Geek-Out Weekend

It's raining once again in Quito...what a friggin' surprise! I blame Craig - it stopped raining as soon as he got here, and started again right after he left. Then again, I was incredibly grateful for the nice weather while he was here!

Tuesday night I started feeling sick again, and when I woke up Wednesday morning, I was so sick I could barely get out of bed. I skipped class and slept the entire day in the hope of getting better, but it didn't really work.

I showed up at the airport on Thursday night at 7:30, as his flight was due to arrive at 7:20. Looking at the flight boards, though, his was delayed until 9pm. So I hung around, did some homework, listened to some music, and finally went upstairs to the watching area at 9. I watched carefully as people poured down the stairs beneath the window toward customs; Craig was on the second flightful, and I waved manically until he looked up and noticed me. He nodded at the guy next to him, then pointed at me and waved. I had no idea who the guy was, but I waved to him anyway. I was so excited that I actually managed to forget about being sick for a few minutes.

After an enthusiastic reunion in which I was afraid I might hit the ceiling for bouncing so much, the two of us took a taxi, found his hotel, and then walked into the Mariscal for dinner. We found a random restaurant with good steak, and Craig called his mom to tell her he was here safely, and I said hello to her as well.

Friday I had class, although Mariana let me out early because I was feeling so incredibly crappy. Craig and I had lunch at Café Amazonas, then wandered around the Mariscal. We crashed at the hotel for a nap, and then went to my house to meet my mom in time to go to the exchance student cocktail at the school. There were bocaditos (the easier-to-spell word for h'ordeuvres) and dancing. After the party, we had dinner at my house, which I had barely had a chance to eat because I was so busy translating. As mom said to Craig, "You speak little no Spanish, I speak little no English."

Dead rat on the Ecovia line, Friday afternoon:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1478.jpg

Craig and me at the student cocktail:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1480.jpg

Saturday we were considering going up Pichincha, but I decided that that was probably a bad idea, as I was still struggling to breathe at 9,000 ft, and 15,000 ft couldn't possibly improve things. So instead we went to La Mitad del Mundo. I managed to get us there by a rather roundabout bus route that took a hell of a long time, but it was only 75 cents. We did the touristy thing, took pictures, got souvenirs for people back home, and then went to the REAL equator, which is next door. This was my third time at the popular equator, but when I went the first time, they didn't know it wasn't the real one, and the second time, we didn't know the real one was so close by. So it was my first trip to the real middle of the world, at the Inti Ñan museum.

Me and Craig at the popular Mitad del Mundo:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1485.jpg

There they do a series of experiments to "prove" that you're really on the equator. Yes, water really does swirl the other way in the south, and drops straight down on the equator. It's easier to balance an egg on the head of a nail there, because there's less gravity; and you also lose 30% of your physical resistance when you're standing right on the line. There is an ongoing challenge to balance the egg like the guide does. Craig was the only person in the group who managed to do it, and he has the certificate to show for it.

Water swirling clockwise:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1486.jpg

An egg balanced on a nail:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1489.jpg

Sunday we did finally go up the Telefériqo to the top of Pichinca, at 4,100 meters. The west side was entirely clouded in, so we couldn't see Guagua Pichincha, but the city was visible, and impressive. It's impossible to understand how truly huge Quito is until you see it from an airplane or the mountain.

View from the Telefériqo:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1495.jpg

Geeky stuff on Pichincha!
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1501.jpg

Craig with geeky stuff:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1503.jpg

Quito from Pichincha:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1500.jpg

That night we went wandering through the Mariscal, and tripped across something to do when a man ran by us at full tilt, chased by a shouting security guard. We looked at each other, shrugged, and followed them at a distance to see what was going on. We caught them up around the opposite corner of the block, where the policeman had the guy up against a wall and was in the process of arresting him. A small crowd had gathered to watch, including a girl who was unmistakably a hooker.

