Pharos 137 phone

This phone is OK, but when you take it out of the box be prepared to apply updates to its operating system. If you are not familiar with Windows Mobile you may have a bad experience.

Once the current suite of updates are applied the phone is pretty tolerable to use.

* The motion sensor support is flaky. It will work when it decides to.

* Do NOT hard reset this phone from the control panel unless the memory card and your SIM have been removed. I haven't experienced this but there are numerous warnings that on hard reset this phone will wipe both the memory card and your SIM (not sure if that's just contacts or the bits that identify your service!)

* Updates to the phone software may corrupt the SD card. Take it out to be safe. They've also had mis-cues with the updates not working in Windows Vista.

* If you're accustomed to GSM voice and EDGE data in marginal signal locations (i.e. on your previous phone that worked just fine at a particular spot) - you are giving that up by buying this phone.

Pharos seems to be quite responsive to user feedback. So far issues are being fixed.

Pharos 137 Phone

I got another new toy I don't really need this week. Of course, I couldn't live without it now.

The specs for the Pharos 137 are widely available, just google 'em. I could write it all down but it would look like an eye chart. In short its the first Windows Mobile phone that supports T-Mobile USA's odd choice of frequency for a 3g mobile network.

The phone has some very appealing features. A GPS that gets its position fix pretty quickly (outdoors, naturally) and navigation software included. A VERY high resolution screen as well.

In a 3g coverage area the phone is a great little media toy. Slingplayer Mobile works flawlessly to bring in TV from home - say, to the office :) The streaming audio options that can be made to work on Windows Mobile work quite well - this may provoke me to finally ditch XM/Sirius, which I've been contemplating since their recent price increase. Viewing as well as upload to YouTube are supported. Xtube does not seem to be supported though I didn't try very hard. (It might work with that Skyfire browser)

The phone has one feature that may never work - the built in phone application supports "video calling." This is the reason for the phone's two cameras - one is front-facing. T-Mobile would have to implement support for it and even then a video call would only be successful to another 3g phone supporting video calls. Given that their own models don't support it nor does anything upcoming, don't hold your breath. But it's a button you can push all the same.

Awesome phone really! And yes, it works all over the world for low-speed data and voice calls.

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.

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.

Late night USA cable TV - you have to check out "shop erotic!" just once if you get the Oxygen channel

These two very average women do this shop at home schtick.

They are very modestly dressed and are just completely deadpan about the items on offer:

Some examples -
Original Jack Rabbit 6 1/2" dong w/ Suction Cup and bonus "Pink Water"
10" dong with suction cup "that you can attach to the shower wall, a chair or wherever"
(Just don't stick it to the windshield of your car in California, suction cup attachments to the windshield are illegal. Suction cupped anywhere else in your car is probably fine...)
Loveclone Vibrating Stroker
Glow in the Dark Clone-a-Willy Kit "Make an exact vibrating rubber copy of any penis."

But a picture is worth thousands of words. Mostly safe for work...

Palin on Saturday Night Live - no surprise on the west coast

Because the Central and Eastern time zones get a differently timed feed (2 hours ahead of us) pretty much all of the Palin woman's appearance on SNL was leaked on the web. I watched anyway just to see it - it was the first time I'd been home near my HD set to really see the difference between Tina Fey and Caribou Barbie. DAMN CLOSE.

I watched the other bits on either YouTube or NBC.com - there is no substitute for the local over the air broadcast (uncompressed by cable or satellite) in 1080i.

I'll keep watching SNL until the end just in case anything got held back on the web.

It is STUPID that even though the New York City local television station signals are landing on my satellite dish, I can't pay for them to be displayed due to a stupid federal law.

Wal-Mart Canada offers super-extra-strength feminine products

Wal-Mart Canada's website is offering a unique new feminine hygiene product. I really don't think they are singling out Canadians - this product should be available in Chicago as well to make the public transport experience a little better.

