Our First Cuenca Apartment

Barbara's photo - Furniture rearranged now.

Cultural differences are apparent the minute you reach the airport here. The luggage was unloaded within minutes of our landing in Cuenca. We were out of the airport hailing a taxi 15 minutes after we left the plane. LAN Ecuador gets my vote for excellent service. This is not our first time with them and we will certainly not hesitate to use them whenever possible in the future. 

We grabbed a taxi to take us to the apartment we are home exchanging with, but the traffic was horrendous. The middle of the major road is being dug up for a new light rail tram system that should be completed next year. It took us longer than the 15-minute ride we were told to expect, making it more like a 25-minute journey. I kept my eye on the meter, knowing that Cuenca government has clamped down on taxis forcing them to use meters. When we arrived at the apartment, the meter showed our fare. $2.07! Yup, go back now and reread the time it took to get from the airport to the apartment and then look again at the fare. Shocker!

Sitting in the middle of the block, the apartment complex is four stories high, well maintained on the outside. Once you walk through large wooden doors, the next obstacle is huge metal gate. Malena, the building owner, buzzed us in; she came down to greet us. Inside the building, it is quickly obvious this building receives tender loving care. Beautifully tiled in light shades of brown, the staircases (no elevator) are airy. Each floor opens to the roof covered in glass admitting all the sunlight that is available at any given time. 

Our apartment is beyond our expectations, even after seeing photos. A tremendous living room/dining room combination has an extra-large flat screen television. Adjoining it is a narrow, but efficient balcony. Beyond the entry is a smallish, but well-organized kitchen. The stove is about 1 ½ the size of ours in Budapest and the refrigerator is like Goliath to our diminutive David. There are so many blinking lights on the door; we would need a degree to figure them all out. 

Two complete bathrooms will obstruct our ability to claim one is holding up the shower for the other. There are three bedrooms, but Barbara and her husband, our exchange partners, use one as an office. Barbara is a painter with some of her gorgeous work adorning various walls.

On the dining room table, we found a vase with roses and daisies, a bottle of Chilean wine, and a box of chocolates. Malena said Barbara left these for us. 

Malena and her ex-pat partner John, from Sacramento, gave us a full overview of where to get what in the city. Much of it was in and out; we were suffering from exhaustion from sleepless nights. They are most gracious and wonderful resources. Malena owns the entire building. From what she told Ron while I was speaking with John was that it took two years to remodel the building before she started renting the apartments. She really did an incredible job. However, modern inside the apartment, the border where the wall meets the ceiling and the ceiling itself has architectural touches that add class and style. No upkeep artificial wood floors throughout other than the tiled kitchen and bathroom floors, make it a breeze for cleaning. We have a housekeeper on Fridays, so we do not need to bother. 

On the next floor up, the entire space is a rooftop terrace. Under a protected area is a US imported washing machine and dryer for all tenants to us. A grill for cooking is part of a co-op of which our exchange is part of and dozens of chairs to sit and watch the world go by. The views are spectacular.

They told us there was a male couple living on the first floor, also ex-pats, from Georgia. When they said the names, it rang a bell. I had tried doing a home exchange with a male couple here in Cuenca, but they were not interested in Budapest in winter. Being the world really is small, as it happens; these guys live on the first floor of the same building. Malena and John said they would connect us. 

We did a three-hour walk around the city re-familiarizing ourselves with different markers we remembered from out last visit two years ago. The lack of sleep and changes in altitude sent us back to the apartment earlier than we usually would return. I had tried getting connected to the Internet via the Wi-Fi in the apartment, but could not get it accept the password Barbara left for me. Malena rescued me latter in the afternoon. She knew Barbara well enough to figure out the correct password. Even with all full bars of a connection, the Internet is still slow. 

One of our markets

Dinner was simple. We bought five avocados for $1 and three mangoes for $2. I think we were overcharged on the mangoes, but… At another stand, we found some incredible semi-hard white cheese and bought a half pound for $1.50. 

Tomorrow, the guys invited us to join them for lunch. They are meeting a lesbian friend. They educated us to the fact that Ecuador had rewritten their constitution two years ago giving all varieties of domestic partnerships equality under the law. Being that they are from Georgia, they went to New York to get married; they are getting their domestic partnership certificate here in Ecuador. They have been here for one year. In order to qualify for permanent residency, they are not allowed to leave the country for more than 90 days a year. Back in 2001, this was the same for us in Hungary, but it lasted for three years. 

More on Cuenca later. 