The guy who was being arrested started begging her for help, saying he didn't do anything. Then another guy showed up - we guessed the guy who was the victim of whatever crime had been committed - got out a tire iron, and started "helping" the policeman. After reluctantly following the instruction to put the tire iron away, he got out a camera to take the theif's picture. When the guy wouldn't cooperate, he got a couple of slaps in the face, and then finally handcuffs and a ride in a police truck.

Meanwhile, another guy had made himself known and was shouting insults at the policeman, who turned and began to shout them back. When the guy wouldn't shut up, he got a dose of pepper spray, which did the job quite efficiently. After that excitement was over, we wandered into a casino and spent some time playing video poker, then went to Papayanet for coffee.

Monday morning I made yet another attempt at registering my visa, and failed yet again due to lack of a certain certificate. Apparently the receipt from the bank stating that I had deposited the fee was not good enough. Frigging bureaucracy.

After that, we stopped in a hardware store to get parts to put together Craig's wireless invention. That was an adventure in itself, as the full extent of my hardware-related vocabulary consists of the word for "pipe." Fortunately we did actually need a pipe, but we also needed some other equipment that involved a lot of pointing and saying "eso, eso." (That one, that one!) We walked back to my house weilding an eight-foot length of steel pipe and a few other, less dangerous items. We leaned the pipe against the roof in the garden, then I went upstairs, climbed out on the roof, and retrieved it that way.

By the time mom returned home, we had put together the dish, mounted it on the pipe, secured said pipe to the balcony railing, and gotten me all the way to the top roof to screw together the coax. We took a break for lunch with mom, where I once again spent most of my eating time translating, and then went back to work. The hardware was the easy part, it turned out - once we got to actually installing things in my computer, it all went wrong. After a couple of hours of trying to de-virus my hard drive, we gave up and reinstalled Windows. That didn't fix the problem, though, and at dinnertime we finally gave up and went off in search of food.

After dinner, we holed up in Papayanet with a geekstick and downloaded drivers for my computer. We didn't go back to the project that night, as Craig had to leave at 6am the next morning. I took him to the airport and was back before I'm usually out of bed. I dragged myself through class and spent the rest of the afternoon and night sleeping.

Wednesday, however, I was back on the job, determined to get the wireless project working. After installing enough drivers to make the computer functional, I went on a hunt for a new USB cable, having the suspicion that the current one had been damanged. I finally found one in the local Radio Shack. It was horrifyingly expensive for a printer cable, so I bought the 1-meter length, figuring that if it actually worked I could buy extenders later.

Upon arrival home, I dumped my stuff and went immediately to work, excited about actually having a geek project to do. I took the lid off the electronics box, but the new cable's connector was a tiny bit longer than the old, so to fit it in I had to take the whole box apart. To take the box apart, I had to take it off the wall...

I asked mom for scissors, cleverly forgetting that I was wearing a very sharp, very sturdy knife. I didn't remember that fact until I had snapped the scissors and left the box intact on the wall. I ended up taking the entire thing apart, all the way down to the wireless chip and back again. Here was the key, though: the new cable worked. As soon as I plugged it in, the device was recognized the way it should have been, so I took the knife and made the hole in the box bigger. Then I spent several minutes struggling to put it all back together, since the new cable forced me to rearrange the big pieces.

Eventually I got it together and tied back onto the window grating, just as it began to rain. Then I went out and bought new scissors for mom, and a 2-meter cable extension. That meant that my computer had to sit right by the door, and me on the floor, but after some futzing with the antenna, I actually got internet.

Today I went on a hunt for cable extenders, and after buying a 1-meter jobber at a place in the mall, I finally found a properly geeky store that sold me a 15-footer. I could have hung around that place for hours; I miss the shop. So now not only do I have internet, but the cables wrap neatly out of the way and still reach both my desk and my bed. Thank you, Craig!

Random graffiti in the Mariscal:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/hh276/keskipper/100_1505.jpg