Last Chance Cafe

Algore went to Canada and called the welcoming Canucks frauds. In demonstrating his mad diplomatic skills (one-upping his own most recent performance of blowing off the President of Columbia last week) Gore is taking on global dimensions. As a matter of fact Canada's Liberal Leader Stephane Dion gave the right reverend Al a hallelujah! by piling on with, "we are failing the world. We are failing Canadians."

I can only advise my friends in the Great White North to be careful of the Gore Effect. It's already cold up there.

Posted by petefredbob at 05:51 PM | Permalink

I've long been an ass about not recognizing and thanking other blogs that have linked to my blog in the past and my current ecosystem ranking shows it. Since the new format change last year, which included a new more complicated url, I've fallen off the face of the earth link-wise.

Steve Graham from Hog On Ice and Steve H. Graham dot com has just graciously updated my link for which I thank him. He does a pretty good Christopher Walken. (you should click on the Amazon link to his book 'The Good The Spam and The Ugly' on this sidebar)

Doug Toby appears beneath the fold.

As much as I tell myself I don't care, I do enjoy seeing my blog mentioned elsewhere, and occasionally I'll do the 'search.' I'm using a new homepage thing called NetVibes which has a Technorati feed and I clicked on one of the blurbs, which made me go to the Technorati site and 'claim' my blog. Which in turn led me back to Obscurorant, who also happens to link me. I had completely forgotten.

So skimming the site I run across a post saying that "no DVD collection is complete without a copy of Red Dawn." Now one could argue the premise, but a little bell went off in my head, and then the post mentions Road House, which I just watched for the first time less than a week ago. Patrick Swayze drives an '84-'85 Mercedes 500 SEC in the film, which is the car that has been making my life hell for going on two years (still waiting for my update today).

I clicked the imdb page for the movie and I found Doug Toby. Hey, I worked with Doug Toby!

From his imdb thing it looks like Doug took a break between Summer Camp Nightmare in 1987 and Dragstrip Girl in 1994, which is the period in question. It was at the Sunset/ La Brea Wherehouse record store in Hollywood and he was an assistant manager. I was going through one of my do-over phases and had hired on as a minimum wage drone whose main job it was to alphabetize the returned videos. It was Zen, I tell ya' and I kicked and screamed when they told me I had to learn how to work a cash register in that new-fangled CD department. And cut my hair.

I went along-got along, made new friends, had parties at my house, hung out up in the hills with the crew and was amazed at Doug's ability to attract the prettiest girl available. Eventually I became an assistant manager myself at another store, but this is about Doug, no?

So this is also the era of the Los Angeles Riots via the Rodney King verdict and our store was on the edge of the disturbance. We were watching the news to find out the progress of the crowd when we heard sirens on Sunset and a parade of police cars whizzed back and forth in front of the store. We thought we were trapped but it was just some West Hollywood white politician leading a solidarity parade of bi-gay-transgendered constituents in support of the more pigmented partiers.

We closed the store forthwith and skedaddled. But that wasn't the end for Doug. He and a crew of three that evening watched the news as the rioters destroyed the Wherehouse store about ten miles south on La Brea and decided that wouldn't happen at our store. After all, we were a bunch of poor minimum wage earners scraping by, why should we suffer?

Next day Doug and friends came back to the store and set up shop in front by blocking the parking lot entrances and erecting a makeshift barrier to hide behind. They were armed to the teeth. (I wasn't there as they didn't let me in on the gag)

Two doors down there was a beeper shop. You remember those? Cell phones were just starting to catch on with the Hollywood set, but were still pretty expensive. All the cool kids and gang members had beepers and hung out in front of public pay phones. Remember those? After a while two cars pull up on Sunset and parked in front of the lot.

As I wasn't there the following is legend, but was described pretty much as I write it by everybody who talked about it. An Hispanic looking gentleman got out of the car, took off his shirt to show off his body art, raised his hands in the air and slowly spun 360 degrees. After showing that he was unarmed he walked toward the guys like he hadn't a care in the world.

He explained that he was just a poor gang member following orders and that he had no beef with the fellahs. In fact he respected them for taking a stand and protecting their workplace, as the corporate assholes had left them alone and helpless with the prospect of losing their jobs.

He pointed out that they didn't need any CD's or videos, but they did need beepers, which were freely available about twenty-five feet to the east. As long as Doug and crew didn't make a fuss about them helping themselves to the electronics, which were, after all in another store altogether, the Hispanic gentleman's crew wouldn't molest the magnificent four with the machine gun another gentleman in the car was in charge of operating.

