Month: September 2006

Going To Puerto Rico?

Donna spent 2 years in Puerto Rico as a kid and has fond memories of that time. Going back there to visit has always been thought in her mind.

Well, a couple days ago her friend Sally (of State Department fame) emailed to say that once she is done with her tour of duty in Namibia next February she was going to be in the states for a few months before heading off to her next assignment. First she will be spending some time in Louisiana with family and then a fellow embassy friend was lending her their condo in Puerto Rico for a week. A plan was hatched to kill two birds with one stone, a visit to PR and get to see Sally at the same time.

We weren’t planning on spending a whole week with Sally just maybe an afternoon and an evening meal. Sally was going to be spending time with her mom and her daughter. Donna and I would spend a couple days in Fajardo were she spent her early teens when her father was a sea plane pilot flying a Gumann Goose for Antilles Air Boats. Donna actually studied Algebra in Spanish, which explains why she asks me to solve all the quadratic equations we run into in our daily lives. A visit to the only rainforest in the National Park system and a bioluminescent bay were also on the schedule. The next three or four days would be spent exploring the central mountains and the quieter south & west of the island. Saturday while out shopping we bought a book called “Let’s Go Puerto Rico on a Budget.”

That $15 may save us a lot of money.
Driving:

Traffic is heavy; many people disregard speed limits, neglect to use turn signals, and cut off other cars. Markers such as stop signs are treated more like suggestions than rules. – Carjackings are common in Puerto Rico, especially in big cities. To avoid nighttime carjackings they have passed a law that drivers do not have to stop at red lights from midnight to 6AM. Central mountain roads tend to be narrow with sharp curves, poor visibility and frequent one lane washouts. The greatest danger is not the roads, but rather the local drivers who often use the whole road in narrow spots and drive at high speeds around sharp turns.

Health:

There are no required inoculations to visti Puerto Rico, but travelers should have the following vacines up to date; MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), DTaP or Td (diphtheria, tetnus and pertussis), IPV (polio), Hib (haemophilus influenza B), HepB (hepatitis B). Make sure the food you eat is fully cooked and the water is clean for drinking.

Time:

Puerto Ricans have a much more laid back sense of time than most Europeans and North Americans. Things get done when they get done. Restaurants do not maintain strict closing hours and will stay open as long as people are still around. If an establishment is empty, it will likely close early. Museums and stores frequently change opening hours and will close if someone who is supposed to work happens to be sick or unavailable.

After reading all that and reading a bunch of web reviews of tours, tourist spots and accomodations we have pretty much talked ourselves out of going.

Started up, went down, still down.
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Backyard Burgers

After our morning’s shopping both Donna and I needed a little snack. At the exit road of the shopping center was a little gas-n-go place, so we pulled in and got me a Coke and her a bag of chips. As we leaned on the fender of the car we both could smell charbroiling hamburgers, mmmm. Sharing the building with the quick shop was a Backyard Burger place.

It was a little early for lunch at 10:15 AM, but we had an early breakfast. The smell of cooking burgers was too much, we were now hungry. Dang, they didn’t even open until 10:30. We left and started our way back to Aiken. As we drove we tried to come to a consensus as to what to have for lunch when we got home, but we kept coming back to those burgers.

So we drove around Augusta aimlessly for a while and by the time we got back, the Backyard Burger place was open for business. We were actually their first customers of the day and it took a minute or so before someone came from out back to take our order which consisted of two 1/3lb. burgers and a small fountain drink. The fellow gave me a receipt and told me my ticket number was 134, the time was 10:34 AM. I almost made a smart ass remark about good thing he gave me a number, what with all the people in here, I’d hate to get the wrong order, but held my tongue. I sat down and Donna went off to use the rest room. It seemed like it was taking her a while, but they had a TV in the corner, so I watched some inane college football pregame show for a bit. Donna came back and we chatted for a few more minutes, we were still the only ones in the place. What could be taking so long? Finally, not wanting to shout out “134” to a nearly empty room and/or perhaps to give himself something to do, our order taker brought the two burgers to our table.

While tasty, the burger was not really hot or fresh and it should have been considering the amount of time it took to get it to us. I think the patties we were eating were probably the ones we smelled cooking at 10:15 and they had been lazing about under a heat lamp for the last 40 or so minutes.

Early B-Day Shopping

Donna and I went over to Augusta this morning and did a little shopping for my birthday even though it is still 10 days away. I of course have an extensive list from stuff that would never happen (new Miata, 60″ plasma HDTV) to the mundane (12oz Coke, spiced pumpkin seeds) and everything in between (DVDs, new hydraulic jack.)

Did pretty well, as I’m now the proud owner of the movie Le Mans on DVD and a “lightweight” aluminum jack from Harbor Freight.

