Tag: Mexico

Posted on

Glass or Plastic?

Why, glass, of course. I hate soda sold in plastic bottles. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

Here in New York in many restaurants you can find Coke and rarely Pepsi in glass bottles.  Yes, Coke in the original bottle shaped like the cacao tree seed pod instead of the coca seed. They are made in Mexico, I think found out the reason why they taste much better than the plastic bottled ones:
“She told me that they were bottled in Mexico and I nodded since I already knew that and said, “I think it is because they use real sugar.”
She shook her head, “No, no, not the sugar. It’s the water.”
She leaned in like she was telling me a secret, “Mexican water is the BEST water in the entire world.”
Just then a smaller woman leaned in beside her grinning with a single eyebrow raised and whispered.
“It’s MAGIC water!”

Apparently it is not Montezuma’s revenge that assails unsuspecting tourists, but the magic waters that sour in the bellies of the unimaginative, somewhere South of the border.”

Remember I mentioned Pepsy Crystal?  People called it second New Coke, but I actually liked it. Well, these days it’s a bit more expensive – single can sells for $20-25 on eBay. Overall “coca cola unopened” and “pepsi unopened” bring back very interesting results.

Apparently they still make Moxie and Diet Moxie. Yep, the drink that gave us a word for “ability to face difficulty with spirit and courage“.

Posted on

Adventures In Food : Kernel Panic

Thanks to the wonders of memepool I learned about Huitlacoche aka Cuitlacoche aka Corn Smut . It is basically fungus infected corn kernels that is sometimes called Mexican truffle. And thanks to froogle.com a can of it is on its way to me from .latingrocer.com . It’s probably not Atkins safe, but what the hell.

This really sucks, but I think Jarritos does not make any diet drinks. I guess they don’t have an obesity epidemic in Mexico.

Also, nobody seems to be crazy enough to sell Surstr�mming. So, Inter Net merchants and search engines, you are still not perfect.

Oh, that Vegemite and Mermite that I got from everythingaustralian.com rocks.

Posted on

TT : Thought Tally : Dude, Where’s My Biochemistry Degree? or Kinky Crew Superstar

is going to like this. As I learned from TV Guide Magazine, Ashton Kutcher majored in Biochemistry.

—

According to one of the most annoying things a customer can do at the checkout line is to say “He heh. I guess it must be free” when the scanner beeps and refuses to scan the code. See, I could never come up with that stupid and apparently common joke. A Null is not a zero.

—

This kind of reminded me about a dude who was playing an electronic one arm bandit in Moscow when the machine crashed with 999999 rubles in the payout window. He stayed at the gaming parlor for days guarding the machine, but in the end the machine was rebooted and he wasn’t given any money. Or so I heard.

—

Coca cola definitely tastes better when it’s sold in those glass bottles. You know the ones that are probably based on the shape of the cacao pod (which was mistaken for the kola nut by the designer or something). They still make those in Mexico and sometimes they are sold in a few bodegas in NYC. I always thought it tasted better because of the glass, but finally found out the true reason:

“She told me that they were bottled in Mexico and I nodded since I already knew that and said, “I think it is because they use real sugar.”
She shook her head, “No, no, not the sugar. It’s the water.”
She leaned in like she was telling me a secret, “Mexican water is the BEST water in the entire world.”
Just then a smaller woman leaned in beside her grinning with a single eyebrow raised and whispered.
“It’s MAGIC water!”

Apparently it is not Montezuma’s revenge that assails unsuspecting tourists, but the magic waters that sour in the bellies of the unimaginative, somewhere South of the border.”

—

Many big corporations in order to retain employees use powerful “cult team building” techniques. One thing that I noticed is that worker ants usually have very peculiar job titles. For instance at Kinko’s the official title is “Co-worker”. At McDonald’s – “Crew Member”. From Gig I learned that Kinko employees unofficially use “Kinkoid” instead of “Co-worker”. And from an lj user in I learned that a McDonalds crew member who has formidable years of experience, but isn’t a manager is called “Crew Superstar”. I guess it’s kind of like “Research Fellow” at Microsoft :)

Posted on

This EU would like to take a TT and DSLAM somebody

My trials and tribulations with Speakeasy DSL reminded my of an old phone prank which goes like this:

Part 1.

Prankster#1: Hi, I am a phone technician, Do you have a minute to help me test your phone line?
Victim: Ok
Prankster#1: Fold your phone cord in half. Can you hear me?
Victim: Yes
Prankster#1: Fold it in half again. Can you hear me?
Victim: Yes
Prankster#1: Fold it in half again.
[long pause]
Victim: What do I do with this now?
Prankster#1: Stick it up your ass. [hangs up laughing]

Part 2.

Prankster#2: Hi, I am investigating some complaints about phone pranks. Did somebody call you recently?
Victim : Yeah, yeah. Somebody called me pretending to be a phone technician.
Prankster#2: And what did they tell you?
Victim : They told me to stick phone cord up my ass!
Prankster#1: Well, now you can take it out!

So, back to my DSL trouble. I got on the phone with a very cheerful technician who asked me to turn the DSL modem on, tested something, then asked me to turn it off and again tested something. After a few rounds of this she told me that my modem is finally busted after 3 years of service.

She said that I have 3 options: to have a Covad tech install one for me ($$$), purchase a new one from Speakeasy ($$) or get one on eBay ($).

I won a bid for a modem on eBay (which set me back ~40) and proceeded to take apart my own modem (to see if there is an apparent short from dirt backup). Turned out that inside it was wrapped in some sort of metallic wrapper (I guess for shielding). The circuit board said that it was made in Mexico. Interestingly it said “made” and not “hecho”. I wonder why.

In any case, next day I tried to connect with my supposedly busted DSL modem, and surprise-surprise: it worked. I went straight to Speakeasy support center web page and it said “Waiting on covad to replace the DSLAM card. It was not responding to testing requests. I will update this in the morning” – exactly the opposite of what the cheerful tech told me.

Well, I guess Covad’s “DSLAM” – “Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer” was causing the outage.

I Speakeasy support again and told them that I’ve already purchased a new modem. I’ve been told to sell it back on eBay.

While going through this shit I learned a few interesting acronyms:

EU – End User (that’s me) and not European Union. I guess it’s pronounced “E-uuu”.
BERT – Bit Error Rate Test, and not the evil muppet of the same name
TT – Trouble Ticket , and not the TT (Tokarev Tula) handgun
CPE – Customer Premise Equipment (a fancy name for a DSL modem), and not Continuing Professional Education

Now I have a fun task of grading my tech support experience. Hmm, I think I’ll send them a link to this post. Ha.

Oh, by the way. Speakeasy still rocks. I do like their service. I think it’s the Covad people who are at fault here. If you want to get DSL, get Speakeasy.