Finally had Smart’s Plug ‘n Talk. I had it bought from the Philippines and had my grandmother bring it. After a couple of days use, here’s what I think and know about the technology:

• The flashdrive comes with 1GB memory space.
• PnP; installs everytime I plug into the USB port.
• Runs on XP/Vista.
• E-Load link does not work.
• Shows Philippine time.
• Shows status of device. If not ready, re-plug the device if Re-Login does not work.
• I can’t copy-&-paste onto the message box.
• The new message does not show an excerpt; just a blank row.
• So far, not all promo by Smart is covered.
• You will be tempted to spend so much because text messaging is so easy.

2008 has been a progressive year for me. It’s not so much productive as I planned it to be, but it was okay. The year went by too quickly for me. Nothing went my way, save a few. I was able to accomplish a few goals and postponed many. I’ve managed to be more literate in my writings. I found my niche in the pursuit of wisdom. I found my mentor, my medium.

I hope the next year would be beneficial to me.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a story of a man born and lived backwards — agewise that is. Benjamin was born in his eighties and aged backwards. The story was told perfectly (I can’t agree on adaptation because I have not read the book) through the film. It took three hours to show how Benjamin aged to infancy and finally closed his eyes. I’m very sensitive when the story’s main theme is time. For this one, though not entirely a time travel, I’m satisfied. The story ought to be taken as an existential observation. The fact that no matter where we begin, there is always an end. A scene that I was mostly touched was when Benjamin learned how to miss someone from a friend who said that death is relevant in life because that’s the only way we would know the importance (or how valuable) someone is. For anyone who’ve been following what I’ve been writing here, I’ve said over and over again that the only way to avoid grief is through detachment. It’s a contrapositive of “Benjamin”.

Brad Pitt has always been an underrated actor. Hopefully he gets what he deserves.

I was so happy when I found this film (with English subtitle) at a torrent tracker. Early this morning, I watched this Korean movie and I wasn’t particularly pleased. I already expected the movie to be dark, so that didn’t bother me. What bothered me the most was the language. Joe Odagiri spoke Japanese and the rest Korean and for some reason, all characters can understand each other. It seemed to me that production gave up on the language barrier and totally ignored it hoping the audience can make themselves understand. Uhmmm… not me!

The particular symbolism used weren’t too familiar to me which is the other shortcoming on my behalf. A few touches of gothic humor gave me a few shortlived laughters. Odagiri’s acting, however, was brilliant. Especially the part when he almost went crazy, it was superb. Both actors did not fail my expectations in their craft. Lee Ran was a perfect character for Lee Na Young.

If not for the acting prowess of Odagiri and Lee, I would have trashed the film. It was artisitc, but filled with loopholes and unrealism.

I woke up early today expecting to be in the office before 8AM. Luckily, the server was up, so I’m relieved. I can go to the office later.

Last night around 11PM, I had to copy a partition to a new drive (temp) and it took 2 hours to finish. I thought the server hung at shutdown state which was always the case for me. I thought I had to physically reboot the unit. Luckily when I woke up around 6, the damn thing was online.

Later tonight again, the final replacement shall begin. Maybe I’ll start around after midnight.

UPDATE: The fix will cause inability to read mails.

I couldn’t let go of Google Chrome, so I checked bug reports and I found a temporary fix to the problem. For my future reference until Chrome devs fix the issue, here’s what needs to be done:

1. Right Click on the Google Chrome shortcut (Desktop or whereever you place it).
2. Left Click on Properties.
3. On the Target box, add the following line at the end:

--user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1 Safari/525.19"

Therefore, if you are running Chrome in Windows, your target should look like:

C:\path\to\chrome.exe --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1 Safari/525.19"

Close all instances of Chrome and open the browser again using the shorcut prepared above.

Yesterday, Wordpress released version 2.7. It’s a point upgrade which means there are significant changes that could affect my plugins and themes. I’m not that impulsive as to upgrading software version, so I ran an upgrade on my test site. It’s close to identical to this “production” site of course so that I can properly troubleshoot if any. I was satisfied with the test, so I decided late last night to upgrade. This is my first post…

The new admin panel looks more like MovableType. Hmmmm. This release is AJAX overload :)

Since my thought (for an entry) escaped me, I’ll post a simple malware removal tutorial.

A few years ago, we called them annoying pop-ups and now we call them MALWARE. Virus is no longer trendy because it does not rake in revenue; malware does because it mostly contains advertising.

If you are a careless netizen and clicking on any pop-up that may appear in front of you, then you are the best malware victim. IT administrators should block all sites except for the ones that the company would need if their users do not abide by the usage policy. In the office, we are too scared to even use Google because internet usage is strictly prohibited unless needed and we can’t hardly slack because there’s too much work to be done.

