A Slightly Smelly Post

On our corner of the street we are lucky enough to have a water shutoff point underground.  I say lucky for this as we can easily see whenever the CEA (water company), guys come and shut off the valve when they are fixing a problem elsewhere and we can also see when they come back and turn it on.  There have been times when they have forgotten the return trip to turn it back on; but someone has usually seen them shutting it off so they know what the problem is and call to get them to come and turn it on again.  A good thing.

On the same corner; although not in the same spot, we also have a sewer manhole.  If there is a problem the same CEA guys come and unplug it or snake it out.  A while back there was a problem with it being plugged and it was backing up, not a good thing.
They came and tried to unplug it manually, (you couldn't pay me enough to do this job).  As an aside, they always show up in their uniform outfits and they are clean as can be, when they are done their dirty job they are still as clean as can be.  How do they do it???
Anyway they couldn't get it unplugged so they called in the big gun.
  THE PUMPER TRUCK.
 The unit arrived and did their thing and then left.  Problem solved, right?  Nope, a short while later it was bubbling over again.  The truck returned, did its thing, went down to the next corner and did the same thing and left again.  A short while later, same old, same old.  They returned again, by this time it was getting dark, and they continued working.  They worked until almost 10 PM until they finally got it working again to their satisfaction.  Our neighbourhood is an older one, developed probably in the 1960's I was told and we have lots of big trees with lots of big tree roots.  Apparently the roots had gotten into the pipes and some of the pipes had collapsed/broken or whatever so it was a fairly big job.
They stayed with it until it was working again.  Kudos to them.


The guys with the pump out truck.

Hmmmm, I wonder if there is a 12 step program for bloggers who are so desperate for blogging material that they video a sewer being pumped out.    
     

House Construction # 6

The landlords sons new house is coming along.  They finished putting up the walls for the second floor and then got it ready to pour the roof.  I was gone when they poured the roof for the first floor or the floor for the second floor whichever you want to call it.  Roy told me that they did it with a traditional pour using lots of men and labour.  This time they decided to get the cement truck along with the truck with the long arm on it for sending the cement right up to the roof.  This is more costly; but results in a faster, better pour with no seams to leak, hopefully.

They still had quite a few guys to work; but it was much easier for them than carrying 5 gallon pails of cement up to the third level.  This way they just had to spread and smooth it out.



The guys ready to go.

The arm truck which is connected to the cement truck.

Getting to work.

Lazy Blogger and Computer Woes

It seems that the longer I am away from the blog the harder it is to come back.  I am getting really lazy about blogging, I just the "new" has definitely worn off after blogging since May of 2005.

The last week or so has been interesting for me computer wise.  My computer decided that it was tired and kept shutting off and turning on, it wasn't the power source, so off it went to the hospital.  The fellow thought he had fixed it; but he hadn't.  I had been tossing around the idea of getting a new one for awhile now as that one I had purchased in 2004 and other than adding an extra 1 GB of RAM and spending a few dollars here and there on it, it didn't owe me anything.
I talked to a few of the computer sales places in town and got the best price from our regular service guys so decided to order a new one.  In the meantime I got them to pull the extra 1 GB RAM out of my old one and put it into Roys old PC which still worked; but was so slow it drove me insane.  While I waited for my new one I used that one.

The new one arrived at the delivery place supposedly; but when the fellow went to pick it up it was no where to be found, so he called and ordered another one.  This one arrived late Saturday night and he brought it over on Sunday to set it up.  After he left I downloaded Skype and my VOIP phone service that I use and I couldn't get the headphones and mic. to work in the front panel.  I called him back and he came and tried and he couldn't get it working either.  He took it to his shop and ended up going back to Hermosillo for them to get it working.

He came back with it last night about 7 PM and it is all working now.  He told me that for some reason those connections on the front had been de-activated, he had no idea why.

Anyway it is all working good now so I have no excuses left.

What I bought was this:

Processor:  Core 3- 540 64 bits dual core 3.06 GHZ
RAM:  4GB
Hard Drive:  500 GB
And all the other usual stuff.

I stayed with a PC as I don't have as much faith in the durability of a laptop and we have one already that we can travel with if we want to.  I stayed with my old monitor for now.

I probably could have gotten it cheaper if I would have gone shopping in a bigger center; but when you do that you are adding all the other costs onto it anyway so you may as well buy at home IMO.

Anyway I am sure someone will wonder what the cost was, it was 6,500 pesos or more or less $ 496.08 CAD.  I have no idea if that is a horrible price or a good one; but it is what it is.

  I am also glad I bought from them as they are usually good with their service and also make house calls for 100 pesos, about $7.63 CAD.  If they can't fix the problem at your home they take it to the shop and then return it.  The house call covers the return part also.

So that has been what I have been up to lately computer wise.