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Opps! There Goes Our Window to the World

During our now regular Sunday dinners, after announcing this happened to be our 13th year anniversary in Budapest, we moved on to the topic of Internet connections. Sharing our experiences back in 2001, our friends were in awe over the advancements. We moved from a dial-up modem paying for every minute of telephone time except between 11pm and 7am to a full-fledged high speed cable connection.

It must have been a hex or a premonition. Monday morning our Internet connection stopped. I did all the things I normally know to do before calling the cable company, one of which is to wait an hour to see if any changes have taken plus. Then I powered everything off, rebooted the computer, and went through the checklist. No luck!

I called the cable company. Press 7 for English, press 2 if you have Internet connection issues, then the message is “You may find what assistance you need on our website.” Duh!! If I could get the website, I would not need to call in the first place or at least not by pressing 7 and then 2. I waited in the cyber-line for my turn. When I spoke to a human and explained the problem, he had me do all sort of things, although I had explained I did them already. Then he reset the connection from the office.  It did not work. He said he had to transfer me to another level tech person who answered my call, but could not hear me. “If you don’t answer in 3 seconds, I am cutting this call” he announced. The line went dead.

Two more calls were unsuccessful, but four was the charmed number this time. Again, the tech ran me through the paces, but could not find any errors on their end. It is always the computer’s fault; never the responsibility of the cable company. After pushing for more service, he finally agreed to send out a technician to look at the wiring to see if that was the culprit. They were due today between 8am and noon.

If the meanwhile, I left the computer on all day long to see if anything would change. 
What we did all day without the Internet:
Head to the computer for researching some movie then realize it is not working.
Read books
Sit down to write e-mails and then remembering they cannot be sent yet.
Took naps
Flip on the tablet to read the news, but only finding “No Connection Found”
Went out on errands we would normally put off
It was a long day!!
By 10pm, the icon previously showing no Internet connection made the conversion to being connected to the wider world. Hooray, but do I cancel the technician coming? No, it could have been a fluke that it started working. Why risk losing a house call if it turned out to be needed.

As it turned out, it was necessary. There was no WiFi anywhere in the apartment. When the technician came of course his English was limited, but we managed. He saw the computer was now connected, but I told him there was no WiFi. He booted his netbook and showed me there was. I booted up my tablet to trump his bid and there was no connection. A smile came over his face. It turned out that when the office reset the connections from the office, they reset everything back to the default, which included our connection name and password. To be fair, the man told me it would revert to the default, but it did not occur to me what was included in this.

When I asked the technician in our living room to change our connection name back to BudaBaB with our original password, he agreed to do so. However, it turned out the cable box had other ideas. In the end, he had to replace the entire cable box. Job well done and problems solved!

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Drowning in My Own Sweat

Okay, I feel guilty over not writing sooner. Honest, I do! There are reasons, not excuses for the absence,
which I will go into short detail about and then hopefully we can move on from there.

We were in Granada. Were the past tense as in we left there…over a week ago. What happened? Well, it is summer in this region of the world. It is hot out. No, change that to blistering hot out. Unlike Panama City where every store has air conditioning blasting and the front doors wide open, here they have the front doors wide open, but no air conditioning. Even our accommodation charges $10 a night extra for A/C with the expectation that it is nighttime use only. That said, the room did have a heavy-duty floor fan as well as a ceiling fan. Neither really met the match of A/C, but we didn’t realize how much we really needed artificially cooled air streams blowing over our sheets causing us a nighttime chill.

The room was not totally uncomfortable, but we toyed with the idea of wrecking our budget for a night or two splurging on the remote control needed to turn on the A/C unit, but it never won the battle. Add to this that Nicaraguan beds and pillows are like sleeping on marble slabs. I truly believe the pillows are made of straw that has been soaked in concrete before being formed into a shape that will never know what fluffing means. This led to lack of sleep. Lack of sleep led to apathy.

Days were moderately busy, but honestly, there would have been plenty of time to write IF it were not so damned hot. The heat melted away any incentive I had at being creative, sharing, or moving away from the poolside, though I did not even go in the one here.

Finally, the Internet connection is worse than when I had a 56K dial up modem, two centuries ago. The bed and breakfast has “high speed” Internet with a heavyweight router, but the upload speed is as fast as a mule in mud. One day, I thought I would be progressive and upload my photos. It took me 2 full days of letting the computer run non-stop to upload 36 photos. I could have delivered them to Picasa in person faster.

Even typing my notes in Word and then copying and pasting into Blogger has not solved the issue. Blogger times out before any saves have been made due to the Internet speed.

So that said, this is why I have not created a comprehensive overview of Granada and now León has past. I will write up a quick overview of each for my memory in the future as well as for your ‘reading’ pleasure. Hopefully, it will get uploaded.

