Rachness

Burp! Freebie Kit

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:27:00 +0000

www.

password: stork

download from :www.dood-elle.blogspot.com

Password for Strange Alphabet

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 23:00:00 +0000

password: rmn

Download from dood-elle.blogspot.com

Used lipstick...and a doodle share!

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 08:55:00 +0000

Really, some people can be so cunning. I'm not so sure if cunning is the appropriate word but here's what happened:

After church, my Mom and I did a little shopping and I bought some more pens and a new sketchbook for my art supplies. While I was lining up at the cashier, I saw this woman (vaguely familiar to me but I can't match the face to a name) putting on lipstick, which I later discovered that she still has not paid for.

You see, I thought at first that the lipstick was hers and she was simply and "un-etiquetally" (I'm making up a word here!) re-touching her makeup right there for the whole 2nd floor of the department store to see. But when her turn came up, she handed over the lipstick to the cashier. Wow, I thought. But I just kept silent, like the other people who were in the same line and who obviously saw her too.

Now at this point, the cashier obviously had no idea that the female customer had already tested the product. To add insult to injury, the woman ended up not buying the said lipstick! She held up the line for quite some time because she was pestering the cashier with a lot of stupid questions about the product, like how come it doesn't twist close properly, etc.

These are questions you ask the salesgirl when you're checking out the product, and it's her job to give you a rundown of the item in question, not the cashier who has absolutely no idea about it.

So the woman walked away with a fresh coat of lipstick on her lips, courtesy of a brand new lipstick that she did not pay for. Talk about freebie!

But it worries me too. I pity the woman who'll be buying that used lipstick, thinking that it's never been used before. That's why women should always buy lipstick that are still sealed in their packages. And if you must use those testers, don't swipe them right on the lips, but on the wrist or palm or any other skin just NOT the lips. It's totally unhygienic.

Anyway, like I said in my earlier post, here's a scrap I made today:

These are my nieces and they're really super cute, only that the photo doesn't do them justice at all since it's low-res from a camera phone. So to make up for the crapiness of the pic, I just made the doodles colorful :-).

I'm giving away the doodle border used in the photo and the black doodle curly swirl or whatever it's called that I used in the journaling. It's for personal and commercial use. Yes, it is. And no credit required to boot, although it's HIGHLY appreciated, there's no pressure for you to credit me when you use these.

BUT... (there's always gotta be a BUT hehe)...for digiscrap designers, please take note: Don't include these borders in your digiscrap kits as scrapbook elements or page accents. If you do that, it's kinda tricky isn't it? These are being offered for free so why should you sell them?

You can design stuff out of these doodles. Like, you can turn them into a pattern and make a textured, background paper out of it. In that case, sell them off in your scrapkits! Or blend the doodles into a strip of ribbon, merge them and make pretty digital ribbons out of them. Go ahead, sell them then. Just don't insert my doodles in their original, un-tweaked, un-edited state into your kits and sell them off to unsuspecting scrappers. It's totally unimaginative, unoriginal and deceiving.

Ok 'nuff said, here are close-up previews (200% zoom) of my doodle freebies for today:

These are close-up previews of the doodles. They are in .png files (transparent backgrounds). The previews with the red background is for preview purposes only, to show you that it has none of that annoying white haze nor jaggies. The lines are smooth and vectorized and 100% hand-drawn.

Sigh. I love doodles. I hope you'll like these!

{CLICK HERE} to download.

If you like them, please leave me a comment here :-) Now that would be highly appreciated haha.

Just random ramblings...

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 23:48:00 +0000

It's Sunday and while I'm getting ready for church (and while my tennis-fan-Mom is screaming at Rafael Nadal -who's losing to Novak Djokovic right now- on TV to clean up his act or she's gonna hate him forever) here's a scan of one of the pages of my late night-doodlings:

I purposefully shrunk the scan to discourage any "doodle pirates" passing by *wink*.

These are no works of art, just restless (and sleepless) doodles from last night. I'm not so good yet with the hands and feet, so I need to practice drawing the fingers and the shoes and the legs. For some reason, I always end up with only four fingers and one bigger leg.

Anyway, when I get back from church, I plan to sit down and scrap some more pics, scan more doodles and maybe post here some doodle shares - or in digiscrap talk, freebies!

New site decor

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:07:00 +0000

It's a Saturday, and I just spent the whole afternoon "pimping" my blog. I was getting bored with the previous theme and sadly, I am one of those bloggers who constantly change their blog themes, never seeming to be satisfied with how it currently looks.

But this is the first time I designed my own banner though, so I might be sticking to my current "doodled" theme. I wanted to stamp my personality all over it, give it more character and make it more me. I don't know if my current design speaks good of me (haha) but I like how it looks.

I like clean, simple designs. I didn't want to clutter the page with too much color, and too much stuff on the sidebar and header, so I looked for a blogger theme that was as minimalistic as possible. I found this design from eblog templates but the designer is Node Thirty Three (scroll to the bottom of this page for the credits and links). I just changed the header and I gotta tell you, it was a pain trying to tweak the html of the theme! I am so challenged in that area and I was just playing it by the ear and after several misses, I finally FINALLY got it right. Whew!

In light of how painstaking a process it was, I am sticking with this theme and my banners for now. Let's just say it won't be anytime soon before I get the itch to change it again.

So anyway, will post more updates, more doodles and more stuff tomorrow. For now, it's off to bed for me.

My first freebie!

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:03:00 +0000

For those who are into design stuff (such as scrapbooking), then I have some freebie for you today:

(Click on image of preview above to download)

It's the flowers I used in my Sweet Twing layout I posted here yesterday. These are scanned from my doodles. I have quite a lot of them in my sketchbook now, only it took me some time to learn how to make the digital version look as good as it does on paper.

