Netgear XAV101 Powerline Networking - Syncing or adding a device

I just wrestled with adding a 3rd Netgear XAV101 powerline networking device to my network. The main problem is that the documenation is blatantly wrong. To press the security or factory reset buttons, you do NOT hold them down. You just click them once. I kept getting stuck in the stage with two green lights on (first and third) implying the device was not paired correctly.

The steps I followed to get everything working with a custom private key:

1. Go to each unit in your network and click the "factory reset" button once.
2. Once everything is reset go to device #1 and press the "security" button once, then go to device #2 and press the security button once.
3. Wait two minutes. (I think you have to pair 2 devices before you can add a third)
4. To add the 3rd (or 4th or 5th) device. Click the "factory reset" button (why not?) and wait a few seconds.
5. Press the security button on device #3, then press the security button on device #2. That should pair #3 to the first two.

The Netgear documentation says you need to hold these buttons down for two or 10 seconds. When we did that, it seemed to make sure that nothing happened whatsoever!

TempGetStateItemExclusive3 called repeatedly - SQL Server requests timing out from ASP.NET

UPDATE 1/28/10: Ok, so the solution I provide below, isn't actually the fix. The SQL Agent being off was actually a side-effect of restarting the SQL Server. Turning it back on certainly helped things, but we still have seen this blocking issue since this fix was in. I currently have a question into stack overflow about this.

---

I just spent the last couple days trying to track down an issue with SQL performance where there seemed to be a blocking or hanging issue causing SQL requests to timeout. Doing a profiler trace, I found a stored procedure called TempGetStateItemExclusive3 (TempGetStateItemExclusive in older versions) getting called over and over seemingly grinding the server to a halt.

It turns out, the issue was with the ASP.NET Session State stored in SQL Server. Lots of internet searches didn't turn up much. There is an old bug in .NET 1.0 that had to do with serialization of objects. I also found a promising looking hot fix that seems to address this exact issue (but it wasn't our solution).

Our problem ended up being that the ASPStateTempSessions table (stored in either tempdb or ASPState) was growing out of control because no old sessions were ever deleted. Looking up session data then became uber-slow causing ASP.NET to timeout waiting for the session (at which point it tries again, amplifying the problem). You can check how many active session rows you have by doing a simple query like this:

select COUNT(*) from ASPStateTempSessions

The cause for this out of control growth was that our SQL Server Agent was turned of for some reason, so old sessions were never cleaned up.

The fix was to turn the SQL Server Agent back on and make sure the ASPState_Job_DeleteExpiredSessions job is running. We also had to turn on the "SQL Server Agent (MSSQLSERVER)" in the Services section of Windows and make sure the Startup Type is automatic. Our session count is now hovering around 1500 (but I suspect this number would vary vastly based on traffic, the important thing is to make sure it doesn't grow out of control).

Hopefully this helps someone out there, or at least gives you some ideas for ways to track down the problem!

Hyperfit USA Review

I've been working out at Hyperfit USA in Ann Arbor, MI for over a year now and I've been meaning to share my thoughts about it, so here it goes!

First, some background about me

I was always an active kid but certainly no savant at sports, and eventually found my athletic "home" on the track team in high school. I had a successful high school career and continued running in college at the University of Michigan and was a pretty decent college runner. My one remaining claim to fame is that I still hold a U of M school record in the 600m dash (1:17.33 for anyone who knows what a good 600 time is). I also ran 46.8 and 1:49.8 in the 400 and 800. I was actually even ranked 4th in the world in the 600 in 2001 (but admittedly, it's not a world champs event so fewer people run it)

After college

It's a weird time for a lot of people because almost all of the structure that school or college provided evaporates. I wasn't quite good enough to kid myself into thinking I should be training for a post-collegiate track career so my motivation to train at a high level kind of died. There were quite a few years there where I didn't do much of anything, fitness wise. I did still run a bit recreationally, doing a 5k here and there, but nothing serious. I may not have known it, but I was in pretty terrible shape. Here's a picture of me which has to be near my wimpiest:

Getting back into it

One day, I got struck with some inspiration to get into shape. I used to think "in shape" meant the ability to jog a 4:30 mile or run sub 50 in the 400 after being woken up in the middle of the night. But even looking back at college, I wasn't "totally fit", I was just fast at running. So, I bought a weight set on craigslist and started doing bench press in my basement. I was getting back into shape! (Or so I thought)

What's Hyperfit?

