We spent the day on the Internet today. Still trying to get the blog updated. The service here is not super fast but not bad. The connection drops from time to time though and this makes it hard to upload photos or to download large files. Things are a little better at the resort than on the boat but not much.

We were on Eric's boat for dinner a while back and he put on April Wine, Nature of the Beast. I hadn't heard that album since high school. What a great record. I had it on vinyl, but like so much of my music from the 70s it disappeared somewhere between UCSB and Los Angeles.

It is nice to live in the modern world (even when you're in a place like Chuuk), I went onto Amazon and boom, $7.95 and a few downloads later... I now have the April Wine album. I have had to download some of the tracks several times because if you lose the connection during a download you end up with a drop out or pop in the track (this is astonishing to me because a first year CS student could write a downloader that would guarantee the blocks downloaded matched those on the server).

The problem with Amazon is that their "you might also like..." algorithm is too good. As I finished with April Wine, it asked me why I haven't replaced that Montrose album I haven't heard in so long, or what about Ted Nugent Weekend Warriors? Sammy Hagar Standing Hampton? Van Halen Fair Warning? If the download connection worked better I'd be in big trouble.

As it turned out the big trouble came when I checked my MasterCard statement. I discovered $6,000 in charges at AutoZone, Kmart, and 7/11in the US over 2 days. This is our first big credit card theft, so we'll see how Citi deals with it. We have been pretty careful with our info but after three years of buying almost everything online, I guess we were due. The funny part is that Citi shuts us off every time they see a charge outside of the US (which is where we always are) and they let these obviously fraudulent charges go rampant for two days in the US with no worries.

Guam is getting some nasty frontal conditions right now and seas are predicted to run up to 13 feet this weekend. We are looking at Monday as our departure day so we'll see how things develop.