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Stumbled Upons

With not much to do here, but relax and read, we thought we would take a walk into town. We stumbled upon directions in our room stating the way to walk if you so chose. There is a path and then a gate where you turn right for the town and left for the Castillo. Either direction should take you thirty minutes.

Finding the path to the kayaks was easy. From there, we stumbled upon the wooden bridge that goes on and on and on while winding in and out. If it where straightened out, it probably would cover about 4 city blocks. I really admire the patience of the people who built it. It is elevated through swampy land with creepy vegetation that looks like a haunted marsh.

When you reach light at the end of the bridge once again, escaping from the canopy of trees and vines reaching this way and that up from the water and other arms reaching into it, you stumble upon a field. On the left side of the field are cows. Brahma type cows, with the long wattles under their necks. They stare at you with suspicion and are really skittish as if they may have seen many things emerge from that darkness where the bridge ends, but they keep their secrets, not sharing a single memory with anyone but each other.

The directions we were to follow were to look for a green gate. Shortly after passing the cows with the secrets, we stumbled upon a green and gold gate, but this did not look right. We were warned that the green gate would probably be locked, but we could squeeze through. This gate was yawning wide saying AHHHHH! We kept walking, but we stumbled upon the path; it consisted on rocks of innumerable sizes, making a stroll difficult, but each step required climbing until the next step. After another ½ a mile, we stumbled upon the really real green gate. It was locked with a chain and a lock. Swinging the gate to and fro did not provide enough room for squeezing anything much larger than a cockroach through. We stood back and assessed the situation before we despaired.

Looking at the situation again from a bit of a distance, we stumbled upon a solution. On the side of the gate post there was an open space where we could squeeze through easily and we did. Our quest was to go to town to buy a Tigo Movil Internet USB stick, so we turned right based on our instructions. Walking on the roadside did not feel too safe, because the road curves and cars don’t pay too much attention to pedestrians. We both independently estimated that it was another mile to actually stumble upon the town. Whoever suggested thirty minutes walking must have been an Olympian, but we made it.

Once in town, we were overwhelmed with the people around, the traffic was horrific both vehicle and pedestrian. With the note in my hand like a child sent to the grocery store by his mother, I went to one shop after another wherever I saw a Tigo sign. In each place, they shook their head, said something in Spanish, which took me too many seconds to comprehend and then they pointed me in another direction. Finally, we stumbled upon the Tigo store, the place where they sell mobile phones as well at the Tigo service needed to operate them. Eureka! This was the place.

For 205 quetzals or 20 Euros, I would get 3 GB of Internet service; however, they we running a special offer and the first fifteen days are free. Now what I was uncertain about is exactly how much bandwidth usage is free?  Once you do use up the GB you pay for, you can return to any Tigo store in Central America or any other place you happen to stumble upon one and add money to your stick. Quite a deal, I thought, since the hotel did not have WiFi and only two computers that I could only use for e-mail, nothing else.

Being potentially connected to the world again, we explored the town, all one street of it. That is not quite true; there are 2 streets, but since the 2^nd street is the one we had to walk up to get to the main street, that had been explored already. Along the one street, it was as in many villages, dozens of the same types of stores competing with each other. Three restaurants sit side by side, none of which would pass a health inspection from a long distance glance. There are more hardware stores here than most cities have bars and pubs. How much duct tape does anyone need?

In one section of the street, we stumbled upon five women with food carts set up side by side along the street. Note that sidewalks are non-existent so you are battling other pedestrians while all of you are trying to avoid bicyclists, tuk-tuks, cars, and delivery trucks all at the same time. It is visual juggling at its best. As we are trying to negotiate some walking space past these women who have their food carts partially in the road, each begging us to try their tamales, tortillas, fried chicken, stuffed chili peppers, and other foods they have labored over. As soon as the warning scent of a potential customer reaches their olfactory glands, you turn into prey. Each woman is screaming at you to buy their food suggesting you only look straight ahead until you have bypassed the competitors’. Everyone has the best selection and flavor in their own mind. We get past each of them with our clothes, bodies, and minds intact, but not without minor scarring.

Now that we are out of the battle zone, what now? We have walked the street, both sides. We have done the side alleys and the courtyards. We have stumbled upon 39 hardware stores, 24 stores that are selling flip-flops and used books, 11 stores offering cheap mobile phones, one veterinary supply store and one pharmacy being run out of someone’s spare room, but where they offer to administer injections and intravenous medicines as well as fill prescriptions. The single woman behind the counter had glasses like the bottom of a soda bottle. Viva la cultural differences.

