Using the songs in my iTunes library, I managed to create a playlist entitled "Story of My Life". It's not exactly accurate, but it does reflect the predominant atmosphere that's been serving as the nagging background of my humdrum post-undergraduate existence. 

Just got back from the bank, after having successfully filed and paid my dues to this government. I'll see you next year!

The process was for the most part painless. It was easy goings when I got to the main branch of PNB, paid at the window and that was it. Painless for the most part, because I had to spend the entire morning calling up banks to find AABs (Authorized Agent Banks). These AABs operate on a per-district basis, so I couldn't just go anywhere. Tough luck that my district's AABs were all conveniently offline and tougher luck that I had to call the main branch last.

It was last minute...again, I never learn. In my defense, I encountered some unforeseen charges and questions regarding dues. My bracket sky-rocketed in the last year and I had to scrounge for receipts. Thank god for depreciation and representation. >:P

Times like these, I wish I was in the showbiz industry, an actor, a model or a class-c talent of sorts. That way, my itemized deductions could include the following:

- my gym membership
- hair care products
- skin care products
- spa treatments
- derma visits
- clothes
- shoes

all because they keep me gainfully employed.

Times like these also see me wishing I was an employee, so I don't have to compute and file my own taxes (all hail thee balanced returns! All hail thee zeroes!). Then again, I start thinking of the time demanded from employees and think never mind. I'm happy owning my time and free time thank you very much.

Next year I'll file those damned returns in March.

I applied for a job posting last Monday. I only found out about the opening Friday night, and it took me the whole weekend to think it through. It was for a position that I'm not normally associated with, but I want that post. Wanted it because I felt it was such a challenge, it sparked my interest so much, I couldn't sleep just thinking about it. The post could've squeezed out the very best from my every pore. No other TOR in recent memory elicited such a reaction from me.

But of course, with the requirements 85% away from my specialties, I didn't get it. Sad, but expected. Oh, well.

To drown the mild disappointment, I busied myself with jailbreaking PIC's iPod Touch. It took me the better part of the afternoon to jailbreak the thing, and probably sustained a wrist injury from grappling the tail-less mouse for hours. Eventually, the Touch was hacked and the January upgrades were loaded sans the 20$ fee (+/- 800 Php) along with other useful and time-draining apps. However, the jailbreak messed up YouTube's protocols and I couldn't get it to work :( Luckily, PIC said he doesn't use YouTube on Touch. I need to find a way to restore that function. Anyone got ideas?


"Give me an occupation or I shall run mad." - Col. Brandon (Alan Rickman), Sense and Sensibility
My sentiments exactly. Very well said Colonel, very well said. - Bart

I got the tickets last week.

PIC was complaining, I told him it'll be the cheapest front row seats to any U2 concert ever.

He's slightly half -hearted about it since it's only a 3D movie in Imax.

Who cares? It's U2!  U2!!

 
A new friend (thanks for the info Ben!) told me that someone spied on a U2 gig itenerary for 2008, and Manila is listed. Another source indicated that the MTV Asia 2008 gig index, lists it as an event...in OCTOBER! Now, I have been seeing U2 TV ads on local TV for several years already and the concert never materialized. I'm keeping my hopes up this time and abandoning the Singapore GP weekend in September...I need the funds for U2. U2!

It's a good thing PIC agrees with me (the Singapore GP weekend plan was his). He told me that we can watch the race next year because the race is like clockwork, it's always there. While a U2 concert is a U2 concert.

I love my PIC!!!

If the spies and sources are wrong and they're not coming to Manila, the minute the band holds a concert anywhere in Asia...I'll grab the next flight out.

Who cares? It's U2!  U2!!


Paul V! I hope you can be in the lowlands for this one! We miss you!

Dad is such a space nut. Every time a space-faring object gets hurtled into space or something from space hurtling toward the Earth, he scours all the news channels to find every bit of information. I think he misses the televised manned moon missions or the televised exploding shuttle launches. I never got to see any of those live. Due to the lack of news regarding Endeavour's flight back, I decided to do a little web searching for dad. Naturally the first site I went to was NASA's, and dad's in luck, I found a live 24-hour AV feed from both Mission Control and Endeavour.


It's not much, most of the time it's boring. Just showing people milling about in Mission Control or feeds of the giant status screens, but the above picture was showing an orbital sunrise as it was happening when the shuttle was just above the northwestern side of Australia. Well, that's the first time I witnessed an orbital sunrise :) The picture below shows a better-lit Earth a few minutes later. I think it's great that NASA provides these live feeds, imagine if you were a kid with dreams of being an astronaut and you were locked onto the feeds, that's 24 hours of astronaut-pretend right there! I suddenly have the urge to say: "Houston, we have a problem..." oh, but I hope I won't hear those words on this feed.



