I’ve let go of one of the sites I was managing before I took on this new job. I was actually brooding on whether to make a full site redesign as it was looking dated, hopefully the new admin will take care of that. Scratch that last idea, I just checked and based on what has been updated, things do not look that promising. When work stabilizes, I might just volunteer again, I just prefer not to commit to something I would not be able to do.

Still getting used to Windows 7—eye candy indeed. With this monster of a PC, Photoshop does instant changes, but there’s nothing much to edit. I have long given up on scanning, translating, and editing manga. It was a great way to learn PS, but it eats up too much time. Been a while since work officially sponsored my copy of PS. Those were fun days.

Boss: Can you edit this so that the kiosk is orange. (Original picture is slightly tilted, taken against the light, and the column-like kiosk is of a blue gradient.)

Me: Sure (whispers to self: what choice do I have, can’t very well tell my boss’s boss to take better quality pictures.)

Another one:

Boss: Can you take out the guy who is seated in front of this crowd … and make it look like nothing was missing?

Me: Sure! 4 hours later… Finally done!

On another note, I miss writing and emails do not count.

I’ve built a new PC again. After 4 years of being on a laptop, I’ll be back on a desktop.

This was my planned build. (This post was drafted back in March!)

This is what I ended up with.

WoW is running indeed!

Why did I stop in the first place? To concentrate on finishing school. Now, been there, done that. Yey!

Here begins another chapter. =)

Tried to play it on my home laptop, after it finished burning off some more stuff, but it wouldn’t. Tried a random DVD and still it wouldn’t! Nearly fainted at the idea of replacing my DVD drive. A replacement was not listed in the budget since I’m saving up for a new HDD. Yikes. While I was sorting through options, I restarted my home laptop. Lo and behold, the drive worked again.

Dunno if it was a windows glitch or anything like that, but it at least it worked again. It was scarier than any movie I’ve ever seen.

After working for non-stop for a while, decided to take a break and update a few posts on various sites I maintain. Note that maintain here means that content doesn’t come from me, but from a pool of writers and update means sanitize, arrange and reformat the content so that it looks and sounds good enough to be posted. Some of the content still isn’t fit to be posted, I’ll get back to them on another break.

Good thing I’m almost done with the school requirements for this semester, just a few more days and we get to the semestral break. Yey!

Work-side, I’ve been tinkering with a few opensource software like PhpBB. It’s been a while since I touched a forum and administered one. Now, I have to build one from the ground up with several mods. I’m planning to integrate PhpBB with a few Google Apps. Maybe I’ll post a how-to here once I’m done.

I’m also tinkering with Word a lot these days to shorten the time I use to format things for the office. Formatting has been speedier with the templating engine we use, but when the content comes from different sources, sanitation becomes quite a task.

A bunch of kids (about 4 or 5 pre-teens) just walked away with large or in Starbucks lingo ‘Grande Frappucinos.’ I am writing this draft on a Friday afternoon and these kids are out in the malls just a few minutes after classes were dismissed. Note that the closest high school is just across the street.

The only downside I encounter is the constant need to have a companion or at least find a trusted shop you can go to so that you can leave your stuff for washroom breaks. Even if I could bolt down my laptop, I sometimes have another bag with me for other stuff which I cannot secure to the coffee tables.

Including:

• 1 controller
• 7 Games
• 1 memory card

Games:

1. Animal Crossing (Simulation) **BEST SELLING GAME**
2. Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life (Simulation) **BEST SELLING GAME**
3. Baten Kaitos (2 disk RPG)
4. True Crime: New York City (Action)
5. Mortal Combat: Annihilation (Action)
6. Legend of Zelda: 4 Swords

Console and games can also be bought separately.

Please call 8138412 and ask for Maribel.

Question/Problem: Take two similar phones, call the same customer service number, get instant answers (or rather live cusomter support representatives) on one phone and then be put on hold for 30 minutes on the other (yeah, I timed it). What’s the difference?

A simple fact. I was using a postpaid line on the phone which got instant access to a live customer support representative, the other one was on a prepaid line. I’ve tried calling on my postpaid line to access customer service, but they say they have limited access to the prepaid numbers.

