I need a printer recommendation, because the Epson Stylus TX420W is a piece of shit

Seriously, why are printers the work of the devil? It seems like printer manufacturers are in a close race with telecommunications companies for first place in the How Much Can You Rape And Pillage Your Customers And Still Make Shittons Of Money competition.

Osama bin Laden buried at sea according to Islamic law

I was really happy to hear this. We’ve come a long way since 9/11 and learned a lot of very painful lessons. But we’re learning, and that’s the most important thing.

About that time I ate a glacier

We recently took a short vacation to Huaraz, Peru. It’s about an eight hour bus ride north of Lima. Or at least, it would be eight hours if your bus didn’t break down 10 minutes from the bus station, then again about an hour later, and then a third time another hour down the road so you then had to wait for two hours for a different bus to come meet you since for some stupid reason you didn’t turn around and head back for the station after breaking down a second time. On a related note, I don’t recommend the tour bus company Movíl Tours.

After we got in 3 hours late, this happened (bus is blocking 4 lanes of traffic)

What’s so cool about Huaraz? It’s surrounded by snow-capped mountains! So if you’re a big fan of really tall pointy cold things, Huaraz is a pretty cool place. You can do all sorts of hiking, enjoy hot springs, see glacial lagoons, climb mountains. But we chose something even cooler: we ate a glacier.

OM NOM NOM

Well, not a whole one. The Pastoruri glacier sits at about 17,000 feet which is easily the highest I’ve ever been while at rest with respect to the Earth’s momentum. To get there, you take a tourist bus up into the mountains, right to the foot of the glacier. Then you just have to hike up a few hundred meters, although at that altitude it feels like your heart is an alien baby trying to break through your ribcage. When you reach the glacier, you can scrape ice right off the top and it’s just like the crushed ice from a snow cone. If you ever go, I seriously recommend bringing some flavored syrup and those little conical paper cups to make your own snow cones.

A little cherry syrup would have been perfect

Sadly, the Pastoruri is actually disappearing right before our eyes. It’s the world’s largest tropical glacier (the mountain range near Huaraz also includes the world’s tallest tropical mountain, Huascarán). For now. I’m glad I got to see it. When the polar caps finally melt, I’ll get to reverently tell my grandkids about it the same way our grandparents told us about black and white televisions.

The rest of our time in Huaraz was very pleasant and relaxing. It has a smaller-town feel (very different from the metropolis of Lima), with lots of cute markets and good places to eat. We stayed at a very cute B&B just outside of town run by a man named Gilf (pronounced with a hard G!!!) and his wife Maruja. From our room you could see Huascarán in the distance. It was absolutely lovely, and I highly recommend it.

This was the view from our room at the B&B

I’ve got some more cool stuff to write about our Huaraz trip, but I think it deserves its own post so I’ll just leave you with some more photos.

Chocolatissimo Tres Sabores!

This is a Peruvian children’s snack that’s essentially dunkaroos minus the cookies. In case you were wondering, the three flavors appear to be chocolate, milk chocolate, and really milky chocolate. Also the plastic scooper is unnervingly phallic.

Buy Chris Bathgate’s new album Salt Year right now

Ho. Lee. Shiiiiiiit. You are not ready for the beauty, soul, rock, and hardcore FOLK of Chris Bathgate’s new album. It’s for sale, now, on his website, in whatever digital format you prefer. Best $10 you’ll spend this month.

Peruvian Customer Service

This is not the DMV in Peru. This is the mobile phone store.

Good Advertising

I wonder if support@hulu.com has received even ONE email regarding this issue.

Collect the whole set

A brief excuse for the long delay since the last post: I’m working on a new project which includes setting up a new website and home for this blog, which I was hoping to have done a couple weeks ago but of course the planning fallacy has reared its ugly head again. Anyway, I was trying to hold off on updating until I had the new site ready, but I’ll give you a brief rundown now.

We already have two Africats and a North Americat, so how could we say no to a South Americat?
Actually, the story is a lot more complex than that, but at the moment we are the proud parents and caregivers for a tiny little kitten that Sandra found dying in the hallway of a hospital here in Lima (yes, IN the hospital). He’s been seeing the vet daily for a week getting IV fluids, antibiotics, blood tests, etc, plus all the yummy cat food he can stomach at home. When we got him he had a very swollen abdomen (which was drained a few days ago) and he’s still very jaundiced and hemolitic. We still don’t know exactly what’s wrong (vet suspects exposure to something poisonous at the hospital) or if he’ll survive, but we’re doing our best. His temporary name is Squeaker, which provides quite a bit of amusement when Spanish speakers attempt to spell it phonetically. And now all we need is an Antarcticat to complete the set.

