Here are the rules that I have set up at the moment that I’m writing this…

1. Wifi Power Control – If I am not connected to a WiFi access point, Tasker turns my WiFi off.  15 minutes later, Tasker will turn on the WiFi for one minute, see if it gets a connection, and if it does not, it will turn WiFi back off again.
2. Automated Calling – If I get a text message containing a specific phrase from a specific number, Tasker will announce (via speaker) who sent the message, call that person back instantly and then turn on the speakphone.  (Cheap international calling.)
3. Please Call Me Alert – If I get a text message from anyone containing a specific phrase, Tasker will announce who sent the message (if they are in my contacts) and then prompt me with a menu to either call that person, compose an SMS, or send a busy message.  If nothing is chosen within 30 seconds, Tasker defaults to the busy message.
4. GPS Power Control – If I launch Google Maps, Google Earth, or Google Navigation, Tasker will turn on the GPS.  As soon as I exit the applications, Tasker turns it off.
5. Night Mode – During a specific time of the day, Tasker will turn off all notifications, but leaves on the ringer.
6. Work Mode – During a specific time of the day and week, Tasker will turn off all sounds, and set the phone to vibrate only.
7. Dock Mode – As soon as I plug a charging cable into my phone, Tasker opens up the clock.
8. Music Mode – As soon as I plug in headphones, Tasker adjusts my volume to a comfortable level, and then presents a menu of music applications that I can choose from.
9. Auto-Sync Control – If my phone does not have a connection to WiFi, and it is not plugged into a power source, it disables auto-sync.  Once either of those are available, it turns back on.

• First day down there, I heard about four songs I was listening to the night before.  Really?  Electronica?  In Honduras?
• Cell phones appear to be a higher priority to a lot of people than food / shelter.
• The cell phone companies are amongst the biggest, if not the biggest companies in Honduras.  Everywhere you go, you see advertising or resellers.  Coke and Pepsi are runner-ups.
• We caught a Moon Jellyfish at the beach.  It was already dead, so it did not have any stingers.  We gave it a proper burial.
• Bugs tend to find there way into your personal belongings somehow or another.
• Animals, such as bats and geckos, tend to be found on the walls / ceilings of rooms.
• Powerlines are an absolute mess.  Power is also rather touchy to weather.
• Pepsi and Coke are consumed religiously.  A glass bottle of Pepsi costs only $0.70!
• Black market exists in Honduras just as you would expect to find in China.  Counterfeit movies, music, etc.
• Police can be easily bribed.
• Everything is protected with barbed wire.  Yards, homes, gates, etc.
• On the higher quality homes, most windows are doors are re-enforced with metal grids to protect against break-ins.
• There is no water pressure in most buildings / homes.  There is no hot water.
• Toilet paper needs to be thrown in the trash can.  It is not to be flushed down the toilet.
• In the smaller communities, the women are usually stuck taking care of housework / errands.
• People let their pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, etc. just wander around freely.
• There is no real trash service around most of Honduras.  Most trash is just thrown on the ground to either decompose or to be blushed into a pile at some point and burned.
• Lady Gaga appears to be fairly popular.  On more than a couple occasions, I heard some of her songs.
• No CDMA service in Honduras, so anyone with a Sprint / Verizon phone will be out of luck.  That is, unless it’s an international model.  However, if it has WiFi, you can make / receive calls with a SIP gateway if you are around a WiFi hotspot.
• American fast food restaurants are very _nice_ jobs in terms of pay.  They all seem to have free WiFi too.  (Pizza Hut, Burger King, Wendy’s, etc.)
• Taxi drivers do not like to have their doors slammed.  I guess Americans tend to slam their doors.
• Taxi drivers also tend to try to take advantage of Americans by jacking up their prices.  Even though it would still be _really_ cheap for an American, it’s outrageous if you make a living in Honduras.
• A lot of Hondurans admire how American’s don’t really care if they look silly. (Head-banging to music on a bus for example.)
• On buses, random people will get on the bus to try to sell something, some will get on to give speeches, and then have people donate.
• School children are required to wear a school approved uniform.  White shirt, Blue pants / skirt.
• Many kids are seen trying to sell food and other things on the street instead of going to school so they can make money.  A lot of parents pull their kids out of school because they don’t have the ability to support them financially if they go to school.
• Other than I suppose cell phones, in the classrooms, there is really no technology.  American students are spoiled with everything they have access to.
• Stray dogs seem to be more fond of Americans than Hondurans.  Most Hondurans throw rocks at the dogs to get them to go away, where Americans actually want play with / pet / feed them.
• The mall in the capital city of Honduras mainly consists of American / European stores.  Once you enter, you feel like you are back in America.  It’s mini-America, or home-away-from-home.
• The TGI-Fridays in the mall was playing a remixed version of the Super Mario Bros. theme song.  It was awesome.

