PLDT

Sucks.

I was without internet connection from August 29, 8:05 PM to August 31, 9:40 AM. And I realized it's so hard to live without something you have gotten so used to.

I don't know but I felt quite relieved (and happy?) that I'm not the only one who was having troubles with PLDT during that time. Yesterday at 1 pm, I went to a pre-arranged meeting with my ortho and I commented about my internet connection. And I learned he didn't have internet connection either, as well as the internet cafes near his clinic.

I called PLDT helpdesk immediately after I was disconnected August 29. The call agent went into procedures of getting info about me and told me my trouble would immediately be forwarded to their technical team. I asked her if other subscribers in my area were experiencing the same thing but she said I was the only one who called about a trouble. I called the helpdesk again that night at about 11:30 PM to follow up my report and I was informed that the trouble was on their end. There was an advisory of some sort given to them by their technical team that a restoration thing was being done somewhere near my area. I wished the first call agent I talked to knew and informed me about it. I shouldn't have gotten into the trouble of checking my router, wires, and doing a stand-alone server. Funny thing was, a PLDT tech went to my place yesterday morning to check on my connection. It seemed he had no idea they were having a restoration thing going on and that the trouble wasn't on my end. He then proceeded to replacing my modem with a newer (and smaller) model. He called Datanet (which I believe is their tech department) and talked to people to check my connection (and I assume the people he talked to didn't know about their network trouble because had they known, they wouldn't bother to check on my individual connection and in turn advised the tech at my house about it). He left my place with no luck. I still didn't have a net connection, but my modem was replaced. This morning my mom woke me up. The PLDT tech from yesterday was at the door, my old modem in hand. His supervisor somehow got mad at him for replacing my modem. Through his harsh voice, he narrated the story of how his boss told him they were having network troubles and that my connection will not be fixed no matter how many times he changed my modem.

Now I have my old modem back. ZTE. A model I was told (by the tech) that they had phased out long ago. But my connection's okay. That's the only thing that matters.

Internet provider. Communication. It seems that the PLDT staff's communication is experiencing so much lag.

Olympics

I love Olympics, but I love China and its culture better.

Social Networking Movie

Social networking is so "in" today that kids (from as young as 6) and adults have an account (or two) to either keep in touch and up-to-date with their biological friends, have contact with their virtual ones, or simply gain more friends virtually. Many (whom I know personally) don't like the idea of these social networking sites, saying most are posers and pretentious, and that they rather keep their friends biological rather than virtual.

I was introduced to Friendster by young friends in 2002, during the early stages of the site. I made an account but didn't do much about it until last year when the people I play with in Ran Online began exchanging e-mail addresses which serve as their Friendster identity. After much prodding from my online game friends, I started adding them to my friend list and eventually found it fun to be updated on what my "friends" are up to and quite happy when I receive comments or messages from them.

Another networking site, Myspace, came out a year after Friendster was born. I also made an account during its early stage and added a few friends but just like what happened to my Friendster account when I first signed up, I stopped signing in.

Then Facebook came out in 2004. It was created at Harvard by Mark Zuckerberg and eventually became a hit. Other same sites emerged such as Multiply, Hi-5, etc. But a pattern emerged. Friendster and Multiply became a hit with Asians while Facebook and Myspace became the networking sites more favored by the caucasians.

But sometimes, the good intentions of these networking sites are put in the bad light by some of its users. Remember the Myspace hoax? Some also eventually meet up and become partners for life while some are being kidnapped through Friendster.

Will these points be brought up in the movie Aaron Sorkin is writing? Or will it be just about the evolution of Facebook?

Bad Movies

My favorite journalist, who does movie reviews for a spreadsheet, described Star Cinema's A Very Special Love as a series of romantic scenes put together to make a movie. Now For the First Time is described as "pretty". She writes: "KC Concepcion is pretty. Richard Gutierrez is pretty. Greece is pretty. The Richard Prince bag is pretty." Followed by: "Then the movie has a nervous breakdown, and everything goes to hell."

What comprises a good movie, anyway? And how important is a good plot to a movie? Is it enough to make the viewers "kilig" or is it also important to instill something and somehow influence them with the movie?

Movie producers have been giving us romantic movies with bad plots. Why? Because these kind of movies are the ones that make more money. Good movies don't make that much money. Look what happened to Judy Ann Santos' self-produced Ploning. Didn't get much attention.