You see, when scanning drawings/doodles/paintings/etc, you have to deal with jaggies and stray pixels when you extract them from the white background of the paper.

Now that I think I've gotten the hang of it and learned how to properly turn my scans into flawless vectors (I hope!), I felt confident enough to offer them here as my first blog freebie.

The flowers are in .png format and you can CTL+J (copy+paste) them in CS3 several times and then flip some of them either horizontally or vertically or alternately change their sizes and then bunch them together on your layout. Or you can cut them apart and stamp them all over your page.

However you use them in your projects, I would love to see how you've used my first blog freebie. Send me a link or an email and point me to the site where I can see them (if you've posted them online). Don't forget me in your credits, too! And point other freebie hunters to my blog here, not to the download link ok? I just want people to pass by my blog first... :-)

Also, read my TOU (Terms of Use) included in the zip file. You can use these for any projects that are for your own personal use only. Don't worry, I will be offering freebies here for commercial use soon enough. But personal use items are for your own 'consumption' only, ok?

If you download, then please take the time to leave me a comment, either here or over at 4shared. Comment is free! And it only takes a sec or two. Intiendez?

Go download it now! :-) Enjooooooooy.....

More scraps...

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:48:00 +0000

Was able to scrap two more pages tonight (for my gallery over at digishoptalk.com. I'm still feeling my way through this new hobby which is quickly becoming addicting haha.

Scrapbooking is usually a hobby for married women slash mothers. Women who got tons of photos of their kid(s) and husband(s) that they can scrap.

So what's a single girl like me doing dabbling in digi-scrap? Don't ask me! But for a design-oriented, doodle-crazy girl like me, my civil status ain't enough reason to hold me back from scrapping pages like these:

So yeah, I guess I'm gonna scrap my photos (haha). And of course, there's the folks, and the friends, and my big, big family (I got quite a lot of cousins, and nephews and nieces). And don't forget the dogs and cats, too!

Credits for these layouts are on the images. Click on the photos to see larger views. The flowers on the two pages and the frame on the yellow page my doodles, which I scanned and vectorized in CS3. Later on, I'll try to post her a brief description of my process, for anyone who's interested.

In the meantime, tata!

My first scrap!

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:01:00 +0000

My first ever digital scrapbook page:

I'm pretty new to digital scrapbooking, but all the stuff I have seen posted in digiscrap sites all over the net are pretty amazing that I just had to give it a try. So this one here is my first shot at it. The flowers and the butterfly are hand drawn (scanned from my sketchbook and tweaked in CS3). The background paper was textured by overlays from different photos, a trick I learned from various digiscrap tutorials posted online.

I'm still learning, so this layout screams "NEWBIEEE!!!" I'm still getting a handle on how to achieve realistic shadows, the sort that makes the elements and photos look like they were pasted on the paper, and not floating above it.

There were a lot of freebies I downloaded from blogs and websites of generous digital scrappers (there's a LOT of them out there, my favorites: digifree.blogspot.com and ikeagoddess.blogspot.com) but I ended up making my own for my first layout. (I feel kinda guilty using stuff created by other people when I know I can make them myself).

I do plan to give away freebies here as well, from time to time, as a way of giving back to the generosity of the digital scrapbooking community (those scrap-for-charity gestures are really touching), and also because God said we should share what He has abundantly blessed us with.

So as a start, if you would like to get that butterfly and flowers I used in my first scrapbook page, then drop me an email over at my gmail account with this addie: 7sparrows (I deliberately wrote it this way to block off the nasty spam'rs and bot's.) Or you can just leave your email addie at the comments area in this post.

It's been crazy, but I'm back... I hope!

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 14:13:00 +0000

I'd like to say sorry to my friends and family who have been checking here now and then... I have been silent for a long time, due to being tied up with work, part-time design jobs, and family issues. It's true what they say that when it rains, it definitely pours!

I have been trying to keep my head above the water with the work stuff (been losing sleep!). Though I can't share everything here right now, I promise I will be spilling it out in my next posts in the following days. One problem with me is, I have a one-track mind- when I have a project, or when I'm occupied with something, I doggedly pursue that till the end and can't be bothered by anything else. I'm not so good with multi-tasking! When I'm busy with one thing, everything else tends to fade into oblivion, even those that needs my most immediate attention. This is a flaw, I know. A bad habit that's so hard to break.

Needless to say, there will be changes in this blog soon. I have recently gotten back to my artistic roots (which have for soooo long taken a backseat in favor of my writing) and I have found an avenue that can be quite beneficial to me, financially speaking (ahem!). Y'all know about it soon enough.

For now, I'm going to have to keep this one short. Just wanted to let you know guys that I'm still blogging here. Although for a while there, I feared that I might have to set up another blog account as I forgot my username to this blog! That's definitely a neon sign that says I've been gone from the blogging world long enough :-)

DIY Tip: ‘Manually’ kick out viruses from flash drive

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:41:00 +0000

Do you often use a flash drive (aka USB drive, thumb drive, pen drive)? I do, and I think this nifty widget is the coolest, not to mention most useful tool invented after cellphones. It is a lifesaver for my digital life; I don’t go anywhere without it now.

One drawback with these little guys is that they get “infected” so easily since you can plug it in anyone’s computer that quickly too. Realizing this, I began to get wary when people would ask to plug in their thumb drive in my computer at work whenever they wish to use the computer or ask for soft copies of my files. You see, I don’t have an Internet connection in my work PC, so my anti-virus program is way outdated. And I can’t afford to have my PC crashing down as it would take weeks to have it fixed, what with all the paperwork involved in sending it to computer shops for repair.

