Early Resolution

Early New Year's Resolution: I will post a selfie and regret it the next day.

Check =D

Fireworks

Caught some fireworks on the way home, after an improvised trekkie gettogether =D

Uh oh

Started the ritualistic unpacking of the gifts today. Get 'em out of the packages, try on everything and see that it fits, toss the plastic bags and stuff. Took the shrink wrap off the cologne... and it started dripping. Uh oh.

Seems the bottle took a pretty mean hit and cracked. Good thing it cracked and didn't smash into 3 pieces.

Spent all of the afternoon looking for a good replacement bottle. Supermarkets, wal-mart, I went everywhere... not a single one. Incredible. Not one store had a glass bottle, jar, or container that was airtight and not 2 gallons too big. Finally found a sauce bottle that was just about the right size and it would have to do. Only thing I need to do now is plug the hole to kill the evaporation factor.

The big problem? My whole bathroom smells like this stuff now. And the smell is not going away anytime soon.

Tamales and eggnog

Tamales and eggnog... I am going to hate myself in January =)

Holiday bullfights

Played video games for most of the day, and then at night I watched more of the holiday bullfights.

Now, before anyone gets on a rant about how awful bullfighting is, I should point out ours are a bit different. Kinda backwards in fact. See this reference video for a better idea of exactly where the fun is in our bullfights.

If anyone's curious, they're streaming every day starting at 0300 GMT, here and here. Which one works depends on the day of the week, since streaming alternates between one site and the other.

A sugar high gives you the strangest ideas

Of course I tried on the socks I got for Christmas.... the very next day in fact! =D

Presents time

Christmas Presents time... yay

Seasons greetings

You can't really tell a story without people, big and small, who helped make 2010 the year it was...

So to everyone out there who became a part of this particular story, Merry Christmas....

Present wrapping day

Present wrapping day

Gonna learn...

Hello, my name is Mario and I suck at drawing.

A pencil is a writing instrument. And the pencil universe as I know it ends at HB. Beyond HB, from what I know, is a giant abyss where people fall off the edge of the planet and into space. I once heard of 2B and even 7B, but from what I hear Stephen Hawking is still trying to figure out how to prove their existence.

Tell me to shade, and I'll have no idea. There's such a thing as shadows and stuff like that?

And don't even get me started on proportions. I can turn Marilyn Monroe into Spongebob without even blinking.

But, I promise in 2011 I'll get better at it =D

Team spirit

Five years. That´s how long they waited to win the national soccer finals. They never seemed to get it quite right, until this year when they finally made it, and in the last seconds of the championship game.

Guess the owners of this shopping center were so thrilled by the win, they actually took down their flag and put up the team's.

$250 saves the day

My computer at work broke last week. Some electrical wiring problem seems to have burned it out. So I decided to give my Motion M1400 a try as a desktop replacement. I took it to the office, plugged in the monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse. And so far, I haven't missed my desktop PC. Not to mention I have a whole lot more desk space available without a huge metal box on top of it.

Who would have thought, an old $250 thing nobody wanted on Ebay would come to replace my $800 state of the art PC, and actually do a good job at it.

Alone in the dark

"No sir, I didn't see you playing with your dolls again" xD

Fruitcake and eggs

One of those unusual holiday breakfast combinations

Highway christmas lights

Highway christmas lights =)

Waiting for Steam

Steam was unusually slow today, seems it had to install some kind of an upgrade. Anyway, I was waiting for Left 4 Dead 2 to load... in the end the wait got so long I actually had to get a book to read.

Mind the barrier

I've always been one for freak accidents. Always the one that never smashes into another car at 50 mph, but manages to hit a steel post while parking in an empty lot. Or gets his windshield cracked by a pebble that flew 10m across the lanes on the highway.

I was riding home today and came to one of those automated traffic barriers that swing up and down. I've gone past it at least 50 times this year. But this time I somehow managed to lose my balance a few inches before it, and as I went left to balance out, I happened to nick the barrier with my arm.

Evidently, these things aren't padded just in case someone should nick them with his arm.

