of pictures...)

half of Chinese mobile phone users text message spammed by an American company

Hmmm this is an interesting story - US-owned advertising companies sending commercial messages to the Chinese. It's like the trade situation - the equipment is made in China but a lot of the added value content is made elsewhere. ;)

"HONG KONG -

Beijing vowed to quell mobile phone spam messages on Sunday after seven advertising companies including Nasdaq-traded Focus Media were discovered to have sent commercial messages to practically half of China's population of cell phone users without their consent.

...

Beijing's actions to crack down on spam messages came after a CCTV program revealed that advertising firm Focus Media Holding (nasdaq: FMCN - news - people ) possessed personal information pertaining to more than 200 million Chinese cell phone users, accounting for nearly half of the country's 555 million mobile phone subscribers. Focus Media and six other online advertising firms were said to have transmitted junk messages to mobile phone users through the two principal network operators.

The issue caused a furor among the Chinese public, many of whom expressed concern that their private information might have been exchanged without their consent. Regulation to protect privacy is absent in China."

no esta nadie por ningun lado

Easter weekend sees montevideo pretty empty. I want to take the bus east tomorrow but going back thru tres cruces on Sunday night would be nasty. I don't know.

Lunch was an excellent experience. Don Trigo has a location at Plaza Matriz and I had a typical Uruguayan meal: everything on the menu is essentially a la carte. I got a portion of pulpon (prime rib) and a chorizo. For a "guarnacion" I was adventurous and went with some mashed boniatos. The meat was good, the sweet potatoes pretty tasteless. Agua con gas.

It was fun to watch the few people milling around. A very few Uruguayans were left - the employees, the street kids, the dogs... a grandfather with two grandchildren who were happily spreading ice cream all over one another in the 27-degree heat.

Everyone around me was a tourist, they had to be. The locals? Se fueron. They left.

It was very peaceful.

Monday the business year starts.

flat panel TV's have arrived at Ta Ta

Uruguayan retailer Ta Ta is having another successful year making their stores hard to figure out. Have I walked into a.... Bakery? Hardware store? Supermarket?

You just never know what you're going to see. I did not want to do a restaurant tonight, I'm tired of them. It's fairly cheap to just get ham and bread... I walked into Ta Ta on 18 de Julio.

As I was walking out, basket laden with "Ser" (drinkable yogurt), some bananas, 200 gm of sliced ham, diet coke and a loaf of bread - I saw a 15" flat panel TV for "only" $8800 UY Pesos ($USD 440). Ta Ta carries the odd appliance here and there but generally not good quality stuff. These flat panels definitely looked to be poor quality. The controls did not fit well with the device and they've pretty well been mauled from the public looking them over. For sure that store is not going to have another un-mauled one in a box in the back, it just isn't so... of course the price is so high firstly due to taxes and secondly due to the technological mishmosh of broadcast standards its got to support for being sold in this part of the world.

Waiting to checkout there was another multinational sight: a group of Filipino crew from the port. They had a vast quantity of basic stuff they were taking on board. They had a positively INCREDIBLE amount of sugar with them: I bet it was for making some kind of hooch. Watching them pay was interesting - he handed the cashier 3 US $100 bills and she immediately gave him one back. He clearly didn't quite know the value of the money. Then she had the head cashier duly examine the "benjamins" and the guy got his change in Uruguayan pesos. She must have handed him some mind-boggling amount like 980 or something because it was a fat wad of cash he clearly would much rather have seen in dollars or euros.

Changing the itinerary

Well right now I'd have been on a flight back to the USA, but it ain't so. I decided to stay another week here - actually that was pretty much decided for me on the first full day I was here. I haven't posted in a week because I've been very much "on vacation." The country is *de facto* closed all week because its holy week

It was down to the wire this afternoon with changing my ticket. I figured, OK, if the airline has a ticket office that should be easiest...

Of course I went right after two of the three employees were returning from lunch. I'd also forgotten that no matter how nice the office look - there's still going to be someplace, somewhere from which you have to take a number. I was reminded of this when two groups of elderly people walked in and grabbed numbers ASAP. No matter I'd been there first by a couple of minutes, I was now 3rd. There's no sense even discussing it.

Well the first group of crones simply wanted to confirm some flight times and details. The second group... I think they were still there after I'd returned to the ticket office a second time!

So this woman who's just returned from lunch looks vaguely afraid of me yet calls my number all the same. The deer in the headlights look is quickly explained by the fact that she's new. Her pat answer to the question "How much will it cost to change my ticket" was "$150 us, usually." She pecks away unconvincingly at the computer and then tells me there is no availability on the flight.

"I know there are seats on that flight, they are available for sale on the internet."

Then she falls back on, "I'm kind of new, this is the phone number for our reservations office in Buenos Aires." I'm dismissed.

I get someone on the phone and he finds availability (imagine that) but he wants me to send him a faxed copy of my credit card along with an authorization letter that he starts dictating to me... um, no. I cut him off and ask him if I can pay it at their ticket office. I confirm (he says) the changes are in the computer under the same confirmation number.