Anyway, I found in this site a smart way of removing viruses from the flash drive without the help of a virus scanner. It’s exactly what I need for my PC at work. Of course, one should always kick out viruses from the drives with a virus scanner, but in my case, I need an alternative to that for my work PC.

But after having tried this manual method for scanning flash drives for viruses, it is now my habit to do it each time I plug in the little guy, even on my laptop with an AVG scanner installed. This manual technique is a way of sneaking inside the flash drive without actually opening it. I highly recommend it to just about anyone who’s always using USB drives.

Down with the flu or Just how difficult it is to be checked-up in Pinas

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sat, 31 May 2008 11:14:00 +0000

I have been really sick for the last three days, hence the silence over here in my blog. I unfortunately and unwittingly caught the flu that's been going around here recently. Summer ended quite abruptly for us here in the tropics. This hasty change of weather has been harsh on the healthy and not-so-healthy.

I really hate it when I get sick. Aside from the physical and emotional suffering it brings, it is a pain in the butt and the wallet to schedule appointments with local doctors here.

Take the case of my Dad, who is asthmatic. His doctor is THE top pulmonary specialist in the city. Now, because this doctor's expertise is so heavily in-demand, a long line of people is stretched out on the corridor outside his office. Say, if you call today for an appointment, his secretary will tell you that the doctor will be able to see you three weeks later. It got to the point that the secretary shooed my Dad away and told him to go see another doctor since he wants to be checked-up immediately.

Although the situation is not the same anymore with my Dad and his doc (my father can see him anytime, anyday even without appointments *wink*), my point is this: this current set-up between patients and doctors in this country, to be blunt about it, sucks. The ideal situation would be if you feel sick, you call your doctor, tell the secretary you need to see him, she says yes just come over, and then you haul your sick tush over to the clinic, period.

But in the Philippines, it's simply a hassle getting checked-up by a physician. If the clinic is housed inside a hospital, most likely your doctor's clinic would be more aptly described as a cubicle; very tiny, very fishbowl-like. While outside, there's a long line of sick people stretched out on the corridor waiting for their turn. And inside there's the cranky secretary who gives curt replies. And when it's your turn to step inside the doctor's clinic, what you get is a few minutes of hurried, perfunctory clinical exchange with your doctor. You walk out with a prescription for medicines worth more than what you get paid for in a week at work (that is, if you're lucky) as you almost gasp when the secretary bills you 350 pesos (roughly 8 USD) for that it's-over-before-you-know-it moment with the good doctor.

I'm not saying this pitiable situation is true everywhere in the Philippines. Most likely it's not true for the "high-end" physicians whose clients are, of course, getting what they are paying so much for. But in the provinces, it is. In my case, when I went to see my doctor last Wednesday, I waited for a little over 3 hours before she showed up, and another almost-an-hour wait again before she finally saw me. And all the time, I was feverish, tired, with my nose feeling like it was stuffed with cottons.

Needless to say, the cold medicine cocktails that my doctor prescribed me worked. It was darn expensive, all four medicines. I'm about a thousand and three hundred pesos poorer right now.

Like they say, bawal ang magkasakit sa Pilipinas ngayon. Ha-choo!

Anyway, before I sign off and since I'm on the topic of doctors anyway, I'd like to insert a shameless plug here for my all-time favorite nasty doctor Dr. Gregory House who is currently on the prowl for the next set of elite medical dream team that he can offend, scold and abuse. As of last count, 40 applicants have dared to submit themselves to the grueling, bordering on sadistic "auditions" ala-Survivor style that House will make them go through. It would be fun watching as House breaks them in one by one when Season 4 kicks off on AXN on June 2. Only five will survive. Only the most courageous, brilliant, and practically brain-dead if you ask me, will make it. This is one job interview you don't want to miss :-)

So hard to be yourself (myself)

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:10:00 +0000

If there's one thing I learned from tonight's events, it's this: it's so darn hard to be truthful, especially to oneself.

I have for so long believed that I am okay, that I'm fine despite what most people think I was missing in life, that I am exactly where I am supposed to be. Tonight though just rammed home the painful truth that I'm not okay, I'm not fine and I'm wishing that I was somewhere else.

It is so strange how simple conversations, a simple bringing up to speed between friends who haven't seen each other in a while, can lead to an emotionally exhausting baring of deep-rooted secrets. You then find out that someone else is walking on the same rocky road. Someone else is carrying the same heavy cross. What's staggering is, that someone turns out to be a really close friend.

I don't know though if this knowledge of a kindred hurting soul will help even the tiniest bit in soothing those unseen open wounds that have long been festering. If it won't, then I don't know what will.

Consumer woes

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:48:00 +0000

I am posting here the comment that my colleague Judy Flores-Partlow wrote in response to my entry about corporate greed and indifference. Her experience pretty much says how establishments, especially in the Philippines, can be so apathetic to their consumers.

Big stores like Super Lee Plaza make money out of the people who, day in and day out, buy stuff from their shelves. And what do their customers get in return? A cold shoulder when they raise product-related complaints.

Corporate social responsibility is obviously still an alien concept to most establishments in the provinces. Customers who have been wronged by business establishments often get only a paltry apology and an offer to replace the product, which is quite pathetic considering that the customer had wasted extra time and money to go back to the store again to raise the complaint.