With that the car door opened and a man emerged holding the meanest looking armament the fellahs had ever seen pointing in their direction. "Sure, help yourself," was the paraphrased response and the guys just following orders proceeded to smash windows and such.

Shortly afterwards Doug, or one of the guys anyway suggested to the others that it might be a good time to call it a day, and they did. The store was never touched and we all came back to work, though the Best Buy- kitty-corner across the street- made it to the national broadcasts as a rainbow coalition of black, white and indifferent helped themselves to big screen TVs, stereos and whatever else their little hearts desired while the police watched from their squad cars.

So here's to Doug Toby, bringing the lessons learned from Red Dawn where a rag-tag group cut off from their government defended their country from the invading Russians, to the real-life workplace, where a rag-tag bunch of minimum wage drones defended their place of employment while the corporate fat cats and police watched gangs and other assorted assholes attack their own city.

Doug, wherever you are I hope you've got the prettiest girl and are driving a Mercedes that actually works, and thanks to the SivlerFox for reminding me.

Posted by petefredbob at 01:04 PM | Permalink

Former CIA chief George Tenet writes in a book due out Monday that there was no serious deliberation within the Bush administration about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and his inside account seems sure to further roil the Iraq disputes raging now.

Via my WSJ morning brief.

Tenet was appointed by Clinton, and Bush kept him. This was likely the biggest mistake Bush made in his presidency, not Iraq or Afghanistan, but keeping this dog.

Be warned, additional right wing rant below the fold:

In this sense I find a not so happy similarity in Bush to our worst president ever: Jimmy Carter. However wacky one may find Carter, he does keep his own council for better or worse. Bush's loyal to a fault peccadillo has come back to bite him more than once, and this is only the latest incarnation. He has never learned how to throw someone overboard, as the current Attorney General imbroglio demonstrates to a tee.

Watching in wonder at our strange political landscape we see Tenet throwing down his partisan gauntlet from the political anti-war side. I've got nothing against anti-war folk, as long as they are following their principles. I think they're dead wrong, but that's just my opinion. Political anti-war people are another story- they are nothing less than despicable.

Tenet, like Joe and Valerie Wilson, takes this one step further- into personal financial gain. I'm a capitalist, I like money. It's good to spend. But there are things you have to forego if you aspire to public service. Take for example: soldiers. There are some highly professional people serving and dying that can make plenty of bucks on the outside (Pat Tillman as an obvious example, but there are many, many more), yet their principles require them to sacrifice short term personal gain for something more important.

People like George Tenet are responsible for sending those soldiers into battle. If he had any principles he would have stood up and done something- like resign- if he felt W was rushing to war. He was the head of the freaking CIA for Christ's sake, not some innocent waif. Where were his balls! Instead he stood there and accepted a Presidential Freedom Award. He should be ashamed, but I found out long ago that's not a real Democratic Party strong point.

Remember, before you Dems go getting all uppity about more evidence that Bush lied and people died, this dick betrayed you too, even worse than evil George. He was a Democrat on the inside, with way more access and responsibility than Hillary, and he screwed you. At least Bush had his convictions, however wrong you may believe they were, which is more than I can say for this piece of crap. Now we have the honor of deciding 'when' he was lying, then-or now.

This 'book' will not help anybody, pro or anti war. It only makes the water murkier and endangers the men and women in harm's way. Had this information-if true-been available at the time it may have made a big difference, Bush would have never gotten a second term, and George Tenet could have gone down in history as a hero. Now he's just a backstabbing coward.

Posted by petefredbob at 09:30 AM | Permalink

About nine months ago they started to build on the property abutting the back wall of my building in Costa Rica. Six days a week the hammering, nailing and indispensable jocular screaming back and forth among the construction workers began promptly at seven. It was one of the things I knew I wouldn't miss by a long shot when I moved.

Apropos the photos from the other day there has been over a week of road construction outside my front door, also beginning promptly at seven. I woke up again this morning with the house shaking from the steamroller. I'd had two days of peace, and as long as they don't break the new pipe they laid in while tamping down the road I should be back to being woken up by my landlord yelling at her employees by tomorrow.

On a predictive note I've been assured that today is the day my car will be returned to me. It's bad, as they say, to count your chickens and all that, but I have a feeling in my bones that it's true. Having been laid up at the mechanic's since January 31st it will be good to see her again. I hope the lawyer got the paperwork done for customs, as legally I only have ninety days to use the car in Panama, and that time is mere days away.

