We finally got the transfer complete today! You may have noticed that the site was off line for a couple of hours. Thankfully, Summer was determined to make this happen for us…and she got it done!
Hopefully I won’t get writers block…a lot has been going on these past two weeks.
Update: Our links aren’t working. Aaaaaaack!
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This morning, I am anticipating (along with every other surfer in Puerto Rico) a nice swell that is supposed to start filling in this Thursday or Friday. There haven’t been waves in sooooo long. Anywho, I decided to put the WaveWatch Surf Forecaster for Puerto Rico in the side bar of California to Puerto Rico so I won’t have to go far to check the swell…now you don’t have to either!
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I just ordered my new desktop computer from Apple.com and found out some very disturbing news. Apple does not ship to Puerto Rico! (or any other US Territories)
Because Apple won’t ship my new iMac to Puerto Rico, I have to get my new iMac shipped to the Vicious Enterprises office in Carlsbad and then ship it from there to Puerto Rico. The operator that took my order gave me a couple of hundred bucks off of the list price to accommodate the extra money I would have to spend to re-ship the computer down here.
Apple is so cool.
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Summer talked me out of being a PC guy and into a mac guy about 7 months ago. If you are a Mac user, you might find some of these Macintosh vs. PC commercials pretty funny. So anywho, I haven’t looked at this site with anything besides Safari and Firefox until Summer told me the navigation to the right is all messed up for Internet Explorer users!
It should look like this:
If what you are looking at doesn’t look like this, you are missing out….and you are most likely using a horrible Microsoft product. If you are on a PC you will not be able to download Safari, because that is specifically for Macs, but you can download a browser called FireFox. It has a built in virus protector and cuts out about 85% of the STD’s (Surfing Transmitted Diseases) you can get from surfing around on the web. You can DOWNLOAD FIREFOX BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK! It’s free and it is very easy to install.
What I want to know is this:
What browser are you using to view this site?
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Last Christmas I got a stocking stuffer that I never thought would be so useful…but since I moved out into the sticks in Puerto Rico, along with having a house with no electricity, this little key chain flashlight has been the most useful thing I’ve gotten for Christmas in years! Walking down dirt paths at night, walking down the street at night (potholes everywhere), looking for my toothbrush, looking for the light switch…I could go on forever…this thing was a great Christmas present that I use every single day. I can’t believe the battery hasn’t gone dead yet.
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Well, everything I heard about DSL being a great service here in Puerto Rico went out the door yesterday. Download speeds dropped to below 50k and upload speeds were at 1k. I called customer service, was on hold for about an hour only to find out that there is a problem in the area (Sector Vargas) and they were working on it.
I went to a buddies house last night to upload all of the work I had done yesterday (including fixing the style sheets of www.ca2pr.com which only uploaded halfway before timing out because of the slow speed) hoping that I would be able to get some work done this morning…but…the Internet speed is still all messed up.
My connection is too slow to upload pictures…but I will update you with pictures on the plaster walls downstairs, the master bathroom and all of our other new projects ASAP.
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I am not a huge fan of zoning out in front of the ‘idiot box’ for hours and hours with a bag of chips, some mountain dew and a couple hand fulls of bon-bons…but I do like what watching movies does to me sometimes…totally zones me out to where I think/see nothing but the movie. I stop thinking about tile choices, bank mortgage rules, contractors, grass, landscaping……blah blah blah.
I joined Netflix last night. I am now paying $17 a month for unlimited movies shipped to my PO Box here in Rincon. I’ll let you know how well that works out…I started my list this morning….”When will I get my first movie?”
The drawback to using Netflix in Puerto Rico is that there is no “on-demand” feature here. In the main 50 United States you can browse movies that you can watch on your computer instantly! When I went to download one last night…they informed me (after I signed up) that would not be able to view movies instantly.
I am looking into maybe using a “proxy IP” or something that would make my computer look like it is on the mainland. I got researching and found something called “TOR” and the plugin for FireFox. Maybe I’ll give it a shot and let you guys know what is up with that working as a mainland IP address. Do any of you have any suggestions?
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Here is our profile…we are using the “Post Claim It” method here; Technorati Profile
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I have been waiting quite a while to say this…Summer and I now have high speed Internet access in Rincon! After an aggravating day of broken automated message systems and 27 minute waits with PRT (Puerto Rico Telephone), I tracked down our DSL Modem this morning through the company that PRT hires to do all of their shipping; Island Wide Shipping.
The story they (Island Wide Shipping) is that they have been trying to deliver the package everyday since they received it (except Sunday) which was on the seventh of September. There is no way that is possible. Jerry and I have bee here building the rock wall non-stop for the past two weeks. My opinion is that Island Wide Shipping is just a bunch of slackers that scored a big corporate account like Puerto Rico Telephone and do a mediocre job at best because that is all that is expected of them. When I called them to try to track down the package yesterday, I was sent into a circulating voice message saying to “hold for an operator” every 2 minutes. After about 40 minutes on the automated machine last night a Spanish speaking operator came on (even though I pressed “2″ for English) and as soon as she heard my english/american accent she shot me back into the circulating automated messaging machine to wait for an English speaking operator. I gave up 25 minutes later…cursing. Over an hour on the phone with the frickin’ automated message with nothing accomplished…I was going nuts. I waited another 30 minutes on hold this morning before i got an operator on, tracked down my package, got directions to the facility in Mayaguez (South on the No. 2 and take a left at the light after the Holiday Inn Casino and then the second left into the office park…you’ll see a sign outside) and went and picked up our modem.
I brought it back to the house hooked it up and am stoked on the quality and speed of our service. Check out our upload and download times;
For Caribbean Island living, the download speed is pretty good and the upload speed ain’t that bad either. I am stoked…my productivity is about to explode. It has been tough to get motivated to go to work when you are running an Internet based business on a cable modem (Choice Cable) that has download speeds a little better than dial-up (it was 70k).
There’s no stopping me now
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We have had our phone lines for about 10 days now. The only reason we got a phone line is because in the Rincon area, DSL is the fastest most reliable Internet available. Your options include satellite, Choice Cable and a wireless broadcast that is similar to satellite. The satellite Internet and TV goes down every time a rain storm comes through and although the download speeds are quite fast when there is reception, the upload speeds are always pretty slow. Choice Cables Internet is just the worst…it is akin to dial up when it isn’t down completely. This is the connection I am using at the office and it is down at least twice a week and the average speed when it is up is 70k. Keep in mind a dial-up connection is 56k. The DSL in this area is provided by PRT and runs at 2mg download and 1mg upload and is reliable. I have not heard of one instance where it has gone down unless a phone line was taken down in a car wreck or storm.
Now that we have the phone lines, the only thing we need to have high speed internet at the house (we work online so this is important) is a DSL modem. I have been slammed with work lately and have been anything but efficient having to deal with Choice Cables horrible service and finally got fed up with waiting for our modem to show up yesterday so I went looking for one. I called Radio Shack, Office Max, Wal-Mart and three computers stores all of which covered from Isabella to Mayaguez. No one carries DSL modems down here, just cable. Every store I asked said the same thing; “Why do you need to buy one, the phone company gives you a DSL Modem for free?”
Although I was pulling my hair out over it yesterday…I am just going to have to settle in to the island lifestyle and wait for the phone company to get us our modem.
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