After that long walk and complete investigation of the town, we were ready to stumble upon something different. We found a hotel restaurant down by the waterfront. The papaya smoothie was delicious, but what now? The clouds were darkening and herding together in what had been a luscious blue sky was now looking like a bad bruise of black and blue. The thought of walking 2 miles and potentially getting caught in the rain did not get score high on my fun-o-meter. We tried taking a tuk-tuk to the green gate, but that was a forbidden zone for tuk-tuks for some reason. Luckily, we stumbled upon a taxi that was more than happy to take us and charge us 25 quetzals. We were more than happy to pay 2.50 Euros for a mile ride.

Back to the green gate, we squeezed through the side once again and retraced our way back to the hotel. We made it back to our bungalow when the skies opened and the rains started to pour down.

For the first time, I took my netbook computer to the restaurant and was ready to connect to the Internet with the new Tigo stick. Each time I had used the netbook here, I had only used it in our bungalow. As soon as the computer booted up, what did I stumble upon, but a message “Wireless connections are available. Would you like to connect?” Well sure I would like to save my 3 GB for as long as possible. Gosh darned if there was not an unsecured Internet connection that was available for using. I was able to post the last three days of blog posts and read and respond to e-mails. I trawled the Internet with the feeling that I had been released from a prison about to explore the world without restrictions once again. That lasted until 6 pm, when the entire Internet connection was lost, not only my WiFi friend, but the connection for the hotel’s computers as well.

Tomorrow, I will try out the Tigo Internet stick that I had stumbled upon.     

Related articles

• Tigo rewards 210 customers in the 'Reload and Win' promotion for mobile money (Rwanda) (wirelessfederation.com)
• Tigo Energy Raises $18 Million, Bringing Total Funding to More Than $50 Million (cleanedge.com)
• Rolling Down the River Without Proud Mary (budgetnomad.blogspot.com)

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Something or Nothing to Twitter About

We have been assisting a Swedenborgian minister who has moved here from the US to create a "church without walls".  This is her full mission statement.

SPIRIT WITHOUT WALLS: Feeding the Soul in a Secular World

Spirit Without Walls is a post-modern ministry aimed at people who are unlikely to set foot in a church, and yet have the same spiritual needs as anyone:

• Comfort when they are afflicted
• Challenge when they are too comfortable
• Ceremonies to mark life’s passages
• A way to connect with a sense of something larger, by any name
• A way to bridge the gap between us, and see the sacred in the eyes of another
• A sense of personal worth and purpose
• A way to celebrate Life Itself
• A time to reflect on what matters
• Something to give meaning and value to life

Spirit Without Walls is an experiment in meeting a diverse community’s spiritual needs outside church walls, in a variety of forms:

• Feminine Spirit teaches and empowers women to live with Beauty, Courage, and Passion, bringing the Feminine to a world dying of expediency.
• Weddings and Sacred Rites create weddings and other rites of passage designed to lift up personal meanings, commitment, and a sense of the sacred.
• Kitchen Talk and What Matters are short, pithy spoken commentaries for radio and YouTube, to awaken and reframe everyday personal and social issues. Written commentaries on the Huffington Post, Interrelo Newsletter and THINK Central Europe, do the same.
• The Common Table feeds the soul through inclusive celebratory meals in unlikely settings, creating community, plenty, and joy in the midst of alienation and scarcity.
• Flash Mobster Choir of Angels will create moments of worship and awe when and where we least expect it, awakening us to Divine Wonder.
• Soul Coaching works through the body and mind to reach and regenerate the soul.

What we have been involved in is a small portion of the above. If you have ever heard of a flash mob, her goal is to create a flash dinner. The original concept was to get hotels and restaurant on board to donate their left over food. Then without warning and without advertisement, a group of volunteers would quietly set up tables and place settings in a public space. When all is set, anyone walking by would be invited to a sit down dinner where they are served. That is the idea, but the practicalities have been burdensome to maneuver. 

At one of our think tank meetings, we were discussing alternative ways to get the word out if the ambling passerby is reluctant to partake of a meal. Our dear minister friend suggested we Twitter the info. After laughing and stating I thought Tweeter was as possible here as diaper rash, she challenged my thinking. Hence, I had to do a survey amongst my list of students old and current, which numbers around 400. I was pleasantly surprised to hear back from a little over 100. They substantiated my claim. 98% of them said they don't use Twitter. Of those, three asked me what Twitter was. Facebook is popular because it is translated into Hungarian. One student who works in the industry sent me a breakdown of social network users in Hungary. Someone else sent this graph.