The barrier went bong and bounced up and down a bit. I stopped to see that I hadn't broken anything, and then got out of there pretty fast, before any of the 50 bystanders waiting for the bus could think of a wisecrack.

Am I hurt? Only my pride for the moment.

And the weather outlook is

And the weather outlook for today is, cold. It's been really cold these past few days. It's stopped raining (still drizzles a bit at sunrise though), but the temperature is not going up.

Most people think that here since we have no formal winter, we don't get cold in December. Actually we do, weather patterns are global. Sometime around the middle of December it starts to get colder at night, and by Christmas if you don't have an extra blanket, you'll be waking up at night for sure.

How cold? The capital averages about 16 C during the day, and in some parts it can get down to below 10 C during the night. It might not seem that bad, compared to other places I've been where by this time of year they're looking at 10C from sunrise to sunset. But when you spend 11 months a year at 18 to 20 C, you notice those 2 o 3 missing degrees.

And I actually found myself taking the car to work nearly all of last week... because it was too darn cold in the morning. On Monday I decided if cold was an issue, I was going to be waiting until january to ride again. No way... a jacket fixed the problem, for the time being.

More like Christmas every day

Even the christmas bargain shops on the street corners are back...

Hasn´t changed a bit

Found an old photo on Panoramio I had taken near the university... about 8 years ago. Today I decided to stop and take a look at the spot on my way to work. Hasn´t changed a bit.

Christmas Shopping

One of those fruitless holiday shopping days. They've been pestering me at home for like 2 weeks now to make a list for this secret santa thing. So I finally got around to it today. Seeing I had way too much stuff from Amazon on there, I decided to take a look at the local stores in case someone just couldn't figure Amazon out and needed locally available gifts.

Spent all afternoon looking around town, had to wait at least 20 minutes for a parking spot at the mall, and picked up all sorts of flyers and clutter along the way. And I thought I was going to get ahead of the christmas shopping crowd by going this weekend.

And in the end, nothing. Sure I got a whole list of ideas for that secret santa thing, but on the other half of the deal which was to buy the rest of the gifts I needed, I came out empty handed. Amazing, but there's just no good stuff available in stores. None of those gifts that you see and you just know they're perfect for someone. Checked the music stores, bookstores, stationary stores, everything you can imagine... and I just didn't see anything that clicked in my mind.

I probably need a couple days and a few more laps around town to start to see potential gifts. Good thing I've got about 2 weeks left to shop.

Tamales

First hallmark of the holiday season here: tamales. Somewhere around the start of december people hit the local markets in search of cornmeal, pork, lard, chicken, peas, rice, and banana leaves... well, not exactly banana leaves but something like that. You season the cornmeal, make little cakes, stuff them with your favorite meat combination, put in a prune and a couple raisins, and maybe an olive, and wrap them up in the leaves. Boil for a couple hours, and here's what you end up with.

When do you eat it? Any time. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, coffee break... it's all good.

There's about 50 of them sitting in the refrigerator right now. And I'm almost sure that by the 25th, there's not going to be any left.

Are they something like mexican tamales? Sort of. Only in Mexico they wrap them in corn husks and use different fillings. Over there you can find anything from beef to berries inside. Over here we only fill with beef, chicken or pork... and maybe beans, but no berries.

Rolling fishbowl

I've seen some pretty fun publicity stunts this year. Seems everyone was short on cash and they had to get creative in order to get people to buy stuff. One day I was waiting at a stoplight when I saw this huge number "5" crossing the street, chased by a giant "%" sign. The other day I saw 2 guys on bikes riding down the street, towing billboards.

And today I was driving home and this thing went past me. A fishbowl on wheels with an artificial beach inside, towing a jetski. I wonder what they'll think of next.

Wipe your feet

Here's one of those ideas you see somewhere that somehow, nobody's come up with yet. Saw this one at a beach a while back, and the idea stuck with me ever since.

Problem with construction sites is that everyone has to make their way back to the office at least 15 times a day, and it seems the one thing everyone manages to do perfectly is track mud into every single corner and hard to reach place in the office.

