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I’m PROUD of YOU! Son
I’m PROUD of you, Son.
Congratulations, you’ve just completed the installation of this shoutbox.
ok lang sis. 
sorry I haven’t been able to post — phone line problems.
what the hey, ive already tagge you anyway. hehehe
bro, can i tag you on my blog?
I don’t have time for that crap. Thanks for visiting my site anyway.
Nice Blog! just passing by try to see my naked body, visit also http://xxx.i.ph you may link it if possible
thanks for the comment, allan. i’ll be posting a review of the e398 in a few days time. been busy with a lot of things lately. thanks for visiting my blog!
sir, care to post your reviews about e398, pros and cons, i’m thinking of getting one myself. by the way your blog is really great, the design are neat and simple, your posts are great.
Thanks bro.
Hi! Your shoutbox is working fine!
Not really… I’ve just decided to set up shop elsewhere.
Therefore, no more posts will be made in this blog. All other posts will be made in my new one.
Why, you ask?
Hmmm? Hmmm! Hmmm… 
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people don’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people the right to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
– Timo, “Coach Carter”
For the first time, I downloaded a podcast from the net. Three, actually — This Week In Tech (TWIT), Security Now, and FLOSS. They were all from http://www.twit.tv.
I’ve been curious about podcasting ever since it came into popularity in tech sites everywhere. I’ve only been able to try it now because of — yes, you’re right — DSL. I loaded it up on my V3i so that I could listen to it on my way to work.
I enjoyed the podcast about the 25 top computers, how Blue Pill works, and that interview they had with the creator of PHP. All podcasts were moderated by TechTV’s Leo Laporte. In fact, I didn’t mind that this morning, while listening to TWIT, a massive buildup of vehicles were stretched from Legarda to Ramon Magsaysay Boulevard caused by roadworks — imagine laying asphalt on the pavement and blocking half the street on rush hour!
I’m now done with Security Now yet, but I plan on downloading other tech podcasts by the following days. Now I could really enjoy traveling to work in the morning!
Another co-engineer spent his last day of work today. He tendered his resignation a few weeks ago and was in the office to provide some support and be able to pass what he knows about the project to another co-engineer. Before he left the office, he sent a short (but direct to the point) email that is shown below. Some parts I laughed at, some made me think. Come to think of it, initially I wasn’t really feeling him as a co-engineer, but later on as I knew more about him, I came to admire him more for his skills and work ethic (I know his message says something on the contrary but my observations tell me owtherwise).
Good luck to him. I hope by the time we see each other again, I can tell him that I’ve grown a lot as an engineer.
Note: I’ve cut some portions (which you can clearly see below) “to protect the innocent”…
—–
–> whats the best thing about <our company>?
Well, they gave me a break, allowed me to buy
a car, the projects sharpened my c/c++ skills,
I had new friends, meet new people, see japan,
learned japanese.
To anyone and everyone who contributed to my
growth -thank you. I hope I was able to contribute
something to you too…
–> Whats your most memorable experience during
your stay here
Here is my top sixlist (btw: most of them happened
in japan)
6. I saw <person 1> smile.
(btw: the smile was directed to <person 2>)
5. I ate sausages, and nothing but sausages for the
whole week. I only stoped when my eyes started to
go blind.
4. I tried to buy a prepaid card.
I was explaining the concept to the store attendant,
and after about 10 minutes of silently listening to my
japanese explanation, he very slowly said (in english)
- “oh, so you want to buy a prepaid card?”
3. I was PL of a very large project. Problem was,
there were only 4 of us. The resulting bug list took
5 minutes to open. The reset bugs alone numbered
nearly into the hundreds…
After that project, the japanese manager was promptly
re-assigned and was never heard of again..
(I think he might have killed himself)
*So ye gads, please, please, always do proper estimates*
2. I passed an english document to a client, and some other
japanese rose up and explained why the document’s grammar
was bad, etc.. etc.. I was boiling in anger inside and it was a good
thing my manager was near me because I was nearly tempted to
say “Oh, so you know english? I didnt think it was supposed to
be funny”.