This continually reminds me that people who come from urban areas in the US, seem to forget that the world has not embraced all things intrinsic to US culture. Another person who was a reader before I challenged his beliefs, truly believed that having everything in the cloud was the only way to go. People often forget that not everyone has a computer, or fast Internet access, or fill in the blank. Ron's family in Iowa still has modem dial up, because there are no cable companies out in the rural parts of the state and no cell towers have been installed. Not even satellite Internet service is possible.

I won my bet with the minister, but there was nothing to back the wager other than reassuring cultural knowledge is indeed intact. The only reason I have hitched up to her wagon is because I am curious about how the ride turns out and what the final destination happens to be. Further updates as they occur.

Related articles

• Flash Mob! (lostinthecall.wordpress.com)
• Flash mobs: still Situationist? (rhetoric114.wordpress.com)
• VIDEO: Flash Mob Busts Out At Dubai Airport (997now.radio.com)

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Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut

Sometimes you feel like a nut (click here when you are done reading), other times you just feel like a stupid moronic idiot. Is that redundant hyperbole? Here is the scoop, Sunday, the Internet slowed to a crawl. It was so slow, I was wishing for a 56K dial up to speed it up. Remembering what the cable company has told me in the past, I followed the steps.

1. Unplug the cord going to the cable box, wait 10 minutes
2. Unplug the cord going into the electric outlet, wait 10 minutes.
3. Reboot the computer. 
4. Done
5. Done 
6. Done

Great, now the lights on the cable box are lit up at all. It died. Its little lights were flickering so faintly in nonsensical patterns. Maybe it was Morse code for SOS. I used to know Morse code back in my Cub and Boy Scout days, but that was too many decades ago to retrieve the information from. I should have paid it more attention. I should have realized something was wrong. Now is not the time to should all over myself. It is too late for should haves. 


It was new just July 2010. What is the lifespan of a cable box? Did we use it to death? Are we cable box murders? Will there be a special place in Hell for people like us? Maybe a room filled with the latest forms of technology, but there are no wall outlets and all of the batteries are dead. The nightmares started immediately, even as I was on the phone calling the cable company, the early symptoms of withdrawal were apparent. My mouse finger started twitching uncontrollably like it was clicking on Internet links that weren't there. Suddenly, I had thoughts of 57 different things I had to check on the Internet, before the slap of reality hit me hard once again. No Internet for you. 


Amazingly, the cable people answered within minutes and on a Sunday too. The person spoke excellent English. She ran me through the list of things, but I told her she was speaking to a veteran. I had done it all twice or more, but there is no life left. She ran diagnostics from her end. She could not detect any life either. She was sending out a technician. On Monday. Only between 1:30 and 4:30 pm. I was so grateful, I was almost close to tears. What the hell were we supposed to do until then? 


I can't share the time spent until the technician arrived. It is too painful a memory to rehash in my own mind, let alone on a public forum. When the doorbell rang at 1:40 pm on Monday, you would have thought I caught Santa Claus in the act; I was beyond ecstatic. He walked in full of confidence, but without any English. Sheepishly, I led him to the scene of the dead cable box and then left the room. I couldn't watch. 


Fifteen minutes I ventured back into the living room to see what progress had been made. He was like a Hawaiian surfing dude, covering the Internet like he was riding a big gun and sailing through the barrel of those waves. When I walked in, he calmly picked up the cable box, which I had thought he must have replaced. After flipping it over, he pointed to something and said...




Switch, on - off! If the earth would only open up and swallow us at times like these...

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Hail Holy Internet

For a number of people, myself among them, the Internet is like a religion. I cannot live without it. I use it to share with friends via e-mail, research for articles I am writing, checking on the latest entertainment, getting the news, and tons of other things. When I don't have access to it, things get nuts.

Yesterday morning the Internet was flaky. E-mail was coming in but not going anywhere. It sat in my Outbox like letters to Santa Claus go to the land of the lost at the US Post Office. Firefox was not working, but Chrome and IE 8 were not either. My mail program was acting very strangely. It would open and immediately freeze the entire computer. The only solution was to manually turn off the computer to reboot.

After rebooting the computer, cable box, and router yet still not finding a solution, I ran the anti-virus program for a deep scan. It kept stalling at 37% with a Chrome extension. I could not find the extension, so I deleted Chrome along with all of the other recent programs I had installed, thinking there may be a conflict in software. After rebooting the computer again, the anti-virus ran fine taking 2 hours to do so yielding nothing amiss. 

When I opened the e-mail program again, a pop-up window stated that due to an Adobe Flash upgrade, the e-mail program may not work correctly, so here is a download to fix the problem. Well, finally! 

Unfortunately, that still did not fix the problem. Thinking wide, I tried the phone. No dial tone. Tried to make a call, nothing. Aha, it is the cable company, not me. Turn on the TV, sure enough, no picture. Too late last night to call the cable company, though they have 24 hour service, I don't have 24 hour patience to deal with them. 

