New Year, New Stuff

Happy New Year! I'm expecting a lot of new things for this year!

My PC broke (yes, broke) last Dec 24, 2004 hence the lack of holiday greeting posts. Almost everything just went poof. Here's what I ended up with: AMD Sempron 2600+, MSI K7N2Delta2-LSR, Apacer 512Mb DDR400, GeCube Radeon 9550XE, Enlight 400W, and a new casing. What's not fried and carried over: 20Gb HDD, CD-RW, CD-ROM, SBLive. New PC, now that's starting the year right, right?

Just goes to show that you should never crimp on your PSU and AVR/UPS, always go for quality and go the branded stuff. Assembling it was an adventure too. Try looking for choice parts during Dec 30-31.

Rain

Here I stand, hands in pocket, waiting for the Moon to show. Expecting as it came yesterday, bright and cheerful, shimmering amongst a sea of black. Moon would call, and I would come. Once, Moon and I went to a place we've never been, of plains and trees and tranquil. Then I knew we were never to part. I belong to her.

Then a Star came, shining brighter than most of the other stars. Star took the Moon away. They belong to each other.

I no longer see the Moon but I know it's there and it will never go away. Sometimes I find myself waiting in the dark, yet I know Moon will never come. But Moon will never be gone.

My Reason is You

Watching the new Bridget Jones Diary movie, I spent almost every moment in frustration, torment, bitter agony. It's not that it's bad, I've just lost all possibilities to appreciate any love story. Some may react: Oh, this man is so horrible to say such things! You'll get to know the feeling when your soulmate and the one you're destined to be with is marrying someone else. You get that premonition you'll be miserably lonely for the rest of your life. My lovelife is a f*cked up fairy tale.

If you're feeling down after reading that, you're taking it the wrong way. You should be thankful someone else is farther down the sh*thole.

I always get on a spending binge after a heartbreak; more pain, more buying. Better start saving up, this one's going to knock the bells off a few cash registers.

Quote of the Day

I was not delivered unto this world in defeat, nor does failure course in my veins. I am not a sheep waiting to be prodded by my shepherd. I am a lion and I refuse to talk, to walk, to sleep with the sheep. I will hear not those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious. Let them join the sheep. The slaughterhouse of failure is not my destiny.
I will persist until I succeed.
Henceforth, I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today.
I will be liken to the rain drop which washes away the mountain; the ant who devours a tiger; the star which brightens the earth; the slave who builds a pyramid. I will build my castle one brick at a time for I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking.
I will persist until I succeed.

Full text here

Guns and Singing Architects

Last night we went to the gun show at Megamall. There were pistols and longarms of all sorts. The .50cal magnum revolvers were HUGE and bloody lethal even when unloaded. I got to handle a real AK-47. There's a 9mm pistol called 'Buddy', you can get for only P9,990. Dissappointingly I learned the HK Mk.23 costs above P120K, and near impossible to get registered as it's meant to be silenced. Dangit.

Off to Virgin Cafe T.Morato for a cousin's band anniversary. He was part of a second generation (playing 80-90s era music, their first batch was playing 70s to way-back era) of Arkiband, a band of architects. Oh yes, they're all architects. You can tell by the sponsors (Boysen and a whole bunch of construction material brands). Free entrance, free food, good music, what could go wrong? They even raffled off some appliances, too bad we missed it. Happy Anniversary Arkiband!

Name my baby contest

The hardest part of applying for a trade name has got to be naming it. So far, every acceptable one I've thought of has been taken: FastTrack, Big Cheese, G&P, even PPB.

Prizes will go to whoever thinks up the coolest name for a company. It doesn't have to be related to anything. Post your entries now!

Better donuts than Go-Nuts (IMHO)

If you're craving for another batch of crispy cream donuts, U-turn on over to Katipunan and down to a donut place called Cello's dips & doughnuts (make sure to enter the service road). They have the lightest, softest donuts with unusual but delightful flavors like cheese (mmm I liked it), M&M, or Oreo. You can get the sugar-glazed and dip it in dark chocolate, white chocolate-strawberry, or Toblerone (mmmmm I like it like it, but they were out).

