July Journal Entries

What I really want now is a bath, a nice cool, refreshing and quick shower would do wonders. But that's something you cannot do here in this God forsaken town when the clocks strike midnight. The water pressure is so frustratingly weak, one would actually get lazy to take a bath in any other way. I hate this town for a lot of reason, the main one being, hmmm, let's just say corruption. Plus, this town belongs to someone, it is their town and we are the poor residents.

Personally, if you own something, you'd try your best and make the most of it, right? Let's say you own a business, of course you'd run it the best you can so you can be proud of it. You won't just leave it to the dogs to run to the ground, right? That's not the case in this town, someone practically owns the whole town, but ever since we have moved here, the place hasn't developed or even changed at all. Not even one tiny bit in 13 bloody years, there is no such thing as development here. And the one who owns this town, hardly does anything at all but make money out of a town that is going NOWHERE.

I mean, if I owned this town, I can't say that I would not be corrupt, which is a constant in Philippine politics no matter what people say, I'd do the best I can to develop the place and make it look good. This way, I could brag like other Metro Manila mayors do, claiming that I did this and that. Who would ever be proud of owning SHIT?!

But hey, if you make 6 MILLION PESOS over a a simple and ILLEGAL business transaction, who cares about what other people say, right?

More on that 6 million peso transaction some other time. I am under strict time constraints.

Unfortunately, Sacrifices MUST Be Made [Wednesday, July 30, 2003 @ 1:45 am]

1:45 am?! Wow! Am home pretty early today, amazing. I was lucky today compared with how unlucky I was yesterday. Yesterday, I had to wait for the jeep to fill up, unlike today where the jeep was already full, nearly full.

After some thinking, I figured that this was the cheapest scenario/option available, commuting to and from work everyday. Sure, it may eat up more hours that I could use for rest, but knowing myself, I won't do that. If I stayed in a dorm, I'd have more time for sure, but that comes hand in hand with more expenses. Commuting is still the best option, since it is cheaper.

To make things simpler, it is a choice between movies and PC time. As I said, renting a place would give me more free time, which I would definitely use for watching every movie I can, but no PC use at all especially when day-offs would be only for a day, laziness would strike, and I wouldn't even bother going home. Alternatively, if I commuted to and from work, I wouldn't have any movie time, but I'd be able to use the PC everyday, which is the case now. I could then rent VCDs and watch the movies I watched during day-offs.

Great, well-thought out plan right? Definitely, because I am in no way going to sacrifice both of them. Fat chance I'd EVER do something like that. Am already feeling uneasy not having seen a movie in over two weeks now. Tomb Raider is still on the list and it's like the first time I missed watching a Summer Hollywood Blockbuster on opening day this year. Insane.

I hope I'd find the time to finish my new layout, I thought I'd be able to finish it this weekend since I am quite possibly going out on Saturday. Maybe I could finish the layout, but not transferring everything onto it. Let's just see what happens.

Pretty Clueless [Monday, July 28, 2003 @ 12:30 am]

Woke up this morning with hardly a clue about what was happening in the country. Some relatives were watching TV and talking about the on going Coup d'état, and I had nothing to say about this.

For the past few days, I was too occupied with work and doing what I want, that I totally forgot about current events. So I didn't know if this thing just happened come Sunday morning or was something inevitable due to the events which happened next week. Might as well read something about it on the Internet, so I wouldn't look so stupid and clueless tomorrow.

The funny thing is, while I was playing Ragnarok (waiting for my life bar to fill up), some guys were talking about leaving the country due to the "events" happening in the country. Nice place to first find out about a rebellion.

Spent the rest of the day working on the new layout, and so far am pretty pleased with it. I wish I could have finished the layout this weekend, but there was hardly enough time. The layout itself, is almost done. The long and tedious part would be transferring the contents from the old layout to the new one, especially now that I am falling in love with coding by hand. It is much easier, since FrontPage is Microsoft, meaning they do not follow standards at all. Bah, even the <q> & </q>, which is used for quoting rather than using actual quotations don't work to think that this is a standard recommended by the W3C.

Over at Neopages, Quiller has set up this simplicity club, who have but one pledge, "Keep It Simple Stupid" (KISS). Personally, am all for simplicity of design, though I appreciate graphic intense masterpieces. This is the Information Age, and with the load of information everywhere, it must be presented in the simplest and most straightforward way possible. If you are one of these people who love simplicity, you are invited to join the club. Just follow the white rabbit. I mean, image link.

Weeks ago, I came across this site (can't remember which one), but the site showcased some of the awards it received. So, just for the fun of it, I tried it out and submitted my website to Golden Web Awards. I admit, the name was really flashy. Yesterday, got the mail, and it stated that I won, in other words, this site was good enough to merit acknowledgment from them. But the mail is more like one big advertising campaign to get your webpage "launched" and viewed by more people. It had ads for hosting and search engines among others, of course, at discounted rates, since you did win the award. Anyways, I think it is cool, and here's the image I chose.

Today's the start of a whole new week, I hope I'd find time and finish the layout so I could upload it next week end.

Movie Absence [Sunday, July 27, 2003 @ 12:24 am]

Have yet to catch the latest Tomb Raider movie, hardly have the time for it due to the insane working hours that am bearing with. Insane in the sense that it completely deprives me of time to conveniently watch movies.

Wrote another monologue, and am starting to develop a liking to it. Maybe in the next evolution of this useless site I'd write blogs for short and unorganized thoughts, monologues to discuss things, and maybe a journal now and then about a significant topic. When the next evolution would come is still a question I have to figure out.