This morning, nothing had changed. No phone, no TV, no Internet. Strangely, I could download mail, but not send a thing. Not only could I not surf the web, I could not even belly board or doggie paddle it. These are usually the times when I have a dozen burning questions pop into my mind that need  answers right then and there. Instant gratification is only playing with my mind. 

After calling the company, it turns out there is a problem in the neighborhood. They hoped it would be fixed by tonight. I can send e-mail from my mobile phone, but it is a pain trying to type on the keypad. While I was on the phone, the nice lady asked if she could ask me a couple of questions. Anticipating a survey on customer satisfactions, I agreed, ready to blast the service. Question 1 - Why are you still sending us money. You have a credit of 44,780 Huf. You could go four months without paying your bill and still have a credit. "Please do not send us any more money." I had always hoped to be able to say that to anyone. 2. We have new faster plans and they are actually cheaper than the plan you have. Are you interested? Sure, I want faster unreliable service. Sign me right up. Tomorrow, they are coming to install a new cable modem box. As least now I will know at a much faster rate when I don't have access to the Internet and pay less for the privilege.

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This Is Going to Be Easy

"This Is Going to Be Easy" are the famous words that every computer technician who enters here says, followed by "I can have this done in no time." Hours later when they are looking at the pictures of their wife and kids to remember their faces, pining to be with them again, they realize they spoke off of the cuff. I am sure those words never leak from their lips ever again when approaching my door. Two days ago, the tech brought my new computer, my Windows Home Server, and new router. After an hour of struggling like a hostage bound and gagged, he finally called it quits placing a phone call to the cable company for Internet assist. According to the company, I had five computers hooked directly up to the cable box, but in reality there has only been one. The others are WiFi, so don't count. Around more rounds than a champion tennis match, they finally agreed to disagree, but resolved the issue regardless. Computer installed, router installed, WiFi working on all computers except the desktop sitting directly under the router. Duh! Back to square one. By 7:30 pm, the tech starts singing "Release me, let me go..." but does promise to return tomorrow to finish up. That is what all of my dates in high school said too; I should have learned by now. If I were smarter, I would have kept his bike hostage.

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Bored with the Internet

God no, not me. I could never be bored with the Internet and now that my students' work is appearing, I am like a dog that has just spotted an unattended steak. A few weeks back, Ron forwarded this site to me and somehow I overlooked posting it here. This cartoon is particularly apropos for bloggers, while defining my thought processes at the same time. Go to this link http://xkcd.com/77/ to see the cartoon in question. Simplistic, but real! The title of the cartoon is the same as the title of this post, so if you get redirected, you will know which one to look for. But be warned, the site is addictive.

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Life in the Boonies

Ron had arranged to call me today from Iowa where he is visiting his brother and sister-in-law. Before he left, knowing he would find it impossible to call, while slightly less possible to tell me when I should call him, I created a Jajah button on our website. If you are a slave to Skype, you owe it to yourself to check out Jajah. You do not need that annoying headset, because you use your own phone either land line or mobile. With the button on our website, anyone from countries that I have designated can call us during hours that I also have control over and we pay for the call. It is just a negligible amount, it is worth the cost if they are calling for a reservation. What I had not thought about was the outback of Iowa, where the entertainment of the day is watching the hummingbirds feed off of the red syrup set out for them. Ron called as scheduled, my phone rang, I accepted the call and was disconnected. This happened twice, but then I tried calling him. The line was busy. Fifteen attempts later, only to get a busy signal, I gave up thinking if he really wants to communicate with me, I am sure they still sell postcards with cornfields. He can send me one. The problem is that the ole family farm still only has dial up Internet service. What happened to the satellite system that was supposed to make every nook and cranny in the US enabled with high speed Internet? This is like time travel after you have put the machine in reverse by accident. Who can live with dial up 56kp in this day and age? The reason I could not get through was because the computer was on tying up the phone line, giving me a busy signal. The funny part is that ethnocentric Americans who continue to believe Hungary is still a communist country or better yet that it is a third world country, don't realize that we have had high speed Internet since 2002. Go Hungary!! He would probably have had better luck going to an Internet cafe, but then again that would be an hour's drive and he no longer has a driver's license.

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What Has Been Keeping Me Busy

Sometimes it is not the complicated things that keep a person extra busy. The little things can be annoying time consumers.

My new phone, the Nokia N96 is all I could have hoped for, but... It seems all of my contacts from the old phone were never saved onto my Sim card. What that means is that all 300+ contacts have to be reentered into the new phone. I have looked everywhere and have not found a way to import my contacts from a file, for example, my Gmail address book.