The bomberos, or fire department, will be here today to inspect the new electrical connections and meter. If approved I'll have a hot-damn 240 volts of electrical power coming into the place. That, and having the car back to scout supplies means next week I'll be whipping out my handy measuring tape and begin laying out the bar space downstairs.

Speaking of which I re-did my Prosper loan request. HERE is the listing if you want to get in on the fun. You may be asked to sign up in order to view it, I'm not sure at the moment. Remember, you don't have to fund the whole thing; you can just throw a couple of bucks at it. You will only lose-just kidding, I mean, are only charged the money if enough people fund it to reach the whole amount.

Think of it as living vicariously or as a down payment on a future bar tab.

Posted by petefredbob at 07:03 AM | Permalink

February 11, 1938 - April 25,2007



He'll be a graveyard smash!

Posted by petefredbob at 05:01 PM | Permalink

There are lots of interesting stories about how efficient government work crews are. You know, 15 guys on the job and only one of them digging the hole or whatever it is they are supposed to be doing. But in Central America it's even more fun.


[Panamanian Road Crew At Work]


We've had a work crew and trucks and other heavy machinery 'improving' the road in front of our place for the past week or so. Central America is not most geologically stable place as you might imagine, and I'd lived for twenty years or so on and off in Southern California, so when the steamroller rumbles by first thing in the morning "roadwork" is not my first thought.

[Do They Still Call Them Streamrollers?]

My landlady grew up here in this little town and knows everybody from the mayor to the Indian guy swinging the machete to cut the grass. For the past week or so the first voice I heard (after I was woken up by the house shaking) was hers yelling at the road crew- by their first names no less. The main problem is that as they put a new layer on the road the rain runoff would be funneled right into the front door of her bar and supermarket.

[Landlady Not Happy]

She ultimately got an agreement from the town to build some sort of drainage contraption, the likes of we'll just have to wait and see. But in the meantime work progressed, until yesterday when the water main broke.

[Not The Fountain Of Youth]

The first pickup truck pulled up with piping in the back of the bed of about two inches in diameter, which wasn't going to work on a ten-inch pipe. But, by the end of the day all was well, and we also found out how the city was going to fix my landlady's drainage problem, shuffle it to the other side of the street by means of a large concrete pipe going under the road. Two birds-one stone as they say.

[Simple Solution]

But as my eagle-eyed girlfriend noted, they used old pipe to fix the leak. This morning the results are in:

[Notice How The White And The Gray Pipe Don't Seem To Be Communicating?]



[Notice The Two Workers Evaluating The Situation?]

Posted by petefredbob at 08:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I think I've written about the 'bichos' or critters in my life, most ominously, in my estimation, the scorpions. I saw a TV commercial the other day for Raid or some other 'bug' killer, and it showed a Mom and baby in a peaceful home setting, until a scorpion decided to show up. Of course the magic spray corrected the problem. I didn't have a peaceful sleep that night.

Far less lethal, yet annoying none the less, are these things:

They are LOUD like dive-bombers when they fly around in the house, and they just knock into things and fall to the ground. This was a fine example at about an inch 'wide.' When they fly they appear much larger and if you happen to look up and see one careening toward you, you get to do the 'tard dance of avoidance. Thus they must be killed.

On another critter killing note: a rat or similar critter has expired inside my front wall and a less than sweet smell has been wafting from there. The guy who sold me the rat poison said that 'that' wouldn't happen, as the poison makes him thirsty and he'll leave the house looking for water. I'm sticking to the sticky paper next time so I can let the neighbor's kitty play with him for a bit.

Posted by petefredbob at 07:14 PM | Permalink

February 1, 1931 – April 23, 2007

Posted by petefredbob at 04:48 PM | Permalink

Read an article a couple of weeks ago (WSJ perhaps?) reminding me of Prosper dot com. They are a personal/business loan site that hooks up people with a little extra cash looking for more interest than they could normally get legally, without getting lucky in the stock market or hitting the lottery. People looking for cash create a listing stating why they want the money and declare what kind of interest they'd be willing to pay- up to and beyond credit card rates. I checked them out some time ago and thought the concept had merit and the recent article got me thinking.

Why not expand the cash pile for the bar? It could speed things up by allowing me to hire a couple of people and reduce the inevitable stress when the inevitable things go wrong.

The first time I tried to register I was missing my bank account info as my checks were tucked away in a box from my recent move. Dug them out the other day and tried again.

