Month: December 2006

Mexican Driver License

I went and got my license today. My current US license expires tomorrow. I have the information coming in the mail so I can renew my license, but it won’t be here before my current one runs out. I don’t want to land myself in jail for 6 months just for parking in the wrong place.

I had to have copies of several different documents. Then I had a written exam as well as a “driving” exam. The paperwork included putting my wife’s name and contact info on the license so she can be contacted in case of an emergency. I thought that was a good idea. Then they had to know my blood type. I did not know what it was, so they did a blood type test right there. The chemist did it right in front of me and I got to ask all kinds of questions as to how it works and how he can tell which type I have. Very cool. I am A RH+ in case you wanted to know.

Then I had to buy a copy of the rule book. I have not read it and probably won’t, but from what I understand it is a requirement to have a copy of the rule book in the car. Interesting. That cost a whopping $2.

The written exam had me a little nervous. Then I found out I could take it in English. My Spanish is fine, but why put myself through that if it is available in English? I scored a 10 out of 10.

The driving part. I don’t know why, but I was a bit more nervous about this. It is not like I don’t know how to drive. Maybe it took me back to the days when I got my license as an 18 year old kid. The examiner got in the car and said right off, “Is that a 38 special or .357?” He was pointing to the floorboard. We carried guns in our car. Who doesn’t in Texas? When I finally unfroze enough to look at what the officer was pointing at, I realized it was just a shell and not a pistol. Whew!

So, anyway, back to today. The examiner asked me to pull the car out of the parking spot. He did not get in. Then he quizzed me on how much Spanish I knew. I told him I knew a lot before I got nervous. He made me parallel park by using only 3 moves. Any more would be failure. Then I had to pull out of the parallel spot with only 3 moves. After that, he told me to park the car and wait for my name to be called.

That was it. No real driving. You only have to prove that you can parallel park. No wonder people don’t know how to drive around here. But, man, they can parallel park with the best of them!

The testing cost just under $18. They took my picture and my fingerprints. That was it. The license spit out of the printer in a few minutes and I was done. It was probably one of the easiest government processes I have ever experienced here in Mexico.

Now, I just have to live 2 years with that photo. They use web cams to take the photos. You never really know when the picture snaps. So you just sit there wondering if the picture has been taken yet or if you are still waiting. Did I mention I was sick the other day. I have a cold. Still have some nasal drainage too. She took my picture while I was snorting my snot back up my nose. It is at least humorous–which is how most pictures of me turn out.

Mom, I got my camel back.

The camel finally came home to roost. I ordered a Camelbak running pack a few months ago from Bike Nashbar. I got a great deal on it in August, but have had to wait to have it delivered. When you live outside the US, all the great deals on the Internet get negated when you have to pay so much extra in shipping, if they offer it at all. Then you have to just hope that the product arrives. We prefer to wait until we know someone is coming down to visit and have them bring the loot in.

I got the Camelbak Flash Flo 45 oz. pack. It took a while to figure out how best to wear the thing and how to cinch it all down. Being a man, I did not even look at the picture instructions. Today, in my spare 10 minutes, I looked at them and saw they were almost totally unhelpful, but there was a drawing that gave me an idea about how to secure the straps a bit better.CamelBak Flash Flo

The pack is marketed to the running community. Or at least a very active community. But this thing has straps long enough to fit around my (very large) sister. I am not petite, but the straps are still very long for me. Just looping them through the tie down bungee still allowed them to flap. Apparently you are supposed to be smart enough to know to double them back on themselves and then use the elastic straps to secure them. There was one picture in the instructions that insinuated this.

I had to wear the pack much tighter than I first thought to keep it from bouncing. I think I will get used to that.

My iPod (20GB hard drive based) did well in the pack. It never skipped. But, my experience today caused me to dislike music in podcasts even more. I start my run through some very busy streets with lots of bus traffic. I have to turn the volume up a bit to hear the talking. But then, when the music started it really hurt. Normally that is not a problem because I run with the iPod in hand and I can adjust the volume while fast forwarding the song. Since I am not a contortionist, I was not able to fast forward the song, nor drop the volume. I had to run with the headphones in my hand. No worries though, the music was so loud that I could easily hear when the song stopped. PODCASTERS, I HATE YOUR MUSIC!! And I especially hate it when the level of the music is so much louder than the speaking part. When I got past all the bus traffic I stopped and dropped the volume in general.

I took it on a short run to give it a good try. I only ran 10K (6.2 miles) today with it. It will be a welcome accessory to longer training runs. Though, I think I will be glad to have it on any run longer than 5 or 6 miles. I only filled it about half full of liquid today and it was not too heavy.