One other problem. I can make calls, but when someone calls me, they receive a message that the number is not working. This is not a phone issue, so I will have to make a trip to my provider to figure this out.

For our university, there is a teaching load calculator we have to fill out at the beginning of one semester for the previous semester. I usually am really good about getting this done right away, but did not get to it until today. None of my BA classes were listed. I have no control to make changes, just add in the numbers of students I gave grades to. Even ignoring the BA students, I get an error message each attempt. Only the department secretary has control over this, but it seems it is beyond her time limit to make changes. We will see how this plays out.

Speaking of the department secretary, I bought her a plant today and made a "You Are Highly Appreciated" sign. The university let my health insurance expire in November. I did not know it until I went for my flu shot. It took until yesterday for it to be resolved. The secretary had to return to the health office five times. Each time, they wanted different information, which they had not told her on the previous trip. Finally, she had me bring in everything I had, photocopied it all, had me sign each sheet, took everything she needed from the Dean's office and I now have my card again.

The Writing Center, I created at the university with the ten computers I was able to get donated has been a blessing for the new courses I am teaching this semester. Only six of them were able to be hooked up to the Internet. This made teaching a blogging course difficult. After discussing it with our computer person, he stated that for 15,000 Huf, he could get a router to connect the remaining four computers, but that the department had no money. I gave it to him, thinking in a week, I would have the router and full functioning computers. Two weeks later, he told me he ordered it. The week after that he said they sent the wrong kind. If I had known, I would have gone down to the store and bought it myself. Today, he e-mailed me. He has the correct one and will set it up. Different people and cultures have such different senses of time.

On a brighter side, I finished my first assignment for the NileGuide at www.nileguide.com. It was a smallish one, but I had some good fun working on it. It was quite challenging finding the names of all of the districts in Budapest, but as it turns out, not all of them are named, just numbered. The best part is I get to continually review all that I love about this city repeatedly.

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My Computer and I

My computer and I should have the best relationship ever. We spend more time together than a married couple who are partners in business with a home office. I do my best to treat it kindly. I show my appreciation for its many talents on a daily basis. Yet, like a spiteful friend, it turns on me on occasion; it really hurts when this happens. Yesterday was one of those times. We were working together seemingly without any qualms with each other, and then, it turned on me without warning. In the little tray at the bottom right hand side of the screen where the running programs are shown, a new little icon appeared. What caught my attention was the fact that it was flashing. It had the shape of a little computer with tiny yellow balls on either side. After I realized my buddy was not declaring its gender, I clicked on the icon for identification purposes. What I received in return was a message that is was trying to make contact with the IP host. For the last two weeks, I have been getting any annoying message on the Internet stating that my connection was reset by the host and I had to try again. This was consistent across platforms. The same issue arose with Firefox, IE 8, Outlook Express, and my Incredimail program, so I could presume that it was not software related. So, I had to break down and call my cable company to have it checked out. After listening to three minutes of instructions in Hungarian, I was finally informed that to speak to an English speaking operator, press 7. The last time I called it was 'press 8'. I think they change this periodically to confuse me. I pressed 7 and a lovely apologetic voice told me that all reps were busy and though my call was important, I could press 2 and leave a voice mail message and they would call me back. Being an untrusting soul with these promises, I waited...and waited...and waited. Five minutes later, I did get an actual person who asked for the usual information: my account number, the account name, the account address, my mother's maiden name, my place of birth, religious affiliation, political bent, phobias that have been cured and those that I still suffer from, and so forth. I really should record all of this information to do an instant playback whenever calling a company here to save my breath, but I never remember once off of the phone. The rep asked me to hold on while she checked my modem. I did and she did. She advised me that the modem was in perfect order, but there may be a problem with the IP, so she had to get someone from that department to check it. She asked for my phone number, the last bit of data not provide earlier so they could call me back after they checked it. When I asked how long this would take, claiming I did not want to be held hostage all day, she said within two hours. In the meanwhile, another glitch came about. The batteries in my cordless keyboard died. Now, I did have fair warning, since slamming a key ten times before getting any results is usually an indicator of something. Did I have spare batteries on hand? Nope! Ron was headed to the store, so this was put on the shopping list. Meanwhile, I tried every set of four AA batteries I could find fearful that the cable company would call back and need for me to navigate in the Network Connections or some such place. No batteries worked. One hour later, the phone rang; it was the cable company. Before the gentleman could say a word about do this or do that, I shared my dilemma. Although sympathetic, he said it did not matter since the IP was fine. It seems that it is my router that is causing the problems. They did not provide the router so it is my issue. Ugh! I hate having an issue. Ron returned with the batteries, so I thought I was set to go. The keyboard did not work. I repeatedly hit the reset button on the control and the back on the keyboard, but nothing happened. I uninstalled the software and reinstalled it. Nothing. Using the computer in the kitchen, I looked up troubleshooting for cordless keyboards. I had followed the instructions implicitly, yet still without positive results. By now, I was fuming. Buying a new keyboard was not on the agenda for the day. Ron had gone for a nap, so I decided to wait for him to get up to see if he wanted to go with me. Without a keyboard there are limited things you can do on a computer. I felt helpless and abandoned by my good friend. Pouting, I went to read the book I had started. After two chapters of being absorbed in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, I had an epiphany. The keyboard has a different antenna from the mouse. The reset button I had been hitting was the mouse reset. When I reset the correct antenna, the keyboard kicked into action.