Big producers only care about making money. And as long as we patronize bad-plotted but full-of-kilig-moments movies, that's what they will continue to give us. They can spend millions to shoot abroad, they can spend big money for the everyday shooting fiesta, because they know people will watch the movie no matter how bad the story line is; that they will get their money back threefolds.

I hope people will think twice about spending a hundred or so pesos for a movie with merely kilig moments rather than a good plot. Because patronizing something bad will make matters even worse.

Loose!

My brackets were "attached" (I hope that's the right term) yesterday. It just took Erich three hours to do all of my teeth (aside from two wisdoms). My other ortho spent almost six hours to do it. I can still remember how my stomach grumbled on his dental chair and how I was starved the whole night after that. I couldn't eat. Whole mouth ached. But anyway a bracket on the left central incisor of my lower teeth came loose. So I'm going back to the clinic tomorrow.

I really hope nothing comes loose while he's in Australia.

On some other things: I wonder what happened to Jessica Zafra's blog. Firefox seem not to find it. It's either my browser is playing tricks or her server's down.

A New Ortho

I went to an ortho... again. My unsuccessful trip to the ortho two years ago had left a memory on the alignment of my teeth. My lower teeth got somehow crooked that I find it stressful when I look in the mirror and smile. Now why would I smile in front of the mirror? Haha sounds funny now but I bet all of us do.

Dr. Kristoffer Erich Roldan Padilla says he can align my teeth in 6 months. And that means I'm just gonna be on braces (again) just for 6 months. Great, eh? But he's going to Australia on October for two months. I just wish no bracket will fall while he's not around.

Erich (allow me to call you by your first name) was so friendly he even showed me his collection of miniature action figures, his oil paintings, pics of his dogs, and a lot more. He's so entertaining he also kept me talking.

Now I have teeth separators between my molars.

I'm going back to his clinic on Sunday. Bracket fitting. My first ortho took almost 6 hours to do it, which means my mouth was open for almost 6 hours. I hope Erich will make it faster.

Autorun

I can see the intention of MS when they made the autorun feature: to make things easier. The cd will autoplay upon insertion and on the case of flash disks, a window will pop-out with options on what you would like to do. So much so, it is helpful if the flash disk you're gonna insert is virus-free, but if it's not, it's gonna ruin your world like it did mine a couple of days ago.

My life was functioning normally until Angel inserted her ipod shuffle to charge. Itunes normally popped out. I closed it since ipod's just gonna be recharged. I continued working until a half-hour passed and a window (much like the size of those that pops out after flash disks insertion) suddenly popped out saying "This computer will shut down in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1..." And my world crumbled.

Goodbye to all my unsaved documents which are written in notepad. Goodbye to all the pics I was editing. And later on, I also had to say goodbye to all the files in my primary hard disk. The computer turned on twice after the ipod incident. But the third time I had to turn it on, it had to be booted by the windows installer because it kept on showing blue screen with errors written on top.

Now my hard disk is as good as new. I don't want that to happen again. Ever. But antivirus softwares doesn't do much good with flash disks' autorun virus. And I learned that you have to turn off the autorun feature so you still have the chance to clean the flash disk before it infects your computer.

I found this detailed steps to turn that autorun feature off:

To prevent from being easily infected with autorun viruses and worms from USB flash drives, iPods, etc.

Disable Autoplay Xp:

click Start
click Run
type: gpedit.msc
click administrative templates
click System
click Turn off Autoplay
click Enable and "set to All drives"
click Apply
close window

Note: do this for both Computer and any User Configurations.

Open My Computer
Click Tools--> Folder Options--> View
-select "Show hidden files and folders";
-remove check on "Hide extensions of known file types";
-remove check on "Hide protected operating system files";
-click Apply
---------------------------
Never ever open a removable drive in My Computer. Just don't open My computer when there's a flash drive of any sort in your usb port or a floppy disk in your floppy drive.

-When opening flash drives, right click Start > Explore
-navigate to your flash drive on the right panel. you should be able to view the contents without double clicking. if you see the familiar autorun virus files (exe, bat, htt, ico,vbs, usually blue box icons or green paper scrolls), delete them right away! unplug the flash drive. check task manager for running programs (for Disk Knight, you have to do this before deleting the files para hindi na bumalik) and close the apps and processes. replug the drive.