Fast forward a couple years, and I had been getting more serious about fitness, working out at a gym at least a few times a week, mixed in with running, hill repeats, etc. I started hearing from a few different friends about this CrossFit thing and my roommate started working out at Hyperfit. Since I had been working out, I think we'd both admit that I was in better shape than him, but after hearing what was going on at Hyperfit I knew he was closing the gap fast, so I had to get in on that. I e-mailed Doug, and set up my first intro session!

Some Reservations

I originally had some reservations about working out at Hyperfit... I wanted to workout like I liked to work out. In my case, that meant focusing on my "glamour" muscles to make my body look as good as possible (and ignoring the "core" and legs, because who cares?). At some point, in my aged wisdom though, I decided that I would just get into incredible shape, then whatever my body looks like would be the way it should look.

Pukey Pukey

The "intro WOD (workout of the day)" is as follows: Row 500 meters, do 40 air squats, 30 situps, 20 pushups, 10 pullups in succession, as fast as you can. I had been working out and was a college athlete, so figured I could blow this workout away. I even cheated a little by training for it before I got there. Well, the workout basically blew me away. I think my time was around 6 minutes and I was JUST shy of puking for about 30 minutes afterwards. THAT sure brought back memories. When I got to the pullups, I was trashed. At the gym, with tons of rest, I could rip of 10 pullups no problem, but after doing all that other stuff I could barely reach up to hold on to the bar. The workout made a mockery of me!

So what makes Hyperfit different?

A lot of things:

• Group based workouts: You can't just show up to the gym and piss around on machines for half an hour then walk out. You show up to scheduled workouts and are forced to work your ass off because everyone else is working their ass off doing the exact same measurable workout and you don't want to look like a pansy. (Not looking like a pansy was my motivation through most of my 10 years of competitive running)
• Total body fitness: Everything at Hyperfit is designed around total fitness. I have yet to do bench press or bicep curls here. (Although my chest and biceps are stronger than they've ever been). Instead more total body complex exercises are performed, like push ups, pullups, olympic lifts, rowing, kettlebell swings, wall balls, rope climbing, running, various barbell and dumbbell exercises and more (if you don't know what those are, don't worry). My "core" is stronger than it's ever been and it gives me a lot of confidence in day to day life and athletic activities!
• Randomization: The workout you do each day is set when you get there and is always (much) different than what you did last time you came. Any fitness expert will tell you one of the keys to improving strength and endurance is to "surprise" your body and your muscles with something different. If you go to the gym and do the same thing every day you're only getting a tiny percent of the benefit out of it that you should be. This doesn't happen at Hyperfit.
• Experts: Personal trainers are expensive. Hyperfit's "group based" workouts offer the best of both worlds. You have expert trainers there who know you by name, teaching you the moves, assigning the workouts and encouraging you to work your ass off, but the cost is shared among all of the members.
• Measurable: While you never do the same workout twice in a row, there are a set of "benchmark" workouts that we do a lot. They're all measurable (usually time, reps or weight based) so you can look at how you're improving over time. Tracking your performance is key to improvement or you end up just not caring and plateauing quickly.
• Photos and Video: Pretty much every workout is photographed and video taped by the trainer running it. It's fun to ego-surf the photos and videos, plus gives you a chance to take a look at your form on the various exercises.
• It's for everybody: When I mention Hyperfit to friends, the most common objection I get is "but that must be for crazy good athletes". No, crazy good athletes are already in great shape, YOU are the one that needs Hyperfit. Everything at hyperfit is scaled. That means stronger members may be doing shoulder presses with 180lbs, but new members can scale the weight down to a PVC pipe if that's where they are at. Everything scales: pushups, pullups, weights, reps, etc. In fact, I highly recommend checking your ego at the door your first few months and going VERY light on the weights or you might end up VERY sore like I did. Hyperfit is certainly embraced by current and former athletes, but I think it's the out-of-shape non-athlete that really needs it, because you get a window into what workout out is REALLY supposed to be like while you get into the shape of your life!
• Results! The bottom line is that the combination of the things above equal results. If you're going to the gym and doing the "elliptical" for 60 minutes while you read a magazine, you're quite literally wasting your time. At Hyperfit, you can do in 5 minutes what 60 minutes of the elliptical can't touch.

