Good News, Bad News Update

ALL the news is good!

In my rant of a post on December 4th, I carried on at great length about our poor Internet service out where we live.  Well, I have no clue if they saw my post or not, but within a few days we had our first service call to the house, ever!  We explained the issues we had been having over the last year and mentioned the busted pole down the road from us.  The service Rep did a little testing and inspecting and made a couple of phone calls.  A very polite man.  Fortunately for me, me First Mate could chat with him in Spanish.  After about 20 minutes he left.

The guy said he thought the pole might be part of the problem, but admitted they had to get ‘permission’ from the appropriate office before it could be fixed.  Per the bureaucracy, if the busted pole did not affect anyone’s service, it should not be replaced.  Never mind the potential issue of public safety this mess might create.  The lines hung down to where I could touch them.  It sat like that for several months.  Infrastructure issues?

Changes in the Wind-

The day of my last post, December 28th, there were no less than 3 crews in 5 PRT/Claro trucks working our little stretch of Highway 150.  They even took care of the busted telephone pole.  WOO HOO!

I’m not saying we are 100%, but we are well on our way to better DSL service.  All the PRT land lines are supposed to be upgraded to fiber-optic in the near future.  And the future looks bright!

The PBS Debacle

PBS NewsHour is my default source for ‘reasonably’ unbiased news.  I never watch FOX and seldom watch network news.  BBC is my next best choice.  This has been a real issue since moving to PR.  WIPR channel 6 ‘was’ the official PBS channel here for years, but did not broadcast any of the PBS programming because it was all in English. The only programming exception being NewsHour.  However, it did not come on until 4AM the next day and then it was often bumped for other programing.  So I had to record it and watch it a day late.  Then in the fall of last year, they dropped PBS entirely.

At that point, I started watching it via a live feed over the Internet.

Normally that would not be a big deal, but I’ve already stated what a problem we have had with our DSL.  A very flaky solution at best.

While checking out Caribbean News, I discovered another channel run by a university in Fajardo, was also a PBS affiliate.  Sistema TV, WMTJ on cable TV at Channel 40 now runs some PBS programing.  As of January 1st, they are formally listed in the on-line channel guide.

A couple of weeks ago, NewsHour came back in an 11:30PM time slot.

That’s kind of late, but WOO HOO!!!  I will support them in what ever capacity I can.  I know it’s in English, but there is no other place to get news of this integrity, anywhere.  English or not!!

That might sound a little bold, but have you seen what passes as TV news these days?  And I don’t need a puppet telling me what the deal is.  Sistema TV has a Website, but it’s entirely in Spanish.

Things just keep getting better all the time.

New Years Puerto Rican Style

I love this place.  As soon as the sun started to set New Year’s Eve, the music got turned up loud and the ‘ka-booms’ kicked in.  From all sides!  It was like a small war had broke out.  I only made it to 1AM before crashing, but me First Mate sez the music and fireworks lasted until about 3:30AM.  There was even a little bit more, last night.

I’ve carried on about this too many times now, but for a place where only ‘safe ‘n sane’ is legal, there was tons and tons of aerial stuff going off, all over.

Makes me wonder where they got the cheap Chinese aerial shells… I shot a lot of these small ‘Festival Balls’ when I lived in Alaska.  We nicknamed them ‘Dollar Shells’ because the were so good, but cheap.  Can’t get any of those here in PR.  Right?

Parranda, a New Social Network

I have one last ‘tid-bit’ of news.  A brand new social network dedicated to Puerto Ricans went live on January 1st.  The site is still in beta testing, but anyone can sign up.  The goal is to map Puerto Ricans no matter where they live and create a dedicated community of users.  Parranda can be viewed in both Spanish and English, though I’m sure Spanish will come to dominate most chats.  I signed up when they still had less than 150 members, but I expect it to grow to 10’s of thousands over the next year.  It will become a big deal, mark my words.

It has been in the works for quite a while.

The Scurvy Dog… Arrg!