How to get to Teotihucan from Mexico City via bus
I recently visited Teotihucan when I was taking a short break in Mexico city. I had read a lot about the available tours online, and saw a lot of complaints about how much time the tours spent at the archeological site vs. how much time they spend at gift shops, etc. I tried to find a tour that would give me some options regarding the time, but couldn’t find any. Private drivers seemed quite expensive, but I was able to find some articles on the bus that runs between Mexico city. I decided this was the best option for me. Everything worked out perfectly, but the guides online were a little confusing for me, so I thought I’d write some additional information that people might find helpful.
The first step to taking the bus is to get to the north bus station “Terminal Autobuses del Norte”. I took a cab from my hotel on Paseo de Reforma and it was 150 pesos. If you haven’t read up about taking cabs in Mexico City then please do some research and don’t hail cabs from the street. Only use authorized sitio taxis which can be arranged through your hotel. I would recommend going as early as possible to avoid the crowds. I had planned on going earlier in the day, but was running late and caught the 9AM bus. The park was very quiet for about an hour when I got there, but loads of tour buses started showing up around 11:30. I would recommend taking the bus around 7:30 or 8:00 if possible.
Once arriving at Terminal Autobuses del Norte, go inside and then go all the way to your left if you are facing the ticket counters. You will be looking for a stand that says “Autobuses Teotihucan” and has the following sign above it:
Teotihucan Bus Company
You will then need to buy a ticket which is 34 pesos ($2.30 at the time of this post) for a one way journey. Make sure you buy a ticket to “Zona Arqueologica Teotihucan” and not the town of Teotihucan itself. Your ticket will look like this:
Please note a few items on the ticket. The buses leave every fifteen minutes, so my ticket was for 9:00. The gate (Asiento) number for my ticket was gate #9, which is to the left of the ticket booth. When you go through the gate there will be a lot of buses lined up between numbered columns. My bus that day was leaving from the column (Anden) between #6 and #7. If you see a bunch of tourist types getting on your bus then you have likely found the right one, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.
The bus trip took about 90 minutes this day and we had around three stops on the way. Make sure you are getting off at the right stop. How will you know? You will see giant ancient pyramids out the bus window. If you don’t see the pyramids then it isn’t your stop.
Once you get off the bus, you will need to walk about 100m to the entry desk and then buy your entry ticket which I believe was around 50 pesos per person. Then enjoy the park… (There are many resources on what to see inside the park, so I won’t duplicate those here)
Exiting the park can be a little confusing, so hopefully this will help. When you go through the exit, keep walking along the road until you see the security hut. Across the street you will see this sign:
There is no bus stop, but the bus stops at this sign. The buses continue to run every 15 minutes or so until 19:00, but I wouldn’t take a chance on getting the last bus. Just wait by the sign until the bus comes along and then ask the driver if it is going to “Terminal Autobuses del Norte” just to be sure. The fare is 34 pesos for the return and the driver doesn’t have much change, so try to have small bills with you.
Terminal Autobuses del Norte is the last stop on the way back, so you can’t miss it. One item to note is that when I took the return bus back, a military or police officer got on at the first stop and asked everyone to exit. He then checked the bus, and used a metal detector want to scan everyone prior to entering the bus again. I don’t know if this happens all the time, but it is something to be aware of and obviously a way the local police force is deterring crime on the bus systems.
More Javelina
My wife and I were walking the dog last month when we stumbled upon two Javelina resting in the wash. I was able to run inside to grab my camera and shot the attached footage. Since then she’s seen a family of Javelina with 4-6 pups, and we think its the same group.
Bobcat in North Scottsdale
I was taping up some hockey sticks in the garage a few months ago when I saw something walk past me out of the corner of my eye. I turned around and it was a Bobcat. I’ve seen them before in our neighborhood, but never this close. I ran inside and grabbed my camera to take a few shots…
Potential risk when screencasting with DimDim
First, let me say that I love DimDim. If you aren’t familiar with DimDim, it is a free way to do online presentations similar to LiveMeeting or WebEx. Its also an easy way to view web pages online with someone else using their screen recorder plugin, and is especially neat because it typically requires no user software installation. Earlier this evening I was using DimDim to discuss which flights to choose while talking to someone on the phone. It really helped because I could select the flights online and show it to the other person in real time.