Now What?

Now a bit over a year of working out at Hyperfit and I did the "intro wod" the other day in 4:06 blowing through each exercise with zero rest. (taking 30%+ off your time is a lot). Yesterday I did 150 pushups and 150 pullups (5 of each, every minute on the minute for 30 minutes, a workout I couldn't have dreamed of doing a couple years go). I'm also having a lot of fun! It's nice to get out and see people after a long day of staring at a screen. Despite not focusing on my "glamour" muscles, I'm pretty sure my body looks better than it ever has. Here are a couple more recent photos taken at Hyperfit:

"Lens error, restart camera" - PowerShot SD750

Problem: My camera's lens (PowerShot SD750) recently stopped retracting after probably getting some sand in the mechanism from the beach. It would give the dreaded "Lens error, restart camera" warning message. I read everything I could, but nothing I did fixed it. I went as far as taking the camera apart, tiny screws and all before I finally chickened out and put it back together.

Options:

• Try cleaning it. I tried, but nothing worked
• Buy a new one... pricey and feeding our "throw away" mentality
• Sell the broken one used on ebay for 80ish bucks and buy a working used one on ebay for 150ish bucks. Probably my best answer but still 70ish bucks and a lot of hassle
• Get it fixed. Canon, apparently, charges $200 (more than the cost of the camera). I called local shops and they said they just send the camera to canon

Solution: Well, DURING my shopping on ebay for a used camera, I found a guy selling the repair for "Lens error, restart camera" for $64. He had excellent feedback (a lot of which looked like it was for this repair service). So I gave it a go. I'd rather have my own camera back anyway. So I shipped it and VERY quickly he got it and shipped it back. Within a few days. I got it, turned it on and "LENS ERROR, RESTART CAMERA". Ugh... I was a little discouraged, but he seemed responsive so I wasn't too worried. But it turned out that there was just some moisture or something on the lens and I cleaned that off and it's been working perfectly ever since!

Summary:

• Guy who fixes "Lens error, restart camera" for $64
• The auction I bought

CUSTOMER SERVICE WATER ANN ARBOR MI

Another weird looking item on my credit card statement, this one with no phone number:

CUSTOMER SERVICE WATER ANN ARBOR MI

It actually was referring to a parking ticket I paid at city hall. Very descriptive.

Maybe there needs to be a website for users to report these.

Update: A better place to look up unknown charges is on What's That Charge?!

SQL Server full text search returns no results, won't index new rows (Error '0x80040e09')

So... I just spent the last hour or two pulling my hair out trying to figure out why none of the full-text searches were working on a specific table of my database. (SQL Server 2005 Express with Advanced Features). Here's what I learned.

Problem: SQL Server full-text search will not index new rows after a certain date. After dropping and rebuilding the index all full-text searches return NO results on that table. When this happened, it was only happening on one specific table and all other tables were acting normally. I eventually dug way down into the SQL full text error log and found an error like this: "Error '0x80040e09' occurred during full-text"... This happened after switching to a new database server.

Solution: Reboot the server. (Are you kidding me?)

Hope this saves someone an hour or two.

SuperSimpleStorageService.com

Those looking for a high-volume, low-cost, totally useless hosted storage solution should check out Amazon S3's newest non-competitor: S4, SuperSimpleStorageService.com

MAPDEMOG

MAPDEMOG is DynamicGeometry

Back in Lima, heading home tomorrow!