Well, not on my watch. Step into the square, turn the valve, and twin jets at 40 psi will get every speck of mud off before you can track it anywhere. Add a 30 foot long walk to the office on top of a gravel walk, and you'll be dry before you can even think about getting my floor wet.

They didn't get it quite right though. I told them like 50 times: when you pour, I want you to stick 2 plastic brushes into the pour so the bristles stick out. In the end, they got the pour right, but they forgot the brushes. Darnit.

Let the holidays begin

Ok, now that we're all good and weighed in, and nobody's pacemaker got fried... let the holidays and the food begin... =D

Add another one to the list

Yeah, well, the holiday spirit kind of got the best of me this time... and I just had to add another Playmates set off Ebay to my collection.

Closest to a tricoder I could find

In the end I finally gave in. Curiosity got the best of me, and I just had to have a digital scale that had the potential to kill you if you wore a pacemaker while you stepped on it =D

After weeks of waiting it's finally here. I'll finally be able to figure out just how good riding to work every day has done me.

Teleton continued

Just another closing day at the Telethon.

Teleton 2010

Got to do some event photography today. This weekend is the annual telethon, one of those old fashioned events that you view on TV, call in, and make a donation. This one in particular is held every year and raises money for the local children's hospital.

Just as I was getting there, I realized I had left my ID badge on top of my desk. I phoned in to see how critical it was, and sure enough, it was critical. So I either had to rush back home and get it, or face having to wrestle with about 500 people for a place to sit and no backstage access. Guess which won out in the end...

Tis the season, now.

Ok, now, tis the season.

Shame on you if you're one of those that put up your decorations in November... and even more if you simply didn't take them down last year =D

Rain #2

Or is that November 31st... it should be November 31st, or at least my head wants it to be November 31st.

More rain today. And not only more rain, it was cold too. That's the worst combination, when you've got that open-refrigerator air and on top of that it's pouring down. It's supposed to clear up by tonight, so I'm hoping to see clear skies tomorrow morning.

Rain #1

Waking up to rain, an hour before your alarm clock goes off, is always nice. Waking up an hour later and seeing it's not done raining yet... that tends to be a problem.

One of those very rare days today, when I can't bike to work because it's just raining at 7 AM. And I don't mean a drop here or a drop there, or maybe an overcast sky... I mean really raining. True, it rains almost the whole year here, but it has a very clear schedule, which doesn't normally include commute hours.

In fact it was so bad this morning I actually had to turn around when I got to the office and head for the nearest supermarket to get an umbrella. I really didn't want to be walking a block from my parking spot to the building under that kind of rain. As luck would have it, the supermarket was closed. I finally decided to brave it, and as I was parking, the rain let up a bit, which left me wet to a point where I air dried about 15 minutes later.

Brownies

A couple years back Shell used to have some awesome brownies at their convenience stores. Every time I'd gas up, there was no question: just had to go get one at the convenience store.

Eventually they stopped selling those brownies, but not before I found out they were made by this place called Mom's Bakery. A few months later I found one of those bakeries near the University, but they had stopped making brownies =(

Today I decided to try my luck again and stop by... and sure enough, they had like 6 of them sitting in the shelves. If I hadn't eaten lunch something like 10 minutes before, I probably would have emptied the shelf =)

Made for a good late afternoon snack, although the popular vote at the office ruled that they still couldn't shake a stick at a chocolate cake from Spoon, another local bakery. I'll have to stop by eventually and get a picture of one of those too =D

Photo is geotagged BTW, in case anyone wants to stop by for one...

The City... finally done...

Finally done with The City Alone. Finished polishing up the last photo this afternoon. They should be up and available on my other site around the middle of this week.

... has a bit of mileage on it...

Ok, you can quit whining about your car having a lot of miles on it... see what I got to drive?

It's a Frontier pickup, one of the old ones that had the extra long cargo space. And it's got 505.216 Km (around 314.000 Mi) on it.