Update 2010/05/06:

• Old retired school buses from the United States seem to be used in Honduras for public transportation.
• Ocean is not exactly clean.  There was a lot of trash floating around in it.
• Some kids use empty 2-liter soda bottles for flotation devices in the water.  I’d say that’s pretty creative.
• Standard American power outlets are used in Honduras.  Same socket type.
• When an English movie is played on TV, words that are censored in America are not censored in Honduras.
• PETA type commercials are played on TV about how animals should not be pets.

I’ll probably rotate the photos that need to be rotated later.  (I said this with my photos from China last year too, and some of them still have to be rotated.)

I plan on bringing my phone and digital camera, but I won’t be able to make or receive any calls. I also won’t be able to text. I’ll be keeping my phone in Airplane mode for my time down in Honduras. I may take photos with it and post them via WiFi to my blog if I find it convenient, but it’s not something I really plan on doing at this point. Email is probably the best method to get ahold of me.

I guess watch for updates and see what happens… If all else fails, go visit Angie’s website for a general idea of the environment I’ll be in.

A requirement is to have the Viostor drivers on your virtual machine before you continue.  They can be downloaded on the KVM Driver Download page.

Before I explain anything, my configuration in the beginning looks as follows…
qemu-kvm \
-drive file="./WindowsXP.qcow2",if=ide,boot=on \
-m 1024M \
-smp 1 \
-soundhw ac97 \
-vga std \
-name "Windows XP Professional" \
-net nic,model=virtio \
-net user \
-usb

1. To start off, we need to create an empty disk image file, or temporarily link an existing one to the XP virtual machine.  That can be done by adding -drive file="./temp.qcow2",if=virtio,boot=off \ to the configuration.
2. Launch the VM with that configuration option added, and once Windows XP loads, it will ask for the drivers for the SCSI controller, which is Viostor.  Point it to the directory that you extracted the drivers to, and it should install.
3. After Windows XP installs the drivers, shut down Windows XP.
4. Remove that temporary line that you added in Step 1 and change your real drive to say “if=virtio” instead of “if=ide”.
5. After making that change, startup Windows XP again, and when Windows loads, it will reinstall the Viostor driver for that hard drive.
6. Reboot, and you are finished.

In the end, my configuration looks like:
qemu-kvm \
-drive file="./WindowsXP.qcow2",if=virtio,boot=on \
-m 1024M \
-smp 1 \
-soundhw ac97 \
-vga std \
-name "Windows XP Professional" \
-net nic,model=virtio \
-net user \
-usb

Part 1: Create an SSH Tunnel
Unix / Linux / OS X:

1. In the terminal type: $ ssh <SERVER> -D <PORTNUMBER> -l <USERNAME> -C

With the above command, <SERVER> is the remote server running the SSH service you will be using to create the tunnel.  <PORTNUMBER> is any number between 1025 and 65535, and <USERNAME> is the username you will be using to connect to the remote server.  After issuing that command, if you don’t get any errors, jump to Part 2.