1. So I was sitting in my chair teaching an impressionable
young engineer, when I felt the need to discharge some
uh… gases. anyway, the resulting smell was so putrid I nearly
fell off my chair… But get this, the engineer pretended not to
notice and decides to hide his disgust by pretending to scratch
his nose. (I guess he didnt want to offend me. )
If I look close enough, I can even see tears starting to form
from his eyes.
After that I excused myself and went to the bathroom to die
in uncontrollable laughter…
Good Times!
btw: the engineer was not a “he” - it was a “she”.
–> whats the worst thing about <our company>?
Sing this in the parokya tune:
<ronnie: okay I have to cut it here… I’m still with the same company!>
–> Okay, be serious…
Okay, before i say anythings, let me say that I have had
my share of defects. I’m inherently lazy. I tend to just do the
minimum requirements of the job and not much else.
However with that said, there is one thing I’m not guilty of.
This -
Some engineers, PL, JS, S, EM go to work everyday,
day after day after day, and show no noticable improvement.
Neither in technical, nor in japanese, nor in management.
Sometimes, not even in their interpersonal skills…
I mean c’mon, If youre doing something everyday for
the last five years, wouldnt you at least become proficient
in it? Its counter-intuitive, but it happens all the time.
To give a specific example, raise your hand if you
a.) Were able to pass level 3 or level 2 (nihongo)
b.) Learn a new programming language
c.) Learned a new library, a new function call, maybe
a new design pattern in the programming language
he/she does know
d.) Learn and “applied” a new management technique
e.) Made a new friend?
I dont know - Maybe you think the good times wont change?
Maybe layoffs and the likes wont happen. No? No chance of
that happening? Really? Okkaayyy… but dont say I didnt try to
warn you.. *whistles*
(Anyway, And this really gets to me - worst of all, you show
nothing, zilch, zero, null, 0×0000h, maru, rei, nada. But you have
the gall to expect promotion… As some of my lady friends used
to say “The nerve…”)
But anyway, to each his own i guess…
–> Why did I do it
a) Its all about the benjamins
(or in this case the hirohito’s)
b) <current project> is too hard. I bailed out before
the proverbial alien matter hits the fan.
c) I wanted to be be able to come back, wearing
a white hat, unbuttoned flowery shirt, and yellow
large necklaces. I will then proceed to say loudly
“And init naman dito sa pinas”, while wiping my
forehead while my face is contorted in a picture
of genuine disgust.
–> No really, why did you do it?
I just have this wanderlust. This need to travel.
To see the world, to read another page of the book so
to speak.I want to wake up one morning and be able
to say to my wife - “Come on baby, pack your bags,
we’re going to the bahamas”. You know, that costs money.
The only way I can do such a thing is if I cut my spending
and save everything till I have enough - or I can try to find
a job which will allow me to earn the money necessary to
finance such activities.
Guess which way I chose?
Besides I really want to be able to say “Anginitnamanditosapinas”.
I’ve even registered a site for it. Go check it out:
<url here>
just joking guys (or am I?)
Anyway, I hope we see each other again.
Some more than others.. haha..
(just joking 2x)
ja ne..
—–
Posted here with permission from the original author.
There was one song in Coach Carter that has been playing in my phone (for several months already) while on my way to work, whose meaning I wasn’t able to fully understand until I watched the movie. Maybe some of those who watched it could even recall when this song was played.
Here it is, for everyone to fully understand the verses. Sometimes it takes a keen ear to recognize the words in Twista’s rap — they ‘flow’ really fast.
Very uplifting — especially when you know some of the characters mentioned in here (Big, Pac, Eddy, R. Kelly, Stevie Wonder).