Uverse - not ready for prime time

I'm experiencing the joy of AT 'n T's U-Verse service. I'm underwhelmed.

With only ONE television turned on and no multiple DVR recordings happening - i.e. one standard def video stream - the picture froze about once every half hour.

The 2WIRE brand box that's the center of the system is the size of (remember telephone directories?) one of the volumes of the Manhattan yellow pages. I haven't figured out the network topology - I think it's all IP over co-ax.

The neat thing about it is it's a distributed digital video recording system. If you record the show on the main box - it's available for playback on the other boxes in the house. However it's impossible to delete a recorded show from one of the other boxes, it has to be done from the "main" set.

It seems to do firmware upgrades (or something) at odd times. 4:30 pm this afternoon, right in the middle of prime football watching - the main 2WIRE box went offline for five minutes. It's hard to tell if this is just a bad install or what - but it seems that many other u-verse users have similar issues.

The pluses - channel change is pretty well instantaneous, no delay like on digital cable or satellite. The picture quality is crystal clear (even when it's frozen for that 1 second or so every half hour).

I hate to say it but if they can fix the freeze-ups and I lived in an area where u-Verse was available - I might end my longstanding boycott of the deathstar.

Going to Fry's on Black Monday '08 - or re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic

EVERY other experience I have had with Fry's is that you will wait 20 or 30 minutes to find a sales rep who's not tied up - this time it was under FIVE. Perhaps under FOUR! The checkout line took an equal amount of time.

It took more time at the supermarket!

How to complain effectively about T-mobile call delivery problems

All is not well inside the Magenta Network.

My previous call delivery problem is back with a vengeance - ironically they couldn't deliver a call to me that was coming from the Cellular Telephone Industry Association (CTIA) convention floor. It wasn't due to local congestion either. They wouldn't even respond with a trouble ticket because I didn't have ALL this information at hand. Their call center did not have access to the previous trouble ticket which was in May.

This SUCKS! I will NOT port my number to the deathstar and trade call delivery problems for billing issues and god-only-knows-what-because-everything-AT&T-touches-turns-to-crap!

To be heard by T-mobile and even get your ticket escalated to anyone who gives a damn it must meet the following criteria:

* Name of the Local Exchange Carrier (LEC or landline telco) of the person making the call
* The full ten or eleven digit number of the calling party (NOTE: Listing only your desk phone number is not valid, Engineering requires the number of the calling party)
* If the call is being placed from a business phone, does the business use a PBX? If so, has the issue been investigated by the local administrator for the system?
* Name of the Long Distance provider of the person making the call
* Has the other carrier been contacted regarding the issue
* Can the customer be reached from a T-Mobile desk phone
* Is the number from a pooled, ported, or a T-Mobile LERG assigned number range? Use the Mobile Codes Table (internal link deleted) to identify pooled or T-Mobile numbers
* Has the T-Mobile number been transferred in from another carrier? If so, which carrier?
* Rebroadcast the number by calling the Number Transfer Center if the number has been ported in within the last 90 days.
* Can the originating party dial to other similar mobile numbers (If the mobile number of the customer is 1-571-555-1212 can the other party dial a similiar number such as 1-571-555-1210, etc.)

NOTE: If you are unable to resolve the issue and need to forward the trouble ticket, inform the customer that we may need to do further testing up to and including our own test calls to the phone number(s) they provided. Include the following in the notes:

* Did the customer give approval for us to do further testing with the unique examples of parties calling them that they provided?

An open letter to T-Mobile USA

This communication is explicitly not a request to renew my contract. I intend to remain OUT of contract until T-Mobile corrects some serious deficiencies in its service and phone offerings.

I was amused to receive a marketing piece from T-mobile today offering me $49.99. This was described as a "free month of service." Hardly. My average bill with T-mobile is always over $100. The goal of the marketing piece was to get me to renew my contract - which I will not do.

I have no complaints with customer service - once I got your support organization to take me seriously they bent over backwards to get the problem fixed. I am generally a happy customer.

