December 13, 2010

When we got up in the morning it was raining and cold. It couldn´t have been more than 15 degrees C (60 F) Hey, wasn´t this supposed to be Brazil in late spring, almost summer? Later Dauro told us that this was the coldest day in December here for the last 25 years. The weather gods were obviously in the mood to rebalance the average weather for our voyage.

Instead of the planned lazy day on the beach, working on a sun tan, reading a book, and playing in the water with the children, we headed over to take advantage of the internet line of our friends.

We did intense schooling for the whole day, until Dauro and Laura came home with the kids close to 9pm.

On most days of this voyage I have taken between 100 and 200 photos. Today I took 22. Seven of them were photos of Branquito, Dauro and Laura´s cat, while it was drinking. and twelve were of a SIM card massacre (see below) Branquito refuses to drink still water, it wants fresh water right out of the tap. It starts meowing loudly until you get it and turn on the water:

1-2-3

Did you know that scientists only recently discovered how cats drink from a bowl? By using high speed cameras they have found out that the cat does not scoop up the liquid as previously thought. Instead, with surgical precision, they lay their tongues flat, with the bottom side only barely touching the surface of the water, and then pull them up quickly. This creates a column of liquid standing straight up into the air. The cat then throws it´s mouth forward to catch the column. Impressive, indeed.

For us adults it was good to see the kids advance in their curriculum. We do hope, however, that the weather will improve. This is not tunring into the beach stay we had hoped it would be.

In the evening I suddenly realized that our iPads could use the GSM network to connect to the internet. With the ridiculously low pricing of data transfer here I could buy a separate SIM for one of the iPads. To test if it worked I got the SIM I had already bought out of my iPhone and proceeded to install the card in an iPad.

Full stop.

I had forgotten that the iPads do not take SIMs, they take the new fancy micro-SIMs. Bummer! The SIMs from TIM need to be activated by making a phone call with them first, so even if I could get hold of a micro-SIM, which was not very likely, I wouldn´t be able to activate it (you cannot make phone calls with an iPad).

I put the card back in my iPhone and consulted with my old friend Google. He could tell me that micro-SIMs contain the exact same CPU and contact surfaces as a standard SIM. They are really the same, just with less plastic around the edges. I even found a site explaining how to cut a SIM to make a micro-SIM.

I went over to the local store to get one and went to work. All I had to lose was 6 USD.

So, that big SIM needs to go into that little drawer there:

I cut off 3 pieces and a corner:

and made it fit:

It didn´t work! Ahwwww! I noticed that the card was not completely centerd and proceeded to cut off another piece, about half a millimeter (teeny weeny fraction of an inch) thick. It now looked like this, as seen from the contact side:

I didn´t have much hope, but put it in the iPad once again. Holy mackerel! It worked! I was online. I was happy. Me Tarzan, me make micro-SIM with bare hands. Me strong!

Eirik

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