Anyway, here's Dood's story:

"Super Lee Plaza!!! Well, well, I'm not surprised with this. Did I ever tell you pipz that I filed a complaint with the DTI because they charged me twice for one item? It was a few months back, and I did the grocery shopping myself. I have this tendency to be cautious when it comes to shopping, checking out the bill to make sure everything is in order. When I got home, I told my maids to check the taped receipt while they were storing the groceries. It was then that they found out that a container of imported butter (P174.00 ++) was punched in twice. No, not punched in nor swiped, actually they used this "gun"??? That thingy that looks like a gun and reads off the magnetic bars?? Anyways, I went to see the cashier and the Customer Desk representative at Super Lee Plaza but they would not hear of it. To cut the story short, I went to DTI and Hermel took care of the complaint. You bet it's not about the money when things like this happen. My husband, Kano as he is, thinks it is not worth my time for only P170 ++ to fight it off with the respondents. But, hey, I am a journalist who keeps on writing and griping about the laws, whether people follow or violate them, and here I am being told to pass up a thing like this? No way, Jose!!! No wonder consumerism is not a big thing in Dumaguete yet. Think about the girl I knew from Bayawan who bought an item for less than P100 at a downtown department store well-known for China-made items. As soon as she returned home to Bayawan, and that's 100 plus plus kilometers south of here, she discovered the item was defective, perhaps from all the bumps and humps it took from the travel! She said she didn't want to waste the time and fare money just to come to Dumaguete to file a complaint with DTI!!! So, you see, Ching, sometimes our principles make us steadfast in what we espouse and believe in. Compassion can be tricky...it fools us into giving up what we have been trained to fight for, and in the end, we lose. I also felt sorry for the cashier that double-charged me, but I wanted to stress a point here. Stores, big or small, do have responsibilities to their clients and it is only when management understands this that they can offer better services to all who do business with them. :-)"

Goodbye, Annica

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:55:00 +0000

It's been a rough day today. We had a death in the family. I received the bad news this afternoon that my “cousin” had to give birth prematurely last night and consequently lost the baby. A girl, who I was going to name Anne Catherine, or Annica for short.

When my then-pregnant Manang and her family moved back from Saudi Arabia to my hometown about two months ago, I insisted on naming the baby. She has two sons already, whose names all start with “A”. So I was thinking of naming the baby Anderson if it was a boy (after my favorite CNN reporter Anderson Cooper) and Anne Catherine if it was a girl (after the Great Russian Empress Catherine II and Anne of Green Gables).

I was excited about this baby so the pain I felt over her passing is more intense, like a thousand paper cuts to the heart. It’s strange how I can feel this much for someone I haven’t seen nor touched yet. And she isn't even mine.

Maybe it’s because I’ve already named her that’s why I feel a loss this deep. Because if she was just an “it” or “a baby” to me – a nameless, unseen and untouched bundle of flesh— then her passing might have been greeted with just a tinge of sadness. Like how one would feel losing a book or a key.

But Annica proved to be a very special baby, made more precious because she was a fleeting dream, a gust of precious air that was gone before I knew it. I can only imagine the pain that Manang Bing and Kuya Totoy must be going through right now. It's probably like having a part of you brutally cut off, leaving behind this yawning, throbbing hole. I don't have the slightest idea, but it must surely feel that way in view of how I crappy I feel right now.

I just console myself with the thought that Annica was born an angel, not meant for life on earth, but meant only to be with God.

Dear MAILER-DAEMON

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sun, 25 May 2008 09:00:00 +0000

In case you need a good laugh today, I am posting here (see below) an amusing collection of e-mails from this website. An ISP systems administrator posted emails from unsuspecting users who responded to MAILER-DAEMON's bounced-back notifications. It got me in stitches when I read it.

For the record, MAILER-DAEMON is a software and not a breathing, living person. A daemon (DEE-mun or DAY-mun) is a process that works behind the scenes on an internet server. Among its many tasks is to track your e-mails and inform you if they were not delivered. The term is taken from Greek mythology where a daemon is a guardian spirit.

You get bounced-back notifications from MAILER-DAEMON either because you sent the email to an incorrect address or the recipient's email address is no longer valid (more info here).

People who are newbies to the world of technology often make the common mistake of replying to bounced email messages, believing that MAILER-DAEMON is a person. Of course they are forgiven for thinking that. I once thought the same, too, although I never got around to sending a reply. But still, some of the messages they sent to MAILER-DAEMON that are posted on the website are just too funny you can't help but laugh at it. Especially Idiot #22!

PS- Names have been changed to protect the unwitting :-)

May 26- I removed the succeeding posts here as it somehow messed up the formatting of my previous posts. So please head on to http://www.jedi.com/obiwan/dearmd.html if you are in dire need of a laugh today ;-)

Grrr

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sat, 24 May 2008 07:47:00 +0000

I am just so pissed off right now I could probably exhale fire. I’m writing this to let off steam or else I might go ballistic.

In my ten years as a government journalist, nobody has ever accused me of any hanky-panky. Mainly because I’m proud to say my parents have raised me well. I’m not perfect, like the rest of the human populace. I have my own flaws. But I have always gone out of my way to make sure that I never step on anyone’s shoes, never insult anyone even if it is called for, and basically never do anything to cause harm either emotionally or physically to other people.

Today, for the very first time, somebody did.

To add insult to injury, the said accusations were done thru text (an act of cowardice). But there’s an advantage to this, I guess. I can “save” these accusations and use it as proof should the accusing person turn the tables against me later on.

I was, in a nutshell, accused of being unfair, inconsiderate and devious. This person, a "reporter", believed that I was intentionally not sending her the press releases I regularly email to all local reporters every week because she did not pay her debt to my father and my boss on time.