Jess and I made it back to Lima this morning after a 15 hour bus ride. Jess is getting on a plane tonight and I get on a plane tomorrow night at around 11. We had a great day in Arequipa yesterday and did get to go white water rafting! The boat almost flipped and when it did, Jess and I were 2 of the 3 people that sucessfully did not fall out of the boat!

Today we hung out on the beach in the hot, hot sun, and I'm hoping that my sunscreen did its work! I am TOO worn out from the sun to try to monkey with pictures, but I'll upload them all when I get back on Tuesday!

Made it to Arequipa!

We made it to Arequipa safe and sound! Today we're just hanging out and checking out the city. Tomorrow, we're going white water rafting, then getting an overnight bus back to Lima for Jess' flight home!

I've finally got my camera cord so I was able to upload a few images!

The beginning of our 4 day trek, riding bikes down a big mountain in the rain! We ran into a river flowing over the road... We had to load our bikes back onto our van which was able to drive over the water which was at least 8 inches deep or so and flowing fast!

Posing in front of another river on the bike tour

Jess and I during our 13 mile hike on the 2nd day of our 4 day bike/hike/Machu Picchu trek! Jess is doing something new with her hair... can you spot it?

Day four of our hike in front of Machu Picchu! Pictures definitely don´t do this place justice!

Back in Cusco, heading to Arequipa tonight!

We successfully finished our mini-trek and it was a blast! Our last day we got up at FOUR AM (I think I mentioned that last time) to hike up the Machu Picchu mountain. Other than the early hour it was really awesome. Machu Picchu is really unbelievable. In short, it's this huge Incan city made of rock and was abandoned only about 500 years ago! The Incans were living there and building this incredible city in the Mountains when they got word that the Spanish were coming to kill them and destroy their cities and build nice churches on top of the wreckage.

I think Machu Picchu get so much attention because it was one of the few Incan cities that avoided that fate. Scholars think it was because the Incans, in anticipation of the Spanish coming, burned down their own city (leaving only the rock walls, pottery and other non-burnables) and hid all the paths to the city. They did this so the Spanish couldn't follow the paths and use the city as a camp for their men.

ANYWAY, it was great. I have awesome photos, but unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera cord with me today, so they'll have to wait for another day. Tonight we're getting on an overnight bus at 9pm to arive in Arequipa tomorrow morning. We're hopefully going to do some fun stuff, like white water rafting! Then only a couple more days 'til Jess flies home on the 25th and I fly home on the 26th!

On a 4 day, 3 night trek, Going to Machu Picchu tomorrow!

Sorry for the posting delay! After I arrived in Lima, we got up the next morning and hopped on a plane to Cusco which is the biggest city that acts as a staging ground for trips to Machu Picchu. When we got into Cusco we booked a 4 day/3 night trek that ends at Machu Picchu, which will be tomorrow!

That trip started at 8am the next day and we've had no Internet access until now. There is a world famous "Inca Trail" that is a multi-day hike to Machu Picchu but that is really pricey and generally requires 6-9 months advanced booking. SO: Our trip takes us on the OTHER Inca trail. Which is just as awesome, as far as I know, but less expensive... and easier to book.

The first day, we drove in vans to the top of a mountain... I think around 4,000 meters? Well, it was way too snowy and sleety and cold up there, so we drove closer to 3,000 meters (I'm making most of these numbers up) and they let us off and we BIKED DOWN on bicycles they provided. It was really fun. It was never too steep. It was cold and raining at the top, but by the bottom it was probably 80 degrees and sunny. It took a long time for the whole bike... probably 4 or 5 hours? One girl fell off her bike and sliced open her arm, but luckily one of the 12 people on our trip is a medical student from Argentina and SHE did the stiches to help the girl!