Faxes have a tendency to get lost or the authorization letter isn't quite exactly what they were after or ... something. It's more room for something to go wrong.

Back inside the ticket office I take my wretched number and wait. The "new" girl is busy screwing something up and one of the more experienced employees is trying to sort it out. I explain to this woman that I've been on the phone to their reservations office in BsAs and I simply need to pay the charge rather than sending a fax.

It turns out that no, there is nothing changed about my reservation. No evidence anyone's touched it. She quotes me a price three times higher than what the guy on the phone said. I smile. My little internal steam gauge has gone from the green, over to the yellow and is wavering at the red. On the green side it says 0 and on the red side it says "PUTEAR." (bitch and complain) "This is roughly the same experience as a visit to BPS. Take a number to be poorly attended by someone who through no fault of her own is not well trained. Get sent to the phone to find that a credit card cannot be accepted without a letter being faxed - so I may as well go back to the office where an employee can see me and my credit card because I KNOW a fax is going to get lost. And the price is now higher than it was ten minutes ago during a phone call I must never have made. I am not moving from this spot until we have a solution."

"Well what price did they quote you?"

"Tell you what, a lower one than you just quoted me. When I hear it again I'll let you know."

Finally she quotes the same price as the person on the phone and says "but you have to pay four dollars higher than that here because we have to calculate the tax differently."

"My hotel would have charged me four bucks to have sent a fax, same thing."

She's on the phone awhile longer while they go back and forth over something. Yes, definitely the fax would have been lost and this would be a last minute drama at the airport.

Finally she's ready. She's gotta get one little dig in though: "Let's see if your credit card is approved now."

Hour and a half to rebook a flight.

Good restaurants in Montevideo these days

Pannini's - go into Ciudad Vieja towards the port on the Peatonal Sarandi. Just one block off Plaza Independencia then go left. It's on the right side of the street. I'd get the exact address off the bill but I don't want to get up just now. Besides, it's an easy area of the city to find food. Prices are high but the service is incredible.

Cru - The address is Guayaqui 2985. Also excellent service. No idea what the total bill was for four of us but the menu prices were in the range of Pannini's.

Home again

Home as a relative term that is. (Bear with me, this is being posted without the aid of coffee or anything - my body thinks its 4:45 am. The subject changes quickly from paragraph to paragraph so stay awake!)

I am back in Uruguay. The hotel I'm staying in is in the heart of Ciudad Vieja in Montevideo. It's early fall so the weather is quite nice.

30 hours of travel time to get here this time - long layover in Miami.

My computer decided to crap out after the long trip... fortunately the machine has a hidden recovery partition. Equally fortunate that my business surrounds me with IT people so it was easy to extract the machine's hard disk and grab the 17GB of files that contain my last three months' work.

The conversation was the same with all of them. "Do you have a backup?"

IT people always preach to everyone how they should backup their files mostly because we're the ones that get whined at and have to dry the users tears when something goes awry.

"No, I don't have a backup, this is it." (Well, I had a backup of the very most important stuff but it would have been bad to lose all of it...)

But amongst ourselves we don't preach. The answer with regard to everyone's personal PC is just that - most of the time we don't have a backup.

I'm just glad that I was able to recover it. The prospect of buying a replacement laptop in Montevideo is possible - but to do so is like voluntarily going on a date you know is going to be bad. The selection won't be good and you know you'll be paying at least 50% more for the machine than you would in the US. When you need one you need it NOW - there's no time to ask someone traveling from the US to bring you a new one.

No one traveling from overseas ever has baggage laden with electronic wizardry. It never happens. You have to carry it on. Well, hypothetically.

But the laptop was able to recover itself while I went off and had dinner with my friend Ale. The food was incredible. The restaurant's wine list started with the $300 bottles, it was a nice place.

She and I chatted about lots of things - like how far removed we were from a boliche (any small local watering hole) in Pando.

She met me at my hotel earlier in the evening and marveled over the room - it's a neat place.



It's very pretty but not very practical. If I lived here for any length of time I would kill myself on these stairs. They are about .4 meters wide (I'm overseas, deal with the conversion yourself if you need to...) and its very easy to mis-step on the way from the bed to the bathroom and go falling right down them. One wrong move and POW! They're made from a beautiful hard wood - which is lovely to look at but very very slippery walking in just socks or barefoot! But this isn't a nanny state, there are no guardrails or warnings in a lot of places - just like in life. The photo is proof that trial lawyers don't make much money here. In the US you might be able to build this in private construction but in a hotel - the place would be sued out of existence.

It's sort of like waking up in a set from A Clockwork Orange especially with the sharp contrast between the age of the building and the style of the construction.

Walking the streets here feels like being home again.

I'm listening, Sally Kern -- Oklahoma is not OK

These businesses are based in Oklahoma:
Dollar/Thrifty Rent-a-Car
National Car Rental / Alamo
Quik Trip
Sonic
First Fidelity Bank

BOYCOTT THEM. Don't spend your money indirectly in a state where intolerance is acceptable. Why?