Have the weekends off, but I was supposed to have my health examination yesterday, unfortunately, when I woke up, it was pouring outside. Woke up again around 10 am, noticed that the rain has stopped, but it was too late to go anywhere, especially if one lives in the mountains. So I just slept the whole day, which was good. Now I can stay up until morning playing Ragnarok.

Ragnarok was featured on Knowledge Power. Nothing special though. The free service is almost up, since August is around the corner. Fortunately, you could buy a 50 peso Level-Up game card and be set for the whole month, with a new server too, Loki. Full pay-to-play starts on September, but at 300 pesos, that's still cheap.

3 Minutes Late [Saturday, July 26, 2003 @ 2:11 am]

I hate being late, that's why I allot more than enough time before anything, i.e. going to work, school, eyeballs, etc. But it is just luck when everything bad that may happen happens. Tough luck indeed.

This country is going no where unless a decent public transport is established. Jeeps are open and thus too hot for Manila, not to mention, it would cut one's lifespan in half. Buses are too big for the teeny-weeny streets of Manila. FX taxis are great, but not all are legal, causing chaos when police are around and commuters are waiting in long lines. Also, FX drivers do as they please, they hardly care about the passengers, such as having lunch break ALL at the SAME time, regardless of how impatient and long the cue of passengers is.

One could argue about private vehicles. Yeah, sure! I'm sure everybody knows about the horrible traffic jams in Metro Manila, and imagine more people going about in their private cars because of the pathetic public transportation situation. Doesn't take a genius to know this isn't a wise solution, since however the MMDA routes traffic flow, or implements stupid laws, nothing has changed.

I mentioned above that this country is going no where without a decent transportation system, right? Well, no matter what is done, this country IS going no where.

Yeah, a lengthy rant for being three minutes late at work.

Speaking of work, one week has gone by and have the weekend off. Unfortunately, I need to have my medical examination tomorrow instead of rest. On the other hand, it is a good thing since I now have the chance to watch Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, as my current work schedule does not allow me to watch movies conveniently.

Topic-less [Friday, July 25, 2003 @ 2:27 am]

So someone who doesn't usually drinks at odd hours, got drunk and says it was for no reason at all. Yeah, right. And that's just a few days after you confessed something. how I wish I was in his shoes.

Oh, well. Nothing good happens to me at all. Let me rephrase that, nothing EXCEPTIONALLY good happens to me at all. Everything that does is just run-of-the-mill stuff. Have yet to encounter one that is both exceptionally good and REAL at the same time.

Another day at work, well, training to be more specific. It was alright. The travel time is one thing I have to bear with though, as it won't get any better any time soon. I mean, EVER.

There was quite a delay in the posting of weekly winners of hosting over at Neopages. It usually comes out at the start of the week. Anyway, last week's winner is www.phlep.tk, and if you would go check his site out, you'd see how awesome this community is. Damn, how can I ever compete with something like that. I need some decent and interesting, but also ORIGINAL content if ever I'd wish to even get a chance of being voted, as I have no graphic sense at all that would help. Add to the fact that I am working now, and am spending less time on the computer, how can I ever "upgrade" my web designing skills to that kind of level.

Stop that Simon, this is something you should not get depressed about. Okay?

Let's try and make the most of the weekend and hopefully come out with a spanking new layout, with the same old boring stuff recycled.

I added this counter of things, if you have been reading my journal and checked it out, you'd know that I have not been playing RO for quite sometime. Now, the counter is back to ZERO. I don't know what got into me, but I logged in yesterday just to check how things were going, like how many players are there and the issue about lagtime. With the connection I had, there was hardly any lag even though there was a high (from what I have seen) of 1500+ at 4 in the morning. Well, I played for an hour, till my character leveled up, but of course, I had to stop, I was going to work, and I needed to sleep. I think I got interested again with it since some of my fellow trainees play the game.

What am I to do now?

Being Too Busy [Thursday, July 24, 2003 @ 2:15 am]

There is no such thing as being TOO busy.

This is one of my own personal mottos in life. Personally, I do not believe that there is such a thing as being TOO busy. I believe, if you want to do something, you would find the time for it. Unless, it is just some "thing" that you USE to entertain yourself when you are not busy and TOTALLY neglect when you are.

Such is the case for me now. After a few days of starting with a job, I still find the time to remember the people I care for, and most important, log online. Let's see how long I could hold on to this motto, now that I am busy.

The shifting schedule works for me, as I could stay up for hours if I wanted to. I'd get tired, but getting sleepy is a whole other thing.

I hereby reiterate what I have been saying for the past posts this week, if only my place would be at most, an hour away from work, everything would be perfect.

Hmmm...Seems like the past few entries have been substantially shorter than old ones. I'd would be a good idea to separate the long ones from the so-called blogs.

Nostalgia in the Rain [Tuesday, July 22, 2003 @ 10:57 pm]

Pathetic.

One word that best describes my blog last morning. Probably, the shortest ever and has no line of thought what so ever. I got too carried away writing the monologue last night that I had no time for creating a decent journal entry. I send my apologies to all you people.

Today was the first day of the rest of my life. At a call center, that is. Like every time am introduced to a new group, I hardly get to know anyone and stick with for more than a couple of exchanged sentences. Nonetheless, I still got to meet some new people. Shifting schedule starts tomorrow, and have to be there by 3 pm, meaning I have a long time to sleep. Yey! But don't get happy too soon, as the shift ends at 12 midnight. Freaky.

And the weather isn't cooperating at all, and is simply making things difficult and more stressful than it should be.