The NEXT two days were long hikes... 13 miles and 10 miles or something like that. We ended up at some awesome natural hot springs buried in the mountains last night. The trails are incredibly cool and incredibly rural. We passed a lot of native Peruvians and it's amazing to think how our lives would be different if we lived in these tiny huts seemingly hundreds of miles from civilazation. Despite being hard to imagine how different our lives would be, we've tried and here's what we came up with:

• We would watch fewer YouTube videos
• We would go on more hikes
• We wouldn't care as much about Obama being president
• Fewer facebook friends
• We would have more pet dogs and cats (they're everwhere)
• We wouldn't care as much about who will be the next American Idol
• We would care way more about who will be the next Peruvian Idol

So tonight, we're crashing in Aguas Calientes, and tomorrow at FOUR AM we are hiking up 1600 steps to Machu Picchu. (Apparently in South America they have a four AM in addition to the more traditional four PM)

I didn't bring my camera cord on this mini-trek, so this is all for now! Hopefully I'll have pictures later

Arrived in Lima, Peru! Heading to Cusco

I have officially arrived in Lima and successfully found Jessica, making the most difficult portion of my trip complete! It was a fairly uneventful travel. A guy from the hostel even came to the airport with a sign that said my name to pick me up and take me back! Pretty lucky. I´m kind of a big wig around here. Jessica also missed a boycott of some sort that shut down all busses between Ecuador and Peru. That would have left us stranded in different countries, EXCEPT the boycott luckily started a day after she got through!

We´re headed to Cusco which is the city closest to Machu Picchu, which we´ll hopefully see in the next day or two!

Simple way to Draw a Circle with Google Maps

The Google Maps API doesn't provide a "draw circle" function for free, so you're left to your own devices to draw an approximation of a circle using the GPolyline object.

Here's a really basic circle drawing example adapted from the more complex example below. My simple example:

http://www.herculessolutions.com/GoogleMapsSimpleCircle.htm

The more complex example with dragable points and more:

http://maps.huge.info/dragcircle2.htm

How does ChaCha make money?

I just found out about ChaCha.com and had one pressing question: "How does ChaCha generate revenue?". Well, I dutifully texted that question into ChaCha and got this response:

ChaCha earns revenue from advertising on its website and through its strategic partnerships. Please text more questions to answer! http://chacha.com/u/theyxbp3

I don't see any advertising on their site, so I guess I don't really buy that answer. I think the real answer is, "ChaCha doesn't generate revenue yet, but hopefully we will some day, somehow". Or maybe they're funded by phone companies for some reason?

ROW_NUMBER() Sucks?

Is it just me, or does the SQL Server 2005 ROW_NUMBER() function's performance suck? I always used to complain about SQL Server's lack of a LIMIT clause like MySQL has. I was thrilled when 2005 came out with the ROW_NUMBER() function.

When we switched to SQL 2005, I dutifully recoded the main search query to use the ROW_NUMBER() function, only to find out that it hurt performance by almost 3 fold! In addition, using ROW_NUMBER() doesn't give you an easy way to get the total number of records a query would return. (Helpful to display something like, "Viewing records 51-100 of 2,120")

I should put a caveat here: My testing shows that ROW_NUMBER() is actually much faster when doing very simple queries with large numbers of rows. For example, if you need to quickly grab 10 rows in the middle of all 10,000 rows in a single table with no joins, ROW_NUMBER() is probably for you. However, if you're doing a more complex query like to search for specific records or joining with many other tables, my testing shows ROW_NUMBER() is a significant slow-down. Here are the results for my specific query:

Description	Rows	Estimated Cost	Actual Time	Slowdown
My original query	12,547	3.701	0.729	-
Using ROW_NUMBER()	12,547	6.616	2.094	287.1%!