The said accusations basically insinuated that I have, for reasons stated above, let myself be prejudiced by personal matters and in turn, I’m supposedly retaliating by depriving a local “reporter” of press releases.

I don’t know which I should be mad about: that I was accused of being small-minded enough to let such a petty thing affect my work and my dealings with the press, or that I was being insulted by a person who’s a newbie in this business and one who is not exactly popular for reasons that I am decent enough not to blurt out here.

I rarely get mad but in this case where I am insulted and accused of such baloney, I let my temper get the best of me. I shot from the hip and fought back, sending her a long, angry reply.

To make a long “text” story short, she ended up apologizing, almost groveling, for her “line of questioning” but added that I was being “sensitive” about the whole thing as she was just “asking”.

Asking, my foot. I’m not stupid; I know how asking sounds like and her text was far from being one. And I’m being sensitive? Wow, I’ve just been insulted twice!

Should, for some reason, this person I am talking about is you, then I have but one advice to give you:

“It’s better to close your mouth and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sun, 18 May 2008 08:39:00 +0000

When I started this blog, I aimed to post entries here at least three times a week, but this week I have been sort of swamped with work and health issues.

For one, the erratic weather has been hard on my sinuses, and I wake up sneezing a lot in the mornings with itchy, watery eyes the rest of the day and pounding headache at night.

It's the tail end of summer right now in the Philippines and the throbbing heat seems to be in a tug-of-war with the rainy season. This push-pull between the dry and rainy seasons, resulting to sudden changes in temperature and humidity, is simply maddening.

I also finished this week an already long overdue design work for a colleague in the media. I admit that I have been procrastinating on this one, aside from reasons of technical issues. My desktop PC's motherboard got fried (again) earlier this year. However, soon as I had the m'board replaced, my printer followed suit. But after I got that fixed, that's when procrastination set in. Somehow, it just got buried under more recent things-to-do's. So finally I got to put closure on this one.

Here is the final design:

Of course, I "scratched" out the name and contact details to protect his privacy.

My client wanted his card to look simple and professional, so I avoided putting a lot of colors and graphics in it. Besides, you don't really want to crowd your business card with too much text and visuals. Keep it understated.

Your card should reflect only the important details that you want your potential customers or networks to know, which basically, are: your name, where you work, what you do and how to reach you. Other than that, if they really want to know more then they can contact you, which is the whole point in handing out business cards in the first place, right?

Tip: If you would like to whip up your own business card but don't want to start from scratch, then you can visit this site which offers links to various websites that offer biz card templates for free.

Just be sure that you are downloading the right file compatible to your program and OS (whether Pagemaker or Quark and Mac or Windows).

Some of the downloads come with a PDF how-to file that you can check out before working on the templates.

From .docx to RTF or how to tiptoe around MW's back

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:57:00 +0000

I just figured out how to convert .docx files into RTF (rich text format), basically going behind the back of the big bully that is you-know-who.

My first encounter with Open XML files was last month, when I copied to my thumb drive a PowerPoint presentation of a resource person at a security briefing. To my dismay, the file won't open in my computer at work which runs on Win XP. I knew the culprit had to be the extra "x" on the file extension, so I went online and made a little research.

It turns out that Microsoft released last year its newest version, Office 2007, which uses new formats for Office documents, such as PowerPoint, Word, etc. What this means is that users using older versions of Office will not be able to open the files created in Office 2007. You will recognize these files from the "x" on its file extension such as".docx" or ".pptx".

From what I read online, the only way - or so I thought back then - for me to be able to open the .pptx file was to download the compatibility pack from Microsoft's website. When I went to the site, I was however instructed to first download "priority updates" before I can download the compatibility pack.

It was too much of a hassle just to open one file, so I just dropped it and forgot about it. Until today.

The newest columnist for my father's newspaper, Don (who writes from Hawaii) sent his two latest items with- guess what- a .docx file extension.

As it is now a necessity for me to resolve this on my end and not bother Don with the hassle of saving his files in RTF, I went back to the Microsoft site and started downloading the priority updates.

However, when the download started, I saw that the first file being downloaded was the Genuine Advantage Validation Tool. Uh-oh. No can do. I knew then that downloading the compatibility pack was not going to happen for me.

But if there's a will, then there is a way.

I aborted the download and Googled for other ways to convert Office 2007 files into a format that can be opened and edited as well in previous Office versions. The first few search results Google churned out offered utilities that only allowed me to either view the files (un-editable) or online converters only, meaning I have to wait after 24 hours before the file is converted. No way. Patience is not one of my virtues.

Then I hit the jackpot with this site, offering a free nifty utility that will convert Word 2007 and OpenOffice files to RTF. It downloaded as a zip file and I extracted the "docx2rtf" file on my desktop and the rest inside the Program Files directory. It took only less than a minute to download and it takes only seconds to convert a file. Sweet.

So take that, you big, bully you-know-who, making what so far is an empty promise of interoperability.

To my Mom

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sat, 10 May 2008 07:07:00 +0000

I am my Mother's daughter. I admit there were (and are) times I wish I wasn't, especially when she's driving me crazy to the point I feel like pulling my hair out, but what can I say? She's my Mother. The woman who would fight tooth and nails for me and my Dad. The woman who took care of me (still does), raised me (still does, I think) and loves me. She's half of the reason why I'm always aiming high at whatever I do, and also half of the reason why I am who I am now.

To write about my Mom will require way more space than what blogspot can offer me. Seriously. My Mother is a unique person, one of those rare, probably dying breed of women who are strong-willed with a lot of guts and gumption and a quicksilver tongue that doesn't hold back nor mince words. She's one of those people who you either love or hate. It took almost 30 years for me to fully understand why my Mom is the way she is, and I am so thankful now that she's the way she is.

