Sunday, May 14, 2000
Defaulting, Wireless, and the Giant Papaya Tree
Catherine ran the numbers and decided she couldn't afford to split the 4 acre lot with me right now (waiting for shares to vest...). I don't think I can afford it on my own -- not if I plan to replace the horrible, decaying house that's on it presently. It would have been easier to give up on, except that I just learned a couple of days ago that I could, in fact, get DSL there, which would remove one of the last notable difficulties of living on Maui (the best I can get here at the school is an analog modem over a crappy phone line). So the image is viable -- I could buy the plot, live in the crappy house, and actually get work done from there with no notable inconveniences compared to San Diego (where my current house is, and where I would return by default if I gave up on finding something here).
Default. How can I live by default?
The wavelan cards are working great. With full wireless access to the LAN and Web (telnet to the linux machine upstairs, email and Netscape via IP Masquerading over the modem line) I'm sitting out in the hammock, looking through some fruiting coconut palms at a forest of probably fifty different varieties of trees, from conifers to eucalyptus to guava to, of course, the mango trees which dominate the lower portions of the gulch near the stream. Though it's hard to say what's a tree and what's a "plant" here since the "plants" grow to be so huge -- like banana plants, or papayas, or these three-story tall spindly things that poof out these bright flowers once in a while... If I get around to it I'll take some pics of the view from the Hammock. For starters, here's a pic of the largest papaya plant I've ever seen in my life, taken on the Kona side of the big island last week (are the power lines a coincidence?):