Why won't I renew my contract - especially for a paltry fifty bucks?! Every so often I go to the "upgrade phone" section of your site and I see that I already own the most "advanced" most expensive model on offer - the Wing.

T-mobile was "a day late and a dollar short" six months ago with regard to rolling out 3g coverage. It adds insult to injury that your company has chosen a frequency band designed to be incompatible with any other 3g device.

I will renew my contract...
- when there is 3g coverage in the Phoenix metro area and...
- when there are phones on the market that not only support the incompatible 1700 mHz AWS band but are usable to roam on 3g services abroad.

I have no intention of switching to AT&T. Alltel, Sprint, Verizon - forget it, CDMA phones are useless outside the USA. Looking at my usage history you'll see that more months than not I have internataional roaming or text messaging charges.

So, once 3g coverage is available in Phoenix and there are "business-class Windows Mobile or Android" 3g phones available (other than the few 3g feature-free toys available - targeted at high school kids and soccer moms) then I'll sign a contract. Until then, forget it. I'll pay my bill every month and stay contract free until T-Mobile USA catches up with the rest of the world.
(signature)

A copy of the same message was submitted verbatim to T-mobile's customer service. As soon as I publish this post I will take this $49.99 "voucher" and feed it to my paper shredder.

DirecTV vs. over-the-air HD / olympics opening ceremonies

There is no comparison. Both are supposedly 1080i. Both my receivers are personal video recorders, both receive HD, but one has an over-the-air tuner.

The picture quality through the satellite service looks like garbage. I get an occasional freeze-up of the over-the-air picture but it's worth it. I don't watch a hell of a lot of olympics coverage every four years but I will probably re-aim the little outdoor UHF antenna to get it pointed more perfectly.

www.antennaweb.org is the place to go to find out how, where and what type of antenna to aim. If you live in the core of whatever city you're in, you probably have high enough signal strength that you can bypass your cable or satellite. The improvement in quality is well worth it!

GSM in Canada - Robbers Communications (er, Rogers)

I visited a friend in Canada this past weekend. GSM in Canada is like a large percentage of the supermarket business in Uruguay - the "appearance" that there are competitors but they are all the same company.

Cellular service - especially anything having to do with data - was absolute RAPE! It was actually cheaper for me to send a text message ROAMING than it was for my friend and the per-kilobyte data charge ROAMING was less than what the locals pay UNDER CONTRACT. Canadian media is a mafia tightly controlled out of Ottawa and there are really only... five companies and the government in the media business. Your GSM phone showed two networks "Fido" and "Rogers" - except about five years ago Rogers (referred to universally by the locals as Robbers) - bought Fido. Fido had been reasonably priced but they were not in the good graces of Ottawa - and the market is so small in terms of users and the territory so large its hard for a smaller company to make a profit. Most of the cellular plans will sell you 150 minutes for the same price Americans pay for 1000. But that's not really the final price...

Robbers charges a CDN$6.50 "system access fee" which is not included in the plan price either. They also CHARGE EXTRA for "features" like caller ID and voicemail. Oh, and the concept of "long distance" still applies although they will hit you with a charge for "unlimited Canadian long distance." Robbers' coverage is OK, I didn't use GSM very much because I was "on vacation." It'll be interesting to see what I get charged for a couple of uses of Exchange push email and a random MMS message I received.

It's also very strange that they do business under a family name. There actually is a Ted Robbers, er, Rogers that owns the whole thing. I don't know of any other nation where the GSM carrier is so obviously family owned and so obviously politically connected.