The process seemed kind of pushy as I created the account (of course they are asking for personal info), and then I was encouraged to create the listing, which I actually wasn't ready for. I did a quick and dirty job figuring I'd go back and edit. I sent out a bunch of emails through the site to folks asking for personal endorsements (picked at random from my address book, sorry if you got one and didn't like it), did a quick check of my account page and signed off. The next day I was busy with lawyers, landlords and my damned car.

End of the day yesterday I got an email as one of my friends responded and wrote a nice bit of endorsement. Trouble was Prosper wouldn't allow me to publish it as it contained my actual name- which is against their privacy policy. My only choice it seemed was to reject the endorsement. They suggested I ask my friend to rewrite the bit, which I did, and he did. Prosper then wouldn't accept the new endorsement because I rejected the old one.

Next up was a phone call from another friend asking for my help understanding the listing. I called up the listing page and was appalled at what it looked like. There were things I was sure I wrote that were not there and my credit rating was a negative six hundred thousand or something. Apparently, after spending months paying off bad debt to numerous collection agencies a few years ago, one of them didn't report my account paid. I need to deal with Experian about it.

I then found out I couldn't edit my listing and my only choice was to pull it and do another one. I'll try to get at it today and post an update here if I get it done. Then you can join Prosper and help fund the funnest and bestest bar in west central Panama.

I'm not bitching, really, because I think the concept is pretty cool. Just a warning for those of you who run across this post thinking about using Prosper: have your sales pitch down and take your time posting it.

Posted by petefredbob at 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The New York Times wraps up an article on the Virginia Tech shootings thusly:

Asian-American students at Virginia Tech reacted to news about the gunman’s identity with shock and a measure of anxiety about a possible backlash against them.

“My parents are actually worried about retaliation against Asians,” said Lyu Boaz, a third-year accounting student who was born in South Korea and became an American citizen a year ago. “After 9/11, a lot of Arabs were attacked for that reason.”

Mr. Boaz, a resident adviser at Pritchard Hall, said many Korean-American students had left campus immediately. Parents of other Korean-American students were preparing to pick up their children on Tuesday afternoon and take them home.

I'm guessing a lot of Non-Korean-American students left the campus immediately- as well as anyone with a still functioning survival instinct, but that wouldn't fit the 'Racist-American' storyline.

[Useless and tired rant against the New York Times follows below the fold]

It's been some years now since 19 Arabs crashed jumbo jets into symbolic buildings in America to start a war, and the TV then showed Arabs dancing in the streets celebrating it. This was an assault on a civilization and way of life for political/religious purposes. It was meant to get people riled up, and it did. The great number of those that could, some at great personal and financial sacrifice, joined the military. A very few people in a country of 300 million took it upon themselves to break the law and retaliate on a personal level.

Human Rights Watch has what should be the most extensive list of post 9/11 'hate crimes' available. I use quotes because they are in the business of finding 'hate crimes' and include figures from the notorious CAIR organization that are dubious at best. They include borderline cases like, sadly, an all too common convenience store killing where:

According to press reports, his wife, Randa Karas, believes he was murdered because he was mistaken for a Muslim.... Local police told Human Rights Watch that they do not believe his murder was bias-motivated because there is no evidence to indicate anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bias.

And not so borderline cases this one:

On September 17, 2001, Ali Almansoop, a forty-four year old Yemini Arab, was shot and killed in his home in Lincoln Park, Michigan after being awoken from his sleep by Brent David Seever. At the time of his murder, Almansoop was in bed with Seever's ex-girlfriend.

Mr. Seever had been stalking his ex-girlfriend before the murder.

A bit of a stretch to call that a hate crime. I'm not minimizing the fears of the young student's parents, or the people that suffered unjustly after 9/11. It's just that The Times has a habit of missing the story in order to promote a point of view.

It is becoming apparent that the killer in the V Tech case was also upset about an ex-girlfriend, or perhaps a perceived ex-girlfriend. This is a kid that was also allegedly being treated by drugs for a psychological problem, and instructors were forbidden from removing him from campus even though he had been taking pictures of girls from beneath their desks, among other things. This was not a premeditated attack on one society by another, and I don't see Koreans dancing on the graves of the murdered. This was a loner knucklehead who needed help that the system couldn't give him.

The New York Times has become a quasi tabloid with little sense of dignity, even in the face of a worthy news story. It has fallen to pandering to a popular psychology and all too often lacks for grownup editing. By pandering 'me-too' victim-hood for the average Korean in the face of real horror the Times makes political points and deflects attention from the real victims.