Back in my immature teenage years, there were so many times I wish I could swap Moms with my friends, particularly the ones whose Mothers allow them to go hang out with their friends till late at night. But when I got into my 20's, I finally realized that had my Mom not been as strict as she was with me back then, who knows how or where I would have ended up. Probably pregnant and married to a bum, or pregnant and not married, or both- pregnant and a bum.

Now, I know my Mom will never be able to read what I've posted here (the only thing she knows about computers is that it's called one and that's it). This is just my way of shouting out to the world that one, my Mom is great, and two, I love her.

I would also like to make special mention of my Mama Corazon, who if not for her, I wouldn't be here. And if not for her, I wouldn't have lived the life I am so blessed with right now. She made a sacrifice for me that only a Mother can do for her child. For this reason alone, and not due to conception, I love her.

Another mother to whom I owe a lot is the woman who took care of me when I was a baby- my Tita Fely. Memories of my childhood will always include her. My cousins Gray, Sisy and KC are all so blessed to have her as their mother.

Happy Mother's Day, too, to my cousins who are now Mothers: Karen (the brand-new Mama), Lea, Teena, Teene, Nang Rosie, Nang Haydee and my Manang Bing. Also to my friends who are Moms now and the ones who are about to be: Sheila, Marife, Marissa, my boss Ma'am Jen and co-worker Ma'am Linds, my mentor Ma'am Romil, Doydo, Lorena in Turkey, Chly in England and Naide in Chicago.

To all my Aunts on both my Mom and Dad's side of the family in Sagay, Manila, Bacolod, Cebu and USA, Happy Mother's Day to you all! There's too many of you to mention, but please know that I love each of you.

Oh I hate to leave out anyone but my memory isn't as sharp as it was before. So to those I've forgotten to mention here, you will have to forgive me. You have my persmission to berate me (by text , phone or email) so I can apologize, grovel and make special mention of you here.

Happy Mother's Day!

Review: Back to Black

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:01:00 +0000

This album turned out to be a pleasant surprise for me. I wasn't expecting to actually end up liking her songs, but Amy Winehouse's Back to Black album, in a word, rocks.

Let me clarify that I haven't heard any of Amy Winehouse's songs before, but of her reputation, that I know of as it is quite hard not to when her 'antics' (which is quite a lame word to describe what she's been up to) is all over the TV and Internet.

She's been described as a soul singer but I didn't know how a darn good one she is until my favorite Filipina international singer Lea Salonga did a review of her Back to Black album on her blog over at Multiply (Ms. Lea is not only a great singer, she also writes really well. Go to her blog to find out for yourself).

So when Ms. Lea said "fantastic album!" I went ahead and searched for the album. I mean, it's Lea Salonga! If she says it's fantastic, you don't hit pause and say "Uhmm...are you sure?" No. You take her word for it, period.

Man, was she so right. All the songs in Back to Black are awesome. Freaking awesome. From "Rehab" to "Addicted", I'm floored. After all, the album got six Grammy Award nominations and five wins. This girl's personal life might be troubled, but her songs bear no traces whatsoever of this.

When I typed to my friend Chris the lyrics from the song Rehab: "They're trying to make me go to rehab, but I said no, no, no", he typed back : "Well, yeah, look where it got her." Haha!

PS to Chrissie: You gotta read this. She played Bioshock! And what's more, she loved it! Ahh, a girl after my own heart. Another reason why I MUST play this game!

Test post on new blog design

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:48:00 +0000

Just a test post on this new blog design. I must have changed this blog's design more than 20 times today. Yes, I'm that fickle-minded. I blame my Mom for this irritating trait. It's in the genes, you see.

I think the design sported by my blog now called Aspire is THE one. I really hope so. I'm getting tired of always changing my blog's look. Reminds me of those days when I can't decide on what to wear, when nothing just seems to look right.

I like designs that are clean and organized. Minimal. Posts and elements are partitioned off and I want one that will highlight my posts. I don't like crowded designs, with sidebars that compete with what I have to say.

Don't get me wrong, I like widgets. But only when they're at a minimum. I absolutely adhere to the belief that less is more.

With that said, I have a strong feeling I will be using this design for a long time.

More posts to come, peeps. Stay smart and be safe!

PS- Happy Birthday to my cousin Gray! May you be blessed with more of the best things that life has to offer. Love yah!

A belated birthday 'bash' and how we waited for more than an hour for lunch

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sat, 03 May 2008 11:00:00 +0000

I met up with my BFF Gi today for lunch, which also served as her belated luncheon 'party' for two. She turned 30-something (when we girls hit our 30's, we stop counting!) on April 24, and since I missed her birthday celeb due to the crazy preps for The Eagle's arrival on the 25th, I made it up to her today.

As usually is our dilemma in a city as small as the one we live in, we always have a hard time deciding where to eat. The usual Chowking, McDo, Jollibee, etc. are too boring, too common and too crowded. We're always on the lookout for small, cozy, yet-to-be-discovered restos where the food is cheap on the price but not on the taste. Sadly, there aren't much of those here. Most of the ones that we think have potential end up closing shop even before we have even tried it. Anyway, today for lunch we decided to check out this cute-looking cafe that we saw months ago. It is basically an internet cafe but what initially caught our attention was their front window display- cute photos hanging from a string, and the photos were clipped in place by tiny, wooden craft clothespins. (I first saw a similar idea on Flickr and on this site and thought that it's a creative and great way to display photos on my bedroom wall or closet door. I've been meaning to do something like this but have yet to find the time to print my photos.)