Monday was a government holiday in Canada so most people had the day off. A Robbers telemarketer called my friend since he shares an account with his roommate. The telemarketer got SO shouted at when first of all he kept calling my friend "Catherine" even though DUH it was obviously a male voice on the line.... my friend just SNAPPED when he used a pushy sales tactic of ignoring the customer saying NO and trying to close the sale by saying "So can I ship you that new Nokia phone? We'll even waive the activation and shipping charges!" Such a deal. Activation and shipping charges on top of all the other nickels and dimes they ding their customers with. Besides, "Catherine" signed a contract a year ago - accepting the phone would add on two more years which is the goal. (There's talk in the Canadian press of another GSM carrier getting into the market and strangely enough it'll be Egyptian-held Orascom who might be backing it. I'll believe it when I see it....) The telemarketer stuck to his script and offered "Catherine" a "free analysis" of how she could "reduce" her bill. Want to know what it was? Reduce the number of minutes contracted. Duh. Of course the bill goes down - maybe. Might go way up when she goes over that tiny little pittance of minutes she changed to from the other tiny little pittance of minutes.

The other carriers smell blood in the water. One of them is running an ad campaign that says "Ditch that system access fee."

They're also in the cable TV business. The cable TV mafia in Canada is the same as the wired/wireless phone mafia. Robbers is not as bad as Shaw - at least they let you lease that soon-to-be-obsolete cable box. Shaw charges CDN$800 for the same Scientific Atlanta Explorer.

TiVo is the gold standard of personal video recorders. However, the only TiVo available in Canada is analog because.... it's the exact same platform and headend as in the USA, and there are "some" sets with cablecard/QAM tuning that make it into the CDN market - but no CDN cable company has implemented cablecard. That nifty dual cablecard TiVo available in the USA *could* work in Canada if the media mafia there decided to give their customers the option.

TD Canada Trust - a/k/a Tittybank

I spent the weekend in Toronto. I have lots more to write about it but too tired now. This (or rather, these) had to see the light of day.

My friend banks at TD Canada Trust. After I saw their marketing material - they should change their name to Tittybank.

So we're standing in front of a teller and she's doing the transaction - and this marketing piece literally POPPED out at me. For shit's sake you can see the nipples!

I said to my friend, "Holy shit look at this, what bad taste! You know that these float in the hot tub or someone got bored with photoshop or something."

"I think its photoshop," he said.

"Mmmmm - I'm not so sure... whoever photoshopped it would have had to have left such definite nipples."

She asked if I was American. I admitted it ;) which I don't often do abroad. She said, I'm glad you think its gross - here, take the whole lot back to the states and get 'em out of my sight.

My friend was quite shocked when I giggled and put the whole STACK (hahah) 23 of them in my pocket. 21 made it back to Phoenix because he asked for two of 'em when we walked out of the bank.

Remember, you can click on the picture to make it (cough) larger.

All this to run an alarm clock

Finally I have a working alarm clock. Or rather, an imported working alarm clock. When I bought it, I'd no idea how difficult it would be to make it function outside its element.

All this to have a clock displaying 24-hour time. I bought it on a previous trip overseas this year, thinking... naaaaaaaaaahhhhhh, it can't possibly rely on the AC power to keep time.

I won't bore you with the details other than to say that plugged near-directly into American current, it runs fast.

It took a $65 device intended for use in cars overseas to provide it with suitable AC power that allows it to finally keep time. Eventually I will un-mate it from the grid here with a solar panel, deep cycle battery and charge controller but that's a future plan. (Yeah, I'm single, no one around to say no...)

Switching over to digital, well, officially

In reality I've had an ATSC (the US/Mexico/Canada digital broadcast standard) box for a couple of years. Radio Shack had a box on clearance back in October 2005 for about fifty bucks - original price had been like $300. The Rat Shack box has things that the "subsidized" boxes don't - indeed, can't! HDMI output, component video, etc.

The US government is subsidizing the switch to the tune of $80 per household - $40.00 per converter box. The $40 subsidy is not a "coupon" but a "debit card" type of form factor. It has an embossed number, expiration date, hologram for authentication and magnetic stripe on the back.

The converter boxes are pretty basic. The goal here was not for Uncle Scam to subsidize HD setups, just keep basic televisions working. But given that they will send the coupons to any household - I ordered mine a few months ago. I don't necessarily need them. With full subscriptions to DirecTV with all the HD stuff and a subscription to Sky Mexico... It's not like I need an over-the-air converter. I pay taxes so I'm not ashamed to ask for my share of the handout.