—–
HOPE
Twista
I wish the way I was living could stop, serving rocks,
Knowing the cops is hot when I’m on the block, And I
Wish my brother woulda made bail,
So I won’t have to travel 6 hours to see him in jail, And I
Wish that my grandmother wasn’t sick,
Or that we would just come up on some stacks and hit a lick, And I (I wish)
Wish my homies wouldn’t have to suffer,
When the streets get the upper hand on us and we lose a brother, And I
Wish I could go deep in a zone,
And lift the spirits of the world with the words with in this song, And I (I wish)
Wish I could teach a soul to fly,
Take away the pain out cha hands and help you hold them high, And I
Wish my homie Butch was still alive
And on the day of his death we had never took that ride, And I
wish that God can protect us from the wrongs so that all the soldiers that were sent overseas come home, And uh
We will never break, though they devestate, we shall motivate,
And we gotta pray, all we got is faith.
Instead of thinking about who gonna die to day,
The Lord is gonna help you feel better, so you ain’t gotta cry today.
Sit at the light so long,
And then we gotta move straight forward, cuz we fight so strong,
So when right go wrong,
Just say a little prayer, get ya money man, life goes on
Let’s HOPE!
Cuz I’m hopeful, yes I am, hopeful for today,
Take this music and use it
Let it take you away,
And be hopeful, hopeful and he’ll make a way
I know it ain’t easy but that’s okay.
Cuz we hopeful!
I wish that you could show some love,
Instead of hatin so much when you see some other people comin’ up (I wish)
I wish I could teach the world to sing,
Watch the music and have ‘em trippin of the joy I bring, (shiit)
I wish that we could hold hands,
Listen instead of dissin lessons from a grown man, And I (I wish)
Wish the families that lack, but got love, get some stacks
Brand new shack and a lack that’s on dubs, And I
Wish we could keep achieving wonders,
See the vision of the world through the eyes of Stevie Wonder, (you feel me) (I wish)
And I hope all the kids eat,
And don’t nobody in my family see six feet, (ya dig)
I hope them mothers stayin’ strong,
You can make it whether you wit him or your mans gone, And I (I wish)
Wish I could give every celly some commissary,
And no po-po bring the heat on our peace like they did R. Kelly, And I
Wish that DOC could scream again
And bullets could reverse so Pac and Biggie breathe again, (shit) (I wish)
Then one day they could speak again,
I wish that we only saw good news every time we look at CNN,
I wish that we can never get the blues
Wish I can bring back the people that died, Eddy too, (I wish)
I wish that we could walk a path, stay doin the right thing
Hustle hard so the kids maintain up in the game,
Let’s HOPE
Cuz I’m hopeful, yes I am, hopeful for today,
Take this music and use it
Let it take you away,
And be hopeful, hopeful and he’ll make a way
I know it ain’t easy but that’s okay.
Cuz we hopeful!
Wish the earth wasn’t so apocalyptic,
I try to spread my message to the world the best way I can give it,
We can make it always be optimistic,
If you don’t listen gotta live my life the best way that I can live it,
I pray for justice when we go to court,
Wish it was all good so the country never even went to war,
Why can’t we kick it and just get em on,
And in the famous words of Mr. King “Why can’t we all just get along”,
Or we can find a better way to shop and please, And I
Hope we find a better way to cop a keys, And I
Wish everybody would just stop and freeze,
And ask way are we fulfillin these downfalls and these prophecies,
You can be wrong if it’s you doubting,
With the faith of a mustard seed you can move mountains,
And only the Heavenly Father can ease the hurt,
Just let it go and keep prayin on your knees in church
And let’s HOPE
Cuz I’m hopeful, yes I am, hopeful for today,
Take this music and use it
Let it take you away,
And be hopeful (hopeful) and he’ll make a way
I know it ain’t easy but that’s okay.
Cuz we hopeful!
Cuz I’m hopeful, yes I am, hopeful for today,
Take this music and use it
Let it take you away,
And be hopeful (hopeful) and he’ll make a way
I know it ain’t easy but that’s okay.
Cuz we hopeful!
It’s way past 1AM and I’m still awake.
Not that I’m into something new to tinker with, but I’m doing a bit of planning. I can’t sleep — I keep on thinking about a lot of things.
