Today, we left Hotel Limbo in Bocas Town, Boca del Toro, Panama, and made our way across the border into Costa Rica via boat, taxi, and foot. The bridge is reminiscent of the trestle at the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz before the foot bridge was added, but with planks across the outside of the ties for foot and vehicle traffic. Few vehicles actually cross the border, most of them being tractor-trailer rigs.
My last Panamanian blog entry came shortly after our arrival in the city of Panama; since then we've been to Santiago, Las Lajas, David, and Santa Fé; we're now in Bocas city in the province of Bocas Del Toro, and about to cross the water to Bastimiento to see what it's like over there. In addition to many kilometers in buses and taxis, we put about a thousand kilometers on a rental car, and spent a fair amount of time traipsing around a handful of promising farm properties (fincas).
When preparing to go to Panama, I realized I was badly in need of sunglasses which would fit my head. I'm a big guy with a big noggin, and in the past that has meant one of two things; Gargoyles with adjusted frames, or the Oakley Mambo, later renamed M-frame. Unfortunately, Oakley has discontinued the M-frame, so I decided to buy some Gargoyles oversized ANSI classics. This turned out to be a very wrong decision.
Today was a day of minor disappointments awash in a sea of ease. We visited the Sierra Botanical Gardens and Zoo hoping to see Panama's poisonous snakes, but they have no reptile house. We went to the causeway to find the yacht club, but the one we were looking for is nowhere to be found. We went to allegedly the best steak house in the nation, and found it lacking in all areas.
23.3 degrees centigrade and 67 percent humidity; I'm far from adjusting, but it's only our second day (and first morning) in Panama. The airport was about like any airport anywhere, and customs might as well have not existed for all the trouble we took to pass it. The weather is instantly reminiscent of the South in the summer, although it's not nearly as hot. The pervasive humidity makes up for it handily.
Well, I made a nice fresh install of Windows XP with SP3 slipstreamed and got 0x8024402F running Windows Update. Long story short, the Automatic Updates service was not running. WTF? Run "services.msc" (or use computer management, etc etc) and check to see if this service is operative before running through your other options.
If you install nvidia-glx-195 drivers from Nvidia Vdpau Team PPA then you may have trouble removing them later due to packaging failure ;) Actually, the problem will crop up when you try to reinstall nvidia-glx-185. I had to do this because my GT 240 is unsupported under all versions of the driver, and while it works it locks up hard on anything later than -185.
As a veteran owner of used vehicles, I am more than a little used to encountering automotive problems. When my Ford's charging system idiot light began to flash at low RPMs, I knew I had a serious problem coming my way. When it picked up to doing it on a regular basis, I realized that the problem had arrived, and unless I wanted to be buying a pair of deep-cycle batteries, I should find a solution, probably in the form of an alternator replacement. After doing a little research, I decided to install a later-model Ford alternator.
As I may have mentioned previously, my 1993 Subaru Impreza LS has a faulty throttle position sensor. I diagnosed it using a non-autoranging digital multimeter on the megohms setting. A better solution is to use an analog ohmmeter, or to follow the factory test procedure and connect a voltmeter to some of the pins on the ECU. So far so good. I ordered a cheap Delphi replacement part from autopartswarehouse.com, and the fun began.
As you may already know, I am the owner of a 1993 Subaru Impreza LS (GC5). While returning from a trip to San Francisco to attend the Power to the Peaceful festival (which was extremely underwhelming this year) in celebration of the three-year anniversary of my relationship with my lady Anna-Maria, a loud clicking noise was to be heard while accelerating and turning left. I easily identified this problem as a failure of the left front axle (I could tell by feeling the vibrations as much as by hearing the sound in this rather small car) and proceeded to research the issue of repair.