The installation experience was very straightforward. If you can connect a VCR to a TV, you can install one of these. It goes through an auto-scan procedure when you first turn it on and choose the default option: "Easy setup."

All that the converter does is output the digital broadcast signal as analog. That's it. Some of the boxes have video/audio outputs but they are still standard definition. Equipment that is specifically excluded has any kind of HDMI or digital audio port on it. The federal government is not going to subsidize your home theater, the focus of the program is to hook up people who don't/can't pay for cable or satellite.

I was a last-minute shopper. Best Buy was the first place that I looked. Their internal "Insignia" brand is really not so bad. They were completely out of stock. Makes sense - July 1st, 2008 would have been the last day any early-coupon-requester could have redeemed theirs.

Target was nearby, then Circuit city, then Wal-Mart. Fortunately Target had two choices of box. One box had no video-audio outputs, it just took in the digital signal and spat out analog on US channel 3 or 4. The other box had the individual video/audio outputs plus the ability to output on US channel 3 or 4. I bought the more expensive boxes, splashing out an extra $20 each on them. Since the dog was in the car waiting for me - and it was still about 100F degrees even though it was dark... I didn't bother looking at CC or Wal-Mart. Had Wal-Mart been my only option - it's quite possible my coupons would have gone unused.

So the boxes were bought at Target. Expect a bit of a hassle at the checkout counter. The cashier had to call one supervisor, then another. That supervisor did something to suspend the transaction and store it in Target's computer system, then had me go over to the service desk to complete the transaction. Each of the $40 cards was then processed as a credit card transaction. A signature was required for the first, but then none for the second. Of course, it's a coupon - so plan on paying sales tax on your federally-subsidized haul.

I haven't had a chance to figure out whether the Rat Shack box is better... the guide works faster on the new "subsidized" one but the picture is a little grainy.

Between February 17th and February 28th 2009, I'll probably try to sell these converter boxes. $35 will be the price, maybe $40. I live in a kind of ghetto apartment complex where people will likely not have noticed ads about the transition.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of publicity happens starting around 1st February 2009 because all of these recently bought boxes and TV's connected to antennas will have to be re-scanned as the actual broadcast channels change.

Religious broadcasters seem to be ca$hing in more than most. The local jesus-wheezing channel on analog is just 1 video/audio combo on analog - but on digital it's five. So yes, the manual that comes with the converter says you'll get more channels - but some of them are just CRAP.

Giving away the store

On the way home from work I stopped at the supermarket to buy dinner. I used to buy for weeks at a time but my habit changed living in Uruguay.

The person in front of me was buying wine. It's faster at that time of day to use the "self" check-out... and the guy tried to show his ID to the woman in charge of the four lanes of "self" check-out.

I noticed there was an out-of-order sign on the terminal used to control the four check-out lanes where she would ordinarily do whatever on that touch-screen to "authorize" his wine purchase. (Those outside the USA - we have stupid laws that set the legal age at 21 and huge penalties for stores and the employees themselves that sell to someone under 21.)

She told him she would come back when he was ready to pay.

Um, he had two items... but she disappeared to go do something else and the "self" checkout lane terminal said it required authorization to complete the transaction. She finally came back over after a minute or two and did the "employee override" button.

The size of the screen made it very easy to shoulder-surf the all-numeric user-ID and password which was something ludicrously easy to remember that corresponded with the company's internal store number (which prints on all receipts).

I doubt that I will try to use that user/password combo for myself but I can't believe that's their plan B. I bet that most of the stores in that chain use something equally guess-able given that most technology deployments have the user ID and password as the weakest link. The screen changed colors and one could do price adjustments or whatever before resuming as the "customer" and completing the transaction.