Now, I really have a hard time understanding this. Try to compute how mcuh they earn from me:

1. The minimum monthly charge I get for my postpaid line is Php 500 (~$10). This rises to a high of Php 1,000 on months when I am involved in projects where the team might be in diffrent locations. While a friend of mine on postapid and on the same network spends roughly 4x the amount I do.
2. Every two years, I get a new low end mobile phone which costs around Php 3,800 to as high as Php 4,500 as a customer retention plan.
3. I sometime login to yahoo messenger using my mobile but always as an alternative to the net, so they do not charge me.
4. On occasion, I use the surfing capabilities of my phone to check mail, message a few buddies, and obtain short bits of information, but this does not go over Php 100 per month.

Tell me again how prepaid customers are more likely to contribute to churn? I’m tied to this operator for the next 25 months because of the new phone (which I’ve already sold), but I’m still pretty happy with their service. It is only during those times that I have to call the prepaid hotline that I get the loooooong wait.

I haven’t felt the pinch of the gas prices up until recently when I noticed more and more cabbies are tinkering with their meters. In my previous post, I mentioned how to read the meters for taxi cabs here in the Philippines, so I can pretty much estimate how much a cab ride should cost. My regular cab ride costs an average of Php 100. Now, it ranges from Php 140 – Php 170 and that is only with the meter running. Some cabbies even ask for fixed prices when or additional fare on top of the meter charge.

I just got news that they might be raising the flagdown rates to Php 40. Well, tomorrow is another work day so I’ll find out then.

JULY 18, 2008 – PHILIPPINES WILL GET 8.1 EARTHQUAKE, thousands of people will die.

Please let us be alert and mark this date July 18, 2008, Friday, let’s be prepared and let us all PRAY that this will not happen to us. If possible: Please don’t go to work especially those with office located in high places, buildings, condos and malls.

A couple of other sites list more details on what he has predicted so far. Give the fact that we live in the Ring of Fire, and that we have not experienced a major quake in the last few years, there really is a high possiblity. I take all of them with a grain of salt, but I would also like to give this warning: be prepared at all times.

I live in a condominium and I just felt two quakes within this hour so they must be way off with their prophecies.

First, a few tips to remember once you get on a cab.

1. Make sure the driver flags down the meter. There are some cab drivers that will negotiate a price with you or ask you to add a tip. I’d rather tip if and when I feel like the driver deserves it (no haphazard driving and braking). I usually tip by rounding up the fare or adding Php 10-15 to the bill.
2. Make sure you have small bills and coins. There are times when unscupulous drivers will tell you they do not have change. Do not ride a cab with a Php500 bill and expect change. I make sure I have several Php 20 and even coins to pay as close to the metered fare as possible. See Tip #1.
3. Do not sleep while in transit. I’ve seen some cab riders sleep while riding. This makes you prone to a fast meter or even holdups. Your taxi driver might even take advantage of you while you are asleep.

Second, the rates:

1. Flag down rate. As of writing this, the current flag down is Php 30. This shouldn’t change for the first 500 meters.
2. Regular travel. Php 2.50 for each succeeding 300 meters.
3. Full stop/Waiting. Php 2.50 for every two minutes of waiting.

Parts of the meter. (I’ll get pictures some other day)

1. Idle/waiting timer (upper left corner) – the taxi must be at full stop for this to increment. The standard rate addition is approximately Php 2.50 every 2 minutes.
2. Odometer reading – the cab must run approximately 300 meters for this to increment by Php 2.50
3. Total Fare – the middle part where the largest numbers are. Your fare must be in Php 2.50 increments regardless of the distance.

Any other tips you’d like to add? Feel free to post them.

A friend of mine mentioned that it would have been better if it was a cup of rice instead of just 10 grains. Imagine how many people you can feed with that rice! I had just come from the company out-of-town activity and we just breezed through 10 kilos of rice. (Note: about 30 people were in the event.)

They also explained in their FAQ that the site was able to give way rice because of the advertising revenue it generated, but if I never click on any of those ads, would they still make money? My Google Adsense only has about $24 in it and its been running, or rather walking, on and off for the better part of four years.

