Doing tourism in my own country

Today I ate a delicious Bife Chorizo (New York Strip) for only 8 dollars! With everybody out of the city on vacation, Buenos Aires is a nice place to walk. So I am burning a lot of calories while whistling "Puerto Madero".

However, I am missing my family too much to enjoy it more. I am bored, and tired. Right now, I am in a cyber in Florida Street, paying around 0.33 dollars an hour for a broadband connection. I plan to walk, buy some Argentinean books and also some music.

Regarding music, I would like to know what is new and good. Regarding literature, my education ended before I finished reading all Cortazar's and Soriano work, so it is hard to choose something to read. There are many other names I am interested in, like Artl, Borges, Bioy Casares, Sábato, but I know I am forgetting many more. It doesn't even have to be an Argentinean author. Darn, I have received a lot of advice lately about new things to read, but I just have bad memory...

Ok, I think I will stay here and read Figuraciones for a while. I am sure I share a lot with Juan Alberto regarding tastes, so I will take his word as advice.

Tsunami accounts

I have just read blogs posts from people that have lived through the Asian tsunami, here, here and there. Also the report by CNN. Tsunamis have been my worst nightmare all my life, not for any particular reason. I lived most of my life protected of the ocean by high mountains. I have been trough earthquakes, though. I cannot even grasp the level of pain this has caused to so many.

Thanks to Scoble for the links. And by the way Robert, your previous post really looked bad in the context of more than 10,000 (now 21,000) people dead. You better accept it. However, I still don't think you are really insensitive. Perhaps you didn't wake up to it at first.

I found something better than blogging

Clues:

• I think it is the ideal hobby for any geek.
• I get a lot of wonderful peer feedback.
• I would be absolutely happy if I got paid for it.
• I would do it full time.
• It is not sex.

Why am I selling my car in my blog and buying a SUV?

Coincidently, Robert is driving a SUV, and giving good arguments against it. I agree with him. It reminds me of when Philip Greenspun compared Java with SUVs. Of course, compared with SUVs, Java is not abominable at all.

I have considered SUVs a monstrosity for years, and I am craving for a new Mazda3 right now.

All that said, I have been living in the city of Santo Domingo for two years. There are so many SUVs here that it is unsafe to go out driving in my tiny sedan. It kills my nerves everytime my wife goes out in it with my young son. Add to this the terrible condition of the pavement, and the very aggressive driving style of the natives (and the well adapted non-natives).

Those are the reasons I am selling my car today, in my blog, and looking for a SUV right now.

Taking advantage of my PageRank?

I want to sell my car, a Chrysler Neon 1996. I don't have much time because I am travelling soon. I tried to upload it to a local car selling site but it is taking time. So I decided to make the experiment of selling it in my blog. I will see what happens, and I will take this post down on a later date.

The car works well, it has good mateinance (I found a great garage owned by two brazilians), and even when it has had a crash, the engine wasn't touched and the repair was so good, now it runs better than before the crash. I am asking a little less than what others are asking for this car here, that is RD$ 150,000.

See for yourself. It is not a new car, not jewelry, but if you live in Santo Domingo, it is great value for your money.

For more details, see my email address in my Profile.

Manu

What drives an Argentinean geek to check the NBA news? to the San Antonio Spurs site? Manu Ginobili does. Everybody loves Manu, and one gets this need to congratulate him for caring so much about what he does.

Updated June 30th, 2005: I have noticed in my stats that many women (I assume), living specially in Texas, come to my blog by searching things like "does Manu Ginobili have a wife?". Well, I don't want to spoil it Manu, but yes girls, I think he does ;)

Is this real realpolitik?

I was looking for a nice definition of realpolitik in English, and I go to this post and this blog. I haven't checked the video referred by the post by myself, but in it, a Muslim preacher in a Mosque located in Germany says:

These Germans, these atheists, these Europeans don't shave under their arms and their sweat collects under their hair with a revolting smell and they stink... Hell lives for the infidels! Down with all democracies and all democrats!

Reminds me of the sad events that happened in the Netherlands regarding the murder of Theo Van Gogh. It is sad that in a country so tolerant the intolerant find a place to preach their hate.

My view is that the video exposes what the extreme right of the Islam thinks about the rest of the world. First clue: It is not at all different of what the extreme right thinks, regardless of country or culture: My cause is the cause of god, yours is the cause of evil. Second clue: Extreme ideology is self-justifying, and once you are inside, you just can't see the alternatives.

This is the reason that the owner of that blog chooses to think his biased politic view can be categorized as realpolitik. While I appreciate that he is not as extreme and cartoonesque as the preacher, I think it cannot.

Hewlett Packard Pavilion zd8000 is out

It seems that I will still need around US$ 3000 to get the Laptop I want. I have been thinking, however, that maybe it is time to jump to a 64 bits machine. Any 17" Laptops with AMD64 CPU that you would recommend?

Idea for improving Microsoft Office

Now that is clear that it is ok to shamelessly clone ideas, and specially now that Microsoft and Sun are friends... While I was reading about improvements in OpenOffice.org 2.0 , I found one that in my opinion Microsoft's product really needs:

Recently-used file list extended to 10 items

For me 4 items is not enough. I loose a lot of time navigating my huge folder structure because my recent files are not at hand. I don't care if there is a supported setting, or perhaps a registry hack somewhere (is it, anywhere?) I want it to be by default 10, at least.

Reasons to use OpenOffice

Going to Tim Bray's blog a few seconds ago, I found this comment about the reasons to use OpenOffice.org software.

I would like to add the sole reason that makes me install it in my computer:

OpenOffice is a great for opening corrupted files that otherwise brutally crash Microsoft Office applications.

This i what I usually do when I have a problem:

1. Setup OpenOffice.
2. Open my corrupted file.
3. Save it, usually with all content intact.
4. Uninstall OpenOffice.

The moral of the story is that, for Microsoft, having such a high quality, independent implementation of their file formats is a plus.

I understand and, to some extent, agree with many of the reasons exposed in that article, but I must admit that it is not use for me to switch to a different product. I like Microsoft Office, and I know how to do my work with it. If my everyday environment weren't Windows, I would probably think different. If I worked for Sun... you bet! ;)

AdSense

I have to mention that I have added AdSense adds to my blog a few days ago. Otherwise, Scoble would make me feel like a bitch ;) Fortunatelly for me, Tim Bray has it too, and that makes me feel way better.

I hope you will appreciate the work I did on the color scheme and placing. I also tried some CSS code to scale it, but Firefox doesn't support it.

By the way, I am not expecting that you actually click on it, whoever you are. Let's say, as Robert says, that I only do it for the fun of it!