From the peanut gallery

My wife saw this in her daily comic reading and called me to the computer to see it.

Mother Goose and Grimm

I have lost 80 lbs. in the last 2 years, but certainly don’t look near that bad. But, to hear other people talk about my weight loss, you would think I was wasting away to nothing. What is funny is that none of my skinny family and friends think I have lost too much. Only the ones who are overweight themselves. I think it is jealousy. Many would be surprised to see what I am hiding under my shirt. I could easily stand to lose 15-20 more lbs. before I started looking skinny.

Comment Spam

If you are not a blogger you would not necessarily know that the reason many blogs use CAPTCHAs and moderate their comments is because of comment spam. Even though I have had my blog on-line for almost a year, I have had very little comment spam. Somewhat on the order of 3-5 a month that I have to filter out.

That was until this weekend. I got 28 comment spams on Saturday. I decided to enable the plugin Akismet that comes with my blogging software. Before I got it running I had another 35 spam messages. That put my number up to 60+ in just a few hours. Since then the software has caught and blocked over 500 spam messages and I have had to manually mark as spam another 100 that the software has missed.

I don’t know why I got so popular all of a sudden, but maybe this kind of popularity is not what I am looking for.

I am curious to hear from other bloggers as to how many comment spams they get each day.

Next Chess Tournament

This is the big tournament of the year for us. It is the Carlos Torre Repetto Memorial Tournament. Grand Master Carlos Torre is considered to have been, and still is (after 80 years), the greatest chess player México has produced. His crowning year was 1925 when he was 21 years old. The next year he stopped playing chess competitively.Carlos Torre Repetto Memorial Tournament

We went to register for the tournament today and met with some typical frustration. Registration is to be Monday through Thursday from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm of this week. Today is Tuesday. We were there at a little after 11:00. They could not take our registration information because the computer was not on site yet. This is the computer that holds all the rating information to verify which group each participant will play in. We were told to come back in an hour and the computer should be there and be set up.

I was a bit frustrated with this. That meant that anyone who showed up previous to that time (at least 2 hours worth of people this morning) were turned away and told to come back to register. This is an International event. We have several Grand Masters from around the world who will be participating with us. Vassily Ivanchuk, the Ukrainian Grand Master and number 1 ranked player in his country will be here as well as Sergey Tiviakov the number one ranked Grand Master in Holland. The current champion of Cuba will be with us…and the list goes on. But yet, we can’t register because the computer has not arrived.

I later asked about what they did for registration yesterday when they said they did not have $7 change for my $20. “Registration yesterday?” Yes, you guessed it. They did not even have anyone there the whole registration time yesterday even though it is on the first page of the registration guidelines that were given out to all hopeful participants.

So, anyway, we left and came back about 30 minutes later. This was only because there was also a book fair going on near there that we had planned to attend. When we returned there was a computer on the table with a mouse and keyboard, but no monitor. We were assured that the monitor would be right there and they would be able to start registration very soon.

Twenty minutes later when the monitor arrived, I knew registration would not start in any reasonable time. The monitor was brand new. I looked at the computer, it too had evidence of having been freshly unpacked. Keyboard and mouse were pristine. I suspect that there was not a bit of software on that computer except the operating system. We would have had to wait through the whole setting up a new computer mess before we could register.

About that time my son’s chess teacher arrived. He greeted us and I begged to be allowed to register and they could look up the info later. The teacher talked them into it.

In the process the teacher pointed me to a rule in the guidelines that I was hoping did not apply to me. It says “All international players who do not have FIDE rating and are over the age of 16 must register in the [I don’t know the translation into proper English chess terminology] first force [primera fuerza].” This basically means that I would be playing in the same category with the Grand Masters and International Masters as well as all those with a rating over 1900. My rating (sub-1100) would normally put me in the fourth force. But my rating is with the Mexican Chess Federation and not with FIDE, the World Chess Federation.

If I got paired with Vassily Ivanchuk (currently ranked #7 in the world), that would have been an honor to play with him. But, that would not have been a fair game for him.

But the real problem for me is that to play in the fourth grouping would cost $35. Which is a lot of money for me to go in and play knowing that I have little to no chance of making any of it back by winning. Especially since I have only been playing a little over a year and not seriously at that. But, registration for the first grouping is $90. That is out of the question. So, I am not playing. Just my son.

The tournament starts on Thursday of this week, but my son’s rounds won’t start till Tuesday of next. He is in a sub-10 year old category which only plays 6 rounds instead of the 9 rounds the big boys will play.