Category: Uncategorized

Crazy lightning
Originally uploaded by daecks.

Over the weekend there have been some massive thunderstorms here in South Florida. Today in fact there was a strike so close that it made my speakers squeal from all the interference. Here is one of the shots I was able to get. The lightning in this shot was striking ground somewhere behind the apartment. Still pretty damn close though.

A little while back I had to book a Visa renewal interview at a consulate outside of the US. This interview was set for early September at the consulate in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. I actually would have liked to have found one in Canada because that’s further away and I can visit Mexico pretty easily from where I live, but I couldn’t even find free slots in Canada before the end of the year for some weird reason. It seems I’ll be trying Canada again though.

I got curious today and decided to find out what was is goin’ down in that part of Mexico. According to this article: “The United States will close its consulate for one week to assess the security of its employees and consulate visitors in this Mexican border town [Nuevo Laredo] after a shootout between drug gangs using machine guns, grenades and a rocket launcher.”

Right… I think I’m going to change some plans 🙂

I’m now getting pretty excited about the whole car purchasing thing, and I’m finding it quite fun to go about looking for cars. I felt I was restricting myself to the Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix thing too much because I really hadn’t researched what else was out there.

So I went for a walk around in a caryard to see if I could find anything that I liked. What was the closest caryard? The one just outside. There are probably a couple of thousand cars in the parking lot and this gives me the perfect opportunity to go around and look for something that fits the above criteria. I found one that caught my eye: the Mazda Protege5. This is based upon the reliable Mazda Protege platform and from what I’ve been reading on the Internets is pretty good value for money and very reliable. I’m leaning towards a second hand version of whatever car I get because, believe it or not, I’m in money saving mode at the moment and I’m really tightening down the screws so I can afford to travel around.

Anyway this weekend I will be test driving the Mazda Protege5 plus anything else I notice. I think the only thing that will really be a thorn in my side will be car insurance, but with some advice I’ve received from friends I should be able combat that.

Ooh, and where am I going to be living? Not far from where I live now, which makes it about 10 minutes from work. This is good, because not only is it still close but it’s also cheap and I can carpool to work. Thank god that was organised without too much hassle. Whatever the case, Aug 25th is approaching fast and I want to have this all sorted.

To my work number: 0%

Every damn phone call I get is not addressed to me. It’s either to someone who no longer exists (1% of the calls) at my number, or some damn telemarketing company (99%). I get about two of these calls a day and always have some on voicemail when I get to work. I actually ended up putting my work number on the “do not call” list. Fingers crossed that works, although I’m not holding my breath…