Last Week

Without an internet connection at the new place life it different and blog postings become rare. At the same time, to some extent I have settled into a weekly pattern that I like but is rather uneventful -- something like real life I suppose. Weather has been a little wet (and "weird" a local said) in Kalaheo. I certainly keep busy and continue to enjoy my time here, but it does feel less and less like "vacation" or "travel".

Monday I went in to Waimea to visit my friends at the West Kauai Visitor Center. I helped them set up a web site using Google's free-for-nonprofits enterprise web service but the account become unusable for them recently. It seems the account somehow was switched to a business trial account which after 30 days expired ... I re-signed-up and it seems to be working again. We had lunch from the local Mexican truck (pretty good but pricey) and chatted for a while.

Worked a couple of days in the Allerton garden helping the grounds crew. It's a great place to spend the day (tourists pay good money for a tour, and I get to spend the day here for free) and as a regular volunteer - which is unusual it seems - I've gotten to know the crew a bit. Also you get to go places and see things not on the tour ... you do have to work, of course. One day we weeded - not a lot of fun with the mosquitoes out in force and working a rocky area - and the other day trimmed philodendron mostly.

On Thursday I swapped rental car out for another, driving into Lihue airport. At times rental cars can become scarce here - obviously when the island supply is rented out there are few alternatives - so I reserved the car by phone before heading down. When I arrived I got upgraded to a Jeep for $10/day extra and this time the nice lady at the counter upgraded me to another Jeep (a little nicer one) gratis. In Kauai at least, I heartily recommend Hertz after two good experiences.

Today I dropped by the sunshine market at KCC (the community college) in Puhi and bought some local produce and eggs and more Midnight Bear bread from Ursa. Then out to Hanapepe library where I've been fighting to get a wireless connection with the admirable help of Ed on staff.

Technical details - unless you know and care about the network problem stop reading now. The HTTP 302 redirect goes to a domain that does not DNS resolve (wireless.librarieshawaii.org) preventing me from logging in with library card number and getting a connection. Turns out the explicit DNS server IP address settings my ISP requires were the problem - removed those and it worked. Disappointingly the library IT staff kept giving highly bogus advice - reboot the laptop, don't use more than one browser.