All this online reading and e-books is giving me a headache. I think it'll be a justified investment to acquire a 17" LCD monitor (Samsung with black frame, P27K). Then I'll be needing to replace the video card (around P15K) since this one hasn't a DVI port. But then the motherboard will have to be upgraded with one that has PCI-X ports (P6K) to accept the newer video card models. The new motherboard will need more power from a new PSU (P3K), which will only fit the larger cases (P10K). The new mobo also uses SATA, ergo new HDDs (120Gb 8mb cache, P6K). I'll also need a new mouse and keyboard (Logitech of course, P4K), to match the black color of everything else.
Conclusion: I'll be needing a total of P71K to upgrade the radioactive (it emits harmful radiation, according to experts) CRT monitor to LCD. It beats laser eye-surgery (P150K) and migraine medication (P5K) by a mile! More than 50% savings!

A loaf of bread, a cup of milk, and a stick of RAM

Warning: the following is not recommended for non-computer enthusiasts (geeks) or the faint-hearted

My stock CPU fan's RPM dropped to half, and was necessarily replaced by a snazzy Coolermaster XDream II (8cm silent metal-finned fan, aluminum heatsink with copper insert). The CPU temp stays around 42 C idle, a big improvement from 52 C idle while using the stock fan that came with the processor.

The computer acted up shortly after, beeping and beeping and beeping and not booting up. The motherboard's debug display showed C1h, which meant memory problems. I tried installing the RAM (I only have one 512Mb stick) in each of the memory slots and altering the voltage, but alas, all efforts failed. Replacing it would cost me a little less than five thousand. We didn't want it to end this way, it was all too sudden. Losing hope I started scraping off the label and warranty stickers, cleaned it up real nice. I dressed it up in copper heat spreaders, if it's gonna go, at least it's gonna go looking cool. I tried putting it in for one last time, like the final ritual of checking for breath and pulse. But wait! Everything started working as it should be! It beeped once, went to Windows loading screen , to the logon screen, then to the desktop! Oh happy happy joy joy!

And in geek tradition I'd like to pay tribute to my specs: AthlonXP 2400+ with Coolermaster XDreamII, Epox 8KHA+, Kingston 512Mb DDR333, Gainward Geforce3 Ti500 64Mb, Seagate 20Gb 7200rpm HDD, Samsung CD-RW 52/24/52x 8Mb, Samsung 52x CD-ROM, Soundblaster Live 5.1, Logitech Z640 5.1 speakers, Exodus 350W dual-fan, 17" monitor

It started as this: Athlon 1.1 with Globalwin TAK68, Epox 8KHA+, 128Mb DDR266, 3dfx Voodoo3 16Mb, Maxtor 10Gb 5400rpm HDD, LG 52x CD-ROM, Soundblaster Vibra128, Labtec 2.1 speakers, Exodus 300W, 14" monitor

Market! Market!

Up-market, down-market, bull market, bear market, blah blah. Never heard it before as many times as I've been hearing and reading it lately.

Just signed up for an account on CBS.MarketWatch. Can I really go through with this? I have no idea what the blokes are saying. There are familiar words here and there; I get to say "Uy, alam ko 'to ah!" whenever I come across the words 'the Internet', or 'Microsoft'. It's like having a vivid dream, you wake up and remember the details but forget everything by the time you get out of bed. Or taking Accounting for two semesters, then one year after graduation the only thing you remember is that a P5,000-below annual income isn't taxed, and you're not even sure.

Oh yeah, a cousin got a K700i. It's as gorgeous as I imagined, but the first unit he got was faulty. If your unit has bugs or operates slowly, exchange it in for another one immediately. I think I'll get one when I need it, or just when it's being phased out and costs P10K (from the current price of a whopping P23K)

The Olivarez Mystery

Yesterday was a perfectly nice day to go on a road trip, so my friends and I did. To summarize, we made our way to Tagaytay in a roomy yet incomparably sluggish Liteace, seeing twenty-something Colette's stalls along the road, getting a few snapshots and burning a few hundred thousand calories through Picnic Grove's eco-trail, a tasty and unusually clean isaw (the search for Olivarez, source of coffee beans, starts shortly after), a lovely lunch at a place we've never been before, then shopping at some factory depots on the way home.
It was a nice day spending it with some of my closest friends, even a clump of some large animal's droppings getting stuck under a shoe and into the van wouldn't have ruined it. To those that should've come but couldn't, I hope we'll all be there on the next trip!