So, if not ROW_NUMBER(), then what? My solution is to declare a temporary table and insert all of your result IDs into that table, along with the ordering. You can then join with that table to grab only the results you need. For example:

DECLARE @FirstRecord Int
SET @FirstRecord=0
DECLARE @LastRecord Int
SET @LastRecord=49

--First make a table to hold the order of the final sorted results
DECLARE @ResultOrder TABLE  
(     OrderID int identity(0,1) not null primary key clustered,
    ResultID int    
);

--The main "search" query... this can be pretty slow with lots of rows
INSERT INTO @ResultOrder (ProductID)
    SELECT p.ProductID
    FROM Products p
    WHERE p.Cost < 100 AND p.CategoryID=4 --Or whatever search you're doing

--A very fast way to get the total number of results
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM @ResultOrder; 

--A very fast way to get the details... you can even join with many more tables
SELECT p.Name, p.Cost, c.Name AS CategoryName, s.Name AS SalesPerson
FROM @ResultOrder ro, Products p, Categories c, SalesPeople s
WHERE p.ProductID=ro.ProductID
    AND p.CategoryID=c.CategoryID
    AND p.SalesPersonID=s.SalesPersonID
ORDER BY ro.OrderID

Obviously, that is a simple example, but I suspect as your query gets more complicated (especially the 2nd details part) you're way better off not using ROW_NUMBER().

As an ADDITIONAL speedup, that first result set is potentially PRIME cacheing material. For example, if a user (or a crawler) hits the first page of results, then clicks "next" a few times. You do the expensive search only once, then quickly pull up the details for each page on subsequent requests. You might have to analyze your usage to see how often and how close together different pages of the same search are requested.

How do you best cache those Result IDs you ask? And how do you get the IDs to and from SQL? Well, I'm about to implement that myself so hopefully I'll let you know in a subsequent blog post.

TWL Two Letter Words Sorted By Second Letter

I'm playing a lot of scrabulous online lately and I constantly want to see which two letter words END in a given letter. So for your enjoyment, here are the 101 words defined by the TWL sorted alphabetically by first letter and second letter.
In list format:

Sorted by the first letter AA AB AD AE AG AH AI AL AM AN AR AS AT AW AX AY BA BE BI BO BY DE DO ED EF EH EL EM EN ER ES ET EX FA FE GO HA HE HI HM HO ID IF IN IS IT JO KA KI LA LI LO MA ME MI MM MO MU MY NA NE NO NU OD OE OF OH OI OM ON OP OR OS OW OX OY PA PE PI QI RE SH SI SO TA TI TO UH UM UN UP US UT WE WO XI XU YA YE YO ZA Sorted by the second letter AA BA FA HA KA LA MA NA PA TA YA ZA AB AD ED ID OD AE BE DE FE HE ME NE OE PE RE WE YE EF IF OF AG AH EH OH SH UH AI BI HI KI LI MI OI PI QI SI TI XI AL EL AM EM HM MM OM UM AN EN IN ON UN BO DO GO HO JO LO MO NO SO TO WO YO OP UP AR ER OR AS ES IS OS US AT ET IT UT MU NU XU AW OW AX EX OX AY BY MY OY

And in table format:

Sorted by 1st letter	Sorted by 2nd letter
AA AB AD AE AG AH AI AL AM AN AR AS AT AW AX AY BA BE BI BO BY DE DO ED EF EH EL EM EN ER ES ET EX FA FE GO HA HE HI HM HO ID IF IN IS IT JO KA KI LA LI LO MA ME MI MM MO MU MY NA NE NO NU OD OE OF OH OI OM ON OP OR OS OW OX OY PA PE PI QI RE SH SI SO TA TI TO UH UM UN UP US UT WE WO XI XU YA YE YO ZA	AA BA FA HA KA LA MA NA PA TA YA ZA AB AD ED ID OD AE BE DE FE HE ME NE OE PE RE WE YE EF IF OF AG AH EH OH SH UH AI BI HI KI LI MI OI PI QI SI TI XI AL EL AM EM HM MM OM UM AN EN IN ON UN BO DO GO HO JO LO MO NO SO TO WO YO OP UP AR ER OR AS ES IS OS US AT ET IT UT MU NU XU AW OW AX EX OX AY BY MY OY

Back in Santiago!

After another all night, 12 hour bus ride we made it back to Santiago! Dan just left safely and should be in the air on his way to Chicago in a few minutes.