To take these pictures I fiddled with the command + shift + 3 (or 4 or + spc bar as the case may be) screen capture shortcut, but I wasn't exactly thrilled that it was automatically being saved as a PNG file on the desktop. I looked for ways to set the preferences for this, but I couldn't find it, so I opened up Automator. The result? I made my first workflow from scratch! Hooray! And here I was thinking that I wouldn't know what to do with Automator. I'm so happy...giddy with geekiness.

I made a three-step workflow:
1. Take screenshot, main monitor only checked, save to desktop as picture
2. Change type of image, show action when run checked (so a list of possible file types appear)
3. Open images in Preview (because I'd like to see the image in actual size post screen grab)

Then it was saved as plug-in for finder for easy right-click access


There are a few things that I haven't ironed out, the workflow doesn't work when I use the keyboard shortcuts. I'm looking for an action that incorporates the keyboard shortcuts into the workflow but couldn't figure it out. The nice thing is, it works great from the right-click option which is a 2 step click process (right-click, select) as opposed to the "command + shift + 3 or 4 or + spc bar" which is a 3 - 4 keypress process. All in all, a good, fun and successful workflow for me! Hooray!

When did I turn into an Apple geek?

Does anyone else ever get calls or text messages in the middle of the night? I am not talking about 9:00 or 10:00 PM, but those 2AM type of disturbances that wakes you from your sleep or interrupt your insomnia-driven activities.

It's the harbinger of bad news.

Most of my friends know they can't call after 9PM because I'm not allowed to use the phone past that time, and if someone did call, I got the glares of death and my folks would hover like a dark cloud until I hang up. We had that 9PM call curfew for years, I think it's still in place now, I just don't get death glares anymore. Looking back, the curfew made much sense. Nobody is going to call at such ungodly hours, and nobody with common sense (or at least good manners) would call and disturb a slumbering household ... unless of course the conversation can't wait. In which case it would be a life or death situation, but mostly death or something akin to it. So any call or message that rouses you (or in most cases, messages THAT WILL rouse you) from slumber is more likely to be bad news.

I've never actually answered such a call, and I dread having to answer one. There were 3 or 4 times in recent years when the phone rang at such hours. Lifting the phone from its cradle felt like lifting a 10 pound weight. Thankfully the calls were mistimed international calls. I remember another incident when my mobile phone rang at the same ungodly hour, I kept looking at the caller ID and couldn't muster the courage to press the green button. My mind kept repeating "I'll tell her I was asleep." A few hours later, I learned that it was a dear(est) friend calling because she snuck a pregnancy test in the wee hours of the morning and the result was positive. Under the circumstances then, it was bad news.

I started writing this post because my dad's mobile phone just beeped with a message. I'm too afraid to look at it. If it's important they'll call. *darn* I better turn the ringer off.

I repeat: midnight phone calls are the harbinger of bad news.

It finally happened, Oli Pettigrew has gone mainstream :(

It just wouldn't be the same...he's going to be far more famous now. With tons of screaming fangirls. For the past five years I felt like I was the only one who would scream out "OLI!" (at least here in the Philippines) just after that stupid Axe Deo TV spot. So sad that now I have to share my kiddie crush :( Don't get me wrong, I do wish him much success on his new shows.

... but still :(

It's like reliving the same moment when another kiddie crush went mainstream ages ago. Remember Trey Farley? A friend even got a Brent ISM yearbook out for me just because Trey was in that graduating batch. Then he went "Channel V" and all those other shows and movies. So sad that I had to share.

I'm selfish like that.

My cat loves Jake Shimabukuro, and damn it! I wasn't able to get a picture!

I know it's the music that  enchanted her, because I know for a fact that she prefers black and white cartoons on Nickelodeon (see pictures below). My cat simply stood in front of the screen and watched closely just around the part when Jake was strumming the hell out of that ukelele in the latter parts of "While my Guitar Gently Weeps". That cat's got taste!

 
(L: Watching Doodlez in the morning. R: Watching Doodlez at night)

I'll try playing the clip on you tube, and see if it catches her fancy again, will take a picture this time.

Oh, and many thanks to Conan O' Brien for sharing the wonderful treasure of Jake Shimabukuro's music :D

Woohoo! Let me reaffirm my geekazoid status through this simple list of things to expect in 2008:

1. New Lego stuff
2. More computer upgrades come March
3. EURO 2008! (The quadrennial sports overload with Football, Wimbledon and the Olympics happening one after another)
3. The Dark Knight in July
4. X - FILES 2 also in July
5. Watch my first live F1 race
6. Star Trek (11 or shall I say a restart of the series?) in December! Yeah Baby!!

Based on this preliminary list of things to look forward to, I can say that 2008 is starting to feel like a great year to me :D

- end of geeky post -

LEGO is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and to commemorate the event I took a picture of my latest LEGO set: Adventures in Bikini Bottom