State Rep. Sally Kern (republican, what did you expect) had this to say to an audience she thought would be "friendly" to this B.S.:
"The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation, okay? It’s just a fact. Not everybody’s lifestyle is equal, just like not all religions are. You know, the very fact that I’m talking to you like this here today puts me in jeopardy, okay? And I’m not anti- and I’m not gay bashing, but according to God’s Word, that is not the right kind of lifestyle. It has deadly consequences for those people involved in it. They have more suicides, they’re more discouraged, there’s more illness, their lifespans are shorter, you know, it’s not a lifestyle that is good for this nation.

As a matter of fact, studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades. So it’s the death knell for this country. I honestly think it’s the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat.

Because what’s happening now, they’re going after, in schools, two year olds! Do you know what they’re trying to get into early childhood education? They want to give our young children into the government schools so they can indoctrinate them. I taught school for close to twenty years. And we’re not teaching facts and knowledge anymore folks. We’re teaching indoctrination, okay? And their going after our young children, as young as two years of age to try to teach them that the homosexual lifestyle is an acceptable lifestyle.

You know, gays are infiltrating city councils. Did you know… you read this phrase, and you write it in there, this passion play? Okay, have you heard that the city council of Eureka Springs is now controlled by gays? Okay? There are some others, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Takoma, Maryland; Kennsington, Maryland; in Vermont, Oregon, West Palm Beach, Florida; in a lot of other places in Florida. What’s happening? They are winning elections.

One of the things I deal with in our legislature, I tried to introduce a bill last year that would notify parents, schools had to let parents know what clubs their students were involved in. And the reason I did that bill primarily was this: We have the gay-straight alliance coming into our schools. Kids are getting involved in these groups, their lives are being ruined, their parents don’t know about it. So I introduced a bill, you have to notify all clubs and things.

And one of my colleagues said you know, we don’t have a gay problem in my county, that’s why I voted against that bill. Well you know what? To me that is so dumb. If you got cancer or something in your little toe, do you say, you know, I’m just going to forget about it because the rest of me’s fine. It spreads, okay? And this stuff, it’s deadly and it’s spreading and it will destroy our young people, it will destroy this nation."

CNN: "Bush has said many times that his administration does not torture."

Every minute of every hour since Bush's administration's lies involved us in Iraq has been torture for the Iraqi people, for the US enlisted men serving their country and for the American public agonizing over the possible fate of their sons and daughters. It's torture for the American public because we're spending untold billions of dollars in Iraq, untold billions of dollars propping up a regime in Israel with a spotty human rights record - with no end in site. Meanwhile the US has street kids, social security is going broke, medicate is going broke, our highway infrastructure is collapsing - but the money goes overseas. That too is torture.

That the congress should have to pass a bill specifically outlawing certain torture techniques shows how insane the "war on terror" has become. The USA taught the Argentine and Uruguayan dictatorships how to drug undesirable prisoners and push them out of planes over the Atlantic ocean.

Those people got on a plane against their will and were "disappeared." It's not much different from this euphemism called "rendition," which really means kidnapping without any due process. After rendition those people largely disappear.

Check out wikileaks.be - read the leaked manuals about the procedures followed at Gutantanamo. This is what your federal tax dollars pay for.

I don't advocate tax protest. It's a good way to join the 1% (a huge number) of Americans who are incarcerated. But if any of this outrages you at all or causes doubt in the current administration, don't vote for the status quo in the next election.

Bush endorses McCain for president... thoughts

McCain has run about as often as Ralph Nader! The headline may as well be "Nixon endorses Nader for president," because they have some similar qualities.

Well this was quick. Now we can cancel the republican convention and have their party spend all that money paying the US government's bill in Iraq.

MTV-LA Asteriscos XXX becomes gay inclusive

MTV-LA is the version of MTV broadcast south of the border. It's seen in Mexico and all of South America except Brazil. They have had a late-night video show, well, forever that shows text messages from one lover to another superimposed over videos.

It's a fantastic way to learn the really explicit turns of phrase in Spanish.

I am rarely up to watch since its on late at night. I noticed this evening that messages between same-sex couples are appearing on-screen, something that had been conspicuously absent in the past.

It just makes an already great show even better. Where else can you read "Sus bubis son falsas?" or "mejor una muneca inflatable." (Your tits are fake / better a blow up doll)

:-)

Eltima Software SyncMate

WOW. I *think* any desire I had to have an iPhone is dead as a doornail. SyncMate is a Mac OS X application that allows synchronization with a WM6 device.

It uses its own synchronization engine on the mobile device rather than try to emulate ActiveSync - it's a little difficult to get installed at first but it's worth it.

I can create an appointment in iCal and have it synchronize to my mobile phone. My mobile phone then pushes the appointment to my hosted Exchange service. From there it gets picked up in Outlook 2008 on my PC - the whole process takes less than 30 seconds.

I'm waiting for the activation key that allows synchronization from iTunes to WM6. It will be very interesting to see if the library of encrypted content in my iTunes library finds its way in decrypted form onto my WM6 device.

The software is $39.99 for a personal license and $49.95 for a one-user business license.