I got a Coke and some pumpkin seeds too!

Started down, went up, still up.
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Theme Madness

Regular readers know that I like to change things up a bit around here style-wise. While searching around for just the perfect look I downloaded a couple I thought, that with a little tweaking, I could make do with. Then I ran into one that is just too cool for words, trouble is it doesn’t really work in IE and Internet Explorer users are nearly 70% of my visitors. So I couldn’t implement it across the board.

So I downloaded a theme switching plug-in and installed it. Then I crudely added it to all the themes’ sidebars, so when someone tried a different theme they could find their way back to the original theme.

Give them a whirl, but remember only one has been truly personalized by me:
* WordPress Classic – came in the box
* WordPress Default – came in the box
* Painted Desert – long running current
* Blocked
* ChinaRed
* New York, New York
* Wuhan
* Vistered Little – if you run Firefox check this out, click on the little squares at the top to change the background

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Moving Day

Things went pretty well this evening moving the WordPress blog from dot com to dot net. The final test I think will be if this post actually gets posted.

If it does, I’ll go ahead and put a redirect page in the root directory of dot com that’ll make it pop over here. Make up a custom 404 error page for the dot com telling everyone to come over to the new place. Speaking of which if you hit your usual bookmark/favorite and are reading this post you need to replace that one with a new one that leads right here.

www.mr-miata.net

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Vote For Your Favorite “My Favorite Miata Photo” Part II

I started a little photo contest for Miata pictures back in August. I got 58 entries and then I put up a poll and asked folks to vote for their favorite. Well I expected them to judge the pictures on artistic merit, but got a surprise. People were voting for some of the least artistic ones. I checked my server log and it seemed like a lot of votes were coming from places that I had received comment spam from, suspecting some one was toying with the process, I closed the voting.

Boy did that raise a stink. The top vote getter had asked her friends to vote for her picture (not that that was against the rules) and the second place photographer did likewise, but was insulted when I mentioned I thought his picture wasn’t even in the top half I would have picked, so he asked me to pull it (I did.) Then I ran into hosting issues, so I couldn’t put the voting back up, until tonight, so…

Wake the kids, phone the neighbors, email everyone in your address book, post a link on your blog and wardrive around town voting from every unsecured WiFi hotspot you can find. The top 2 vote getters will win prizes, 1st place gets a shirt and second gets a sticker from the Life of Brian Store. Third place will get an honorable mention, which is just like it sounds, a mention. The polls will be open until Sunday, September 24, 2006 at 1700 hours Zulu (12:00PM noon Eastern US Time.)

—>> Voting Booth <<—

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The Honeymoon Is Over

I signed up for web hosting yesterday with HostGator. Last night I had no problem logging in to my Cpanel. I even uploaded a php snippet that sent anyone stumbling on the .net site right over to this, the .com site.

Today I received an email saying asking me to call HostGator’s support line. They had an issue, the recorded IP address location from where I signed up was several hundred miles away from my home. I explained to the nice lady on the phone that I had signed up at work and all our internet goes through the corporate servers in St Louis, MO. After confirming my information, she said I would get another welcome email.

I never got that second welcome email and now at home this evening I can no longer log into my Cpanel nor is the web page I uploaded yesterday showing. mr-miata.net is 404. I went to the support site and opened a ticket stating pretty much what I said above and went and had dinner. An hour later I checked back on the ticket and it was still listed as open. Right below it was another ticket that they had started saying my domain was on hold and it read like this afternoon’s email.

Called the support number again and got a nice fellow who was true to his word, within a minute of him saying he would send me a new welcome email I heard a beep from my Gmail notifier. Trouble is I now have to go change the name servers at Yahoo’s Domain Control Panel to the new servers and wait for internet propagation.

Enough about me…

A co-worker purchased a Kodak EasyShare digital camera about 3 or 4 years ago. He thinks he probably spent about $300 on it and it has served him well, up until he went on vacation last week when it quit working. Nothing happens, when he turns it on the power light comes on and then just fades out.

Today he called the support line at Kodak to find out how to return the camera for repairs. The woman on the phone told him that they don’t repair those anymore. But that all was not lost, if he returned the defective camera to them in a couple weeks he would receive a voucher entitling him to a big discount on a newer re-manufactured Kodak digital camera. He was given an address to send the camera to and a list of four different cameras and what they would cost with his discount.

After hanging up in order to get an idea of which camera he would get and its feature he did a little internet research. The first model he looked at on the Circuit City website had a price there of $180 which the Kodak folks had offered to him at $220. Nice discount, more like profit for Kodak. The other three cameras were priced the same way, the new camera was considerably cheaper on the street than Kodak’s re-manufactured camera direct from them. This left a slightly bitter taste in his mouth. Guess who won’t be buying a Kodak digital camera this time around?

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