More remarks from afar

I am back in reality from Las Vegas and also back in the land of "free" high-speed internet (free as included in the price of the hotel). The only good news I have picked up from Latvia is that Lattelekom is offering 1 Mbps download, 512 Kbps upload HomeDSL for an extra LVL 1.99 per month, with the first month free to those who requested it by March 27. The only bad news is that I could not access the www.dsl.lv page to get my free month, presumably because I was outside of Latvia and the HomeDSL network. Oh well.
In Las Vegas, you have to be pretty far off the strip to get free internet, otherwise it is USD 10 for 24 hours, as it was at the ridiculous Luxor where we stayed (not my idea). So anyone travelling to Las Vegas, Google for free internet, plus a free shuttle to the main attractions, and you will get a far better deal. Plus make sure your friends and family in Latvia get Skype on their home/work computers, so you can make computer-to-computer calls for free. SkypeOut, the service that allows you to call ordinary phones, will eat up EUR 0.20 per minute to Latvia, so calling on a phone card may be cheaper.
One major "problem" here on the West Coast is that one is -10 hours from Latvia, making it impossible to overlap business days. Right now (before the US goes to Daylight Savings Time) it is 20:15 here, but 7:15 AM on a Saturday in Latvia. I spend the first week of my vacation sending SMS to all kinds of unanswered calls that I got at 1:30 AM local (California) time, telling the callers that I was in the US. So if you are expecting calls on your roaming LMT/Tele2 or Bite phone, turn the phone to silent and then SMS your callers. With free internet, it should not be hard to keep up with any e-mail.
As for Vegas, I will diverge from telecoms simply to say it is the world's biggest balagāns. I don't want to explain that Latvian term, so if you don't know what it means, ask your nearest neighborhood Latvian.