New Project

I have a small project. My granddaughters came up for a visit a week or so ago and the youngest was quite taken with my new Asus Netbook. She decided she wanted one and told me she had almost enough saved up from her Birthday and Christmas cheques over the last couple of years. She is very good with money and has saved every nickel! She has decided this is what she wants to spend her money on as she is tired of waiting in line to use the family computer and then getting kicked off when someone else has something more important to do.

I ordered her one on the Internet last night and it should be here in a couple of days. Maybe tomorrow. I will strip it of the bloat and 30 day trials of software, load it up with Avast! anti-virus, Ccleaner and Open Office. I will make a Ghost backup of the whole thing that I will hang onto and, after giving her my standard warning about downloading games and basic Internet safety for kids, I will send it on to her.

I eBay’d a New Camera!

I have been coveting a Nikon D200 ever since the D300 came out a couple of years ago and the price of the D200 started to drop. I have been watching eBay and Craigslist carefully keeping track of the current price. When they came out five years ago they were over $2000 and have recently been selling on eBay in the $600 - $800 range.

A few days ago I started watching one that was being sold from Quebec. It was advertised as being in “mint” condition with low shutter activations. I thought it might end up selling at the low end of the price range as most buyers are in the USA and do not like shopping outside of their own country. The price stagnated at $365 for some time so I put in a bid of $405 and was immediately outbid. It had three days left to go and I did not want to start or contribute to a price war so I did nothing further. The price inched up $5 or $10 at a time to $500 where it stopped.

I set up my “Sniper” program to put in a bid of up to $621 USA (the most I was willing to pay) four seconds before bidding closed at 5:00AM this morning. I awoke at 8:30 to find I had won the camera for $612. If it is truly in “mint” condition, this is a very good price. I used my PayPal account to pay for it and it will be shipped as soon as the payment clears.

I will hang onto the old D70s for this winter and then sell it next summer. They are going for +/- $300 USA on eBay right now for the body only.

I am spending today downloading manuals, user guides and software updates for the new camera. Life Is Good!

The Prize:

Mexico Electrical Tips

Here is a tip I borrowed from my friend John Calypso's Viva Veracruz Blog.

When traveling in Mexico and thinking about staying in a hotel for a night or two always carry one of these:


Mexican hotels hate putting in more electrical outlets than they need. I guess they are afraid you will bring your own microwave or hotplate. One of these low tech devices will come in very handy for plugging in a laptop, shaver or hair dryer. Thanks John!

As my own addition, also carry a couple of these:

Most electrical outlets in Mexico are of the two hole variety and when you try to plug in your laptop, you will be one hole short. These are cheap, easy to figure out and work well in conjunction with John's adapter above! My computer bag has both.

The other piece of cheap test gear you cannot do without in Mexico is one of these:

It plugs into the outlet and tells you if it is safe. It identifies lack of ground and wiring errors. When you find a problem you can move to another spot before you hook everything up and then get a shock from the door knob! Very handy.

Nice To Know We Are Safe

From terrorists that is. We live on the Inside Passage of Vancouver Island, looking out over the water towards Powell River which is on the mainland. Whistler is a hundred KM's or so south of Powell River. Whistler, as you know, is where the 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in February.

Recently there have been more and more "training" exercises held by the Canadian Armed Forces who are preparing for I don't know what. There are screaming overflights of jet fighters and huge helicopters throbbing past almost every day. They usually fly along the beach which is only a hundred feet from our house, causing the house to shake in the process. Yesterday a huge bomber made several circuits over the water out front. I can only hope it did not have bombs aboard!

I guess an international event like the Olympics is a perfect excuse for our armed forces to spend millions of taxpayers cash to show their antiquated equipment off to the world but enough already! Pick up your toys and go play somewhere else. Spend my tax money on trying to figure out how to ensure a little snow falls for the occasion. Downhill ski racing in a rainstorm on gravel will look good on TV and will really sell our Province as a winter destination!

The Olympics will be here. It will cost us millions (maybe with a "B") and it will take decades to pay it off, if ever. I voted "no" for having the damn things here in the first place but as usual I voted with the minority. Either that or they borrowed the "George Bush" software to count the vote. "One for you, two for me ......."

