The Times reported earlier this month that city manager Robert Rizzo makes $787,637 a year, probably the highest in the country for someone in his position; Police Chief Randy Adams makes $457,000, 50% more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck; and Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia makes $376,288, more than most city managers.

The mayor has apologized and will serve the remainder of his term without pay, or so has been reported.

Hey, we should email the mayor of Bell and some of the city officials who will soon be left without a job to come be politicians here in Puerto Rico. All we have to do is explain to them how the dieta (lunch money for politicians you can live on) works here, in addition to high-paid salaries. That is more than enough money to intrigue them. The real perk? Is that here there is no scandal and politicians are shameless.

With stories like these, I have to wonder: Puerto Rico sets 15% renewable electricity target for 2020.

That should have been the target from 1995 to 2000. Or even 2000 to 2005. Lord knows we have been paying a tariff in our electricity bill into a fund for the study of such alternative energy sources; cough, B.S., cough. Sorry, I had to clear my throat.

Where was I? Oh, yeah….

So the target now is 2020 and only 15%? I am willing to bet that 2020 will come and we will still be where we should have been back in 2000. And companies will continue to shun Puerto Rico because of the high cost of doing business, hell… by 2020, we might be an agrarian economy again.

I used to get angry at career politicians and their ever unfolding nightmare on the rest of us sane enough not to buy into their bullshit. Not anymore. I've learned that the nightmare will never end, so why fight it?

This Friday morning, around 8 a.m., our transformer blew again, it was so loud we thought the U.S. Air Force had dropped a bomb on this forsaken peace of Puerto Rico.

Those explosions are nothing new, but this time it was different, it was especially loud, we later found out damage had been done to the transformer. The problem is that there is a huge tree right besides the post that makes contact with the high power lines.

In 2005, I called several times to have the electric company come and take that tree down (they do have contractors that do this kind of work), it never happened, all I got for my troubles was lost time and a few order numbers for my complaints. Nothing was ever done, and since then those explosions are heard every time there is high winds or we have a down poor. Some times we are left without electricity until the company sends a team over to restart the transformer.

When the team brought the transformer up this time, our electricity spiked to 138 volts per line! So that's 276 volts, instead of the 220 volts, coming into the house. Luckily we know what to do and the five houses close to the post had our refrigerators unplugged. I know that the voltage went that high because my computer UPSes told me.

Now we have sporadic down and up spikes all day, it can go as low as 90 volts and as high as 147 volts per line, it can usually last for about a minute or two.

Since yesterday, we have called the electric company three times. They are nowhere to be seen.

One more black eye for the way I feel about our local government and the useless services they provide. As if the usual brown outs and blackouts aren't enough we also have to be treated like shit when we need maintenance service.

I have been able to keep my refrigerator safely on with a computer UPS.

Puerto Rico continues to go downhill as each year passes, there is nothing that motivates me to wish anyone a happy new year on this island, that too would be a waste of a good wish.

The AEE sucks!

Update July 19, 2010: Early today, around 11 AM, our electric problem was taken care of. Not before I blew up on the phone, I was irritated and screaming, I actually hanged-up the phone on them. About a half-hour later they called us back and told us they were on their way. Among the excuses they tried to give me was that of a lack of employees and that there were 180 cases (we all know many of their brigades have more employees than they need; this goes for any government entity—local or state). I asked them how many of those had a severe case like ours with cables actually blowing sparks that could be seen at night? Since Friday we had been waiting. How long did it take to fix the problem? Less than a half-hour.

En mi búsqueda para entender el porque, me encuentro con este cuento! Leí aquí! Racimo de guineo con 400 guineos. ¡Ea rayos! ¡400 guineos! Es de la variedad manzano agrio, cuya mata se importó de Suramérica.

Las siguientes fotos son de la mata mía, el racimo todavía esta creciendo:

The verdict from information on the Microsoft website? "It's impossible." Yes, they actually use the word "impossible" when I read most of the answers to questions like these.

I was looking at four hours to backup all the data from the hard-drive and then start a new installation, and probably countless hours more to keep the Windows 7 Ultimate settings and program settings.

I wasn't going to call customer service to waste my time, I've had these wasteful experiences in my time with them.

So I proceeded to search the internet for an answer from our friendly white hats and I found these instructions. I followed them exactly, and was able to downgrade.

The instructions provided in this post Upgrade the Windows 7 RC to any retail version can be used to downgrade any version of Windows 7.

I was able to downgrade and keep all the programs' settings and most of Windows 7′s settings. I saved a ton of time here.

Here is how the scam works. My wife was in town and she couldn’t find a working pay phone, even tough she had plenty of spare change. So she made a collect call to me that lasted maybe, 30-seconds.

It went like this:

My wife: “I just got out, come pick me up at the same place.”

Me: “OK.”