"Yeah, there are a bunch of dead people but look over here at what might happen when cracker gets pissed off."

According to the current storyline when something bad happens compare it immediately to 9/11- which diminishes that event- and then search for possible 'backlash' from 'Americans.' Play this as the real problem, not the event itself.

One has to wonder from the fearmongering stories if immigrants feel unsafe in America? I don't think they normally do feel unsafe. Consider the remark from the student above, "My parents are actually worried…" If my kid were in a school that had a nut murder 32 of his classmates I would pull him out of there in a New York minute until I could evaluate the situation.

The conversation probably went something like this: "Come home." "But Mom I'm perfectly all right here with my friends." "I don't care about your friends, they're going to be singling out Koreans now, come home!" That's dog-bites-man, not news.

This is small potatoes compared to other more significant and well-researched criticisms of the New York Times. I just hate the fact that it has sunk so low to attempt to stir up more shit in the middle of a real tragedy. These were innocent kids and their teachers who knew there was trouble in the making but were helpless to stop it. That's the story, and the Times is missing it.

Update: Oh boy. Islam makes an appearance in the form of Ismail Ax. Go figure.

Posted by petefredbob at 10:33 AM | Permalink

Posted by petefredbob at 06:27 PM | Permalink

A couple of weeks ago I was hanging at Amigos doing the laptop thing and overheard a conversation with the Panamanian representative of Red Bull (that err… energy drink thing). Turns out he was excited about bringing the Company's Formula One racing car to the streets of Panama City.

I naturally interrupted and pressed for details. Bottom line is that Red Bull is closing off Calle 50 for an hour or so on the first of May so that they can make a bunch of noise running the Renault Red Bull car up and down the block for grins and giggles. I'm getting grins and giggles just thinking about it. According to the website (the link should bring you to the right page, but you know how to click if it doesn't) the event should happen around three o'clock.

I’m going to try and make it and bring the big camera, but the capital is six hours away by car or bus and I've got business in Costa Rica around that time. If you're planning to be in Panama on May 1st and are a racing nut, or just like loud noisy spectacles, send us an email for further info and I'll forward it to the right guys. If you want to write it up or take pictures I may be able to arrange VIP access.

In the meantime click here for the French version of God Save The Queen (or 'My Country 'Tis of Thee' depending on your grade school education), sung by a Renault Formula One racecar. It's inspiring.

I almost forgot, when the rep told me I could/should write about the event he said the company was very touchy about the use of the logo. I did a quick search and found an appropriate one. You can click on it to bring you to the same place as the other two links above. Note to Red Bull: This is how that new fangled internet thing works.

Posted by petefredbob at 10:06 AM | Permalink

Sorry about the lack of posting of late as I really wanted to go for a 'diary' feel for this latest gig, but I sit here with four itching-swollen bug bites, two on each arm, stopping to scratch between commas. Translated it means that the past few days have been nonstop work moving to the new house and making it livable, with me falling into bed at the end of the day.

Yesterday I had a list of more things to do inside, but somehow I wound up outside all day digging on the canal. It's finished now, in the sense that I'm not going to re-route it and the water runs freely all the way across the property. I also burned stuff in the back yard. Yes, I have gone native.

When I had first arrived in Costa Rica I marveled at the fires. I'm too young to remember this kind of thing happening much in the US, but in the days before leaf blowers and big plastic bags and not having to haul your trash to the dump, on reflection I'm sure it was the same. Looking out across the valley on any given day I could see a dozen or so plumes of smoke, attended and unattended. I'd even seen them 'cut the grass' on the side of the freeway by setting fire to it.



The fire pretty much lasted all day, smoldering during rain showers, and finally with a dose of gasoline to reinvigorate it, on into the night.

As we burned more stuff I got a sense of how much 'more' we are going to need to burn, especially now that we're having rains and the fire is slow.

Good news- I have coffee plants!

I don't know enough about picking but I know that one of the locals made deliveries to Amigos last week of fresh batch of home grown, which I bought and it wasn't bad at all. To my eyes these look ripe for the taking but I'll have to ask around. If I can make it all work we'll have some really special Irish coffee.

Today I return for a final time to the old house and uninstall the suicide shower. I don't really need it but the vieja is insisting. We left far too many things in Costa Rica for her satisfaction and she's determined nobody gets to use our leftovers. The new place has a more 'robust' suicide shower, which means I don't get little drops of cold water on me even when it's supposed to be 'hot' water, and, wonder of wonders, the ground wire is just dangling there ungrounded.