In a little more than a month’s time I’ll be taking the Philippine National IT Standards (PhilNITS) Examination. It’s quite a bit late of a decision for me, I informed my manager just last week. Aside from taking the Japanese Language Proficiency Test last December of 1999, this will be the second time that I’ll ever be taking a standards examination. Admittedly I’m quite nervous — I’ve never taken a board exam (none was required for my degree) and I consider this to be somewhat like one. Actually I should have taken this a few years ago, I just don’t know why I kept on passing up whenever I’m asked if I would be taking it.
Wanting to prove something to myself? I don’t know. I just feel like challenging myself to get a high grade from the exam (Cocky? No, I’m aiming a bit high so that even if I miss my target, there would still be a higher percentage of me being able to pass the exam).
I’ve gathered review materials from the PhilNITS website. I tried answering the first 30 items from last years’ examination, and I was able to make 10 sure answers, the rest being ‘intelligent’ guesses. That tool me less than ten minutes. Maybe I still have a long way to go — a review to recall those past lessons might help a bit.
So right now I’m making a plan to study all covered topics in 3 weeks, and the fourth and fifth week would be spent taking the exams posted in the PhilNITS website and doing a final review. Of course I still have my day job and my travails with Perl, and and I have my family to take care of. I hope my family would understand if I’d switch to Hermit mode in front of my books and computer for 1-2 hours everyday.
Quit laughing. I’m serious about this.
Just a few days ago I switched to Ubuntu 6.06LTS — more widely known as the Dapper Drake release. As to why I switched, I wasn’t really planning to, until I saw that my bluetooth dongle and webcam — two devices that I’ve had trouble using on my Slack-enabled machine — worked right out of the box. Surely that convinced me to let Ubuntu stay a bit longer in my machine, as Slack 11 is still far from sight.
The included packages were really meant for desktop use — not much of the server tools such as Apache were present after my default install. However these could be solved right away by performing an online install through apt-get (did I mention that Ubuntu is Debian-based?) or the Synaptic package manager. I downloaded 128Mb of packages for upgrades, and then some more for additional stuff, like KDE and XFCE, as well as Cannon Smash and Frozen Bubble, games I’ve grown to love in Linux. So many downloads you say? I’m guesstimating that I’ve got about 800Mb of package downloads already. Ah, the joys of DSL!
However, the real kicker is this: XGL and Compiz. These X server and window manager combination allows my Linux GUI to behave similar to that of Mac OS X — I dare say even better. Why, you ask? Windows wobble like Jell-o when dragged across the screen, popups fade in and out, window borders are translucent, window elements are shadowed. Not only that, the desktop switcher does a nifty cube-flip animation when switching from one virtual desktop to another. I tell you it’s really entertaining for me, I’ve spent 5 mintues just flipping through one virtual desktop to another, just to marvel at the effect. It’s still at the alpha stage of development though — fortunately it’s stable running in my machine. At least it’s a taste of things to come in the future for Linux.
I’ll leave things as it is for the moment. I’m fairly satisfied with what I see and how stable it has been for the past few days it’s been in my machine. Who knows, my journey from one distro to another may might as well end here!
(more…)
I watched Coach Carter Friday night. I was raring to watch the movie ever since I heard about it on the radio and watched the trailers on TV. Of course I can’t go to the movies, our son still doesn’t have an attention span that long to sit through a full-length movie yet. After watching it, I never regretted spending money to get a VCD copy of the movie — I was even sorry that I didn’t get the DVD version instead. The movie brought again memories of how much I wanted to play basketball and be a professional basketball player. It also brought memories of how much I missed the kind of camaraderie that exists between players in an athletic team (I missed that kind of bonding so much that I try to cultivate the same atmosphere with my development team at work).
How I wish I’m playing basketball at the pro level right now. However if I think about it deeply, if I did I won’t be experiencing the level of fulfillment that I have right now (having a family of my own) — I might still be running the kind of life I had when I was a bachelor. That’s something that I’d never trade for anything else.
I start considering the day as a weekend the moment I step out of the office on a Friday night. As the title had stated it was quite unfortunate for me and my family.
I worked overtime and I only had Php50 left in my pocket, so I started to head home at about 8pm Friday night. After boarding an FX taxi, the rain started to pour. Good thing I had my jacket and umbrella. I went straight to my parents-in-law’s house to fetch my son and wife.