However, we learned that they don't serve lunch but the girl on the counter was nice enough to point us next door, a "kitchenette" that just had their soft opening a couple of minutes earlier I presume, as the balloons were still on their front door.

When we went in, we first noted the decor. It was so trendy with its bright colors and the tall-back slim chairs. The place was not too large, lending a coziness to its ambience. After flipping through their menu (aside from the usual Pinoy fare, they also serve European, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican food), I ordered Chicken Teriyaki (it was spelled as 'Terryaki" on their menu) while Gi chose Chili Con Carne with Mexican rice.

While waiting for the food to be served, Gi and I decided to check out the second floor. As we climbed the stairs, we saw mounted on the deep pink-colored wall this huge gold-framed hot pink wallpaper with yellow flowers print. The effect was gorgeous. The gorgeousness continued when we reached the second floor, which mimicked the traditional Japanese restaurants- elevated platforms on top of which are those low Japanese style wooden tables surrounded by cushions. No chairs, of course. Each dining area platform is enfolded with sheer deep red curtains. The effect is Oriental romance with a splash of Western boudoir. I love it!

We just swooned over the beautiful decor, especially Gi who will soon move into her brand new house and we "oohed" and "aahed" to our heart's delight (we were the only people in the floor) as we smoothed our hands over the rich texture of the gold and red wallpaper and the multi-colored cushions.

Heady from the allure of our surroundings (we go gaga over decor that rocks), Gi decided to open her gift, which she also went gaga over. Since she was moving into a new home soon, I picked out decor-related gifts for her- two tall yellow green-tinted wineglasses and a figurine of an African lady holding a drum (a symbol of fertility? *wink*).

Since we had a lot of catching up to do, we chatted for some time before we realized that it's been almost an hour and our food hasn't arrived yet! We later learned that they confused our orders with the customers who came in later than us, and mistakenly cooked their order first. But surely it won't take a cook an hour to prepare our orders. Unless they ran out of main ingredients and had to rush to the grocery store to buy them, or they ran out of gas for cooking and had to go get one. But wait, they just opened today so it's impossible for them to run out of stuff!

We were already hungry so we decided to just bear it out and wait for our orders. I muttered to Gi that the food better be worth the wait. It was already 1:30 p.m. when our food was served, and after the first bite, I sighed in disappointment. It was just... okay. Well, forgettable. Let's just say that when we stepped out of that place, the decor was the only thing that impressed us.

My chicken "Terryaki"

Gi's Chili Con Carne with Mexican rice

But we're willing to cut them some slack as it was just their first day. At least our eyes were able to feast on their decor. They just need to work on their service and food.

But bad food aside, I had a great time. Whenever you're in good company, you'll always have a great time, even if the food sucks.

Only in Pinas

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Thu, 01 May 2008 05:58:00 +0000

If you’re a foreigner living in or have lived at one point in the Philippines, I’m pretty sure that if you were made to write something about this country, the easiest subject would be on the oddities and idiosyncrasies of the Pinoys (or Flips, as my kano friend Chris would say).

I remember Anthony Bourdain, whose show “No Reservations” on Travel and Living channel I make a point to watch during the rare times I get to hold the remote control at home (the remote control is the only electronic gadget that my Mom knows how to use and constantly lords over it).

Now, I don’t know if the brave-will-eat-everything Mr. Bourdain has filmed in the Philippines yet, but if he hasn’t, then I highly suggest that he pen in this country in his list of exotic places to go to. We have so much to offer that foreigners would find bizarre, weird and wonderful, especially when it comes to food and this is right up in Mr. Bourdain’s alley.

Sometime last week, a day before The Eagle was to fly in, I was with the group composed of The Eagle’s advance party who was doing the rounds of the areas that The Eagle will visit and making sure these sites are “friendly” and ticking off the sites that weren’t. It was already way past 12:00 noon when we wrapped up and headed to a local, newly-opened restaurant. Tired, hot and extremely hungry, I devoured the delicious and spicy sisig. Try as I might, I have forgotten the other dishes served up that day, and I’m sure they were all yummy but the sisig was the only one that made quite an impression on my stomach. (It made such an impression that I was feeling its after-effects that night and the day after. I so love spicy food, which I eat a lot of despite my IBS).

So, sated and with a happy stomach, I waited for the dessert which was locally made ice cream placed inside small, white, plastic cups. As it turns out, the ice cream came with two surprises as well for me: first that it was made by a local hardware store and secondly, it was really delicious. It came in three flavors I think- mango, cheese and mocha. It had the flavor of fresh fruits in it and it wasn’t too sweet like its more popular commercial counterparts. While I was eating it though, I was fervently hoping that their secret ingredients have nothing at all to do with nails or copper wire.

Now, I know that an ice cream made by a hardware store is not bizarre enough to be seen as a “weird and wonderful” Pinoy eccentricity as compared to our balut, barbecued chicken and pig entrails, or fried pig skin or our penchant for eating fish in its entirety – from head to tail. But I was just reminded of this while I was eating that ice cream. We Pinoys love to eat, and we eat almost everything that other people in other countries shun from.

For example, I love to eat fish eyes. Yes, I really do. It’s scrumptious. Especially when the fish is cooked in vegetable stew. Pig’s brains? Yummy. But I stopped eating it a long time ago because it is said to be high in cholesterol. What about fried ice cream? It’s not as yummy as just ice cream, but it’s a taste that needs getting used to. In fact, The Eagle, while touring the local cultural booths in her visit here, was given a treat of it and I saw her nodding and smiling as she spooned in a healthy slice.