Posted by petefredbob at 07:54 AM | Permalink

Wow! Is all I can say about the ABC News blog of Terry Moran.

I've been busy doing my thing in Panama, changing houses and moving all my things again and have stayed away from commenting on the news, but this is rich.

DON'T FEEL TOO SORRY FOR THE DUKIES

…[P]erhaps the outpouring of sympathy for Reade Seligman, Collin Finnerty and David Evans is just a bit misplaced. They got special treatment in the justice system …

…[I]t strikes me as just a bit unseemly to heap praise and sympathy on these particular men…

As students of Duke University or other elite institutions, these young men will get on with their privileged lives…

And, MOST IMPORTANT, there are many, many cases of prosecutorial misconduct across our country every year. The media covers few, if any, of these cases. Most of the victims in these cases are poor or minority Americans…

OK, that's not all I can say.

The assertion that three innocent people facing thirty years in jail don't deserve sympathy because they are white, privileged, and the press doesn't report on prosecutorial misconduct against minorities is absolutely absurd.

This is the height of racism and self-hatred. Where does the privileged white prosecutor that decided it was a good idea to stir up racial hatred to get reelected as District Attorney fit in to this worldview?

Maybe it's the fact that the mainstream media (including the New York Times) and their own university faculty (the group of 88) had thrown these guys under the bus from day one has Mr. Moran feeling a little peckish. ABC is about as mainstream as you get, and why change your opinion when faced with mere facts?

Maybe my research is a little perfunctory, but my Google search on "prosecutorial misconduct" doesn't show up any other articles written by Mr. Moran, so maybe a tinge of 'white guilt' could also be in play here. Whatever it is, Moran has dragged down the dialogue to a lower level.

Posted by petefredbob at 09:16 AM | Permalink

Time for the semi-regular photo tour of Beautiful Downtown Boquete, except without any photos of the actual downtown. First up: the neighbors. This is on the south side of the old, yet still for the moment current, abode. These two houses are now vacant, as is the house directly to the north of us. The one on the left wouldn't be so bad were it minus one dilapidated and stripped pickup truck.



Next is one of the two Boquete Arches coming into the city. I'm guessing they chock them full of flowers and whatnot during the festivals, but off season they look kinda bare. If you are visiting and you see this coming north, hang a quick left and stop in for a drink. The old school buses on the corner are the giveaway.



Looking north into the town proper.



I don't know what they're growing but there are rows of them.



Looking out over the back forty at the new ranch. The lumber at the middle of the photo is courtesy of the city cutting down some big trees at the top, which could have fallen on the house. We're talking big trees. I will be making use of some of the felled timber, perhaps as part of the bar. The tall grass at the bottom has been hacked away.



More of the jungle view to the south.



It's phone installation time!



State of the art electric stuff. This is on its way out.



Our happy electrician and the new inside breaker box. He's happy at this very moment because I paid him and he's in his cups. I'm letting him sleep it off downstairs tonight, though I doubt he'll be of any use should somebody be wanting to break in.



Here is our happy electrician's happy assistant. This is how you wire a house in Central America: Take a hammer and beat the crap out of the walls until you get holes. Rest a bit and do more hammering until you can stuff wire in there from one side of the house to the other. Cover with cement and hope you don't have to go back in there for something.



Now we have our second internet technician on the phone to the office accomplishing nothing. We walked up to the local office soon after this to get up to speed.



Here I am working on one of the windows. This one wound up not getting the first screen, as the opening gets smaller and wants to stop it from opening. I'll be using bigger trim pieces on this side.



On the way home last night we found a parade! In this photo it appears that somebody got Christ down of the cross, put him Lenin's tomb and dragged him around the city streets.



Here's a better shot after they stopped in front of the house for a bit.



Here's Mary all decked out in flowers. The crowd was very quiet except for a car with loudspeakers intoning on about something.



The parade stopped here in front of a neighborhood church three doors up from the house. There were distinct hissing noises directed my way as I photographed this.



I'm a little confused on this one, as by itself it could be Jesus, but considering he was leading the parade in his glass coffin I'll guess this is Joseph.



We were a little short on light but I wanted to get the full effect of the effort these guys were putting in. It's a bit obscure but I thought the contrast of the laughing girls with the struggling litter bearer makes it a picture.

Posted by petefredbob at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's a link to an 'infoplease' webpage indicating the world's top oil producers, exporters, consumers and importers. Exhaustive in my efforts to bring you reliable information, here is the Wikipedia entry of top petroleum producing nations as well.

