Chichipanguanorrea 3.0

View Larger Map

It all started on July 30th at 3:30am when I get this phone call:

Me: “He…mfff…llo…bmgrrr?”
Cab driver: “Hello are you Mr. Jaramillo? I´m the cab driver and I´m waiting for you outside your house”
Me: “Dude! I asked for a cab for July 31st! You came 24 hours too soon!”
Cab driver: “Oh… errr.. crap!… sorry sir. I will cancel this service then”
Me: “No problem, just make sure you pick me up tomorrow at this time. Thanks.”

Ok that wasn´t really the start of the trip, but it was a funny story. By the way, if you ever need a great cab driver in Austin let me know and I will give you Fernando´s phone number.

It all REALLY started on July 31st at 3:30am when I get a phone call from my cab driver Fernando and he takes me to the airport. I got there at 4:15am and there was no line. Check-in and passing security was extremely fast. My first plane was Austin-Atlanta departing at 5:30am. In Atlanta I had a Donut and orange juice for breakfast and then at 10:30am took a plane from Atlanta to Miami. I got to Miami at 12:30pm and had pizza for lunch. In the past being at the Miami airport has been a nightmare bearable only because you can buy beer and walk around the airport with it, so I had one Heiniken for lunch, and then a Pacifico but I have to say that this time the airport wasn´t as crazy as other times.

Finally we got in the plane to fly to Medellín. The plane had some decorations related to the Feria de las flores which is the city festival celebrated once a year in early August. But that wasn´t all: the Avianca crew in charge of the flight had a few surprises for us the passengers. First they played Me voy para Medellín by El Combo de las Estrellas and then played La tierra by Ekhymosis (rock band from Medellín that Juanes used to be part of). Then they announced that Buchanan´s was sponsoring the fun factor in our trip, so they did a raffle and gave away t-shirts and a bottle of scotch and then gave scotch to all the passangers. Off course I had mine on the rocks. But the best thing came when we were about to land: instead of landing directly at the Jose Maria Cordoba airport located 30 minutes from Medellín when you usually don´t get to see the city, the pilot flu over Medellín for about 15 minutes at a not-very-high altitude where you could see all the main city landmarks like the Coltejer building, the Atanasio Girardot stadium, the old airport, the pueblito paisa, etc… it was a blast and at this point we were all singing, drinking, screaming, clapping! It was like being on a flying Chiva.

Anyway, that last part of the trip was a blast, and then seeing my family was even better. We stopped at Rancherito and had a picada and finally came home. I can´t wait to see what is next, but I´m having sancocho for lunch today!

It has been almost a month since I wrote my last post two days before my birthday. I have to thank everyone who made it to my birthday party. It was really fun. I also want to thank all the friends and family members that sent me happy birthday wishes through emails, instant messages, phone calls, etc…

So what does it feel to turn 30 years old? I got to tell you that it feels really good. Someone told me recently that when you turn 30, you are now officially an adult. You can no longer excuse your stupidity by saying things like: “I was young and I didn’t knew any better!”. It also feels great that many people don’t think I’m 30, so I can pretend to be young and stupid if I really want to. But honestly, playing the grown up mature adult role suits me better.

My parents gave me Garmin nüvi 200 GPS for my car as a present. It is a really cool device and I’ve been playing with it a little bit. I really want to do a road trip to see its full potential and I’m also curious about Geocaching. I also got from my friends in Austin a really nice gift: a $220 certificate from Amazon which I’m still planning to spend. I’m debating between buying a lens for my D40x, a DVD recorder, an Airport Express or a bunch of toilet paper.

There is a time in every blogger’s life when you simply don’t have much interesting material to post about, so you decide to create a post about the last few things that have been going on. Unfortunately this is not the first time I do this, so feel free to drop some hate comments and show me your love and appreciation.

Last week I was recognized in my company with the ‘Engineering Excellence’ award which is given to about 8-15 engineers every year. I was pretty happy with the award because it motivates me to keep working hard and doing a good job at work. (Note to self: update resumé)

Last weekend it was Claudia Lorente’s 30th birthday which she celebrated at her place with a fabulous cricket game. A lot of friends were there and I had a great time. The day after was Gabriel’s bday and we celebrated it in my house. I hadn’t had a party in my house in a while and I figured I could have one. The party was really fun, lots of friends, alcohol and dancing until 5am. The next morning I had to play soccer with the NI Eagles and we beated team Black Star 2-0. There are only two games left this season and it looks like we have a chance to finish 4th or 5th place if we win the last two games. Right now we are in 7th place.

I already did my taxes which I still need to send, including a big fat check that I wish I didn’t have to pay. I was surprised how quickly I did my taxes. Either after 6 years doing taxes you get better at it, or TurboTax has became much better, or I just don’t care much about them anymore that I don’t triple check everything. I think it is the combination of those three.

I’m jealous of two friends (Eva Noyola and Natalia Uribe) who are going to Portishead concerts in London and Munich. So far I haven’t seen anything about them coming to the US.

Life is good…

This coming February 4th: join us in the mobilization against FARC.

It is really sad to see how the “Colombianos en UT” group have changed the main objective for the mobilization. Here is the text they sent through the “Asociación de Colombianos en Austin”:

Please join us Monday, February 4 2008 10:30 am at South First and Barton Springs: we will march to City Hall.