Click.

For that NCIC charged me $32.85 cents. There were two calls made from the same area, we didn’t know by the second time, because we had not received the phone bill. So we have another $32.85 cents headed our way. The bill also claimed that the phone call was 6-minutes long! Oh, really?

Also, there was no warning what the cost of those collect calls were going to be. Not at the phone booth or by the operator handling the calls.

My phone co., PRTC (now Claro), told me I had to call them and try and get the charges either lowered or canceled. That didn’t go so well, I was still charged $9.80. They discounted only $23.03 cents. ¡Que clava, mi hermano!

After that experience, I went online and Googled this company, and found that they have been doing this for as far back as seven years!

No wonder they will not repair the public phones. They are hoping that people like my wife will make collect calls. And before you ask “why not get cell phones?” Because I really have no need for the extra expense. I really hate to be called anyway, I can just imagine myself going nuts with a cell phone on me. LOL! This is not the issue.

The issue and the question here is why has this company been allowed to do this for so long? Especially with all the gripes I found online, and all true; as I can see that most of the experiences are just like ours.

Anyone else for more regulations? How about another 10 government agencies? This is why I have always been against government regulation. Government regulations hamper use as individual citizens and gives us a false sense of security. What has the FCC been doing here? Downloading porn? Like the SEC agents?

I always try to keep a positive outlook on Puerto Rico as a whole, outside of politics. We all know, or you should know, that local politics will never amount to anything good for Puerto Rico, but, I digress.

If it weren't for the fact that I don't live on a fairly or highly traffic area, I would probably have my own shop now along with everyone's clients. Yet, for all I know not one of these shops will give me a chance.

I did after all run my own ISP from my living room's apartment in Philadelphia! That's on my resume. I find it hard to believe that not having a degree trumps that, do you?

I have had friends come to me complaining that a local computer shop took a month to fix their computer and then did the opposite of what they asked!

For example, one of my friends wanted the same exact motherboard replacement put into his Gateway computer so that he could use the software that came with his Gateway computer. After a month, he got it back, but it was a totally new non-Gateway motherboard and CPU. Granted, it was a better motherboard, not that munch faster, but he wasn't happy.

And to top it off, I had to take the computer back because it kept restarting. I had to explain to the person who repaired it that the memory type he installed could not be combined on this particular motherboard because the motherboard would only accept 1 stick of the type of memory he had installed (as per the motherboard manual). So we had to exchange two 256 MB sticks for one 512 MB stick. I wonder how long he would had kept the computer again if he had to diagnose the problem?

Guess what this friend does now? Yep, he comes to me. The last time I repaired a computer for him I had to order a motherboard from Canada, because I couldn't find it anywhere else. It was for a 64-bit motherboard for an eMachine that was bought a year earlier at Sams.

His wife was happy and it didn't take a month.

Here's something else I can bring a local computer shop: respect for your customers! Try getting that from a degree.

I can overclock computers and their graphic cards, diagnose problems caused by simple things like a bad BIO's setup, test memory sticks, program, etc., the list goes on.

How long should my resume be, before any of you shop owners get a clue?

If you enjoy entertaining your self with trivialities and puzzles you will enjoy trivia, you will not only entertain yourself you will also learn a lot about your beloved country!

http://www.gozatelo.com/trivia/

You can access the site in English or in Spanish.

——–

Te queremos invitar al único sitio de trivia en linea dedicado a la isla de Puerto Rico.

Si te encantan los rompe cabezas y trivialidades, te encantará un juego que no solo te entretendrá pero te aseguramos aprenderás algo nuevo sobre tu querida patria.

http://www.gozatelo.com/trivia/

Podrás disfrutar del sitio en español o en inglés.

That was cool for awhile, and then I got extremely busy and I had to let that go. It is extremely time consuming just to work in a few minutes of video.

Then I got curious about 3D rendering; specifically Poser figures. Last year, around October 2007, I started dabbling in the 3D Poser world. I liked this a lot more than the stop motion animation because I could see results fairly quickly. I have learned a lot in the 3D world that can also be applied to photography and video. The use of lights to light a scene, for example.

Although the 3D figures I use are Poser. I commonly use Daz Studio, Daz's free Poser-like application, and Daz Studio compatible Poser figures sold by Daz 3D.

Just check out my 3D Graphic Novel, Valeria, so you can see for yourself what you can do with 3D software and 3D models these days.

My biggest consuming appliance is my air conditioner (AC), so I am searching for a solar powered AC unit. Many companies claim a savings on your bill of 70% with one of these units. But I have no idea how much of this claim is true. If anyone here has a solar powered AC unit, or know's someone on the island of Puerto Rico who has one I would really appreciate it if you could find out and tell me if these claims are true.

One of the prices I was quoted was $2,100 with installation, so the price is steep.