Eleven

What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you're eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two, and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don't. You open your eyes and everything's just like yesterday, only it's today. And you don't feel eleven at all. You feel like you're still ten. And you are, underneath the year that makes you eleven.

Like some days you might say something foolish, and that's the part of you that's still nine. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mami's lap because you're scared, and that's the part of you that's five. And maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you're three, and that's okay.

You don't feel eleven. Not right away. It takes a few days, weeks even, sometimes even months before you say Eleven when they ask you. And you don't feel smart eleven, not until you're almost twelve. That's the way it is.

You're eleven today. You're eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, and one, but I wish you were just one again.

Happy birthday my little baby girl, I love you very much.

Adapted from "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros (Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. Random House, New York. 1991)

more...

The New TV

Today I spoke with Fernando, one of my best friends of many years, and I learned just 2 months ago he started his own blog.

In the times when we were university students and we had plenty of spare time to waste doing nothing, we used to read, investigate and talk for hours about technology and how we would, when we had jobs and money, buy every new gadget in the market we weren't able to have at that time.

Well, time has passed (15+ years to be exact) and here we are, discussing again about today's technology and how all this tech wave has passed over us without having caught it. In one of his posts Fernando jokingly talks about the technification of love, and compares today's way of life with the live of just 20 years ago. It's worth to read, although it's in Spanish.

I can say I totally agree with him. Today's technology has changed the way we live, and has made us dependent of it. We can't conceive life without cell phones, digital music, internet, satellite TV and DVRs, and about this last I'll talk after the jump.


DVRs are the new ubiquitous technology. I confess I resisted it for a couple of years because, as it happens with every new technology, I thought I didn't need it, until I tried it for a first time. Now I don't know how I could have lived without it.

I have had DVR for just a week, and I love it. After more than 4 years being a loyal DirecTV subscriber, I decided they didn't deserve my loyalty anymore after they weren't able to give me a DVR without I having to pay more than $100 for the equipment and having to sign a new 12 months contract agreement. Call it a wrong customer retention policy. They give away new equipment to new subscribers, but we the old ones have to pay a hefty amount to get the same things.

So what did I do to that respect? I sent DirecTV to the hell and signed up with DISH Network.

I got a brand new equipment, for free, with a 18 months agreement. Heck, I would have signed the same contract extension with DirecTV if they would have given me free equipment.

Anyway, DISH's service is the same crap as DirecTV's, hundreds of channels and nothing worth to watch, but hey, at least I can record all that crap in my new flamboyant DVR. For now, I'll have to get used to the new channel numbering, but once that happens I definitely won't miss DirecTV.

My DISH Player-DVR 625 allows me to pause live TV, which I think is the real killer feature. I usually don't have much time for watching TV and when I do it something always happens that makes me stop watching and attend such other issues, call it phone calls, disturbing kids or bothering wife, you name it. The fact is that if you can't postpone such issues until the next commercial break, then you may lose the best part of the program or movie you're watching. And there's when the Pause button becomes handy. I know every single DVR in the world also has such feature, but for me it's something completely new and great. Isn't technology amazing!?.

The only drawback I noticed on this DVR 625 is that it "hangs up" very often and very easily. If you press the wrong combination of buttons on the remote, it stalls for minutes without letting you do anything. I don't know if this is a common behavior or a failure, so I'll have to research about it.

more...

Cool new features for my DS

I just read Nintendo is developing a bunch of new gadgets and features for the DS, which includes an Opera web browser and a TV tuner. The DS has built-in wi-fi and free wireless access in many places, and because it also has awesome stereo audio capabilities someone is already offering a 4 GB hard drive with a media player as well. (via I4U)

more...

Future husband in training

My 2-year old son just discovered the magic of his TV/DVD combo's remote control. He fights for it and cries when it's taken away from him. He raises and lowers volume constantly; pauses, forwards, rewinds, stops and resumes the movie endlessly, and the worst part is that he definitively enjoys doing it.
Trying to watch anything with him is such a pain.... now I know how my wife feels ;-)

more...