I am happy that we will be in Mexico when they are on. We will watch them on StarChoice from somewhere on the Yucatan while enjoying the tropical sunshine. No one I know would be able to afford a ticket to go and see it in person anyway. It will be a good time to be away from Canada!

I Bought My Mexico Vehicle Insurance

I bought my vehicle insurance for Mexico today. I scanned the registrations for the motorhome, car dolly and Honda and emailed them off to our insurance agent in Arizona. We have been using San Xavier since we made our first trip down south and they have given us great service and good prices. Six months insurance for everything cost only $620, less than it would cost for the same period in Canada.

When we get home, we send our Canadian insurance company proof that the vehicles were out of Canada and the USA and had alternate insurance and we get a refund for the time we were in Mexico. This will amount to more that we paid for the Mexican insurance.

Considering my record of driving in Mexico, I was half expecting some additional cost but it did not happen. As I understand the rules in Mexico, your driving record cannot be used when you apply for new insurance. Lucky Me!!

A reader has asked for contact information for San Xavier Mexico Insurance. Click on the link and it will take you to their website. That price reflects values of $50K for the motorhome, $2K for the dolly and liability only for the old beat up Honda.

Blogger Down

Blogger and Gmail were both down for much of the day! Very nerve racking for those of us without much of a life outside of Blogging and emailing....

"Avast, there!"

No, me hearties, it is not Talk Like A Pirate Day, that was on the 19th and I missed it. Now I am talking about Avast! the anti virus program. I have used the free version of AVG for so long I can hardly remember anything else. I went to it when my Norton Anti-Virus subscription ran out and I was looking for a free replacement and settled on AVG. I had AVG on all three of our computers and installed it on all the other computers I set up for family and friends. It has served me well and I can only recall one virus that got through and that was my own fault.

However, some computer expert friends of mine have directed me to some recent reports comparing anti-virus programs and I noticed that AVG was slipping down the list slightly. The program recommended by these folks was Avast! Since I had just purchased a new netbook, I decided to try Avast! out on it.

My main concern was the lack of the ability to schedule scans like I could do with AVG. This bothered me at first until I discovered that I could load Avast! as a screen saver and it would scan every time the screen saver was running. This was even better than AVG's scheduled scan which required leaving the laptop on all night once in a while. Avast! also downloads new virus definitions several times a day so it should be more up to date than AVG was.

I now have it loaded on all four of our computers and it seems to be running well. If you download it, just make sure you have the free version as both the paid and free versions are available from the same website.

Old Friends Drop By

Ken and Chris stopped by today on their way back home to Port Hardy. We have known Ken for many decades from our time in Northern BC and Chris for twenty some years as well. We had a nice visit and then called Bruce and Millie who live here in Campbell River and we all went our for dinner. Ken, Bruce and I were all Union Reps for the Telecommunications Workers Union and worked together for many years.

Bruce and Millie invited us over to their place after dinner to break in a new deck that they just finished. It was a great evening and great conversation with old friends. The kind that we do not see very often but when we do, it is just like we have never been apart. It was a great evening and Bruce has good taste in scotch.

My son just sent me this video by the Zac Brown Band. He says it describes me to a "T". I could do worse!

"I got my toes in the water,
Ass in the sand,
Not a worry in the world,
A cold beer in my hand.
Life is good today!
Life is good today!"

Zac Brown Band

More CMT Music

More CMT Music Videos

The "War" On Drugs

The "War" on drugs is lost. The cost of this foolhardy war is taking a huge toll on the economies of Canada, the USA and Mexico. Law enforcement is simply unable to control the illegal cross border traffic in drugs and the citizens of all three countries are paying the price.

Mexico has taken the lead by decriminalizing personal possession of small amounts of all drugs and Canada has long ago ceased prosecution for possession of small amounts of marijuana. We are all waiting for the USA to come to their senses as well.

Legalization would bring an immediate end to the violence on the USA Mexico border and allow millions of dollars per day of taxpayers money to go back into general revenue to help pay for things like education and health care. The extra taxes created by the sale of drugs as well as the income taxes paid by those involved in the legal production would further swell the coffers. It would be a win-win situation.

The New York Times has a very good editorial here: Link