I doubt if I'd get the chance to see Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, which is opening on the 24th. I have to finish some papers and other requirements for the job, maybe I'd be able to squeeze it in on Saturday, or even next week. Here's hoping it would be significantly better than the first.

My fingers came back to life today. The itch to keep on SMS-ing someone. Was great and nostalgic, but I wish I could have been the one to make her happy, I wish I was good enough for her. Hay...

Enough of this melodrama.

Time to get on-line and be connected to the REAL world.

A Short Blog. [Tuesday, July 22, 2003 @ 12:47 am]

I'm soaking wet.

Oh, and am not jobless anymore. Starting tomorrow, am employed and will start contributing to society. In other words, working for my own personal gain.

Would have told the whole story here, but had to many opinions about it so I wrote a monologue instead. Check it out, and please pardon me for the poor grammar.

Have nothing else to say now, might as well make this short. I have to wake up early and go to work.

Am starting to make a list of things am going to buy. Hehehehe...

Altercation 4.0 [Monday, July 21, 2003 @ 10:52 am]

Altercation 4.0 is up now. If you don't know what it is, it's a rock e-zine by some friends.

I submitted my so-called gig review of Admit One last June, and it's part of the new issue. Reading it again on an e-zine brings a different feeling about it, one that was weird and funny at the same time. And man, the writing was lame, totally lame to the point where people noticed. For every article there was a comment link, and I had my first content, which said "the review was poorly written...grammar-wise that is."

Perfect. Thanks. But is it really that bad that you had to comment on it? Shit! I forgot that I am in the Philippines, a country TRYING so hard to be Americans that one has to spice up said articles in order for it to be good. Common, foreign articles aren't that fancy but they are good. Pathetic. I see a lot of poorly written articles out there, but I never comment on it. Ever. I admit that it was poorly written, reading it was like reading an excessively long gig and album review rolled in to one. Add to that my own personal experience about the gig, so it sounded more like a story than a review.

Ack, this is what I get for not putting the whole review together. For crying out loud, I ripped it out of a journal entry so give me some slack.

Blah. Or maybe, which is very likely, I suck at writing (and everything else for that matter), and am simply feeling depressed about the comment. I absolutely can't do any single thing properly! Talent? Never heard of that. Everything I think I am good at is so fucking mediocre in comparison to another.

This is the perfect mood going into a job interview. Hahahaha...Thanks so much. Am never gonna write a stupid review again.

Tableless Layout...Almost [Sunday, July 20, 2003 @ 11:25 pm]

After more than a month the guys at E-telecare call me up and ask me if I am still interested in working for their company. Of course, I said yes, and am gonna have the final interview tomorrow. Seems like they need someone ASAP, or else they wouldn't have bothered. If ever the interview turns out well, which is highly unlikely, I may have to turn it down or ask for a week before I'd start. The thing is last Friday, I passed my resume to a handful of companies for jobs that actually had a decent career path compared to a call center. I'd have to wait if these applications iron out well first before accepting the job at E-Telecare, even if the salary they offer is substantially higher, I'd gladly pick a job that would provide me with useful and related experience.

I have to be there by 2:30 pm, which means, I could stay up late like always. Yey!

Spent the day creating a new layout using CSS. Learned a bunch of stuff, though I really can't figure out how to make it "tableless" with the design I have in mind, since I want images for the left and right margin and tables seems like the only way out. Resorted to a 1x2 table. Hahaha.

Design?! Right.

Since am just playing with it, am trying to emulate this current layout that am so in love with. I need some new images, create a new banner and stuff as the left and top areas are pretty bare.

And encoding by hand is so freaking cool. It's addicting. =)

Damn! I should have been studying ASP today.

The Job Fair [Saturday, July 19, 2003 @1:59 pm]

Oh, the troubles of finding a job.

Had a really long and tiring day yesterday, my legs were killing me so much that I decided to just sleep it off rather than adding another entry to my journal last night.

As I said in my last post, I dropped by a job fair and met up with some old friends. Most of the companies there were call centers dealing with customer support, one field I hope I don't need to enter because it hardly has any career development at all. So I decided to pass my resume to companies who were looking for IT professionals, in other words, programming, web designing, heck even as a management trainees. Wait. What the hell do I know about Management?! Oh, I forgot that I am a graduate of Business Administration.

But then again, we have programming. The only programming I've ever had was with Visual Basic 6.0 which we used for our thesis but I don't give it such a high regard since I was a little creative in doing that. Sure, we had Java, C++, and ASP before, but we hardly scratched the surface there. This translates to using the next few days reading stuff about ASP, JavaScript, and VB.net, preparing myself for those technical examinations for each company that I have applied to, so I won't make a total fool out of myself and who knows, I might even get hired. I wish and I hope.

In ways, I wasted the last few days choosing to learn CSS first over the other languages out there. I could have easily chosen to learn PHP instead, but I was really fascinated about CSS. Well, it isn't a total waste since I did learn something, sadly though, I won't be able to implement and play around with it since I'd be busy with something else. Oh well, I guess one can't have everything. However, how I wish I could atleast have something.

I was supposed to catch a movie yesterday, but in the end didn't have any time left to, which is quite disappointing as I just found out that Bangkok Haunted also opened last Wednesday. Would now have to squeeze it in somewhere the next time I go out. Bummer.