This seems to be a growing trend these days. It started out with volunteer organizations setting up their own sites, then it moved into soliciting funds via the web, and then eventually sites that allow you to volunteer by using your PC. The Free Rice site works on a different model and tries to take up a different market, think of all those casual gamers. Just a few minutes a day and you could feed a family—plus you get to learn new words.

Try it out and let me know what level you get. They said its normal for people to reach level 48. I’m just at 42-44. Better brush up on my vocabs! Off to www.freerice.com.

Ticket Price—6/10: Php500(Orchestra, Right Side) c/o Gibbs Cadiz, he shares free tickets which were generously given by the producers or the directors of the shows. This show is really in demand, since a guy was standing near the stairs leading up to the venue and asking for extra tickets. A scalper? Hold on to your manes.

I was seated on last row at the back, 2nd seat from the aisle. I had been so use to theater seats being as comfy like the newer movie houses. The Music Museum’s seats are really due for replacement. They aren’t broken or diry, but they are a tad uncomfy. Also, from the last row in the orchesta, my feet couldn’t reach the floor as the seats were unusually high.

Acoustics—6/10: They seemed to have problems with the positions of the lapel mics. I heard clothing brushing across the microphone on several occasions. At times, the performers’ voices also seem to fade in and out. Maybe its just me, but I didn’t particulary like the sounds for this venue.

Performers—9/10: I had always thought that movie actors were more used to having several takes for a scene. I thought they wouldn’t pull off those long lines and would have to do ad-libs. Btw, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt since I don’t know how the translation went.

Length/Storyline—7/10: The play started around 30 minutes late, so it felt longer than it should have been. There was no intermission and due to nature of the story, the play is really wordy.

This is a comedy about 3 friends and the story begins as one of them, Serge, buys an expensive pure white painting for Php 200,000. One friend, Mar, is appalled by this, and the other, Jun, can’t seem or rather won’t take sides. Conflict begins and strains their friendship even putting Jun’s wedding into peril.

I think I would have enjoyed this play more if it had been set in another venue.

They also interviewed Lilibeth Legasto, one customer who had recently filed a complaint against Nokia. Note, she only filed a complaint, citing that it is our moral obligation to help global brand improve the quality of the products they sell. If she had chosen to sue for damages and all, it would have been yesterdays news in a flash. It has become more of an information campaign because she wants people to know that there is a possibility that it could injure individuals or lives could be lost.

The radio show host commented that her case is only one out of a hundred formally filed complaints with regard to faulty or defective batteries. Imagine, out of a purported a billion Nokia phones sold, Nokia is offering to replace some 46 million mobile phone batteries.

The phones affected are Nokia 1100, Nokia 1100c, Nokia 1101, Nokia 1108, Nokia 1110, Nokia 1112, Nokia 1255, Nokia 1315, Nokia 1600, Nokia 2112, Nokia 2118, Nokia 2255, Nokia 2272, Nokia 2275, Nokia 2300, Nokia 2300c, Nokia 2310, Nokia 2355, Nokia 2600, Nokia 2610, Nokia 2610b, Nokia 2626, Nokia 3100, Nokia 3105, Nokia 3120, Nokia 3125, Nokia 6030, Nokia 6085, Nokia 6086, Nokia 6108, Nokia 6175i, Nokia 6178i, Nokia 6230, Nokia 6230i, Nokia 6270, Nokia 6600, Nokia 6620, Nokia 6630, Nokia 6631, Nokia 6670, Nokia 6680, Nokia 6681, Nokia 6682, Nokia 6820, Nokia 6822, Nokia 7610, Nokia N70, Nokia N71, Nokia N72, Nokia N91, Nokia E50, Nokia E60.

Around 30% or so of these handsets are in the mid to low price range. The Nokia 1100 has sold more than 200 million units. In the Philippines alone, taxi cab drivers and jeepney drivers sport this unit. What if a phone were to explode while these public transports were moving, it would cause harm to many individuals.

With regard to the way Nokia is handling the recall, many Filipinos have voiced (or texted) concerns to the media that it is difficult to go online and check. It would be much more realistic for someone to drop by a Nokia outlet and have their phones checked there. What do you think?