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.

Labels: blah, technology

Olympics

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

Labels: current events

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?

Labels: movies, technology

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.

Labels: blah, movies

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.

Labels: blah

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.

Labels: blah, health

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

Labels: technology