But I did have the time to check out the record bars. Tower hardly had anything new in there stock, so I assumed that the other record bars would be the same. However, before heading home, I dropped by Odyssey XL checking out CDs. Was excited to see they had copies of Glassjaw's Worship and Tribute, and almost decided to buy it, but I moved to the "T" section and found copies of Taking Back Sunday's Tell All Your Friends and Thursday's Full Collapse, plus another 5-track CD from Thursday. And with only 500 php to spend I was in quite a dilemma over what I should buy. I already have all of the mentioned albums on MP3 but I wanted an original CD. Tell All Your Friends and Full Collapse were at a reduced price, 250 php, half of which a normal CD costs, but Worship and Tribute is an enhanced CD. Settled with TBS and Thursday in the end, hoping that since the copies of Glassjaw were relatively new, there must be copies left come next week. Having spent the last money I've kept, am thinking of ways to come up with 500 php next week.

I really need a job now. Hmmm, I really need money right now. Forget the job, am still having fun staying at home doing nothing.

You are so EVIL [Thursday, July 17, 2003 @ 7:34 pm]

Yes! After so many days of reading through the W3C recommendations for CSS 1 & 2 specifications, I am done and can finally start playing around with CSS, actually implementing what I have read.

The question is if in reality, did I learn anything from that. Well, yes, I did, and quite a handful compared to what I would have learned if I simply started fiddling around with CSS at the start. I guess I can safely say how/why so and so happens in CSS. It opened my eyes to the power of CSS. With a little creativity, one can do almost anything DHTML and JavaScript can, not to mention create pages for different media and even for visual impaired users. Now if only all the properties in the CSS 2.0 specification worked and rendered properly from each browser then all would be nice and dandy. Sadly, this is the trick of fully utilizing the powers of CSS.

It also further emphasized that Microsoft is EVIL. Among the three popular browsers, IE, Mozilla, and Opera, IE sucks since it has the weakest support for CSS. Rendering CSS pages with Mozilla and Opera are almost the same, but IE outputs something really different and out of this world. The scrollbar colors that are quite popular now, don't work with Mozilla and Opera since it isn't even in the CSS 2 specifications, which happens to be the latest. I guess IE invented it for themselves. Nice, but then if you want to validate your markup, you have to scrap the idea of colored scrollbars. Right now, am having trouble saying goodbye to them since they integrate so seamlessly with the current layout.

Like I said at the beginning, I can now use the following week playing with CSS and learning some tricks with it, which seems pretty interesting. It is very interesting. Layouts, rollovers, skin switching, etc. all using just CSS and have the rest of the month to do that. Next month, we could move on to XHTML, XML, and RSS.

Tomorrow appears to be a busy day spent in Manila. Have to run some errands for mom, submit my resume to a friend and drop by Megamall for the job fair at the Megatrade Hall. Of course, I'd be sure to throw in a movie in there somewhere. I wouldn't want the whole trip to go to waste.

Erudition [Monday, July 14, 2003 @ 11:42 pm]

Been reading/studying Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Level 1 & Level 2 specifications using the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. It would be easier if I got a tutorial somewhere and studied CSS from that, but no, I'll read through this then I'd check out some tutorials and play with it. If I decided to play with CSS before reading anything about it, I'd end up not learning a thing.

Anyway, am almost finished reading it though it is taking way too long. Being the specifications recommended by the W3C (technical documents), it is like the raw document about CSS, straightforward and confusing, especially when the styles generate so differently from browser to browser, IE being the worst.

Still, it is something productive for me to do, instead of bumming around and playing videogames all day. My brother is helping out a lot too. Since he and his girlfriend are staying over, they are always using the PS2, and I let them, there isn't any new game that am oh-so-crazy about to begin with. If there was, then that would be a different story.

Then there's the issue of my PC having not enough memory to play games, Win XP sucks a lot, of memory, that is. Thinking of upgrading, but with no source of money and the fact that my brother would then use my PC for playing games, isn't such a bright idea right now.

Ragnarok Online started to get too crowded for me last week, and have stopped playing it since then. Got a lot of time and nothing else to waste it on so am trying hard to concentrate and learn some stuff on the PC. It's hard fighting recurring attacks of extreme laziness which is the reason am advancing so slowly.

Nonetheless, it's a good chance for the better. Just need a little inspiration from someone then am all set. Watch out.

Sunday Newspaper [Sunday, July 13, 2003 @ 11:30 pm]

Mom is showing hints that I should start looking for a job now.

She bought a newspaper today, took out the job listing section and left it on the table. It's a good thing she doesn't scold me to get off my lazy bum and earn some money for myself. I wonder why? I am so clueless, it's disgusting.

The Sunday edition has a special section for job listings. Just laughed at it. Well, I did look at it, trying to find a suitable job to no avail. Only saw one possible job, one that am mildly interested in, and it had no address, instructing applicants to log on to their website and submit their forms online. No problem there, since am online everyday, but the newspaper hardly helped at all, in that aspect.

The entertainment section was a different story. Got a decent idea of which movies are opening this month. The Lizzie McGuire Movie, Jackass, and Down with Love are opening on Wednesday, July 16, then Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life on the 24th. Among the first three I mentioned, I'd definitely be seeing The Lizzie McGuire Movie as I just loved The Princess Diaries, while still thinking what else am gonna see on Wednesday, depends on the mood and budget, actually. But I'd be more interested with Down with Love than Jackass, the latter being a film enjoyable at home with some company. Miranda (Cristina Ricci) and Bjork's Dancer in the Dark are showing at Greenbelt's Art Film, but GBelt is too far and costly for me. There was also this interesting article about the Philippine movie industry, and how/why it is slowing dying with no one noticing or caring.

Flipping through the entertainment section with an intention of finding something about Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, like when the hell it is opening over here, unfortunately to no avail. Man, have only heard good things about it, which is saying something since it IS a Jerry Bruckheimer production. And let's not forget about Keira Knightley and Johnny Depp's gold teeth. Aarrrr! Guess, I was having too much fun with all the simultaneous releases of the big Hollywood blockbusters.

