Gas, food, and Internet

...Wait! Don't sell your gas-guzzling SUV just yet. They're saying that gas will soon drop to $1.15/gallon on the mainland. (We're currently at $3.28 in Guam -- but it may drop some here, too.) Well, there goes all the impetus to develop alternative cleaner fuel.

...Upon Melissa's recommendation we got Philly Cheese steaks at the Steaks and Shakes restaurant tonight (Not the same as Steak & Shake in the mainland Midwest). Definitely an island winner.

...A construction crew hit a fiberoptic cable yesterday morning taking down the Internet for a good portion of Guam -- at least those utilizing a cable connection. But amazingly they had it back up within a few hours. There are times when things are at least as efficient here as they are on the mainland. Sometimes -- but often not.

I suspect that most people on Guam get their broadband from the cable company. We do at the school and it works fairly well. On the other hand, at the home where we're house-sitting they have DSL from a company called Talaya and the service has been extremely random. It's literally out of service more than it's on. Tonight it decided to start working again -- hopefully long enough to post this.

I bought some pre-paid dial-up from Talaya's parent company IT&E as a back-up (not too many choices here from cheap dial-up) and when it actually connects the connection is really slow. I should have known it would be this way. When I first got on island someone who was leaving Guam gave me a pre-paid IT&E cell phone with lots of minutes on it. They told me that IT&E had the best coverage on Guam. But it doesn't work at all where we're staying in Dededo -- the most populous village on the island. OOG.