Same phone different pile.

For those of you who remember my old phone, this video will make sense. For those who don't remember: My old phone was a discount phone by Motorola that had one or two features including the ability to make phone calls on common cell phone networks... but not much else. One of it's selling features was that it used "throwback calculator screen technology" as I liked to all it. Remember those crappy screens with 8 digits and black on gray?

Well that's what my phone had except I had 12 digits (2 rows of 6... which is completely unreadable) and white-on-black text. Anyway, my new phone looks just like the old one (which looked great when turned off!) but has an LCD screen instead and is about 75% thicker. Behold:

StatMan

Hey everyone!
Yesterday lots of people came to see the blog. That's good to see. As you may or may not know I actually keep track of how many people come to see what I am up to. People seem to like Mike's (& Dave's... our lawyers are working on this dispute) Disco Dryer video. As only a transparent dictator I like to share my census results with my population. Here is the history of the blog from day one of data collection:

As you may notice, yesterday was the most popular day in almost every way. The only stat that did not reach a record high yesderday was the "First time visitors to the site" statistic. We had 24 new visitor yesterday one short of the record 25 new visitors reached on the day one. "First time visitors" can be calculated by subtracting "returning visitors" from "unique visitors".
In related news, the disco dryer can also be used as an air condition in dry heat situations. As humidity levels reach 90-100 levels it will stop functioning as a dryer or air conditioner and merely be an 1960's style disco ball (before the technology had been perfected).

Inside the Instituto (sequel to "Crossing the Gulf")

Here is an insider view of where I work (Instituto Stela)
This is the upstairs reception:

This is my humble workspace:

Here is the general work area:

Here is the lunch room, but I haven't needed it so far cause we have great lunch options. The place across the street is so close and very good for about 6-7 dollars/plate in a pay-by-the-kg style buffet. But a group of us want to save some Reals so we drive about 10 mins to the discount cafeteria which feeds us well for about $4 plate. Today I paid R$5.53 = $3.45CND which included a chocolate cake dessert. These are great options considering the quality of the food. It's cheaper than making a lunch!

And here is another glamor shot:

I'll take some more shots of outside the building (which is the nicest in the area) later.

Lazy Sunday - The Chronicle of the Laundry Solution

Sunday night was not great as nothing useful was open, particularly the laundromat. I went to the grocery store instead (which never seem to close) and got what I believe is laundry detergent (there were picture of people enjoying towels and stuff on the cover). My gas at home was not turned on either so I talk to the landlord Eriba about it in one of our broken Portugese-English-signlanguage conversations. I think that we understood each other. I'll see if he really understood when I get back. Hopefully he won't be in the yard buning all my clothes in a gas fire while giving me the "thumbs-up?" looking for approval. BTW Thumbs up are HUUUUUGE here in Florianopolis!
Here is a video of me last night explaining my situation and demoing one of my solutions.

After making this video I remembered that I have shutters on my windows so I closed them to keep the light in then turned on my light for some extra drying power. Also the cold air of the night turned my window into a condenser/dehumidifier... My clothes where quite dry by morning ;)

New Apartment

First off I want to shout out to Kels on account of here bday today.
OoooooooK... Moving onto other business, here is a map of where I am living now:


View Larger Map

As you can see I am much closer to the ocean-side beach and still very close to the lake. Here is a quick video of my temporary place. I recorded it yesterday.




Last night was my first stay here. There is much more wind here than the last place I stayed so it was a bit cold. But the "winter" will soon be over and the addition wind will come in handy.

Here is where I catch the bus:


and here is my view from the bus-stop:




Peace! We outta here! (Old SNL reference)

Out to lunch

We went out to lunch again today (5th time this week!) I guess since lunch is the most important meal of the day and restaurants are relatively inexpensive compared to grocery store food, going out to lunch is not uncommon. We eat at a cafeteria style buffet today which is subsidized by the state. It was pretty good! Some of the guys went today. On the way back we discussed the motel industry and how it differs from that in North America.

First day on the job

Before I forget, this is a picture that I stole from someones Facebook profile. It is from Lagoa Conceicao, the part of town that I am living in and plan to live in long term. Whenever people ask where I am staying and I answer Lagoa Conceicao they smile and roll their eyes as though to say "of course". It is the most desirable place to stay it seems or at least the hippest and we all know that I only live in the hippest of places. I also only drive the most fashionable geiroscope balanced scooters to go to places like work... They have a specific name but I can't remember it right now... but it doesn't matter as I only brought it up as a Segway to the story of my first day at work. I got up at about 7:30 even though I didn't start work until 10AM. Had my nice breakfast as usual and watched a little Brazilian TV before walking to the bus station. Luckily I got there at 9:24 cause even though I missed the 9:20 and the 9:33 never showed up, the 9:50 got me to work only 8 minutes late. Lesson learned, buses... not so reliable. Although it may have been a fluke: everyone seemed pretty pissed. Anyway work was great. I got loads of facetime with top management and they are all super nice! Secrataries are researching apartments for me in Lagoa. I met my supervisor and it seems that our incentives and goals for my internship are well alligned. I spent most of the day reading books on software companies and their busiess models (product vs services) which I would do on my freetime anyway then about 8 of us went out to a 3D movie of a U2 performance in Argentina. All in all a great first day. More updates will come once I get settled.