On a latter note, the Talk 'n Text Phonepals snatched the All-Filipino Crown in the PBA from the Coca-cola Tigers in 6 games, to think that they were done 0-2. Coach Joey Banal is having an excellent year lately. A UAAP crown, a PBL crown and a PBA crown, all in a span of a year. What more could one wish for.

Green and White [Saturday, July 12, 2003 @ 7:23 pm]

Season 64 of the UAAP (University Athletic Association of the Philippines) opened up today. This is a basketball country and for some, the UAAP is only about that one sport, neglecting the fact that there are so many events and the university who wins the Overall Award hardly gets any credit compared to the team who won the Championship for basketball. Just so you'd know, University of Santo Tomas has won the overall award for a few years now, sadly, to the knowledge of no one.

After a heartbreaking loss to Ateneo de Manila University in last year's finals, De La Salle University is back to prove that they, as well as any team, have a good chance of winning the championship. With Cortez, Sta Maria, and Manalo gone, there is hardly anything to be said about the team now, much more to expect reaching the finals or reclaiming the championship for that matter.

DLSU's opening game was against UST, a rivalry that goes way back to the early 1990s, and with coach Aric del Rosario calling the shots again, they are a formidable team. So with La Salle having an almost entirely new lineup, being a bunch of rookies (8 rookies?) and sophomores, one could say, La Salle's chances were slim. And in the first three quarters, it showed. UST was shooting the lights out, banging in every shot from almost every corner. Almost made me want to turn the TV off and do something else.

Luckily, La Salle held on with their excellent pressing defense and turned things around in the fourth quarter winning the game by 12 points, extending one La Salle tradition of winning opening games since 1987. The commentators were quoting Franz Pumaren about the current lineup of the Archers being the best pressing lineup he has ever had. The infamous La Salle press, the success behind those 4 consecutive championships. Brings my hopes back to the team, they'd have little to no trouble at all reaching the Final Four and this maybe be wishful thinking, but can possibly enter the Finals again. If not, there is still next year. Am not a sports analyst or anything, just have high hopes for the team. Yes, am still supporting La Salle years after the school kicked me out due to ineligibility caused by excessive failures.

Another excessive story about a game I watched on TV and a school which marked the biggest regret of my life. By the way, the regret was getting kicked out of it rather than getting into the school as some of you may think.

Personally though, the UAAP is too commercialized. You don't even have to open your eyes to see the loads of advertisements all over. Even a defensive and offensive play is brought to you by some product. Am going out on a limb saying this, but it is WORSE than the PBA. With the PBA, it is a professional league so you'd forgive the shitload of advertising schemes there, but the UAAP is a collegiate league. Ah, I won't bother with this anymore this is part of Philippines politics.

One more thing, it's drop dead amusing to see 3 different sponsors on a basketball jersey, right?

The Burnt CD [Friday, July 11, 2003 @ 11:42 pm]

Before anything else, I did mention that I have updated a page I have hardly touched before, didn't I?

I have this CD which I burned about two months ago, and have been playing it over and over on the mini-component ever since. Well, not so much now since there are other people in the house. If I haven't mentioned before, my brother's girlfriend has been staying here for more than a week now. Note, younger brother.

Back to the burnt CD. There was a span of nearly two months that I've been playing it almost everyday, usually when I HAVE to take a bath and do some errands around the house, you know, being the good boy that I really am. But now, I guess I have finally grown tired of the CD. Not quite though, as the sight of me singing (screaming?!) and jumping around rocking to the music maybe too much for some people and could possibly induce irreversible nightmares for some. I am a shy person.

Anyway, here's the track listing of the said CD, if by any chance you are curious.

Hands Down -- Dashboard Confessional
You're the One I Want -- Jets to Brazil
The Middle -- Jimmy Eat World
Without You -- Silverchair
Accident Waiting to Happen -- Discount
A Box Full of Sharp Objects -- The Used
Buried Myself Alive -- The Used
The Taste of Ink -- The Used
You're So Last Summer -- Taking Back Sunday
Cute Without The 'E' (Cut From The Team) -- Taking Back Sunday
Between You and Me -- The Ataris
Bad Case of Broken Heart -- The Ataris
Perfection Through Silence -- Finch
What It Is To Burn -- Finch
Letters To You -- Finch
Without You Here -- Finch
Three Simple Words -- Finch
Stay With Me -- Finch
Legend of Zelda (cover) -- System of a Down
Ghostbusters (cover) -- New Found Glory

First five songs are for her, sentimental, so to speak, as well as the two Ataris songs. I don't know how The Middle got in there since I skip the track most of the time. The others are a mix between being sentimental and songs I really love to sing (scream!) out loud for no particular reason at all. I just threw in the two cover songs for kicks, plus, they were cool especially SOAD covering the Legend of Zelda theme.

Most of the bands are pretty popular these days, except for Jets to Brazil and Discount, two band that I highly recommend to anyone. Especially Jets to Brazils as they are simply top-notch.

I think I wrote "screamo" across the disk face, but now that I think about it I should have removed the "non-screamo" songs and added a few from Thursday and Glassjaw. Then I'd write, "screaming my heart out" on the disk face.

Ah, there's the CD and I did not write anything on the disk, it's black and the only marker available within one arms length is a black one, so no sense writing anything I won't even be able to read. Was that what I was thinking before? And oddly, according to the CD, I burnt it on January 1, 1995 Hmmm...