One awesome note: veterinary care here is excellent and cheap. The place we’ve taken Squeaker has staff who speak English, they’re efficient and knowledgeable and kind, and the cost of medicine is clearly socialized because a round of antibiotics and IV fluids plus the cost of the visit is 30 soles or about $10.80.

His leg is fine, the bandage is just to protect the IV catheter

Here's his skinny butt looking all crabby at dad for taking these pictures

Besides cat rescue, I’ve been working on a bunch of web design projects, both through the regular job I have here plus some contracts. I hoping to turn that into a real business that can pay for all the new gadgets I want. On a related note, if you’re in the market for a new crock pot please hold off on buying one for a few weeks.

In two weeks’ time we’ll be home for the wedding of one of my best friends. We’ll only be back for a week, and a lot of that time will be taken up by the wedding (I’m a groomsman), so if you want a chance to see us I would recommend booking that ahead of time, as my parents have already so intelligently done. Appointments can be scheduled by email.

The food in Peru continues to be awesome. Some friends recently took us to try Anticuchos, which were incredible, although not for the faint of heart (har har). And yesterday mangoes were on sale at the grocery store for 69 céntimos per kilo, aka 11 cents per pound. You can put that in your dollar menu pipe and smoke it.

Ditching RSS (mostly) for Twitter

So I recently decided to “clean up” my online life, meaning trying to cut down on distractions and wasted time online, inspired by a slew of signals (including this xkcd blag). The first thing I did was cut out all the RSS feeds in Google Reader that posted more than a few times a day (e.g. techcrunch, engadget, boingboing). I still have a lot of blogs that I follow (~30) but combined they only account for a few posts per day, that I check once in the morning and once at night.

I replaced that by following a bunch of new twitter accounts for those same sites and related people. To avoid getting completely bogged down by twitter instead of rss, I set my twitter client to automatically scroll as new tweets arrived, and created a couple lists for “don’t miss” important accounts (close friends). I still scroll back sometimes, usually if I’ve been disconnected for a while, which doesn’t happen too often. But overall I’m just checking it passively, and any interesting links go into a separate browser window that I go through at a convenient break time instead of on the spot.

The big question was, would I still get the news I was interested in? Would I miss anything? Would I actually cut down on my “wasted” internet browsing? Initial results say yes, who knows?, and definitely. I mean, if I’m missing something, I’m not really going to know that I missed it, am I? (For those of you sitting in the back, if you can’t hear me please raise your hand.) But I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. And it also seems like I spend less time reviewing things that don’t interest me. The twitter character limit and not being able to immediately view posts like in GReader makes skimming over unimportant content quicker. Or more avoidable, or something. Overall, it feels like a definite productivity improvement.

Now trying to decide what the next productivity change should be. Thinking of “dark” hours (i.e. times when I’m not allowed on the computer, or maybe just the internet), which is difficult since my work is so closely tied to being on the computer. Thoughts?

All hail the old lady food huts

Ok, now let me tell you about something that makes Lima, in the words of Shakespeare, “The sheezey for reezy.”

There is an entire economy here built up around what I will term “mobile purchases,” and I don’t mean cellphone apps. Essentially, when you’re out and about, there’s a vast network of people selling cheap goods on the street, anything from newspapers to ice cream to meat on a stick. Because of the congested traffic, on any major road (and on some minor ones) there will be people waiting near the stoplights who will wander through the packed cars offering goods. Stuck on a hot, cramped bus? Don’t worry, here comes the guy with the cold Inca Cola – just pay through the window and enjoy. On the larger buses, people will get on at one stop with goods to sell to the passengers, exiting at the next stop. On the right buses, you can even buy apple pie!

There are also food carts, similar to a hot-dog stand in the U.S., where you can buy sandwiches, empanadas, drinks (with some very interesting options: I have yet to work up the courage to try to Quinoa-based drink), fried donuts and other desserts, etc. And then, there are the “Old lady food huts” as I have affectionately named them in my head. They’re basically newspaper stands converted to hold all kinds of candy, drinks, and other goods. They’re staffed without fail by old Peruvian women, and there’s pretty much one on every corner. This means you are never more than a block away from being able to purchase a cold Coke (1.70 soles, or about $0.60 for a ~13oz bottle – not even a bad deal!). No need to go into a store. No need for a receipt. Instant refreshment.

If I end up going broke here, it won’t be because of all the fancy restaurants, it’ll be because I can’t help myself with all of the impulse food purchases while merely commuting to work. I can already picture this being the biggest culture shock when I get home. “You mean I’m in the middle of downtown and I have to walk four blocks to the nearest convenience store for a Coke? WHERE IS MY OLD LADY FOOD HUT?!?!”