One would correctly assume that the United States is the top-consuming nation in the world, but did you know that we are the 3rd most prodigious producer, right after Saudi Arabia and Russia? We produce 8.69 million barrels a day but consume about 20.5, which means we import about 11.8.

Iraq, hitting the list at number 14, produces a measly 2.03 and exports even less, and Iran only coughs up 2.55 for export. Taking both country's total exports would still leave us almost eight million barrels a day short. Somebody's got to talk to George about mathematics and stuff 'cause we're definitely picking the wrong countries to steal oil from.

Posted by petefredbob at 06:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Finished the first window screen installation today except for the molding work, as the local woodstuff provider is closed for the day. Claudete says they will be open tomorrow, Saturday, but I kind of doubt it. This was one of the 'easy' screens being only a rough square frame that swings in and up to latch for access to the window. The double windows will require an under-over sliding thingamabob that will be more fun. (Fun Facts From Microsoft Word: 'thingamabob' is apparently a word. Who knew?)

I just checked on the yard canal and after two days of rain it's quite full of the old H the 2 and the O. It looks like I'm going to have to finish digging the trench all the way through the back yard to help it drain before we expect to get any word from the water analysis folks. I'm still itching though from my previous bout with the bugs, plus it's overcast, plus the electricians are using the back porch for their breaks and it would just be rude to interrupt, plus I just don't feel like it today.

Posted by petefredbob at 12:49 PM | Permalink

The "electricians" are humming right along and have the new inside breaker panel installed as well as a new entry box on the outside. The new conduit running upstairs for the oven is ready to have wire pulled and the holes hammered into the masonry to accommodate all of this have been patched. Once all has been completed, the bomberos-or fire department, will come to inspect, then the electric company will run the extra wire from the pole to give us 240 volts.

It's been raining in the afternoon the last couple of days, which has pushed me to work inside instead of in the yard. That is a good thing, as I need to get the living quarters ready for us to move into on Tuesday, but bad as all the little bug bites from my previous yard work have started to itch like crazy. There are all manner of 'bichos' flying and crawling around the immediate outback, and a quite a few of them apparently have a taste for human blood. In the once bitten-twice shy category, fifty or so bites are making it easy to avoid going back into the woods.

In other critter news the little lady found a scorpion in the bedroom yesterday. Before I could get there he, or she, skittered into a crack in the concrete. A bottle of Pino (Pine-Sol substitute) was available which we splashed into the hole, I stuck a letter opener inside and rooted around a bit, then we stuffed a wad of toilet paper into it to seal it up. I had very strange dreams last night.

Posted by petefredbob at 12:46 PM | Permalink

The Internet can be a strange animal in Panama. Boquete is a small and out of the way place and things reach here less quickly than they do more urbanized parts of the country. The local phone company's monopoly contract ends this year but until then we have only two options for connectivity. Aside from the 'wired' option there is a company that for a fee will install an antenna on the roof, which thereafter for $150 a month will get you a blazing 512 kbps. The same speed ADSL service is $47 from the phone company.

We went with the phone company, being less flushed with money than pride. Immediately after the technician left I plugged the modem into the wireless router, as he refused to soil his hands with it, and the subsequent connection to the ISP was denied. A couple of phone calls later we were up and running again. Since then it's a daily or twice daily operation to call the office and get them to restore our failed connection.

Yesterday another technician came out to supposedly give us a new modem, but as we booted the system and all came online immediately he just stayed and chatted a while. As he was screwing around he loaded a speed page to see what we were getting and we were stuck around 217. He then loaded the phone company page and found we were set for 255 down and 125 up. He called the company to get us the right service and got nowhere. He left, we made a few calls and finally decided to walk up the hill to the local office and see what was up.

The nice customer service lady pointed to the phone number scrawled at the bottom of the installation contract. We explained to her our previous attempts and she finally agreed to get on the phone herself. Thirty minutes of small talk and waiting for various live people on the other end of the line later, everyone was all smiles and we took our leave. Back at the ranch we tested and were hovering around 415, which will need to be good enough for government work. I haven't tested the laptop yet.

Posted by petefredbob at 12:45 PM | Permalink

Easter week, known in these parts as Semana Santa, is probably the biggest holiday outside of Christmas, otherwise known as Navidad (Natal in Brazil). Last night, Thursday, the bar next door shut down and probably won't open again until Monday. You may have read in the news recently that Hugo Chavez shut the bars in his Catholic country down beginning at the end of last week. It strikes me as weird, an indigenous South American champion doing the bidding of the Vatican. But that's our boy Hugo. Karl Rove must be involved.

