My Daily Mexico

It never ceases to amaze me all the bad press against Mexico, but this evening I was watching several news sources, ABC, NBC and the other popular networks and they where airing the new security measures, including full body scans, and essentially strip searches for those traveling… Has not the united states stooped to a new lower level or is it just me?

Many people bash Mexico, especially recently with all the bad press related to the drug wars, when I saw the interviews of people being fondled, to go from one state to the next or to another country from the U.S most of the feedback from those interviewed was…well if it makes me safer than I am all for it.

Are people out of their mind? If this is in fact the case, then I should have looked in to a new career of working at an international airport, sure I would most like be fondling the average Joe, but maybe also fondling a few nice looking women, hey, call me a pervert, but first if all I have no current plans to fly out of Mexico in to the U.S but even if I was flying to some other destination I would definitely be bypassing that country.

I only lived in the U.S for about 5 years, and well I found Mexico with a bit more freedom than in the U.S people are to proper and to uptight, the other day me and the wife went for our daily walk and of course it was rather dark but as we walked by the sidewalk we felt a tree brushing up against us, so we moved a side.

Driving by later we actually could see what we had avoided , a small manhole, so who needs orange tape or warning signs, this three branch did the trick and cost nothing:-)

Hh

If you looked at previous posts, I had promised some picks of the Regata de globos in Ajijic but, unfortunately one of my kids fell ill and we where unable to attend. I have been suer busy doing other stuff so I have not had time to keep regular posts going, with that and just the whole writers block thing its difficult some times.

I am writing this, because it occured to me this morning, on a Sunday, which I hate Sundays, they seem always mundaine there is usually nothing on Tv. in any case my thoughts stayed there, and instead of just leaving this as a draft here it is. I guess I will remeber sooner or later what I was going to say.

The year has flown by , but then again , living in an almost perfect climate and an slow paced lifestyle that can happen, if you want to live a long time, I believe in low stress levels, I love this time of year, in Ajijic or Mexico in general the 16th of September which is Mexico’s independence day, is usually celebrated with a Grito de independencia on the eve of the 15th, and on the 16th there is a big festive and colorfull parade of schools charros mariachis and other fun stuff.

This weekend however September 12th 2009 in Ajijic ,in the football field next to the main highway there is an annual balloon regatta, which essentially is different groups of local people building balloons out of paper mache and then flying them in to the air, over the years, they have built some awesome figures and many go hundreds of feet in the air and some never make it off the ground, but the ones that do , what a sight to see. My plans for tomorrow is to take the family along with some sodas and beer and get some photos of the whole event, so stay tuned and I should have some photos up over the weekend with some pics for those of you can be here in person.

The other day a friend of mine, originally from spain asked to use the office bathroom and well the rubber stop in the tank was leaking so it would not hold the water properly, so I forewarned he would have to fill up a bucket to flus the toilet anyway after that experience he was kind enough to send me a suggestion on how I may repair it, pretty clever I though, Allthough I have not had a chance to to cut a piece of garden hose from the house I have not tried the efffectiveness of this contraption, let me see what comes firts the garden hose or the plumber.

I am pretty sure I mentioned sometime back I own a small ISP in the Chapala area. I have been living in Mexico all of my life and it has been great, I had a great childhood and so do my kids, its a simple life, and we have lots of fun, the only stress in my life for the most part is from unhappy foreigners that come to Lakeside, and expect everything to be perfect.

Years ago in Chapala there were maybe 2 phone lines in the whole area, electricity and water was good depending on the Weather , but nowadays people come down expecting everything, as if they had everything up north, they want everything that works in the U.S and Canada to work the same here in Mexico. I say

if you want it that way. I say go the F***K back to where you found life better, but many who move to Mexico, don’t seem to do that, they come down expecting something its not.

Kind of like me going to the U.S when I was 17 years old  for the first time, and I just could not figure out the following

Why I could not drink and drive
why I had do drive the posted speed limit
Why I could not let my dog run free in the streets or in a public park
Why my dog could not freely relieve himself in public

I guess one of the great things about this country is in fact, there is a true freedom,  unfortunately lakeside is growing leaps and bounds, but I guess thats what they call progress, the good thing about Lakeside it is unique, in that you can find many imported goods and people who do try to import their north american lifestyle can to an extent, but if Lakeside becomes overwhelming there are many pueblitos, small towns and villages that are still charming and hold Mexican tradition.

Remember this is just one opinion the only way you will find out if this country is right for you is to spend some time here and then you can see for yourself if you can make the move.

Over the past few weeks I have not had a chance to post much, things at my business have been running well overall, no complaints, so we must be doing something right, but people will always complain, I had mentioned, setting up a mil server using the Intel atom processor, and for those of you, who are considering using it as a mail server it will work with a client base of around 200 users, this is simply using Postfix smtp, Dovecot and nothing else, if you add a Spam filter and some virus scanning it will bog it down but I tried.

So what does this have to do with Mexico you are asking, in July the famous CFE or Mexicos electric company has decided to increase electric rates, on commercial businesses, and on households that exceed a certain amount of usage.

So after several months of struggling and optimizing my server equipment I have managed to lower my electrical bill considerably.

But now they up their rates, go figure, I have searched high and low on the Internet about the Intel atom processor and plan to migrate one of my servers to this platform in hopes on becoming still more efficient, but no one can tell me if it will handle various users, my intention is to run Centos linux and postfix mail server .
In the meantime I have built a server using the Atom 330 dual processor.

Will it work ? we shall see today I am going to install the software and see how it goes, this could be huge for companies living in areas with high energy costs.

Opening up CNN on my Pc this afternoon, there’s a survey, should the Pamplona bull run still be allowed? Well yes some guy did get nailed by a bull, and he died, if you are going to run in front of animals with sharp objects in front of them, yes chances are you may die, for some, it could be kind of cool, for me it’s not, because I am not that agile. (continue reading…)