Position of “Colombianos en UT” in reference to the “Un Millón de Voces Contra las FARC” March February 4 2008

We march against, and manifest our rejection of all crimes against humanity committed in Colombia over the last five decades by all of the different parties involved in the internal conflict of Colombia .

We march to say:
NO MORE Guerrillas (FARC, ELN, EPL…)
NO MORE Paramilitaries (AUC, ACCU, CONVIVIR, Aguilas Negras,….)
NO MORE complicity of government officials with illegal armed forces
NO MORE abuse by elements of the armed forces
NO MORE massacres
NO MORE kidnappings
NO MORE forced displacement
NO MORE targeted assassinations
NO MORE extrajudicial killings
NO MORE forced disappearances
NO MORE arbitrary detentions
NO MORE impunity for military and paramilitary officials
NO MORE death squads
NO MORE state sponsored terror

We march for PEACE as long as it is dignified and just. We march for LIBERTY and JUSTICE for all Colombians.

Please join us Monday, February 4 2008 10:30 am at South First and Barton Springs: we will march to City Hall.

http://www.colombiasoyyo.org/

Please distribute widely

This is clearly a mistake. It causes the mobilization to lose its focus. It causes that people identifies them selves with some of the points of the protest but not with others. It dilutes the clear message that started it all: NO MORE FARC. .

Update
I’m glad to inform that the original objective of the mobilization has been reestablish.

Finally I can tell you all about my new MacBook. I bought it last November but I couldn’t publish anything about it in this blog because I wanted to surprise my mother because I gave her my previous laptop as a present.

I’m very pleased with the MacBook but I have to admit that there are a couple of things where I think the PowerBook is much better. I like the PowerBook keyboard better and I also dislike the sharp borders of the MacBook, because it leaves marks in your wrist.

But to be fair, I love the new glossy widescreen display, the remote with front row, the iSight webcam.

I also installed BootCamp and Windows XP on a 10GB partition and was able to play Need for Speed Porsche. The process for getting Windows XP running on my MacBook was really straight forward and all the hardware in the MacBook was recognized and works great so I have to give Apple kudos for that.

Designed by JD

Chichipanguanorrea 3.0 staff wishes you love and joy during these holidays and an amazing new year 2008. This time we are very sorry we could not hire neither Ugly Santa nor Ugly Elf, but we put together this beautiful christmas tree to keep the holiday spirit alive and we hope you enjoy it (specially if you are a ‘millionaire‘, a ‘devil‘ or a ‘powerful‘).

I spent all day yesterday at the 2007 Challenge organized by First Lego League (FLL) organization which is a Robotics contest for kids using LEGO Mindstorms. The day was very fun and the team i was coaching, the Pond Springs Pioneers finished in 19th place out of 60th teams. But the best thing is that our team got a 2nd place in the ‘Teamwork’ award and we got a nice LEGO trophy.

KVUE news was covering the event and they said they were going to post pictures and videos later this week.

Last weekend was labor day holiday and usually different stores arrange sales. Half Price Books one of my favorite stores in Austin had all its inventory with 20% discount. This store carries used books, cds, dvds and even lps and tapes.

First I went to the photography books section and got my self a really good photography book that is currently in its 9th edition and sells for $84 at amazon. I payed $14 for the 7th edition. I also bought a smaller book called How to Photograph People for $3.

Then I went to the foreign language books and got my self two books in spanish Rumbo a la libertad y Halcones de la noche each for less than $5.

After that I went to check the music and decided to buy some Opera, so I grabbed Carmina Burana and a compilation of songs by Puccini and Verdi.

Finally and this is the most interesting part of my Half Price Books adventure I was looking at the international artists section and I found a cd from Almendra.

This is an argentinian rock band from the 60’s and Luis Alberto Spinetta was part of it. The cd includes the album “Almendra”, plus some singles. I think this is an album that you will even have trouble buying in Argentina, so the fact that the cd is in Austin is really intriguing. How the hell this cd got here? I’m probably never going to found out, but it is interesting to think about it. Maybe I should do something similar: sale my Cuarto Acto cd from Estados Alterados or Shampoo from Calle Silvestre, hide a note inside the cd cover and ask the new owner to contact me and describe what he thinks about finding a very rare album from Colombia in Austin.

Today I bought tickets for the Austin City Limits music festival 2007 and I’m really happy!

Some of the lineup bands: Björk, Bob Dylan, The White Stripes, The Killers, Muse, Queen of the Stone Age, Bloc Party, Arctic Monkeys, Aterciopelados, …

Back in 2004 I bought myself a very small and nice digital camera Pentax Optio S4i as you probably already knew. For 3 years I’ve been taking lots of pictures and having lots of fun with my camera, but over this past 3 years I also realized how point and shot cameras are very limited and how SRL cameras can take gorgeous pictures. Photography slowly grew in me as a hobbie and I started getting interested more in the subject. Seeing the amazing collections of pictures available at flickr or looking at the pictures taken by friends like Johnny Kings or Niv was definately a motivator.

Anyway, thats a long introduction to tell you that I just purchased a new Nikon D40x digital camera with a 18-135mm lens and I’m really excited to learn more about photography!