This is the point in my post where I like to complain about either the speed of the Internet or the speed of my computer. Today you are in for a treat because I get to complain about BOTH! I was hoping to upload all 200 or so of my photos, but they are taking about 5 minutes each. There will be a few up, but I think we'll have to wait for later to see all of them. There are also some exciting VIDEOS on the way!

Today in Santiago, we got in, helped Jess finish moving out of her apartment, found a place to stay and explored the city! Tomorrow we may be hitting up two coastal cities about an hour from here, Valaprasio and Vina del Mar.

I'll post more photos and videos soon! You can see my Chile set of photos in progress here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerschneid/sets/72157603748636020/

3 Days In Bahia Inglesa

We spent the last 3 days and 2 nights in Bahia Inglesa! Bahia Inglesa (or English Bay) is this gorgeous little touristy beach town. Food and lodging is expensive, but totally worth it because everything there is so beauiful and sunny. I think we all could have used about an extra week there!

Unfortunately, I´m currently using the same computer that the Wright Brothers used to run their aviation simulations. The historical value is interesting, but uploading photos is nearly impossible (as it pre-dates the Internet by about 80 years).

The last two days we went SURFING on the Pacific coast! We wore wet suits as the ocean is still pretty cold here, but not too bad. This was my first time surfing and I did a bit better than I expected (although I had pretty low expectations, since my goal was to not drown). It turned out it is pretty easy to "catch" a wave, but standing up on the board proved to be the hardest part... I got up a few times but nothing you´ll see on ESPN2 any time soon.

We also stayed in this awesome little cabaña. Well, not little, actually. It had 3 rooms and SIX beds, plus a living room and kitchen and porch! We bought groceries and cooked dinner and drank Chilean wine last night. I think they charge per person, and foreigners don´t have to pay the 19% sales tax so we ended up paying about $80 per night, split 3 ways!

Tonight, we´re catching an overnight bus to Santiago. Dan leaves tomorrow and Jess and I leave on the 29th. I´ll be back in Michigan on the 30th! Photos and even some exciting VIDEOS will follow!

On our way to Bahia Inglesa!

We´re doing great and have left San Pedro de Atacama. We're currently on a layover and are on our way to Bahia Inglesa which is described as "beach nirvana". Still short on Internet time, but here are a few selected photos from the last few days!


Here we are in our beach clothes in 0 degree Weather! Actually, this is after the sun came up, so we were much warmer here.


Here is a shot of the mountain where we saw the geysers. Those are flamingos!


This is my feet as we are about to cross the Bolivian border. I didn´t sign up for snow!


Dan and I in the snow. SNOW? Seriously though... I didn´t sign up for snow.


This is a shot of the Bolivian customs building, which was more of a shack. To get here, we turned off of a nicely paved highway in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. I don´t even think we were on a road. We just drove off road for a while then got to this shack. (They did have two little gates, also in the middle of nowhere, as if that might prevent people from crossing or something). We actually had some trouble crossing. They said Americans had to get visas in advance, even though our tour booking guy specifically said we didn´t. Everyone else on our tour left and we were sitting there at this shack in the middle of nowhere, waiting for the Bolivian "boss" who was going to come sort it out. He actually did show up, and got us temporary visas. I have to imagine the tour company decided it was easier to have their guy bribe the officials rather than force American tourists to buy the expensive and time consuming visa. It would have been nice to let us know though!


The three of us in Bolivia in front of La Laguna Blanco


We drove around in Bolivia in these trucks for HOURS and HOURS and HOURS over virtually no roads. We all had serious headaches and car sickness by the end of the day. We also were in a BLIZZARD by the end and were concerned that we wouldn´t make it back at all. I certainly did not sign up for a blizzard.


Dan and Jess in natural hot springs in the middle of the Mountains! The hot springs were about 100 degrees here!


This photo doesn´t do this place even a little bit of justice, but it is a huge bright PINK lake with THOUSANDS of pink flamingos in the middle of gorgeous mountains. It was just really really beautiful, fertile land. Amazing stuff. And if you´re wondering how flamingo kebabs taste, they´re delicious.