Job Discussion Forums

[tjteachin]

Here at my university in Oaxaca, we have reguladores. At least that's what we call surge protectors here.

About safety, I lived in Tijuana for 10 years, a city I consider home and will eventually return to. There was a lot of drug violence, of course. A few days ago I remember that every day, without exception, there was a headline in the local newspapers detailing the latest numbers of deaths and the gruesome ways they died from violence among drug trafickers.

Yet, for the most part, ordinary citizens weren't affected. Those who go looking for trouble will be the ones to find it. Those who didn't take normal precautions were the ones hurt. For most people, it was as normal as living in any big city.

[notamiss]

A surge protector will guard your equipment from spikes, but to keep it from going out when the power goes off, a UPS (Uninterruptable Power Source) is needed. Granted, this is more an issue with a desktop than a laptop. We use UPSs that have 6 outlets; of which 3 are merely surge protectors, and 3 keep the power going for 10, 15, 20 minutes, depending on how much battery the unit carries.

[MotherF]

A regulador is neither a surge protector nor a Uninterruptable power source.
In places like Oaxaca, the voltage is constantly fluctuating. If you put a voltage meter into your wall socket instead of seeing a steady 110, you will get something between about 70 and 130. A computer, and other expensive electronics need a nice steady flow of 110! So we use a voltage regulator on our computers.

My immediate family and I also never choose pork to eat--if that's what's served at a wedding or quincea�os or some such event we eat it, but we don't choose to eat it, not because they feed the pigs garbage but because the Taenia solium (tape worm) parasite is rampant in Mexico. My husbands uncle--who lived in Mexico City during the last 40 years of his life--died when one of these babies got into his central nervous system (a rare complication from a tape worm case--but tape worms are NOT rare in Mexico.)

[notamiss]

I had always heard that the tapeworm is only a hazard if the pork is incompletely cooked. Is that not true, or is it that it's hard to tell if the meat has been properly cooked, so that it's safer not to take the chance?

[mejms]

[MotherF]

Proper cooking should kill the tapeworm. But around here it's often a chunk of pork floating in some very flavorful sauce, so it can be hard to tell.
Deep fried carnitas are probably completely safe as I can't imagine anything surviving a nice long boiling in oil!