We didn’t stay for long when I arrived there, we immediately prepared to get home. We usually take the taxi from my in-laws to our home — it only costs Php50, and we could head home faster than taking the jeepney.
Alas, when we ‘re approaching a few blocks away from home, I noticed that the whole place was dark. There was a power interruption! Good thing we have some candles stored in our house. However things got pretty warm inside the house that my wife had another fit of asthma. I didn’t know what to do at the time, so I just observed her reactions and got ready to take her to the hospital if things got quite a bit out of hand. Fortunately she got out of it, but not after a few arguments ensued between us, with me insisting to take her to the hospital and her refusing to go.
All the while there was still no electricity in our area, and it’s already past midnight. We tried calling Meralco’s service number and found out that several people have already reported the problem. So we have no choice now but to wait until everything is fixed.
So we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Until we all fell asleep.
At 5am Saturday my wife jumped to the sound of the alarm of my cellphone, and lo and behold — there was still no electricity! She has to go to work, so she took a bath and prepared her things with the aid of our best friend of several hours already, the candle. I was still dizzy from lack of sleep that I barely managed to accompany her to the door and lock it. Fortunately our son got up for only a few minutes to have a dose of “dede” and fell back to sleep. I tried to take a nap again, hoping that when I wake up everything would be back to normal.
—
My eyes opened and felt a cool breeze blowing from somewhere near my feet — the electric fan’s working! I looked at my watch, it’s 10:30am — about 12 hours has passed since electricity went off in our area!
I wasn’t feeling well — as to why I don’t know.
All I know that this isn’t a really great way to start my two days of rest.
I found out that not a few people who use the nVidia (Linux) drivers from the manufacturer’s site encounter hangups after installing it to their system. I’ve had this problem for years, so I shied away from the commercial drivers and got myself contented with the non-accelerated open source drivers.
I recently found a post in a forum that finally gave a solution to the problem and it involves editing the X configuration files in /etc/X11. I modified the Device section to look lie this:
Section “Device”
#VideoRam 65536
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
Identifier “** NVIDIA (generic) [nv]”
Driver “nvidia”
Option “NvAGP” “0″
Option “RenderAccel” “Off”
Option “IgnoreDisplayDevices” “DFP,TV”
Option “NoRenderExtension” “Off”
Option “AllowGLXWithComposite” “Off”
EndSection
Now I can watch the MTV of BEP’s “My Humps” without any hiccups — and the best part is, NO HANGUPS!
I’ve done upgrading the kernel to 2.6.14 last weekend and right now I’m a bit comfortable with it. I’m not worried anymore that I might have missed a module or two during the upgrade process.
What I did was a three-step process, actually. The first was to reinstall the entire system, but during the install process itself, I have booted the test26.s image (from the CD) to start things. After copying the necessary files, I selected the test26 kernel image as the one to be used in my new linux installation. After rebooting the system, I installed the other packages in the testing directory of the second install CD of Slackware 10.2 (the kernel modules and alsa drivers, specifically).
That’s all there is to it. I’ve tried the upgrade a few times before, but it was the first time that I got things to work without introducing new problems to the system.
Of course, things were a lot easier since I have a backup of all the utilities I’ve downloaded and all documents in my then current installation. So when trying a major upgrade like this, don’t forget to BACKUP!
Finally, I was able to upgrade the stock KDE installed with Slackware from 3.4 to 3.5!
I just downloaded all KDE-related packages (about 190MB) from linuxpackages.net and did an updatepkg for all of them. X should not be loaded at the time. The upgrade took about 5 minutes.
There’s not much change between the two versions, except that when you look at the splash screen it shows that the version number is different. My settings are still in effect, and the menu remains as is.
What’s next? Kernel update?
I tried installing Gentoo Linux a few days ago, and this is what happened.
During install, I was adamant to do the stage 1 – or the ‘compile-everything-from-source’ — option, since I do not have the time to download everything at the moment. I settled for stage 3 — files existing within the distribution CD are the ones used to set up the system.