Yesterday I made all the windows on the second floor shut (more or less) correctly and gave them all latches to make them stay that way. The one problem window on the side needed to be turned inside out as years of bad construction and hinging and blowing in the wind had put it quite out of square. In this case my luck would have it that the hole in the wall more closely matched the reversed shape. There was much dangling of limbs. I've yet to devise a device to keep them open and discourage them from swinging and banging into things with the wind.

I also built my first screen frame, which for complicated reasons ultimately won't fit the window I made it for, but works perfectly for its opposite number across the room. All would seem to be going swimmingly, except for the aforementioned Semana Santa; in which not only are the bars closed for the long weekend anchoring the event, but most other businesses tend to be shuttered as well. Maybe I'll get some writing or research in this weekend.

Posted by petefredbob at 12:42 PM | Permalink

I like comments. I don't get many and I'm pretty loose about what I let stand. But idiot off-topic comments that are only meant to degrade or mock people will be deleted, especially people I know and like.

I'm pretty liberal in the 'live and let live' category, I don't care if you're a prostitute or a stripper, a gay soldier or make a living selling pot. It takes all kinds and I've spent many an evening partying with most of them.

As far as telling tales out of school, I try to reserve that for actors, politicians and 'holy rollers' as they 'usually' deserve it, or at least encourage it. Don’t be a bigger asshole than I am, and your comments will stand the test of time.

Posted by petefredbob at 05:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I learned the finer points of operating a Weedeater today, and as I kick back covered with detritus picking pieces of biological debris out of my pockets, I feel like a job well done. I reclaimed about a twenty by thirty portion of my back yard, though reclaim might be stretching it a bit. We'll just say I got down a level to the first layer of crap that people have been throwing out there for decades. Tomorrow is another day.

The water guys also finally showed up today and they seemed optimistic about the quality of the water. We found fish. Little ones about 2 and a 1/2 inches long swimming in our little canal. Added to the little crabs I found yesterday we can at least have a diverse aquarium going on, and the water is oxygenated and relatively clean. It could also mean we have an underground lake very close by, and if we find it, we gots plenty o' water.

The downside is that if we don't find it our seepage rate was only about 2 gallons an hour at our test hole (which consisted of sticking a plastic water bottle with its bottom cut off into the side of the hill). With a larger and deeper cistern it's good enough to get off the city grid, not good enough to bottle and sell. I'm betting on the lake, why not dream?

Broke it to the old landlord this morning that we were moving out and he took it relatively well. The electricians are already at work putting in the new breaker box, and tomorrow we'll get a new front door. Tomorrow we start off at the Do It Center to buy wood and screening and hinges and the like to attempt to 'bug proof' the upstairs living quarters. I prefer my bugs on the outside, thank you very much.

The odor from the fumigation two days ago has dissipated enough to make the place livable, so we can pretty much move in as soon as I get the screens installed and the windows squared up. After that it's back to the great outdoors and hauling gigantic pieces of wood off of the back forty and see if we can make them into a bar top.

Posted by petefredbob at 05:43 PM | Permalink

Sunday April first, and we're in a transition period. I'm writing this with my first cup of coffee at the old place but I'll post it from the new newly 'wired' place. Internet came to Petesville yesterday around 4 PM. As soon as they remove the rest of the huge wasp nest outside the second story window and fumigate the joint we'll start moving our things in. Probably tomorrow.

At the same time we'll get our first water test for the big problem/road to riches spring just a few yards away from the house, cost: $100. If we find it's not deadly other tests will follow, along with a geological survey about where exactly the water is coming from and what chance there is for it to be polluted in the future by runoff and other stuff. Today will likely see me with a machete or other such implement chopping flowers, weeds and tall grass from around the test area. They say there are no snakes in the grass but I've not had time to do my wildlife background check on the Panamanian highlands so I'll be keeping my eyes peeled all the same.

Our first contact after getting online yesterday was a Skype call from our friend John in Costa Rica. It's not that I have been ignorant of or haven't seen it before but the space age is here my friends. It was my first call with video, and it was free. I'll be hooking up the camera to the PC soon for it to be a two-way street and all that. My only advice would be to note: attend to what's in the background of the camera, and remember, if you're naked or otherwise disheveled, everyone can see you.

Posted by petefredbob at 01:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)