One night I was victimized by a malware in my home PC. The site I used to frequent had a hidden malware injector through PDF. I’ve been removing malwares for others, so I’ll share the secret with everyone.

1. Download Hijackthis & SmitFraudFix (Google them)
2. Install Hijackthis.
3. Add an exception in your AntiVirus (add both softwares above).
4. Run Hijackthis & fix processes you don’t recognize.
5. Restart your computer in Safe Mode.
6. Run SmitFraudFix (option 2) and clean registry when prompted.
7. Restart your computer in Normal Mode.
8. Done!

The South Trip (Set 2)

140 Photos

The South Trip (Set 1)

87 Photos

INTRODUCTION

Before December begins, I should have used all my vacation days from work. It was the last two weeks of November. Usually, I spend my vacation in the overseas, but this year, I opted for a domestic trip with Frances.

I did not plan the trip ahead of time like I usually do things. Planning a trip most of the time does not work for me because things happen in between. I’ve been irking to go south this time, especially to Texas. It has been in the back of my head. Only financial burden and fear was pinning me down. That’s another thing why I don’t plan my trips; I get over the fear. So during the weekend when I picked up Frances from the airport (she came from Las Vegas, but originally from Vancouver, BC) I was thinking about the trip while driving. From there, I decided to do it. Face the music later.

So, we’re all set. We have the destination, now what? I wanted to go by land so that I can see other states on the way to Texas. I need to at least map my path before heading to the dungeon, right? Well, if I’d let Mapquest do everything for me, then the purpose of the trip would be nullified. I don’t like “sight-seeing” museums or tourist attractions per se, but I need something that’ll point me there. Then it hit me, why not taste all the good burgers that America can offer? Not the chains, but local or regional burger joints. The Burger Trip was born.

MATERIALS

These are the things we had to execute the trip:

• Sport Utility Vehicle
• Cooler
• Baseball bat for protection (I don’t need a permit to carry it)
• Clothes (4 seasons)
• Cash (ATM charges are expensive)
• Sunglasses
• iPod
• Blanket
• GPS navigator
• Flashlight
• Pen & paper
• Tissue & sanitized wipes
• Few cans of Red Bull
• Snack

SUV — The vehicle had to be an SUV for me because I didn’t know the terrain. I rented a Jeep Wrangler which really was a perfect vehicle for the trip. It was brand new, so I had minimal worry during the 4,000 mile trip.

GPS — Prior to the trip, I bought a NavTour from Buy.com for $100. It wasn’t able to find new roads, but it was good enough for the trip. I had trouble with it when I entered Houston area because there were many new roadways as well as North Carolina.

Red Bull — It was not of great help, but it did help a bit to keep me awake during a few segments of the trip.

It is indeed the first time that Bb. Joyce Bernal disappointed me. Over the weekend, I had the patience to watch the first starring film by KC Concepcion opposite Richard Gutierrez. I don’t know why Kookie had the “fortitude” to promote this high school skit; maybe, just maybe she was desperate.

I did not have a very high expectation before watching the film, so nobody can tell me that I expected too much and the film failed that high expectation. The film is simply garbage and does not qualify to be in the big screen at all (not even in video even).

Firstly, let me point the obvious: KC cannot act. Saying that this was her first, so excuse her is not acceptable. Maybe in the future, she could, but lead starring in something where you know you are poorly trained is unacceptable. Let me enumerate her shortcomings in acting (in the film) and I may miss some: (1) poor facial expression, (2) trying hard, (3) no subtlety. Her facial expression cannot convey the character’s emotions. It is as if she’s trying to memorize her lines during the dialogs and she forgets to project the emotions visually. She tries so hard to show skin in a couple of the scenes whereas she lost the subtlety in her acting. There was a scene where she was half asleep and she was carefully unbuttoning her blouse to show her brazier. It was pitiful to watch.

With Richard Gutierrez’s acting resume, it was obvious that he was guiding Concepcion in acting. Like the rest of the characters, Gutierrez’s character isn’t well developed either. It wasn’t colorful just like its boring plot. The production team should just have a 5-minute press conference to introduce Concepcion upon entering show business instead of spending millions for producing trash.

For The First Time may well be considered one of the worst Filipino movies ever. The location was wasted for something like this. It may have raked in millions because of excitement in seeing Concepcion in a movie. Though I’m not a fan of her parents, but she’s a fingernail away from either one of them. Star Cinema may be at fault here also for rushing such production. They should have had Concepcion attend a workshop beforehand. The production even injected a few stars, but since the story itself is trash, they couldn’t put out the fire.