Movie Day Wednesday [Thursday, July 10, 2003 @ 2:40 pm]

Watching a movie is such a chore for someone who lives so far from the nearest mall, which happens to be an hour and a half away from here, not considering the traffic and other mumbo-jumbo that may happen along the way. Left home after lunch and wasn't back until barely before midnight. How convenient it could be if I could just watch a movie and be back after two or three hours. Sad thing is that is very unlikely to ever happen, unless we move or something.

Well, it was worth it anyway. Got to see two movies, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and 28 Days Later.

Initially, the plan was to see T3 and buy some CDs, had no idea that 28 Days Later was also opening today. So I had to see them both. Spent a few minutes staring at the screening times, figuring out how I could do both and get home the earliest. Ended up with T3 at 4:50, followed by 28 Days at 7:25. At first, I wanted to view T3 at Cinema 1, as it has reserved seating and was simply the best theater in SM Megamall, with the rest being absolute crap. The hitch was that I had to wait till 6:20 which would mean viewing 28 Days Later during the last full showing which was at 9:40 and that just wouldn't do at all. Since, it's just T3 and am not really crazy about it for it to deserve VIP treatment.

So with the day planned out, two movies in a row, I had little or close to no time to window shop except buy that CD my brother asked me to. I did however check the record bar for a few minutes, checking if there where copies of Finch, Thursday, or Taking Back Sunday. No hope there, though the best of Faith No More was available, I opted to just save the last few pesos of my money for something else.

Enough with the story telling and on with the movies.

**Review**

T3 was explosive, I loved it, which is saying a lot since I only have a bleak recollection of Terminator 1 and 2. The catch phrases were a bit too funny and overused this time around like, "She'll be back.", "I'm back." and "We need a new car." among others. Forgivable though since he is a machine, clearing up the monotony and apparent lack of emotion. The good thing about playing as a machine is that one need not be an excellent actor in order to play the part, one just has to be convincing and not over exaggerating things. And I feel that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kristanna Loken were convincing enough for their respective roles. Hats off to the guy who thought about using a female terminator for this movie. I find it amusing how the script writers were able to squeeze previous catch phrases of the old movies such as "I'll be back." and "Asta la vista." John Connor just HAD to say those words. Well, it was fun hearing them again.

With regards to the ending, it was well-done and is a good way to conclude the series. Sure, it may seem to open possibilities for a few other sequels but sequels that would not be terminator per se but more on the events of the actual revolution. T3 kind of wrapped things up for terminators, since Judgement Day has already begun and it would be stupid for the machines to send another terminator back at this time. After three years they have clearly pointed out that Judgement Day is inevitable no matter what they do. On the other hand, this may have been the reason from the beginning why terminators come back in time to assassinate John Connor. Whether or not this is the case, a direct sequel to T3 (one involving terminators going back through time) would be short of stupid since loose ends have already been tied up and the revolution is underway. If they really wanted to make one, maybe it would focus more on the events of the revolution with Ah-nuld squeezed awkwardly in between. Personally, I'd like the series to end here.

Ack. I must get my hands on a copy of Terminator 1 and 2 before making anymore of these conclusions. On to the next movie then.

Despite what Carrington of Movie Punks has said about 28 Days Later, I find the movie quite entertaining. Having not seen a zombie flick before, aside from Resident Evil, I was pretty much excited about this flick, and I wasn't disappointed. Sure, there are scenes where the characters just do the dumbest and most illogical things, such as the expressway scene. Was funny and stupid at the same time. Carrington is a movie enthusiast, and has probably watched every zombie flick ever released which led him to say such things about the movie. And one more thing, I think the movie is a bit too long and dragging compared to how much tight and captivating the trailer was. Again, a minor issue. Nonetheless, if you want a decent scare while waiting for Bangkok Haunted, go see this movie.

**End of Review**

Hmmm. What else happened? None. I guess that's about it for Movie Day Wednesday. I wonder what new movies are opening next week.

Ragnarok OFFline [Tuesday, July 8, 2003 @ 4:39 am]

After a week or so, I have officially decided to stop playing Ragnarok Online. It just isn't fun anymore, but it could have been if I was younger and had oodles of time to waste. With it I got my first taste of an MMORPG and liked it, but as I initially anticipated, without a reasonable connection to the net, it isn't as grand. You need dedication to play these kind of games, slowly building up your character from scratch.

The main reason for this unexpected chain of events is the influx of new users, the first time I logged at around 3-4 am, there were about 700+ online. Now, at the same time, there are close to a thousand connected to the server. And with a 31.2 Kbps connection, the game lags painfully too much. These prepaid accounts used to be fine with connections reaching 45.2 Kbps, but now you'd always connect at 31.2 Kbps during these hours. I guess they don't call them peek hours for nothing. But nonetheless, the connection is still crappy, I have yet to experience a dial-up connection that reaches 56.6 Kbps here, 48.0 Kbps is the fastest ever. A friend mentioned that the infrastructure in the country restricts dial-up connections to speeds significantly lower than 56.6 Kbps. As for broadband internet, forget about it, they will never be available in my area.

Browsing through Neopages resulted into this recent feeling of restlessness and desire to upgrade my skills/knowledge in web design. For young people who create websites mostly as a hobby, they do pretty damn well. Hmmm... That recent string of adjectives barely describes how good these guys are. I know am good at these, I just need dedication to get things done. This site looks okay but lacks significant content which I should work on if I ever want to have the slimmest chance of ever getting accepted. Atleast, it has inspired me to learn.

Am deciding to try out and make a layout using CSS, but am still reading stuff. Then there's XHTML, RSS, XML, PHP, MYSQL, ASP, etc. OMG, my brains are so hyped up, I can't sleep. Oh, well, let's see what's going to happen.