Disable Autoplay on Xp Home

There is no gpedit.msc for Xp Home. Copy the following lines on a notepad. Save it as "Disable Autoplay.reg" on your desktop. Double click it to run and it should automatically edit your registry for you.

Code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Policies\Explorer]
"NoDriveTypeAutoRun"=dword:000000b5

if you want the cd autoplay to keep working, change b5 to 95.

Note: you can also run regedit, search for NoDriveTypeAutoRun , and change the value manually.

Source: ulop.net

It's a Church Song

Here's a video of my nephew singing while playing with her mom's camera phone. He actually turns off the volume of the speaker whenever we play this.

Ling Zhi

It has been 18 months since I was brought to the ICU due to hypokalemia which was caused by the steroids in the multivitamins I used to take. Ling Zhi, available at ELOV Chinese Drug Store located at one of the kiosks of your favorite mall. They are also the ones selling the Pei Pa Koa candies which are known to those who sing because it supposedly clears your throat. Anyway, Pei Pa Koa is endorsed by Kyla.

Two days ago, I was reading the candymag forum my niece left open in the internet browser and the girls were talking about the Ling Zhi vitamins, and they were talking about the side effects of the drug. One said she had pimples all over her face and back, the other said only her face became fat, and another said it damaged her adrenaline something and that she desperately needs a good derma. The side effects those girls experience are nothing compared to what I had. I became a veggie for hours in the sense that I could only move my head and neck part. The effing steroids made my potassium count so low that my muscles stopped contracting. It could have been my heart that stopped pumping if I weren't brought to the hospital sooner.

I hope nothing like that happens to one of those girls, or to others who take steroids for their sense of vanity.

And the reason about why I'm (re)writing about my Ling Zhi experience is because of the coffee someone gave me. Ling Zhi coffee (above photo). And it was still inside the yellow plastic bag with an ELOV print when it was given to me, complete with a tag price that says 285php.

I said nothing to the person who gave it to me for the fear of offending someone with good intentions. And, anyway, it's not really the exact Ling Zhi that sent me to the hospital. It's coffee. Powdered. Instant. 3-in-1 even. And I tried it the other night. Bitter to the taste. The catch is, it gave me the exact feeling that I had when I was taking the vitamins - that constant feeling of having a lump (of air/food) in the middle of my esophagus. I don't know if I'm just being paranoid of the name Ling Zhi but really, it's the same, exact feeling the vitamins gave me, aside from the fact that my heart beats faster than normal. I'm quite sure of it, because I noticed that feeling long ago, while taking the vitamins, even before I came to know it had steroids.

Now I still have 19 coffee sachets left. Who wants some?

Flattery

My niece asked this 2 mornings ago: "When someone imitates the way you dress, does it irritate you?" Taking into consideration that she's in her teens, and that fashion style is one of the most important things to teenagers (at least that's what I know of), I answered her in a way that will make her be proud of herself. "Imitation is the greatest form of flattery. She dress up like you because she thinks you dress up okay." I was still in for more of the topic but she shrugged her shoulders and went back to her room.

And that made me think of myself. Has someone ever imitated me? Well one of my closest friends imitated my business and put it up 4 lots away from mine. Also, that same friend acquired a shih tzu of exactly the same color as mine 3 months after I got Princess. Flattery, indeed. But it irritates me.

On other notes, I would like to congratulate Vanessa Ann Balleras for passing the nursing board... and for having a boyfriend she loves and who also loves her with much intensity. I hope the sparks will last a lifetime.

New Shirt

I brought my shih-tzu Princess to the vet yesterday for the yearly rabies shot and since I left her there for almost four hours while my sis and I pay the bills and shop, I bought her a new shirt so she won't feel so neglected.

What's Real and What's Not?

Watching reality shows can sometimes be quite depressing, especially when favoritism of the show among the contestants becomes so evident you wanna pull the contestant having the opposite advantage out of the show. It's actually like watching a television soap, except for the fact that you know it's not fiction.

Text votes aren't real. They will actually evict who they want to be eliminated, no matter how many times you voted.

The opposite happens, though, in Pinoy Idol. They really follow the text votes. Proof of which was the previous elimination of two of their favorite contestants. But I've read somewhere that the so-called "network-war" played a big role in the incident; that the competing network was responsible for the big votes the lesser talented contestants got, resulting to the elimination of the better contestants.

I'm starting to hate local television. These text votes thing is a crap. I guess watching WWF is better.