The files that were installed from the CD went without a hitch. However, when time came to get packages from the ‘net, I encountered an error.
Maybe it was related to a package that was being downloaded at the moment (it might have failed checksum verification), but nevertheless the installation was stopped and there was no option to recover from the error.
I’m back to slackware on my machine right now. I’ll just try the install process at some other time.
1. When installing OpenOffice 2.0.3 in a Slackware Linux system, get the .tgz file from www.linuxpackages.net. The available set of install files from the OpenOffice.org site is a collection of rpms, which when I tried installing, gave an error telling me that /bin/sh was not found (though it really is present in my machine).
2. Picasa for Linux is actually the Windows version configured to run using wine. Quite ingenious feat, but I resent the fact that a Windows binary is residing in my Linux machine.
3. Audacity is created to run on a GNOME-based environment. Since Slackware 10.2 eliminated everything related to GNOME from its install tree, I have trouble making Audacity run on my machine.
4. Rosegarden (a MIDI composer application) requires that the kernel is customized for low-latency-requiring processes. Since my system uses a stock Slackware Linux kernel, a warning is displyed everytime I start Rosegarden.
5. K3b (a CD-burning frontend for KDE) requires several libraries that are not in the stock Slackware installation. I’d have to download them as well in order to make K3b run. During program start, it immediately notified me that the current user does not have root priveleges, and offered an option to run a setup program to fix the problem. However, I’m wondering why when I select the option that would run the setup program, nothing happens. I tried reinstalling the packages after encountering problem with K3bSetup, and then things went well.
This morning I was able to install OpenOffice, Picasa, K3b, Rosegarden, and a slew of other libraries to further customize my Linux box.
However, in terms of getting optimized software for my computer, I could say that not all have been compiled for an i686-level processor (I have an AMD Athlon XP processor).
So here I am trying out Gentoo, a ‘metadistribution’ as the developers would call it. I can have the option to boot from the LiveCD I’ve just downloaded and install a clean Linux system by downloading the source to the packages I need and compiling everything.
I’ve booted the LiveCD (I’m using it to post this message). Shortly I’ll try compiling everything.
I hope things would go well.
Suddenly I’m on the process of customizing the installed apps on my Linux box. I’m not confined anymore to the stock install of Slackware 10.2.
I just finished downloading OpenOffice — all 120Mb of it! I find it far better than other office suites (KOffice comes to mind) for Linux. I already got Picasa for Linux as well. Audacity would be next (so that I could edit ringtones for my mobile phone).
I might as well be upgrading all packages to the latest release. My main target would be to upgrade to KDE 3.5 — I haven’t figured out how to do it yet, with all the applications and libraries that come with that desktop environment.
I’ll be posting notes as I go along.
When I was configuring my DSL connection in Linux early this morning, I stumbled on one little problem: my ethernet card is detected by Linux, but it is not configured. This was due to the fact that my internet connection is ppp-based, meaning that I need a conventional modem to be able to connect to the ‘net.
Of course I can do it the traditional way, via ifconfig, then add the necessary routes through route. However, there’s an easier way for Slackware, and that’s
netconfig
It presents a dialog-based configuration screen that would perform all the necessary settings similar to what is done with ifconfig and route.
After rebooting my system, all’s well, and I’m off to my regular ‘net activities.
I did not go to work today.
Imagine my surprise when somebody called and told me that they would be installing the DSL modem in our house! I remember I told them to come either Saturday or Monday, so I wasn’t really expecting any call from PLDT by this time.
Talk about coincidence.
Now the effective rate (as tested from www.2wire.com) is around 690Kbps. Sweet!
I’ve come to a decision — i’ll be doing the code using Perl!
I got the Llama book – Learning Perl to those outside the Perl world. I hope that getting myself on serious mode would let me produce the needed code at a much shorter time.
Well as they say, When there’s a will, there’s a way.
I’m planning to write a script that would be most useful to my current project at work.
However, I’m at a dilemma. I’m torn between learning something to get the job easily done and learning something that could be of use to me in future projects.
Could somebody help me decide, please?
