Q: What do you get when you tell the leñero (firewood seller) that you don’t want pieces longer than 40 cm?
A: An excuse to buy a chain saw.
To be fair, he doesn’t cut it himself (that’s not him in the link above; last time I saw Dardo he was driving a taxi). And he charges me 20-25% less than the going rate: UYP 3,000 (USD 130+) per metric ton. Yes, per ton — I’ve discussed this before.
I just took readings of the stuff I got today: of maybe fifteen samples, most in the high teens-20%, one at 30%, and two at 11-12%.
I need to get some documents to Mexico. Sent Priority, they can be there in two days for $54.38. Or by paying only 25% more for “Economy,” I can ensure they won’t be there for a full week.
Nothing unusual about a package with “Air Mail” in French and English. Unless it’s mailed by someone who lives in Germany ….
I helped one of my son’s friends build a bookshelf unit over the weekend. At the end, he had a piece of thin plywood for the back, that proved a little tricky to cut on the table saw. No problem, I said, I’ll use the circular saw.
Except it proved to be suddenly dead.
Well, I said, I can cut it with the blade on the angle grinder. But even with a very light load, it bogged, then started smoking. So the hell with tricky. We managed to cut it on the table saw, and finished the project.
Yesterday I dismantled the circular saw and tested the switch, then remembered that when I bought it from a German guy several years ago he had given me something else, replacement brushes for the motor. After a bit of searching, I came up with one, and dismantled the saw further. Voilà! Relatively painless to replace the brush, reassemble the saw, and it’s back in action!
Walter the German handkreissäge is happy again.
Not so the angle grinder (amoladora). It addition to being more challenging to dismantle, in the end I couldn’t get to the switch, which I suspect partially melted.
And I thought Hyundai made quality stuff.
It is the only thing I’ve bought here for which I cannot find a receipt, but I’m pretty sure it’s been over a year, if it even had a guarantee that long (the cheap Chinese power tools come with a two-month guarantee: inspires confidence!).
So, this becomes another addition to the next Montevideo trip: find their service center and see if it can be repaired. It may not be worth it, but anything with electronics, a motor, or an engine costs 60-100% more here than up north.
I note that the Playstation 4 has landed in Uruguay. Yes, only 850 US dollars! My son was able to buy two last December in the States. He sold the second to a friend here, and got almost all his money back for both (he gave his friend a deal).
The PS3 and Kinect are correspondingly cheaper as well, of course.
I know: shoes with Velcro are not exciting. But in Uruguay, cheap shoes that fit me are exciting. And most of what’s available is size 45 or less. These are 48. And they fit. And they cost under USD 30.
The ones I wanted they had, surprisingly, in 46, 47, and 49, but no 48. They called another store a few blocks away (I thought I’d been in every one in Pando already), and told me someone would bring a pair in size 48. Which they did, though the only similarity to the others was the color.
I have a special disdain for Velcro shoes, our nemesis in our early days of doing school author presentations. Well, not the shoes in fact, but the combination of the shoes and the kindergarteners in the front row who couldn’t stop sticking them and loudly unsticking them. I sometimes felt like screaming at them, WHY DON’T YOU BRATS LEARN TO GODDAM TIE SHOES? But I didn’t.
My neighbor Manuel told me that going to Pando used to be the butt of jokes in Montevideo, since it was popular for its whiskerías (whorehouses) and hourly motels. It’s significant for us because they deliver for free (the stores, not the whores): Montevideo is farther, and through the toll booth.
While in Pando, I found a 20-tube solar water heater with a 3-year guarantee for USD 675. So maybe one day soon I’ll actually get to do a hot baking-soda-magnesium-oil soak in our expensive bathtub.
My excitement today in Uruguay: cheap Velcro shoes. No, really.
I discovered, to my surprise (why?) that our local computer store in Atlántida could get our laser printer cartridges refilled. Prior, I’d been taking them to Tecsys, where they advised that each was good for perhaps four refills, and that the people who did the refills would not refill them if the quality wouldn’t be up to par.
The local computer store also cleaned our printer, which had stopped functioning a few days ago. So the first thing I did on arriving home was hold the “on” button for five seconds to print a test page. It didn’t look good at all: the black test bar was streaky and gray in places. So I took it back, a bit upset.
The owner offered I could return the refilled cartridge and apply the cost to a new cartridge, about USD 90, saying that was the only way to get “new” quality (even though I was sure the previous refills had printed like new). Meanwhile, he showed me that a printed page of text—unlike the printer test page—looked just fine.
At which point I realized I had paid perhaps half (USD 20) for this refill as the others at Tecsys. I’d have to dig out receipts, which I’m too lazy to do, even for you, beloved reader of my drivel. But I know I didn’t pay twenty bucks in Texas.*
So he’d given me a workable solution at a good price, even though in terms of quality I’d essentially gotten what I paid for, which was less quality than I expected. But that was perhaps also more than I needed.
I thanked him for explaining. Ya veremos. We will see.
*Huh—? That’s what you get for not clicking on links 😉
Our vet suggested a different dog food, one with less fat. She says less fat has solved skin problems of many dogs she knows, and ours is having issues.
The guy who sells the dog food displays it outside his house, fading bags in the full sun—who would buy that, knowing full well everything inside would be rancid? Turns out to be just a display. He gets a fresh bag from inside. Then gives me a refrigerator magnet, and say to call next time: he delivers for free, like many merchants here. I like that. I tell him my name’s Douglas, and there aren’t many of us in Uruguay.
Last Friday, our fiber optic service crapped out. I called AntelData to file a reclamo, a complaint, and learned that service was down for an entire zone. Not much to do but wait.
Saturday I learned that our neighbors had their service back. Sunday we spent a delightful afternoon with a couple of friends with whom we explored northern Argentina a few years back, at our favorite restaurant. Got home: still no internet.
Monday morning, a computer-illiterate Uruguayan friend mentioned entering usario and contraseña, and suddenly it clicked: Antel insisted the correct modem lights were lit. Then I remembered that on my first call, they’d had me enter user name and password, which I did—obviously incorrectly?
So I wondered if what I took as a capital A at the beginning of the handwritten password the tech left months ago, was instead a 4. The passwords are all upper case. LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES LOVE ALL CAPS.
No, not 4.
Then I looked at out ambiguously written handwritten user name, one letter and 5 numbers @adsl… and wondered: was K supposed to be k?
Bingo! In a trice we were back to wasting huge amounts of time glued to the screen.
