One small step . . .

I've always been irritated that birth control pills are prescription-only. I don't need a prescription for the over-the-counter cold medicine that makes my heart race double-time & causes mood swings; why the heck do I need a prescription for an optional drug whose main possible side effects are pimples and reduced monthly cramps?

I'm hardly a conspiracy-theory junkie, but this is exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to start picketing street corners, ranting about the evils of a paternalistic, pseudo-Victorian society trying to control women's sexuality.

So I am naturally overjoyed that Plan B has just been approved to be sold over the counter. My only question: how long is it going to take for the rest of us? Come on, we don't want to incentivize people to plan poorly . . . do we?

Adventures in networking

Last week our DVD player started making sad little staticky noises instead of actually playing any sound. Hmph. So much for watching News Radio while lazily eating pizza.

Possible solutions: we could clean our DVD player . . . buy a new DVD player . . . or we could network the whole house! Use our 200 GB hard drive to record TV! Download movies! Set up our internet connection to run thru the walls on our electrical wiring! Copy our old VHS tapes to a portable hard drive!

Naturally we chose option three.

We haven't set it up yet, but here's what I've learned so far about doing it (as well as prices, for my own amusement in case they come down before I get around to doing this):

• Total cost to get the TV network set up should be $300-$400. Wow, less than I thought!
• No need for Windows Media Center edition - in spite of Microsoft's nasty website that tells me I need to buy a whole new computer!
• We'll need a TV tuner & recorder to install into the computer - $134
• We'll also need a Media extender to get the signal from the computer into the TV - $90
• Two powerline ethernet adapters to get the network signal from the room with the computer into the room with the TV. Sounds like the older ones are too slower, but the latest from NetGear might work: see Powerline Networking that Doesn't Suck, and Mossberg's column
  
• Possibly Sagetv, which supposedly has a better UI to navigate recorded stuff & find new things to record - $100 (including the site license re: the TV networked in the other room)
• This page has great details on how to set up recording from various sources. Another good reference guide is here.
  

I also have a bunch of questions:

• Can we watch DivX movies and/or streaming movies with this setup (eg CinemaNow - and is there a better site than this one)?
  
• The TV tuner supports 125 channels. BBC America is on channel 162. Will this work?

And of course, the final question: if we clean the DVD player, will that solve the initial problem?

You've been where?

Peru smells of dust and diesel and the leftovers of crops burning in the fields and incense and cedar and good things cooking. I gorge myself on fresh squeezed pineapple juice and say "no" and "no" and "no" to all of the dozens of small children trying to sell me postcards and shine my hiking boots. On the train out of Cusco I marvel at the fact that I can now afford a seat with a view (so unlike that previous anguished trip six years ago, but still containing brief flashes of vivid memory: last time I sat on this side of the train, last time I ate breakfast at this bakery).

I chat with cabdrivers and the women who keep the hotel desks running. I say, "so much new construction!" and they tell me yes, the Lima airport has been privatized and is now run by a German, see the new hotel? Be careful after dark, don't call attention to yourself or buy from street vendors. Enjoy the torn-up, graceful beauty of the slivered, shadowy, squatter-filled mansions in the center of the city and be sure to visit the mall on the edge of the sea - it's amazing. If you like you can take a bus up to the peak and see the city - 10 million and growing - spread out below you.

They ask: Have you been to Cusco? Did you like it? Will you come back? Have you seen the fortress at Ollantaytambo?

I take a photo of three doorways: one Inca, one Spanish, one modern. The doorways are lined up on a street that was first laid out over six hundred years ago by people I can barely imagine, but whose profiles I encounter daily behind a shop counter, above a business suit, mortaring a wall with modern mud. Behind the Inca doorway a dog barks, and I hear the smack of a soccer ball against the wall.

I walk for hours every day.

I am here for a week but it feels longer, and when I return to work I can no longer remember the combination for the cable that secures my laptop computer to my desk.

Boxes of . . .

Sitting peacefully in my garage are no less than four boxes of books I don't intend to keep. I've got books that looked good but weren't, books by famous authors that bored me, and books that just weren't, well, me. I won't read any of them again, so the question is "what now?" My available shelf space is in high demand, thanks to a guy who loves books and reading as much as I do, and collecting a little more. For the past couple of months I've been thinking about selling these books on Amazon, but I haven't actually gotten around to it - and it seems like a lot of work. Maybe this is a better option? Seems less painful, and I know just enough about online shopping fraud to be leery of getting into the money-related actual merchant game. Now . . . will I get around to it?