kirktastic

I got back home about a week ago. Which is a drag, sorta. I miss the beach and the tranquility. And although I thought it was hot the whole time I was down there, it got cold here this week and I’d rather have heat.

Papers Please…
My journey home was pretty uneventful. Except my flight from Monterrey to Austin was scheduled to leave at 6:50am. vivaAerobus wants you to be at the airport 2 hours early but there was no way that was going to happen. I got there at 6 am and there was a Mexican woman with her two kids and their dog in front of me and only one guy working the check in counter. There was something wrong with her visa so the guy didn’t want to check her into the flight (the rule is the airline is responsible for sending the person back to their home country if the customs and immigration officials don’t let the traveler in). She was raising her voice same something in español about going to many countries and never having a problem. Blah blah blah. Listen señora I’m tired and I really want to get on that plane. And you’re embarrassing your kids. It also turns out the airline doesn’t let you travel with pets internationally so the same person that brought her current visa had to take the dog. The check in guy was relieved to see me since I had my documents in order and odds are the Americans would let me in.

Like many flights I’ve been on internationally flying into the US, security has a table set up at the gate and they rifle through your shit to make sure you don’t have more than the 100ml/3oz of liquid. Most of the people in front of me didn’t read the sign or follow the direction from the check in guy and had larger than prescribed bottles and/or no little zip lock bag. I feel this is a really stupid restriction but I had my shit in my little bag ready.

When we got to Austin it was nice since about 95% of the people on the plane were Mexican nationals coming to Austin for the weekend to shop and help our economy. This meant the US Citizen line at the customs line was just me. The DHS did decide to let me in and did not even noticed the 23 kilos of cocaine I had in my bag (or the 5 Mexican babies I was smuggling in my carryon)

Technology Getting Me Down…
If you had been following my tweets, I complained that my battery on my MacBook Pro seemed to be getting sick. So I made an appointment at the Genius Bar and after plugging a special iPod into my MacBook they said my battery was bad and gave me a new one. Computer batteries (Sony makes them for Apple) can be pretty finicky and do wear out, since my Mac is only 8 months old it was way too soon to have the battery worn out. Anyway, as usual, Apple was awesome and gave me a new battery. While I was there I brought in my old computer’s power adapter as it had some fraying at the mag-safe connector and even though it has been out of warranty for two years, they replaced it too. So I still am a big Apple fanboy. Macs rule. Everything else sucks.

Apps…
I did break down and buy the $20 Spanish/English dictionary from Ultralingua for my iPhone. Considering it costs about a billion dollars a byte to do international roaming, it paid for itself after looking up the second word. I actually smartly only used Wifi when I was down there so no surprises on my phone bill. And even tough I have 2 tiny Oxford Spanish Dictionaries, I will either leave them at home or back in my hotel. The other app I like this week is SnapTell, which I learned after reading about the Amazon app, what makes this different than the Amazon app is that it magically looks up stuff much like Shazam does with music. You shoot a photo of a CD cover or book cover and it will go out on the interwebs and let you buy it. The Amazon app can work with many more things but it takes a while since it actually relies on a human looking and the pic and matching it to a product. I JUST DON’T HAVE TIME MAN! The idea of having your phone out in the store and being able to see the pricing and availability in other places is pretty powerful. The other app I found is called vlingo and it is sort of like the Google app, where you can say something into the phone and it figures out what you are said and gives you an answer. You say “what’s the capital of Vermont” into it and it will go google that shit. The Google App uses an undocumented feature in the iPhone that knows when you hold it up to your ear and uses that to start and stop listening. vlingo isn’t so lucky, for that you have to push a button on the screen. vlingo does go far enough to let you say an update to Facebook or Twitter and post it. The next feature I want is speech to text SMS.

Movies…
I caught up on my Netflix queue. I saw a film that didn’t get good reviews that I wanted to see anyway called Vantage Point. The plot is the US president went to a conference in Spain and gets assassinated and the story is told from the vantage point of several people. I wanted to see it because I WAS IN IT (don’t bother looking in IMDB, I’m uncredited). But faithful readers may ask, how could you be in a movie set in Spain? You’ve never been to Spain. But I when I was in Cuernavca back in 2006 (I have about 1000 photos from that trip but only uploaded a handful to flickr). I was on the street outside the cathedral and they were shooting a film. I noticed the cars had Spanish license plates and so I figured they were using Mexico as a proxy for Spain. In the most pivotal chase scene if you look really closely (about 30 minutes in) you can see people on the sidewalk. I AM ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE! Yes I am in a mix of people and totally unrecognizable. Otherwise the movie is meh. It had a lot of potential, but seemed flawed to me.

I also saw the BBC miniseries State of Play and I really enjoyed it. It had a great story and lots of twists and great characters. It had to do with a MP (that’s member of Parliament) whose aide dies of mysterious circumstances. The report covering the case has a past with the MP. Again, hard to explain. Just add it to your queue. I saw when I went and found the link at IMDB, it appears that it has been remade and will star that talentless hack Ben Affleck as the MP (but since Americans don’t know what that is, it looks like it is taking place on this side of the pond so he’s a Congressman). Rachel McAdams, who I adore, is playing the female reporter but probably not like Kelly MacDonald did. The guy that played the newspaper publisher was outstanding. They got Helen Mirren for the USian version. I don’t know how they’re going to get around the plot point about the evil oil company being able to keep the newspaper from publishing the story since we have that crazy first amendment here. Perhaps the only thing that will save this film is Jason Bateman is playing the freelance PR guy.