Haven't touched my PS2 since, hmmm, the other day. I was only forced to use it because my brother and his girlfriend are staying over and occasionally use my PC. I don't know why, but have it seems I have lost interest in the damn thing now. A good thing maybe but I bet a momentary thing with the recent lack of games I really want to play. I should make a counter for these things. Nice.

It's the eight today. No comment. Let's just say, am seeing T3 tomorrow.

Cute, something I got from Audiomatch.

Seriously Speaking [Sunday, July 6, 2003 @ 5:57 pm]

Quite a story yesterday, almost spilling everything that happened. I have no friends that I could call up and just blab about the whole experience. This is my only outlet.

Don't get me wrong though, I have tons of friends everywhere, but few of those who are close enough. Plus, it seems that I unconsciously push them away. Here I go again, whining about my life. Bear with me folks.

Now that father's death anniversary has passed, I guess it's time for me to really get serious about stuff, like go find a job or actually try and learn something on the PC. Got a ton of tutorials here, but never the enthusiasm to do so. And that's bad, considering the oodles of free time available. Starting to spend more time on the PC than playing PS2, which is a nice turn for the better. Actually, I haven't touched my PS2 in days, for some reason or another. Maybe because I have finished most of the games I was dying to get my hands on when I didn't have my PS2, such as FFX, Xenosaga, and Kingdom Hearts. Then again, spending more time on my PC doesn't exactly translate into accomplishing anything worthwhile.

I wonder what happened to my brain. What once was beautiful and great, now is just one piece of lazy organic matter atop of my head. Need to jumpstart it again, without destroying anymore precious brain cells. I blame her for all of this. Hahaha. Another thing I have to sort out and finally do something about. At this rate, I am getting nowhere, only older.

"I believe that I deserve hosting at Neopages because I always strive to learn more and my capabilities as a web developer are only limited by restrictions set by the host, which in my case is Geocities, and of course, my mind."

An excerpt from my current application at Neopages. Can't believe I said that. To some extent, it holds true, but this extreme laziness is really getting on me.

Speaking of my application, I had to bump it up for the second consecutive time. Pathetic, but am used to these things by now. Prompted me to stop hoping something good would turn out from the application, am not that leet yet. Anyways, there are tons of stuff I could do without having PHP and MySQL support such improve my HTML and CSS, then throw in a little XHTML. Sure, I could still learn PHP and MySQL at home, with everything setup already, but it isn't worthwhile until it's published online, even if no one sees it, it's a different feeling online. Yeah right. Knowing myself, even if I had the luxury of having such a host, I doubt I'd study PHP and MySQL.

Seriously speaking, I need to work on these things, rather than repetitively stating it. How many times have I said, "I'd shave my head, if this happens?" More than I could ever imagine, and I have yet to shave my head.

Out of the blue (sea) [Saturday, July 5, 2003 @ 7:28 pm]

A year ago, my father passed away, thus making this day his death anniversary.

It was a unusual family day, and not the traditional Filipino family day, wherein everyone is present, related or not. Just my mother, brother, his girlfriend, my aunt and her family, one grandfather, and a couple of my brother's friends. Oh, plus our dog. May seem a lot (13 people), but a group that was traveling in a big van comfortably. One van. And that's small for a Filipino family. Way small.

I remember the scene last year, when I got home, there was a crowd in our house, full of people I don't even know. For crying out loud, I couldn't even get inside our house and I just wanted to scream back at them. He was to be cremated that night, and I could safely state that the whole barangay came along, about 8+ vehicles (3-4 were jeeps which sat close to 20 persons each). Imagine that. A friend who was waiting for us at the crematorium asked if they were ALL with us, to which I briefly exclaimed, "Yes!".

I doubt if I would have survived a wake lasting three to four days, and luckily that didn't have to happen. I know these people were offering condolences and all, but three days? Come on. A day is enough for me. Filipinos have strong family ties, hence the overextended wakes, as families wait for relatives from the far reaches of the world to arrive before the actual funeral. If you can't make it, the family would understand, right? Heck, my grade school mates don't even know my father passed away.

Anyway, enough blabbering about Filipino culture.

As I said, today was his death anniversary, so to speak, and we were to release his ashes in the ocean. It was a simple trip to Quezon, which was the nearest coastal area to us. The plan was to rent a boat, release the ashes in the ocean, and then have lunch somewhere. After asking around, we came across a resort in an island. One had to ride a boat before reaching the island, so on the way we could already release the ashes, then spent the day on the island.

Sounds perfect, right? Well, it was. But the place was just too good for us to just sit there and have lunch, of course, we had to take a dip in the waters. Add the fact that we really haven't taken a trip like this during summer. The problem was we forgot to bring extra clothes and bath accessories. Luckily, we were able to borrow (read: rent) a couple of shorts from the people who maintained the place. Since, summer in the Philippines was officially over, there were no other tourists in the island, and we had the whole place for ourselves. A great sunny day indeed. Unexpected but still great.

Got home by late afternoon. Tired as hell and sleepy as I didn't sleep the night before. But first, I had to write this in my journal.

There, am done. Off to bed now.

Unsynchronized [Thursday, July 3, 2003 @ 11:10 pm]

This is just great! I feel sick and just want to lie down and get some rest. But some part of my body says no. I really don't understand this body of mine, no parts were removed or replaced so that rules our any compatibility issues. Or prolly, it came with defective parts right from the start.

So am left with the only option I have, stay up until the the sun rises from the east, which would definitely do wonders for this cold that I have right now.

