Ola pessoal! Hi everyone! I haven’t blogged in over two weeks due to a technical snafu. I have been traveling with an HP Mini netbook that has been refashioned through more than 50 hours of stealth programming into a hackintosh–yes, a PC running a MAC OS. I am not a developer, but I live in San Francisco, land of Mac enthusiasm, and my friend and Mac advisor Ed was extremely keen to turn a PC into a MAC so I went along for the ride, convinced it would be worth it to run my own programs and enjoy more virus protection. It’s an eye-popping wonder to see the MAC dock on an HP and it’s cool to run iPhoto. <any people are impressed and jealous. However, there have been some major bugs.

1. The audio input doesn't work, so I can't Skype on the computer (thankfully I have my iPhone with me and can talk using Skype on my iPhone)

2. The ethernet cable doesn't work, so it's wifi, or nofi

3. Worst of all, two weeks ago the machine crashed and the airport stopped working so I couldn't connect to the Internet at all. A netbook is made for using the Internet. I couldn't read email, surf the web, back up photos, or post to this here lovely blog

Through some miracle of chance, the gods of buggy hacky technology have given me a reprieve this morning and the airport works again, suddenly. Now I am busily backing up photos and writing this update. I am mightily crossing my fingers that the airport continues working so I can keep blogging on the road without resorting to saving files on pen drives and then toting them to Internet cafes.

Stay tuned for most posts–so much to say! I have been to Ouro Preto, Paraty, Petropolis, and most recently into the Amazonian jungle. And that's to say nothing of the jungle in Rio. Send me your best tech luck and check back soon.