Click here to view the embedded video.

Just goes on and on huh? Why am I not surprised.  Sheesh!

This made me want to know exactly where ARE these countries in relation to one another. Therefore, you may click the thumbnail map above for a full sized view of the area.

I believe this will place everything in perspective for my loyal readers!

With that in mind, I am switching to new theme which hopefully will be easier to read. About the only thing I may want to change on this one, is moving the posting information to the bottom of each post instead of having it appear just below the title.

Anyway, feel free to comment on this new design… good or bad.

Some Blogs add new content (articles) every day. Others maybe once or twice a week or sometimes less often. So the question is whether there is a way to keep up with the blogs you like to read without having to go to that Blog to see if there is anything new. If you have a list of maybe 8-10 of your favorites, that can be time consuming. Well there IS, and this article will teach you how to do it in almost no time, and the good news is you already have everything you need to set it up!

The KEY to all this is RSS or Really Simple Syndication. It is likely that you have seen a link or maybe a graphic on many web sites and Blogs that looks like this or maybe this . Sometimes is is a text link that says: Subscribe to my feed or Subscribe to my Podcast. When clicked, all of them will provide a special web page that is kinda nasty looking, but is not there for you to read. It is there for a news reader to read and THIS is the key to keeping up to date with as many Blogs as you like in one centralized location.

Every time the blogger adds an article, this RSS FEED page is updated. The article’s title is shown and also an excerpt from that article, usually the first 4-5 sentences. They are links, so when clicked, they take you to that Blog or to that article, your choice! Now you have an easy way to see who just blogged something and you can then go to their blog to read the whole article!

Nearly all blogs create this RSS feed automatically. There are also companies like Feedburner who take the RSS feed created by the Blog and make it pretty. They ALSO provide a central link to that RSS feed. I use Feedburner and you can take a look at what appears there by clicking here or here. There are two as I publish two blogs.

OK… so how can you use these RSS Feeds to create a summary of all the blogs that interest you. To make this simple, as promised, I am going to use Yahoo or to be more accurate My Yahoo. Why Yahoo? No reason at all. This whole process is available on Google, My AOL, MSN, NewsGator and others. I happen to use My Yahoo so that’s what you get!

We are going to create a one page location where you can follow two of my Blogs and two others that I like to follow. This post is also available as a downloadable .PDF if you wish to have a printable copy. Click here to download.
You will need a Yahoo login before you can do this. It is painless, but required by Yahoo to use the My Yahoo feature. I am going to presume you have one or will make one for use here.

Here are the steps:

1. Login to your My Yahoo. I use their three column format.

2. On the right side, below the advertising, you will see a link: Add New Page Click that link.

3. On the next page, just below the Yahoo Banner, you will see a link like this: Add Content Click that link.

4. On the next page, you will see a box labeled Find Content and a click box labeled Find. Do NOT click that box! Instead, look just to the right and you will see in really tiny print: Add RSS by URL. That is the one you click!

5. On the next page, you will see a location to enter the URL (page address) of the RSS for the blog that interests you. How do you find that URL? You go to the Blog of interest and look for that little graphic or any of the text links I gave above and you click on that link. THAT will tale you that nasty looking page I mentioned. You then just COPY and PASTE the URL into the box pn the Yahoo page and click ADD.

So, let’s say you want to add the RSS for The Real Costa Rica Blog. The RSS page is: http://blog.therealcostarica.com/wp-rss2.php so you copy and paste that URL to Yahoo and click Add.

6. On the next page, you verify the information is correct and click: Add To My Yahoo.

That’s it! When you return to your My Yahoo, the Blog Title will show and the last serveral articles and dates will be show right there! When the blogger adds a post, the RSS is updated and so is your My Yahoo. When they Post, YOU know it right away.

Now some variations.

Variation 1.

We will next add the Blog Costa Rica Jones. On HIS blog, the RSS link is called: Subscribe to my podcast. BUT, when you click it, you are asks to DOWNLOAD the page. That is NOT what we want! We want the LINK to that page. How do we get it? Simple! Right Click on the link Subscribe to my podcast and select “Copy Link Location”. This may vary by browser, but this is what Firefox uses. Now PASTE that link into the Yahoo page as I described above, click Add, then on the next page click Add To My Yahoo. You’re done!

Variation 2.

We are now going to add an RSS feed to My Dos Colones, another blog I frequent. On his blog, the RSS link says: Subscribe to my Feed. When you click THAT link, you get to his Feedburner page for his Blog. We discussed Feedburner above. That link actually shows his RSS feed all pretty and formatted, but the URL for THAT page is what we will copy and paste into Yahoo. You could, of course, right click to Copy Link Location as we did in variation 1 above.

You can now follow all of the above steps again to add blog after blog to your My Yahoo. When done, you will have a collection of all your favorite CR blogs in one handy location.

And now the cool parts!

Cool thing 1.

My Yahoo will allow you to add these RSS feeds from ANY web site, Blog, newspaper, whatever! Just look for the graphic on any web site and you know you can add that content to your My Yahoo.

Cool thing 2.

Many sites now offer an instant, one click graphic that when click, automatically add that content to your My Yahoo. Here are two examples: For Hisfault – Rants from the Tropics look for this: Now when you click THAT link, it instantly adds the RSS feed for www.hisfault.com to your My Yahoo. you need do nothing! Here is one for The REAL Costa Rica Blog that works the same way:

On various blogs, you may also see: , , and others. These are automatic, 1-click links to add the RSS to the reader specified. In fact I will be adding them to my blogs very soon. All work the same way.

