Metrotel

All right! We are in the new house! Even better, the DSL guy came like...5 minutes, after we brought the last of the stuff from the place we were renting. All that's really left is for those punks with our cargo to come. They were suppose to be here early in the morning, but nope. Anyway, I'm hungry.

Settling

We're moving tomorrow morning. Yay.

Victory

Yay we got a house again! It's definitely not as big, but it's nice. We will be moving in by week's end, hopefully all our stuff from the warehouse will be moved in as well (my bed! My computer! WEEEEEEEEEE!) and our internet should be setup next week too (from another provider with DSL, not the Wimax, which we canceled today). I'll get pictures up once we move in or somethin'...

Rights

Interesting article I just found here. A little snippet here:

"Despite what you might have heard about "separation of church and state," the expression of religious beliefs remains a constitutionally protected right, even in public schools. Many school officials need an education on this point."

I guess the only problem would be the fact that we may not have constitutional rights anymore due to the Patriot Act? Kinda segwaying here, but I saw a little brochure on it and terrorism or something. It was interesting because there was a list about those you should keep an eye on, and considered a "terrorist group". One of them on the list were "religious fundamentalists". I guess that means "hardcore religious" and I'm sure that term can be applied to a true Christian, which in turn, makes us part of a potentially dangerous terrorist group? I'll try to find the brochure online, or see if I can get a scan of it once we get our stuff back.

I''m not very knowledgeable in politics, law, or crap like that, I'm just putting pieces together of what I've heard and seen, so don't rag on me. :P

Wimax

Hey guys, yesterday my dad got an 8 day trial for internet via Wimax. For those who don't what it is, well...look it up. :P Basically, instead of DSL and cable that use the phone line, or cables, Wimax just sends it wirelessly. So your modem has an antennae and picks it up that way. Then you just connect your computers like usual.

Anyway, it's not as great as I thought it would be. Here is my list of observation:

Wimax is suppose to be symmetrical, unlike DSL for instance which is asymmetrical. What this means is that the download and upload should be the same (unlike DSL, which has a very low upload, and normal download). We asked the guy who sold us the Wimax, and he confirmed it. However, it's not. The internet company, Orbitel, rips their consumers off according to a Spanish forum I was reading.

The main problem is really that consumers here have no interest in bandwidth apparently. Like I might've mentioned previously, when we asked about the 2MB service in Bucaramanga, the guy was quite surprised, and said we were the first to even ask about that speed. So people here in Colombia just don't seem to understand much about speeds. 1Mbit here is a big deal, while over there it's actually quite a low DSL speed (Comcast offers 6-8 Mbits, and Verizon is actually selling 50Mbit fiber optic in the northeast!)

Anyway, apparently Orbitel chops up our upload, which should be at 1Mbit like our download, but is at some 300Kbits. Less than 1/3, which is crap (for what they guaranteed we'd get). In fact, this trial we are taking is suppose to be satisfaction guaranteed! I'm not satisfied...here's another problem:

Wimax has a 7km range. Signal is affected by your environment as well. We asked the guy if our speed diminished if our signal got week (e.g. we were at the edge of that 7km radius). He reassured as that as long as we were in the coverage, we'd have our speed. He obviously does not know what he is talking about, and my assumption was correct. It's quite the opposite. It's just like a regular Wi-fi network, how can you guarantee full speed on 1 bar of signal? That's crap.

Lastly, Wimax is a little more expensive than DSL or Cable, and with the 2 previously mentioned problems I don't really see why we would stick with it.

That is all.

Chicken

I ate the biggest chicken of my life last night...and I ate ALL of it.



Even there, you can see I ate a chunk out of the left side, which was also dangling off the wood tablet it was served on by about an inch.



TADA!

Nags

Ouch. Here I am, in the new temporary apartment that we are renting, for who knows how long, holding my laptop in the air in an attempt to get a signal to a wireless connection somewhere in the distance. It has internet (albeit VERY slow) but you gotta do what you gotta do. I'm at the moment holding the laptop on my knee, which is taking a toll on my back, so I should make this quick. :P

House hunting is quite the amount of work, it's really stressing out my parents, but we continue praying and hoping God closes and opens doors as he sees fit. Hopefully we can get all this resolved quickly enough...

A little off topic, I woke up today to the sound of some birds screeching (or a child, I don't know) and a guy screaming, because he's selling stuff. There are a bunch of beggars around here and it is extremely annoying. Thing is, you can't trust anyone as my mom's friend has already given stories of how she gave money to a dude who was asking for money for a trip or something, months later, he's still there asking for the samething. There are also the ones that are just ANNOYING. A little boy, STRUTTING ok, all arrogantly in his jeans and bright red hat and shirt goes up and asks my mom for money. The heck? What for? You could see the pride oozing out of his face as he walked by, staring at his reflection on the store windows. My goodness, I wanted to whack him with the water bottle I was holding. Fortunately for him, I didn't. But people here really are so unashamed about asking for money, it sickens me.

Another thing that I've seen around here are children with the wheels on the shoe. Remember that came out a couple years ago? It seems it only started catching on in the past year, and over here I'd say more than 50% of kids in the mall have em. OMG, so many little people rolling around, doing that lean-back kick thing to glide on their heels. You just wanna trip em and be all like, "You have FEET, USE them like a normal person!" -.- Geez, they even have velcro add-on wheels for those unfortunate kids with regular shoes, who want to be all "cool" like the others. And these have LIGHTS too! >_<

Anyway, on a happier note, I beat the Super Excite mode on Excite Truck, and now unlocked Mirror mode. :P Whoopee...

Here, I leave you with these 2 pictures of a sunset...

Piñitas

Hey guys! We're getting real close to a decision on the buying/renting a house/apartment thing. Kinda...:P The thing is, we need to find a good place to stay at, and we want to rent for a year (in case it doesn't work out here) but renting is expensive. Buying a house is an option, but you just can't find a house that doesn't need repairs. So we'd have to rent (like a hotel) for a while...that's the situation.

Anyway, the title has to do with a yummy little bread they have around here. "Piñitas" means "small pineapples" I guess, but it's really just a regular looking bread with a layer of sugar on top. LOOK!



Also, here's an iguana.



And lastly, I finally got the S ranks on all the tracks in the "Super Excite" Gold Cup. I unlocked my last car, and it's pretty much the best one in the game (DURR). I recorded a video, which I'll have to upload later, as it's big and I'm out of time (laptop has 2 hour battery life, 20 minutes left, upload on slow connection wil take who knows how long...) soo...that is all. Goodbye.

Nada

Hey guys and gals. I don't have much to update on, still no house, despite my parents visiting so many. I should probably jot down what I want to blog on a notepad, because I'm sure I wanted to put something up today, but I forgot it...X-)

Coast

So, here I am in Barranquilla. Lots of photos, some updates, little time, and no internet! X-D Well, at least I can use this mall Wi-fi till my laptop battery dies...

I took quite the amount of landscape photos, which look great if I do say so myself, on the 8 hour trip it took from us to drive from Bucaramanga...





Here's me and the fat, wind in my hair, about an hour or so into the ride...;)







and the last one for now, I took it today while eating dinner...



As for updates, to keep it simple, we've moved to Barranquilla, we are staying at an apartahotel for now, and are looking for a house, with so far no success...that's about it. We got our stuff back, stored at a warehouse for now though...BUT I HAVE MY COMPUTER WITH ME NOW! YAY...