But the most surprising part is, it still runs like new. Most cars I've seen start to drag their feet around 100.000 Km, and start to have all kinds of weird hiccups and noises. Not this one. The engine was a bit loud, sure, and it had a loose screw here and there, but aside from that it ran like any other pickup you might drive.

Had to take it all the way across the ranges on the Atlantic, which was a pretty good test drive.

From what the guy who normally drives it tells me, the secret to getting 500.000 Km out of a car is maintenance. Oil, tuning, spark plugs, all that stuff... change it when the manufacturer says to, on the dot, and you'll never hear your car complain. This one in particular was like that: it´s had a maintenance schedule that almost borders on obsessive-compulsive.

End of story, almost

Finally. Exactly one month after I send the defective one out, I got my replacement drive from Western Digital.

I do have to give them credit, that month in the mail was mostly the local post and my package forwarding service. WD's did a pretty good job, and their part was just 4 days long: 2 to process the return, and 2 more to ship a replacement.

But my forwarder forgot to notify their address change, the package got stuck when UPS couldn't find them, and it sat there for a week while everything got cleared up. Which in turn made it miss the weekly flight. It finally flew this week and the package was released today.

Only thing left to do now is open the bag, and pop the replacement into the Mybook World II. And wait to see if it does its magic and syncs up. I'll do that before bed, otherwise I'll be up all night looking at the sync progress every 5 minutes.

Clear skies at dawn

Now it's looking a lot more like December. A drizzle here and there during the night clears the pollution out of the air and makes for a clear morning, so clear you can see all the way to the top of the local mountain ranges and even make out the trees and patches of grass.

If time permits and the weather cooperates, I'll stop by again on the weekend and get a better shot of the ranges =)

Night Rider 2

After last week's test ride downtown, this week it was time to pull off the real thing. We joined the local downtown nightly art tour, to see what would happen. And it went pretty well. The city at night, all the museums you might want to look at, and some stops along the way for necessary food and drink. 3 hours of good fun downtown, not something you get to do every day here.

From what I hear, around 70 people RSVP'd online... only about 8 of us showed up. Guess that's to be expected when you take reservations via the Internet for a free event. Reminds me of that joke on Saturday Night Live: "the Department of Homeland Security would like to thank the multiple anonymous college students who made calls to our hotline reporting the names of dangerous terrorists..."

But on the flip side, seems word of the bike tour is getting around. The organizers tell me there's a lot of embassies that have people that want to join the ride next time, and one of the local TV stations wants to try a "celebrity night ride" stunt in a couple of weeks. If you make it, they will come?

Old stuff

Getting rid of old stuff is always fun, especially when you manage to make something off of it.

Had a Linksys wireless card sitting in a desk drawer. I bought it a couple of years ago, used it for a while, and then stashed it when I came to realize 802.11b was no good for transferring large volumes of data. I found it again a while back, put it up for sale... and off it went today.

One less thing hanging around in my desk drawers =)

A cookie for your thoughts

So I get this email this afternoon in my inbox. "Dear customer: please give us your feedback, and we´ll give you a cookie"

Come on Subway, what do I look like, Scooby Doo or something? xD

Toyscon, Day 2

Day 2 of Toyscon 2010. Got in early, earlier than most would have imagined for a Sunday. Lots more people today at the convention, and 10 more hours standing up to add to my record.

The convention was a local museum, the building itself used to house a prison until the 1980s. Of course, there´s stories about ghosts and noises and things moving at night... we didn't see any. And this morning nothing had moved on the tables, so I guess whatever ghosts there are, they aren't precisely into model cars and Star Trek figures xD

Darth Potter

Seems everyone's getting into the Harry Potter spirit these days.

Bigger than I thought

Almost done with the trailer office idea. I have to say it got way bigger than I imagined. In the end, aside from the trailer office, it ended up having a roof on top of it large enough to house a basketball court. And the best part is, it all comes apart and packs up so you can take it anywhere... no crane required.

Though looking at it, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the neighbors wants to buy it from us when we're done with it. It's just turning out to be too neat an idea...

