A day in the hay

Another small vid of an average day on my street. My street is famous for having cheap prices. I will hopefully have a better video once I figure out how to take it without upsetting too many people.

Some Pics

This me and my language helper. This cafe is my classroom :)


me camouflaged


You can read about these interesting goats here
Yes, they ARE in the trees.

Christmas in July!

I had a somewhat interesting adventure the other day. I was asked to pick up a friend from the airport. This is usually not a big deal or a terribly difficult task and have done it several times...in the US. This would be my first time driving without someone with me nor following someone. It would be my first car adventure in Casa.I drove just a time or two while in Egypt. I did however drive quite a bit back and forth across the Mor/Spainish border of the spanish enclave Melilla when I was here before. On either side of the border are really small towns and so it was real easy to navigate. I did, however, manage to get into a wreck while driving in Jordan. Poor dog came out of nowhere and broke the car pretty good. Anyway, so I haven't had alot of experience driving in big cities overseas, plus I'm directionally challenged. So, I got directions to the airport. I have been there a few times, but never by myself and always following someone. So I take off, i'm a-dodging and a-weaving, a-weaving and a-dodging and totally go the opposite direction I'm suppose to. It took me a while to figure out that the scenery didn't look familiar at all. So I make a phone call to confirm. I had misinterpreted the directions. Ah, there is always interpretation. Oh well. The solution: keep going until I find another airport exit. Yeah, took me twice as long to get there and I was terribly late, but my friend was as gracious as always. We made it back without a hitch and then the exchange. I had sent some things with my friend to send back to the manufacturer for replacement. My RAM had burned up due to my computer power supply overcharging my battery (I think), in any case the RAM caused this error, which led me to believe it was the hard drive that was messing up, when it wasn't the hard drive at all. Kingston who manufactured the RAM has lifetime guarantee on RAM. So I sent it back and they sent me another one. My ZEN headphone jack also broke. They also replaced it, even upgraded me to a 6 Gig instead of the 5 Gig I had sent them! It was nice surprise. Then I started playing with the new Zen I realized my old one didn't function properly anyway! The interface was tricky to use since there are no 'buttons', but only touchpad type interface and it didn't work well. But this new one works great, easy to search and select! Both products were sent in and replaced within 10 days! I was so impressed. I didn't think I would see the stuff until maybe the end of August when I go to Germany. I also purchased a new power supply for my computer and it came as well. I was hoping this would alleviate the overheating problem, but as of yet, it still overheats and shuts down unless its propped up and a fan is pointed at the computer. But atleast its still working!
Also an update from my Recipe Website post: Check out this website Google Cooking It does a descent job of giving you recipes for what you have! Thanks Kyle!
(for those less web savvy, click the colored/highlighted words for links to other websites)

neighborhood vid

Recipe Website

Hey I thought of a great idea for a website. It is probably already out
there somewhere, I just don't know where. Its a recipe website, but it
searches recipe for items that you already have in your house. I have recipe
books (believe it or not) so many times I ain't got what they require and
there's just alot of searching involved. So on this website you can input
what you have, lets say: chicken and potatoes, and then the website would
give you possible dishes with just chicken and potatoes, then there would be
a link "can you run to the local hanoot real fast?" and it would have other
recipes that require a few more items than just chicken and potatoes, but
items easily gotten here. Then maybe another link 'full board' where you are
preparing a full course meal and it would give you options and what to buy,
all of this of course for items you can get in the 3rd world, or offering
replacement items, "don't have this item?try this and this item to replace
it in the recipe". I mean a standard Betty Crocker comes close to what I
want of course, but to be able to narrow down recipes to exactly what I have
in my house and using items easily gotten over here would be really neat.
What do you think? Am I just lazy?
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A Season of Goodbye's

In the past few weeks I have had to say almost 30 good byes!! Thats alot. But thankfully I will be seeing most again in the fall...but not all of them. Its more difficult to say good bye to those you don't know when you will see again. Getting closure has always been a difficult thing for me. But I heard a song at just the right time by Bobby McFerrin -the 'don't worry, be happy' guy, called Friends:

Of all life's treasuries
one is most preciously
kept in my heart
and that's the loyalty of friends
and family gathered 'round
and making joyous sounds
familiar voices warm the heart
I find myself alone and feelin' blue
then I know what to do
I phone my friends in melancholy
and then sometimes I'm filled with doubt
something will chase it out
it's having friends, their faith will win it out

the problems that we face
are easier to take when you have friends
to share the ways and how you knew
that they will share the load
and you can always go by day or night
you know that you're with folk, of course
I know that some of you
can't think of any who
you might call friend
but listen and I'll tell you that
you've heard it said before
and of it's truth i'm more
convinced that you have friends just be one

no thing comes even close
to what we treasure most
then to be with friends
-Bobby McFerrin

My friends, know that you are treasured. I apologize if I have not made it as clear to you as I should have. Thanks for sharing the load and making me feel like I belong here.

Where in the world is Carmen Scotiago?

It's just been too long friends! To catch up on what's been happening of late. In the beginning, was a fine cost effective demo computer, small and compact,perfect for traveling. Then, One day I had this error in bootup that I was missing a nfts.sys file. I tried to reboot, same problem. On the fourth try, it booted just fine. I worked on it for several hours, and got the blue screen of death. When I tried to reboot, same problem with that missing file. Well, after doing this off and on for several days, it seemed like a hardware problem. If that file were actually missing, it wouldn't boot normally at all. So I had a crazy thought, lets call the 'warranty' people that i used to insure it from officemax , and they wouldn't touch it of course. Plus the logistical problem of getting it there and back in a reasonable amount of time was impossible. So I decided (with the help of our company IT guy) to just wipe the hard drive. Even though the computer was only working off and on, i was able to get a full back!PTL. I bought my computer as a demo ( i only paid 450 bucks for it) and it didn't come with any system disks (like xp or any installed software), but I had a valid xp key on the little stickerdude on my back of my computer, so i didn't think much about it. My IT friend wipes my hard drive and before he puts it back in, we just try to turn on the computer without the harddrive, guess what-we still get the error! ARGGGG. so it wasn't actually the hard drive at all, it was the RAM! I didn't even think to check it. My IT had an extra stick laying around, popped it in and booted just fine. Apparently my computer got too warm and caused some corruption in the RAM. Then I realized, that the power supply I am using, isn't the orginial-it came with an HP power supply from officemax for some reason, but they said the averatec works fine with this power supply. After my ram burned out, i looked a little closer and the HP powersupply is a 95 Watts but the one that is suppose to go with it is only 65 Watts, I don't know if this contributes to the overheating or not, but it is definitely overcharging my battery! (So I purchased a new power supply and it will hopefully be here late this month)Anyway,So then, i get the windows xp cd from my buddy, and start to install since there is nothing on my hard drive now, but it wouldn't accept my key on the back of my computer as valid xp key! Then I remembered an event that happened in 2005 and I had to call microsoft and get another key for some reason-xp just one day decided that the key in it was invalid, but they gave me another key-but I didn't write it down, Doh!! I'm so stupid, so now Microsoft won't give me another key and since its outside averatec's one year warranty, i'm stuck....legally. ...but there are ways around that of course *wink wink* I am running xp now. But my processor is still getting warmer than usually, around 145 degrees! that's hot. So recently its been shutting down suddenly to prevent overheating. While all this was going on, I also noticed that the casing around the hinges for my laptop were coming apart and the screen had alot of play in it. So I used Gorilla glue to keep the casing together. It worked pretty good. I hope to save up and maybe get a new computer by the end of the year, if this one lasts that long as jacked up as it is.

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