Windows:

1. Download PuTTY.
2. Launch PuTTY.  On the initial screen, enter the remote address of the server you will be connecting to in the “Host Name (or IP address)” field.
3. In the ‘Category’ list, expand the ‘SSH’ option, and select ‘Tunnels’.
4. In the ‘Source port’ field, type in any number between 1025 and 65535.  Select ‘Dynamic’ under the ‘Destination’ field, and click on the ‘Add’ button.
5. Click ‘Open’ at the bottom of the window to start the connection.
6. A new window will open up and prompt you for your user credentials.  Enter your username and password.  While entering your password, nothing will show up on the screen.
7. After submitting your credentials, if you don’t get any errors, you should be successfully connected to the remote SSH server.

Part 2: Configure Firefox

1. First of all, if you don’t have Firefox, go to GetFirefox.com and download yourself a copy of it.  If you are on a Windows machine that is not your own, consider grabbing yourself a copy of Portable Firefox for this guide and throwing it on a flash drive.
2. After your copy of Firefox is up and running, whether it be Firefox or Portable Firefox, it’s time to install FoxyProxy.  Add the add-on to Firefox, and restart Firefox when asked.
3. Launch the FoxyProxy options.  From the ‘Tools’ menu, hover over FoxyProxy and jump down to ‘Options’.  From the status bar, right click on the FoxyProxy icon, and select ‘Options.’
4. Click the “Add New Proxy” button.
5. A new window will appear.  “Proxy Details” will be the tab initially selected.  If not already selected, select “Manual Proxy Configuration”.  In the “Host or IP Address” field, enter ’127.0.0.1′ and in the ‘Port’ field, enter the port number you used in Part 1.  Make sure the check box for “SOCKS proxy” is checked.  We will be using “SOCKS v5,” so select that.
6. Click on the ‘General’ tab, and in the “Proxy Name” field, give the proxy a name that summarizes what this proxy will do for you, or where it will connect you to.  You could even keep it as generic as “SSH Tunnel.”
7. Click the “OK” button in the “Proxy Settings” window.  You will be prompted with a message about not adding any web addresses to the domain white-list.  That’s fine, just click “OK” again.  Once back on the main “FoxyProxy Options” window, just click the ‘Close’ button to close it.
8. Time to activate the proxy.  From the ‘Tools’ menu, hover over FoxyProxy and select “Use Proxy <PROXYNAME> for all URLs.”  From the status bar, right click on the FoxyProxy icon, and select “Use Proxy <PROXYNAME> for all URLs.”
9. At this point, any web site you visit will be proxied through your SSH tunnel.  If something is not working for you, go back and check all of your settings from Part 1 and 2.
10. When you are finished using your proxy, be sure to disable FoxyProxy.  If you don’t disable FoxyProxy and your connection from Part 1 is not running in the background, your connection to the internet is going to appear dead.  To do so, from the ‘Tools’ menu, hover over FoxyProxy and select “Completely disable FoxyProxy.”  From the status bar, right click on the FoxyProxy icon, and select “Completely disable FoxyProxy.”

tptLife:485028615:8VSB:81:84:5
tpt Wx:485028615:8VSB:97:100:6
WFTC-DT HD Minneapolis, St. Paul:515028615:8VSB:49:52:3
WFTC-DT SD Minneapolis, St. Paul:515028615:8VSB:65:68:4
WUCW-HD:521028615:8VSB:49:52:3
WUCW-SD:521028615:8VSB:65:68:4
K25IA-D-TBN:539028615:8VSB:49:52:3
K25IA-D-TCC:539028615:8VSB:65:68:4
K25IA-D-JCTV:539028615:8VSB:81:84:5
K25IA-D-SOAC:539028615:8VSB:97:100:6
K25IA-D-Enlace:539028615:8VSB:113:116:7
WCCO-DT:581028615:8VSB:49:52:1
tpt 2:593028615:8VSB:49:52:3
tpt MN:593028615:8VSB:65:68:4
KSTPDT1:599028615:8VSB:49:52:3
KSTPDT2:599028615:8VSB:65:68:4
Worship:629028615:8VSB:97:100:6
KPXM ION Life:629028615:8VSB:81:84:5
KPXM qubo:629028615:8VSB:65:68:4
ION:629028615:8VSB:49:52:3
KSTCDT1:659028615:8VSB:49:52:1