Night Rider

For those who are horrified at the thought of riding downtown, after dark, and on the streets where all the seedy bars are. Yeah, I went riding downtown, after dark, near the seedy bars. So did 5 more people. Then we all rode home... at 10 PM. So get over it.

It's all organized by a group of people, who you probably couldn't call anything but visionaries (given the apparent insanity of the idea). And it's actually not a bad experience. You see the lights, the parks, and you can even learn a bit about the history of the buildings you see along the way.

They tell me this particular city tour was small, since they wanted to make it short. But the last full-scale city night tour, they tell me, had over 1.000 people, some on foot, some on buses, some on bikes.

Next city tour is Wednesday night, and this one's an all-bike tour. If anyone's curious to go, check out the Tour's web page and sign up.

This one's for Wilford

It's all Wilford Brimley's fault really. When I was in school, he came out with a whole mess of Quaker Oats commercials. "A bowl in the morning keeps me going all day long... it's the right thing to do" or something of the sort. I saw them so many times I got hooked on the stuff.

Sure I had my share of lucky charms, frosted flakes, count chocula, bread and butter, bacon and eggs, pancakes... but in the end Brimley won out and I went back to Quaker oatmeal. The little instant packets, because "They tell us we can have Quaker Oats 11 times in a row and never have the same flavor twice" xD

And it didn't stop there. After I was done with all 11 flavors I went hardcore: straight up with no artificial flavors, dried fruits, nothing. And I haven't been back since. I figure it's been a year and a half now of quaker oats, every morning.

And well, no, I don't really have any miracle stories about how it changed my life, about how it made me win a marathon, or about how I lost more pounds than you could ever lose on a Jenny Craig and Slim Fast binge. A year and a half later it's the same old me, my Quaker Oats diet didn't do a damn thing.

But, it tastes good and it's fun. So I'm not switching. Damn you Brimley =D

Staircase #fail

Next time you design a house, don't forget to add a staircase to those second floor gates... xD

To and from

On the way to work... on the way from work...

Getting up in the morning, you'd never expect it to rain. Unless of course, you lived here =)

The city alone

Most of your life you see the city in the same light: full of people, full of cars, full of noise. When I was at the University, several long nights finishing projects showed me there was a completely different side of the city most people never see: the one that comes out only at sunrise, and lasts only for about an hour.

What's there to see at sunrise? Nothing. The city alone. Deserted. No people, no cars, no noise. It's like you're the only one there, you and maybe a couple of people waiting for the bus or walking to the shift change.

And the most interesting part is, the city becomes your playground. You can park anywhere, explore the view from the middle of the street, stop at a green light to take a look at something... and nobody's there to care about it.

Yesterday I canned my urge to go out at night, and today at 4:30 AM I was out walking the streets. 4:30 AM, downtown, on a Sunday. And not a soul to be seen. I'm still looking over the photos and adjusting stuff, hoping to have the set up on Flickr by the end of this week.

Cybershopping Saturday

Today was cybershopping day. A friend needed me to help buy a cell phone off of Ebay, and some stuff off Amazon. So we went shopping. The Ebay purchase got a bit complicated, but it went through in the end.

Problem is, now I'm seriously thinking about going shopping for some stuff I had seen on Amazon. Must.... control... credit card....

My new scanner

I've got a bunch of papers from who knows how long ago stored in drawers, boxes, you name it. Those kind of papers you figure might eventually be necessary for something. What exactly I don't know, but eventually you could need them.

For a while now I've been thinking about getting one of those scanners with a built in feeder. Problem is, most of the half decent ones I've seen run about $800.

But a couple of months ago I found a neat solution. There´s this software called Snapter which lets you take a photo of a document, and then straighten and crop it automatically. And you end up with a scan that's pretty good. It's not the exact document, but for most cases where what you need is the information and not so much the document, it works.

So today I made myself a scanner. Took an keyboard drawer that was pretty beat up and painted it black, and set my P&S up to scan documents. And it worked nice. Out of almost 100 pages, there´s only a couple of documents I'll have to redo on the flatbed. Total time invested? About an hour.