Now, not all Pinoy food eccentricities fall under the “weird and wonderful” category. There’s one Pinoy fare that I am guilty of eating, something that I shouldn’t have eaten but at that time when I ate it, it was considered normal.

I once ate a dog.

Yes, I am guilty of this crime and I’m not exactly proud of it. But I was about 6 years old and at that time, the Animal Welfare Act or kindness to animals was totally unheard of. My uncles would catch stray dogs wandering in the barrio (village) in my Mom’s hometown and they would either roast them or make menudo out of them. I remember it tasted like chicken, only that it was leathery.

I also remember that when the dish was served, my Dad – who absolutely will never eat any four-legged animal except pig – wasn’t told by my Mom’s mischievous relatives that the menudo was made from dog meat. He thought it was pork as he feasted on it, blissfully unaware. It was only a day after when he was told about the whole thing and until now, he doesn’t feel too happy about it.

Let me clarify, for the record, that I am a huge dog lover. I would never commit the same crime again now, that’s for sure. It was one of those Pinoy food oddities that was certainly weird but totally not wonderful.

Camille and Gail

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 06:11:00 +0000

Goofing around with my godchild Gail and her older sis Camille:

The photos were taken using a (really) low-end point-and-shoot cam and tweaked in CS3 and Paint Shop Pro XI to make it look "professional." I think I've nailed down on how to add character to my otherwise ordinary shots. It's just the watermark that I have to work on.

Gail didn't like having her photo taken, so I goofed around, trying to get a "stolen" shot of her. These two love to play games on cellphones, and it didn't take them more than a minute to figure out how to play Alexa on my S500i, a game that took me about 45 minutes to learn (haha).

Kids nowadays are so different, aren't they? They pick up on tech stuff quickly. I have another godchild who is about 5 years old but he knows his way around a laptop already. This is a child who yet has to learn how to read, but can already understand the basic complexities involved in turning on a laptop and making it do what he wants to do- get online to play Yahoo games.

Kids!

Compassion vs. Principle

noreply@blogger.com (Rachelle) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:30:00 +0000

After work today, I went to the local department store to buy a couple of things for my trip to Cebu tonight. I stopped by the school supplies section to buy a highlighter, which I cannot function without. I always must have one handy whenever I read a book or a magazine. I’m a compulsive “highlighter”- I have to mark every passage that I find interesting. (Granted of course that I own the book or the magazine I happen to be reading).

So I picked the Faber-Castel neon green highlighter. The price tag said 23.50. I went to the counter to pay for it. When the cashier swiped the item, the price that popped up in her computer said P24.90. She then explained that the price must have changed. “Well, how come the price tag says 23.50 if the price has changed?” I asked. “They weren’t able to change the price tags yet,” she concluded, referring to the salesgirls in charge of the said items.

Now, I work for a government agency of which the main task is to inform people of the laws. I wasn’t about to let this pass. “Okay, Miss, there’s a law called the Price Tag Law, and that law says that in cases like this, where there are two differing prices for the same item, the price that is marked on the price tag should be the price that the customer will pay for,” I insisted. (I’m not really sure if that’s what the law stipulates as I might have confused it with the “lower price prevails” clause, but I know it was somewhere along that line).

So the cashier huddled with a salesgirl who then waved over another salesgirl and pretty soon the huddle became a group of blue and white-clad salesgirls furiously whispering among themselves about, and I assume, who’s to be blamed for not changing the price tags right away.

Pretty soon, they called another lady, who I presumed was their supervisor and she confirmed what have already been obvious from the beginning. “Oh, Ma’am, the prices were changed today as you can see on the computer,” she announced.

Wow, thanks for pointing that out. “Yes, I can see that. But the price tag clearly says 23.50,” I said patiently.

“The price tag hasn’t been changed yet,” she said, again, pointing out the obvious.

“So? I’m only going to pay according to what’s on the price tag. That’s what the law says,” I replied, hiding the fact of course that I wasn’t that sure that that’s what the law actually says.

“Bitaw, bala-od na (Yes, that’s the law),” she muttered, and turning to the guilty salesgirl, said “The price difference is going to be deducted from your pay. You will be given a voucher for this.”

When I heard that, I was a little taken aback. She’s going to pay for it? But why? I looked at the price again as the supervisor said to the salesgirl “Your deduction will be P1.50.”

At this point, I was about to retract my earlier stand as I pitied the salesgirl. But on the other hand, it’s only P1.50. Now, if the difference in the price were, let’s say, 100 pesos or more, then maybe I would have acquiesced and just let it pass with a stern warning to the salesgirl to avoid committing the same mistake.

However, money is not the point here; it’s the principle of the thing. Consumers have rights, and stores, especially one as big as this (dare I name it? Lee Super Plaza), should do some sort of mitigating measures to ensure that situations like this must never happen. Like, maybe, whoever was in charge of changing the price tags should have pulled out all the items from the display and put them back only after the necessary changes have been made.

So I gritted my teeth and held my ground. My father has always been after me to stand up for my rights so this is a perfect time to listen to him, I thought. So without another word, I paid for the item and walked away.

When I was out of the store though, I started having second thoughts. I admit I don’t have nerves of steel and most of the time, my emotions shoot down my logic. I can’t stand being responsible for something unpleasant happening to another person, even if I’m the one in the right.

So maybe I should have just let the whole thing pass. What if the girl gets into trouble because I insisted on not paying P1.50? What if she loses her job? But heck, nobody would get fired over P1.50, surely? Besides, it’s going to come out of her pay. Now, that’s another issue too. Why should the employees pay for that? Shouldn’t it be shouldered by the store? I find this policy quite unfair.