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The Letter That Has Been Going Around

Normally, when friends send me clips, I always ask what was the source? Many times I go to Snopes.com to see if it is real or some hoax before sending it forward. It is my intent to use some critical thinking about what is truth and what is a "good story", but without any backbone. This letter came to me seven times from seven different people. I found two sources that suggest it is true. Snopes states Anne Kilkenny did indeed write the letter. However, I also found on the Alaska Daily News website what follows below. Words in bold within the article are my highlights.

"I have known Sarah since 1992..."

Posted by Alaska_Politics

Posted: September 4, 2008 - 12:11 pm

From David Hulen in Anchorage --

The e-mail below has been bouncing around the Internet since Sunday. It was written by Anne Kilkenny of Wasilla - stay-at-home mom, letter-to-the-editor writer and longtime watcher of Valley politics. She's a registered Democrat. She was one of the delegates to the Conference of Alaskans in Fairbanks back in 2004. Her bio from the conference is here.

She e-mailed this letter over the weekend to family and friends Outside, and (despite her request not to post it) it went viral on the Internet very quickly, showing up on blogs and Web sites all over. Since then, Kilkenny has been inundated with phone calls and e-mails. She said she stayed up until 3 a.m. last night answering e-mails, and found nearly 400 new ones waiting when she logged on this morning.

It's posted here with her permission.

***

Dear friends,

So many people have asked me about what I know about Sarah Palin in the last 2 days that I decided to write something up . . .

Basically, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have only 2 things in common: their gender and their good looks. :)

You have my permission to forward this to your friends/email contacts with my name and email address attached, but please do not post it on any websites, as there are too many kooks out there . . .

Thanks, Anne

ABOUT SARAH PALIN

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she's like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won't vote for her can't quit smiling when talking about her because she is a "babe".

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.

She is "pro-life". She recently gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn't take positions; she just "puts things out there" and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin's kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.

She's smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a "fiscal conservative". During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren't enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn't even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later--to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today's surplus, borrow for needs.

She's not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren't generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren't evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin's attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the "old boy's club" when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of "old boys". Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal--loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State's top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla's Police Chief because he "intimidated" her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska's top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it's pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn't fire her sister's ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn't like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.

When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the "old boys' club" when she dramatically quit, exposing this man's ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the "bridge to nowhere" after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects--which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance--but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as "anti-pork".

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah's mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as "AGIA" that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned "as a private citizen" against a state initiative that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State's lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior's decision to list polar bears as threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.

However, there's a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.

CLAIM VS FACT *"Hockey mom": true for a few years.

*"PTA mom": true years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since.

*"NRA supporter": absolutely true

*social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconstitutional).

*pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor to promote it.

*"Pro-life": mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down's syndrome baby BUT declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation

*"Experienced": Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.

*political maverick: not at all

*gutsy: absolutely!

*open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.

*has a developed philosophy of public policy: no

*"a Greenie": no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.

*fiscal conservative: not by my definition!

*pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.

*pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents

*pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla's history.

*pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works union doesn't make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

WHY AM I WRITING THIS?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you google my name (Anne Kilkenny + Alaska), you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA/parent organizations.

Secondly, I've always operated in the belief that "Bad things happen when good people stay silent". Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don't have a job she can bump me out of. I don't belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that's life.

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah's attempt at censorship.

Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

CAVEATS I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending & taxation 2 years ago (when Palin was running for Governor) from information supplied to me by the Finance Director of the City of Wasilla, and I can't recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjust for inflation? for population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of City Hall--they are swamped. So I can't verify my numbers.

You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the population of Wasilla, ranging from my "about 5,000", up to 9,000. The day Palin's selection was announced a city official told me that the current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-90's.

Anne Kilkenny August 31, 2008

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