At any time, you can now quickly easily add the RSS feed for thousands of blogs and web sites. Also, if a blog becomes inactive or you lose interest, you can just click the little X and Yahoo removes it from your page.

Here is a link that shows you a screen print of my personal My Yahoo and exactly how this whole thing looks when finished. I have maybe 20 links, but the screen shot only shows the first three.

RSS is really easy an now you can make use of it too.

RSS Links used in above examples:

The Real Costa Rica Blog

http://feeds.feedburner.com/therealcostaricablog

Hisfault – Rants from the Tropics – Costa Rica

http://feeds.feedburner.com/hisfault

My Dos Colones

http://feeds.feedburner.com/DosColones

Costa Rica Jones

http://costaricajones.blogs.com/costa_rica_jones/rss.xml

and a couple more to play with!

http://www.abroadincostarica.com/index.rdf and

http://jacquelinepassey.blogs.com/blog/rss.xml

Today’s story about Pope Benedict XVI’s return to Rome following his historic, three-day trip to Six Flags St. Louis is just about as funny as it gets.

Anyway, I have no idea if this link will hold forever… but do take a read. It will brighten up your day unless you’re like terminally Catholic!

Bbaale County MP Sulaiman Madada said any girl in his district who wanted to take part in the scheme aimed at promoting girls’ education would be given a gynecological examination by health workers to check they were virgins.

Probably don’t have a Ugandan Civil Liberties Group there huh?

The orginal article is here Oddly Enough News Article | Reuters.com but they don;t leave them up for long.

Oh… and The MP did not extend his offer to young men… apparently because he was unwilling to accept a boy’s word that he was, in fact, a virgin. Whatta surprise!

According to Henry Mora, coordinator of the study, the alarming news is based on the disproportionate increase in the cost of food that make up the “canasta básica” (basic food basket).

The increase in the cost of the canasta basica this year has topped 21% which means more than 50% of the cost of living for many. Mora explained that the increase affects the most the poorest which spend 80% on basic food needs.

The latest census done in 2004 showed 21.5% of Costa Rican families were poor while UNA investigators say that it will reach 25% by the end of 2005. In 2003 the number of 18.5%.

There is a lot of terrorism news about suicide bombers these days which got me to thinking about this whole virgin thing.

It is my understanding that those who recruit and train the suicide bombers promise them 72 virgins when they enter heaven. I guess these are wifey type virgins, but I am unclear on this. I mean the term ‘slutty virgin’ sorta seems like an oxymoron.

I guess before I start… I’d sorta like to know what’s up with this virgin thing anyway? I mean yeah… maybe your ‘her first’, but most virgins suck in bed (maybe not literally) and need extensive training. Give me a hot 35 year old woman with some experience just about anytime… well maybe not NOW as ML would surely kill me… but we were discussing virgins, right?


Sadly, there have been a pretty huge number of these bomber idiots blowing themselves up over the past decade or three, which begs the question about the “virgin pool”. I mean, just how many virgins are available in this pool? First, if you eliminate the under age virgins 0-17 (to be street legal), you must be looking at a fairly small number. Then there is the fact that they had to die as virgins. This would sort of eliminate a lot of high schoolers I knew. Anyway…

Freshly blown up? That brings up another question. OK… you blow yourself up. Do you get maybe like reassembled before you meet the virgins? I am not going to dwell on this much, but if you ever read The Monkey’s Paw… you sorta get my drift.

OK… back to the virgin pool. I am guessing that if I am a devote Islamic boy, eager to enter heaven and claim my virgins, I would want my virgins to be devote Islamic virgins right? Now really… how big is THAT pool? Maybe they just get the next virgins on the list. Pretty funny if the Islamic bomber person found himself stuck with 72 Jewish virgins! I mean can you commit suicide twice?

And what happens if you are an Islamic suicide bomber in an Islamic country like Iraq and you blow up a bunch of virgin Islamic girls. Then you get them right back! I mean OK… they were virgins and all and maybe all very good Islamic women, but might they not be sorta pissed that you blew them up? I sure would be.

Virgins rights!

This is the 21st century. There just about HAS to be a National Organization of Virgins (NOV). What if the bomber, even if properly reassembled, if really ummm.. disgusting? Stinky breath? Foul balls? Can’t hold a job. Can these virgins maybe back out of the deal? Are there virgins rights or is this kinda like an arranged marriage thing? I am sorta thinking that Islamic boys may treat their virgins as cattle. I doubt modern day virgins would put up with that! Do the female virgins get the same pay as male virgins?

Now that brings up marriage. Does the bomber have to marry these virgins? All of them? Can he just marry one and fool around with the others? Do these virgins all live in the same house with the bomber? I once read that women who live together for some length of time will eventually all get their periods at the same time each month. I have no idea if that is true, and as my daughter is not here to tell me that is stupid and I am a pig, I will presume that this is true. OK… 72 women in the same house with PMS? That’s heaven?

The Virgin Conversion Plan

Not to be to graphic here, but after the bomber has “had his way” with the 72, they are clearly no longer eligible to be called virgins. One time… pop… no more virgin! So can he replace them? Maybe go back to the online virgin chat line, or virgins-on-line web site and hook up with the next 72? What happens to the old (now ex) virgins? If there are not enough virgins after being blown up, does that bomber get a pre-owned virgin that is almost “like new”. Do these recently converted ex-virgins have to resign from NOV?

Finally, let’s say there IS this huge pools of virgins. THAT would imply there might be a huge group of mothers. OK… you got 72 wives… and NOW you have 72 mothers-in law. Holy Moly.

Ya know? The more I ponder this, the more sure I am this is not covered in Islamic bomber school.