Roomba vacuuming robot

In a word... Wow. The thing does a better job than my upright vacuum cleaner and its possible to sit on my ass and remote control it.

The jury is out on total cost of ownership.

Unexpectedly - Shaggy is not afraid of Roomba. I have a long way to go though to make my apartment Roomba-friendly - your place already has to be pretty much clean (free of clutter) for the robot to do its job.

I'll be curious to see....

* Will Roomba zap a hard disk it passes by
* Will Shaggy decide that Roomba is another pet and thus mark territory?
* Will Roomba survive my style of housekeeping, or improve it?

The thing ran for about 45 minutes after I charged it 12... well 8 really... hours. There was still plenty of power in the battery, I was just tired and had it go back to its charging station.

Ambien + blogger -> last three posts LOL / Uruguayan currency

Holy crap. Well, at least the mileage on my car was the same last night as this morning :-) Just goes to show that when you take the CR pills (Mom and I joke that CR stands for chewable) because it knocks you on your ass faster - that you really should log off after you swallow.

(And yes, I deliberately wrote that sentence that way. Thank god cyber-sex hasn't provided a way to exactly make that happen although who knows...)

Upon waking up this morning I re-read that and it sort of makes/made sense at the time.

Now that I'm back in the USA for a full 24 hours, I *think* I've finally gotten all the foreign coins out of my pocket... between that and the left over paper money I've got 36 bucks in Uruguayan currency hanging about. Since the dollar is tending to fall against the Uruguayan peso I'm betting the money will keep its value or gain a precious few percentage points. But I'm also a realist: whatever value the money adds/retains will get eaten up by price increases!

Oh wait, that's really 46 bucks... I put about another ten bucks on my Movistar account to move my UY phone number expiration date far enough into the future so it still is active for my next trip. It's so cool to be able to just change the chip and the GPRS parameters on the phone as the plane lands :)

Monday morning in Montevideo

Just another Monday AM in Montevideo. My work day started - well, when I decided to start it. I'm an entrepreneur so that usually means early. I was up about five to have everything ready for something later. "Everything" and "something" just got more and more fucked up as the week droned on....

Of course, it's COLD here. 11c was the temp display on an advertising sign when I was leaving central MVD to come home last night. It was even colder overnight and by morning my 3kg tank of gas was nearly empty. (No really, the 3kg tank of gas - it's what you use to heat, that or wood in a fireplace.)

AMERICAN READERS ONCE AND BLOODY BUGGERY FOR ALL FUCKING FIGURE OUT THE METRIC SHIT, m'kay? hmm???

It had nothing to do with the La Cigale ice cream I had with my friend Maika at Montevideo Shopping yesterday afternoon. I thought - this will be perfect. I'll order the ice cream and then run across to the San Roque and get lactaid-type pills.

No, I'm standing there with my ice cream, starting to eat it and explaining in really graphic detail the symptoms of lactose intolerance. He finally figured out what it was I wanted and he said "we don't carry it."

Yes, I cannot digest lactose in my old age. Gotta have the special tablets and then I'm sorted. Otherwise, well, I'm not so sorted.

Instead we went to Tienda Inglesa attached to the mall to get Yakult. Of course I still ate the ice cream knowing that there still might be hell to pay later. Yakult is shown at the top of the first picture. The first link goes to their Spanish/Portuguese site, this one to Yakult Australia might explain it better. It's like a fermented milk bacteria bomb that is actually good for your stomach.

I decided to go back to Tienda Inglesa during the work week since the place was super-full on a sunday afteroon. I like to explore the crazy crap they import.

This crap isn't necessarily all from Tienda Inglesa but some of it is. It's sort of my breakfast. Ok, so starting at the bottom center, we covered what Yakult is. It fixes your culo. Moving to the left, we have 'Polakitos' - um, not-very-politically-correctly named roasted peanuts - in other words - Little Polacks. In the center we have PanCatalan Tortugas. Or, in other words - hamburger buns. Damn close at least. Above that - sliced ham. Immediately to the left of that is a McDonald's (Uruguay) Beijing olympics collectible glass. For whatever odd reason I think they have five available. It makes no damn sense to me and I ultimately came home with 4, or a set as Americans would think of. Ok jumping to the left past the ham we have bananas. No really, just bananas. Uruguay's climate is not quite temperate enough for banana crops so I think these are from Brazil or they could just as likely be from Ecuador like the ones we get here in the USA.