After the call was over I logged into the meeting through my second computer, just to see what the experience looked like on the other side of things. A few minutes later, Firefox happened to crash, and I assumed the meeting was over. Firefox had completely closed and as I launched my browser I continued to work on other applications. The screencaster app however had not stopped transmitting, and I continued to see the session on my second computer as it was still logged into the meeting. I fired up a shell and was able to see the following processes:
macpro:~ user$ ps auxw | grep een rob 699 4.0 0.5 731600 44576 ?? R 6:56PM 1:14.50 /Applications/Dimdim/Screencaster.app/Contents/MacOS/OSXvnc-server -connecthost https://df1.dimdim.com/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX?dimdimId=dimdim____XXXXXX#roomId=_default#sessionId=XXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXX#recording=off user 754 0.0 0.0 2435032 528 s000 R+ 7:09PM 0:00.00 grep een user 698 0.0 0.0 668212 3904 ?? S 6:56PM 0:00.08 /Applications/Dimdim/Screencaster.app/Contents/MacOS/dpc user 694 0.0 0.0 668212 3888 ?? S 6:53PM 0:00.08 /Applications/Dimdim/Screencaster.app/Contents/MacOS/dpc user 692 0.0 0.6 3666808 58076 ?? S 6:53PM 0:04.65 /Applications/Dimdim/Screencaster.app/Contents/MacOS/dos
I was able to kill these processes and stop the screen casting, but someone unfamiliar with the software might think they had quit on their own. This is a potentially serious issue if you were presenting to clients, etc. and then happened to open some confidential files. I’d recommend looking at your running processes after each screencasting session to ensure they exited properly.
Czech Hockey Camp
I attended an adult hockey camp (http://www.hockeycamp.cz) at Prague / Nymburk in the Czech Republic in October 2008. I wanted to write a few words on it primarily because I couldn’t find any reviews online when I was researching the camp.
- Our Crew
The camp was excellent training, and a great value. The current cost of the camp is 590EU which comes out to around $750 US. This includes two ice sessions daily, dorm style lodging, meals, and a few other events. Unfortunately the camp was scheduled at the peak (hopefully) of the current financial crisis, and many players had to cancel, leaving only four of us signed up.
- Nymburk Ice
I would have expected the camp to have been canceled, but they were nice enough to ask us whether we still wanted to come out, which we did. This was really an added bonus because it gave us a lot of individual instruction. We worked with the coach for the two on-ice practices each day and then had the option of playing drop-in hockey with the locals in the evening or other sporting events.
The coaching was excellent and I really enjoyed my time at the camp. As someone who “learned” to play hockey as an adult, I did pick up quite a bit and am sure that my game will improve if I implement the concepts into future games. The coach also went above and beyond what we signed up for, taking us out to a local pub one evening and to two local games (HC Sparta Praha and HC Slavia Praha) on two evenings. The staff was very friendly and made us feel quite welcome.
I’d be happy to answer any questions anyone has about the camp, and will certainly consider returning next year.
- Nymburk Hotel (Adjacent to the rink)
Telecom Wires in India
These would be very difficult to troubleshoot…
How to match values for two columns in Excel
One item that I see people struggle with quite often is how to match values for two different columns in Microsoft Excel. In many cases you can sort both rows, remove duplicates, and then look for a match. This however doesn’t preserve the original data.
I’ve also seen people write a program to parse the data and then run queries on it. This is efficient if you’re going to perform the task again and again, but not very time friendly if you only plan on doing it a few times. Fortunately some of these functions are built right into excel and you can match values on two columns with some simple calculations.
We’ll use two columns in this example, both containing the first names of an individual. The objective would be to determine if the value of the first column exists in the second column. This seems simple for the small number of entries we’ve laid out, so please consider you would be doing this with hundreds or even thousands of values.
Here we have our two columns that we would like to compare:
We’ll want to use the next column to set up a MATCH function covering the span of the second column. In this example, we have the name “MARY” in field A2, and would like to see if there is a match for anything in fields B2 to B19. We’ll enter a formula of =MATCH(A2,$B$2:$B$2:$B$19,0) into cell C2.
If you aren’t familiar with placing the “$” character in the formula box then just know that it keeps a value constant when cutting and pasting. We’ll want to create a formula for the C2 cell and then cut / paste it for all values in column C, so we want the “$” character in before the row/column places to ensure Excel doesn’t move it with the copy/paste function.
With this MATCH function we now get a value which indicates the first row where the Column A finds a match with column B. If no match is found then a “#N/A” is placed in the column.
We can then issue an IF function to detail some output on the data. In this example I used a “YES” if there was a match, but this could easily be replaced by a “1″ if you were trying to add the number of matches, etc. In our example we’ll want to use the formula “=IF(C2>0,”YES”)” in Row D:
Hopefully this helps any Excel column matching items you may want to accomplish.
Coyote on my street early this week
I got up early to take a flight to San Francisco earlier this week and snapped a quick picture of a coyote walking down the street. Its only my second year in Scottsdale, but I haven’t seen as much wildlife as I did last year.
My wife did see a bobcat on the street this week, but I’ve never seen one. I did catch a Javelina in the yard a few months ago…