The thing is, I already fell asleep, for about 30 minutes till I woke up sweating due to the heat. Not such a big deal, right? But the moment a slight breeze passes my nose, my cold starts acting up. Oh well, at least this way I'd get to go online and do my regular stuff, and yes, play RO later. Wouldn't be nice to break out of a habit just like that.

I guess I'd have to bump up my application over at Neopages, since after a few days I've got only a few replies to it. But in a way, that could be a good thing right? Replies are supposed to contain criticism (constructive or otherwise), so if a viewer has nothing bad to comment about my site, no need to say anything, right? I hope, but then I don't. Stopped hoping about things a long time ago. Anyways, the community there is just great, short of addictive, a habit slowly building into your system.

More people are playing RO these days, logged off around 6 am, and there were still about 500+ users, in comparison with the 400+ during the same time last week. 2 months to go till free beta testing is over so expect the number to grow. And with a 31.2 Kbps connection, that ain't great news at all.

Waah! It has been weeks since I last went to a gig. Broken Middle Finger productions has a great lineup of bands at Kafe, Katipunan, including Typecast, a band from Laguna that am really dying to see live, heck, I haven't even heard a single song of theirs, but have only heard good things. Then there is Admit One on Saturday. Sadly, I can't go to either for a completely valid reason. Guess I'll just have to make up for it next time, considering that with out a job yet, I still have a hell lot of time in my hands.

Hooked [Wednesday, July 2, 2003 @ 10:58 pm]

Slept for practically the whole day, from 7 am to 4 pm. I am quite the nocturnal person.

Stayed up till 7 playing RO, maximizing my ISP's free hours which is only up to 7 in the morning. How I wish that humans don't require to sleep. Quoting Gustav Graves of Die Another Day, "You only live once so why waste it on sleep?"

Nothing special has happened today. Decided to make a few changes with the site. I think it is better now.

God! I've got a bloody cold now. I hate this weather, it's so damn hot, but the moment you turn on an electric fan to cool yourself down, you get a cold. Good thing that it ain't that bad, have gotten used to this by now as it happens ALL the time. I feel so hot.

Lately, this PC has become awfully slow, guess I need to reformat it again.

Question, would you be my punk rock princess? Hahahaha...

Bling-bling [Tuesday, July 1, 2003 @ 2:14 am]

So how's your bling-bling?

Had quite a movie weekend. Saw 2Fast2Furious, Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry meets Lloyd, and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Two sequels and a prequel. Nice, but not quite.

First of all, by all means, stay away from Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry meets Lloyd. When I watch a movie, I usually lock out the logic circuits of my brain, and just sit back and enjoy the movie as they are meant to entertain, rather than be analyzed bit by bit like a highschool report. This is the reason I seldom experience a movie that in my opinion is so bad. And this movie is way up there. It's so "dumb" and stupid that the jokes aren't even funny at all, to the point where it gets so blatantly annoying. Stay at least a hundred yards away from this film. The only reason I watched it was because my brother bought a VCD of it. Not one of the movies I'd waste money and time to watch at a theater.

Then we have 2Fast2Furious, a movie about flashy cars, sexy women, and uhmmm, flashy cars, with a sub par story mixed in somewhere. Obviously, a movie built for a certain demographic who loves cars and sex. Not entirely a good movie, but the stunts and cars steal the show. The best scene I saw in this movie was on the bridge where two cars were jumping over each other. Insanely stupid but cool. Another movie I watched since a VCD was lying around in the house.

The only movie I watched last week at a theater was Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Nothing spectacular about it, as you expect from a Hollywood movie. It was mostly a rehash of the first movie with more ass included. Same annoying hair-flinging-while-head-turning scenes at slow motion. You could count the scenes taken from the first movie, only this time tweaked and much more flashier. And the movie is flooded by cameo appearance, you have Bruce Willis, the Olsen twins, heck, even the director can be seen in a scene somewhere. The wire-fu fight scenes were mildly enjoyable, nothing you haven't seen before. Ohh, and let's not forget the motocross scene which was simply outrageous. Overall, I did have fun with the movie, both from watching it and making fun of it. The action sequences in the Matrix is so much better compared to this, because in the Matrix we know that the physical limits can be broken and hence lead to bullet-time and wire-fu. I can't believe am comparing the two, well, they have the same fight coordinator so that's okay, I guess. And one more thing, the crazy thin man is back, though I don't like what happened to him in the end.

Aside from The Hunted, I don't know of any other new movies opening here. Am really not mad about this film so I may opt to skip it, since going to a mall is such a chore if you live in such a secluded place. Back in college, when I had my room, I watch almost every movie released, even the crappy ones. T3 won't open till the 9th, two weeks. I guess I'd go to the local rental and pick some movies that I have missed. Or maybe not, as I have a lot of other things to do, such as PS2, Ragnarok, and do stuff for this PC.

Tried to play RO this afternoon, the server had more than 2000+ people connected, the most I have seen so far. Am gonna try it again during the weekend, just to get a rough idea on how many people are playing the game in the country. Like I could play during those hours, the servers pretty flooded and those with pathetic connections (/me raises right hand in the air) can hardly even enjoy. Besides, it isn't on my schedule to play online games in the afternoon, time reserved for PS2. Early in the morning, around 4-6, there are only a little more than 400+ users online.

It's July already? Wow! June passed by just like that. And I still don't have a job. July isn't such a happy month for me. Last year two big things in my life happened in July. One of which I only found out about come October. Well, am better now, though still bitter. Life!

JULY JOURNAL ENTRIES

It's time to get serious. Dead serious.

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