Off to the right, my two laptops and in between them my HTC phone - Americans know it as a T-mobile Wing. Get the unlock code from T-mobile and it becomes a truly useful device. HTC GSM phones ROCK provided they are unlocked. When I am in Uruguay it has a local number, access to the internet, crackberry-style email ... everything you would expect. It's all hellaciously expensive by local standards but still far cheaper than roaming.

If I used it as a strictly T-mobile device all that neat-o stuff would work but I'd have a thousand-dollar-plus bill at the end of the month. Thus unlocked, I can put a 3rd company chip in the phone and have a local phone number and not get raped.

I have a little 3rd-world-marketed-only Nokia GSM1800 phone the actual T-mobile SIM stays in so that my American co-worker(s) can keep in touch when they deign to. I mention GSM1800 because that's the state-owned network, Ancel - they have truly INCREDIBLE coverage so I know for sure that at two bucks a minute I won't miss that goddamn all-too-rare phone call.

Lastly - a bottle of Salus mineral water. Carbonated of course. Why on earth would one buy a bottle of water if it didn't have bubbles?



Below is the heat source. Or, it's one option. You can get a small electric heater but if you use it constantly it will cost you US$250 a month. Oh and that curtain/metal door thing off to the right in the pic? The goes directly outside. Damn near every room in every house has such a draft leading to the outdoors!



As the morning goes on the expected "visitors" arrive. TCC (Tele Cable Color) is already doing a card-swap on their digital cable customers. Digital cable has gone the way of Europe here. The box is a little Chinese-made (ok that can be safely assumed of everything right?) DVB-C box. Translated - not the same as what the Americans do. Not at ALL.

But yeah a card swap already! Um, duh... yeah launch your system using Irdeto 1 (an encryption system) which has been widely hacked worldwide because its been used for a variety of satellite services. I mean, hacked for like oh... three years?! Every single one of the satellite services using Irdeto 1 moved to version 2 (that's sorta hacked too) or something else and then TCC launches with Irdeto 1. ;) I hope their contract included the first few card swaps.

(Don't even think to ask, please, where I may or may not have learned anything or nothing at all about conditional-access TV systems.)

So then an hour later (maybe less) another 'cadete' (translation - young guy on a motorbike) shows up from Anteldata with a replacement 'splitter' for Rodrigo's DSL. Yes, I know what it's FOR but I'm not going to bore you with it... he sure didn't. He wanted the old 'splitter' in exchange for the new one and a signature. I sign the form complete with UY ID number... why the fuck not, it's a part that costs $1.98?! Having signed I replace the part in the appropriate spot - um, no, still not working.... But he's gone and he didn't have a f'in clue what it was he was delivering nor how to install it.

The problem is still not solved. Fuck it, data still works, if I plug a phone in at the main jack data drops and I can dial 141 for a cab.

141 uses caller-ID pre-registered to the address and the voice basically says "If you're still at ____________(address), need a taxi NOW and are paying cash press 1." You press 1 and a minute or so later the voice tells you the license place number of the cab and whether it will be there in three or five minutes.

When I plug the rest of the house cabling back in, the phones no longer work but data comes back so at least its a consistent problem/solution.

Off I go to work. What "work" is exactly escapes me on many days - I'd been up since 5am doing it remember? But by that time it's 1230 Montevideo time which means 0830 Arizona time so I can reach my co-worker .... or her goddamn voice mail. Her voice mail is precisely what I get so, hell with it, off to the office without any new info for negotiation purposes. Fuck it all, I'll wing it another day.