No that’s not me. It’s part of the press release pics.

This was my second time to do this. Racing really is a thinking sport more than anything. The harder you try, the slower you get. It was actually very physical for me, and I was drenched in sweat from concentration and effort - which was a sure sign I was doing it wrong.

Anyway, will write about it for one of my sites soon.

As a testament to how boring exciting a couple we are, Jill and I are about to embark on an Old Movie Tour in the coming weeks. Many of which are from my recollection of movies I watched but never really understood so much as a kid, but nevertheless thoroughly enjoyed, and had somewhat shaped my opinion and perception on popular culture, the arts, artists, and what movies and theater were all about. Forgive me if I sound serious but movies a serious topic, for me, be.

A sampling:

Cabaret

Cabaret is one of the most frequently copied, spectacular movies I’ve ever seen. I was surprised when everyone was raving about Chicago, when I realized that they had probably never seen Cabaret. To be plainly clear about it, Chicago is a sad, pathetic attempt. When I think of great singing, dancing performers, there is nothing quite like Liza Minelli. Check out Michael York here, before he became just another funny character in those Austin Powers movies. The only copy that can possibly come close is Flashdance and maybe some scenes from Fame, but that’s about it.

Two For The Road

We’ve already watched Two For The Road last week. Jill let out a gasp of surprise when I told her Albert Finney was Julia Robert’s boss in Erin Brokovich. Here he somewhat reminds me of Robert Redford, but very much his evil ahole twin brother. It was my first time to appreciate Audrey Hepburn’s timeless appeal. She can be devastatingly pretty but still be your average girl next door. The hot chick in this movie is even a small role by Jacqueline Bisset, who was a real knock out.

I credit this movie for starting in me a lifelong appreciation of small British and Italian cars, such as the MG, a Triumph (I think), an Alfa Romeo, a Bentley and the luscious white Mercedes 230SL whose model a friend owned I managed to test drive once. The non assisted clutch was a back breaker, but no matter, it looked fabulous, exactly what old-Hollywood stars would be driving.

Grease I

I still make references to Olivia Newton John and John Travolta’s Grease, specifically where Newton John’s character changes from nice to bad girl, the ‘Greased Lightnin’ song and Stockard Channing’s ‘bad girl’ role, which is a precedent for all those ‘popular girl in high school’ roles like in Mean Girls and Clueless.

Fans of High School Musical only need to watch ‘Summer Lovin‘ to understand what a teen musical is all about.

The Graduate

The Graduate can be summed up with these lyrics:

Never have I seen a better movie re youthful disillusionment. The Simon and Garfunkel score given, there’s also the beautiful Alfa Romeo 1600 Spider, charging along the US’ open highways to the sound of Mrs. Robinson, its 1600 overhead twin cam engine roaring like the beautiful Italian Goddess that it is. Yes I take notice of movie cars as much as the movies.

Wayne’s World parodied that scene to perfection, with even a hilarious cameo by the late Charlton Heston.

Rocky I

I’m not particularly sure which I like better, Rocky I or II. Rocky I however, remains the most ‘perfect’ of all the Rocky movies imo, since I assume they never knew it was gonna be a hit so they just laid out the story of the struggling, no name but talented boxer to the hilt. There’s even a scene I can’t forget, where Rocky takes money from a mobster, kind of like the way The Sopranos pictured it to be.

This was a great movie after which of course, ridiculousness set in. From the entertaining Mr. T version to the mildly so so US vs USSR version, to the sad latest one, which isn’t even worth a mention. Rocky I is the ultimate guy’s sports movie. Better than anything out there, bar none. Movie trailer here, which sort of reminds me of how Philippine movie trailers were made. I’m trying not to remember the absolutely hilarious Chiquito version.

Well, that’s it for the old movies section, unless we think of a few others. I would’ve wanted to watch ‘Oliver’ the musical again, but Jill said it’s too sad. I would’ve also wanted my favorite oldie, High Noon, but I think it’s too much of a guy thing.

After this, we’re going 80’s teen romantic movies, such as Pretty In Pink, Valley Girls, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and others. Friends who want a copy (you know who you are), just lemme know :)

When will all this stupidity end?

We live in a country that suffers through 3 or 4 storms a year, and every year, thousands die. Re above, you’d think that with centuries of experience with storms plus being surrounded by an ocean, we’d at least know when to send a ship out to sea and when not to.

Especially people who run a shipping line. Especially when that shipping line sends out ferries several times a week. Especially when this sort of thing has happened before.

Does it really take all that much? Does it take a genius to run a ship? To look out the window and say ‘hey, it looks bad’, and turn towards the wind, or not go out at all?

The sad thing is, we’re so fucking used to this sort of thing that 700 people dying a horrifying death seems just as bad as gas hitting P58.00 / liter. If Pacquiao loses tomorrow it might even be deemed as a greater ‘tragedy’ than this.

I’ll go ahead and say this, even if it seems unnecessary, only because someone needs to say it. No, it is not as bad as gas hitting P58. It is so much WORSE, because I just can’t see how it could’nt have so easily been avoided.

Above is my sad, dead PC, about to be rejuvenated. I can work on it from where it is so I didn’t pull it down.

So first I proceeded to remove the old power supply.

Off it goes.

And here’s the new one.

Compared to the old one. The old one’s still ok. Need to find a use for that.

Then I pull out the old mobo. As easy as it looks.

I try to remember where every cable goes to for later. These things can get tricky.

And finally, le piece de resistance. Unboxing my new Asus M2N-MX SE Plus Mobo.

There it is. Two PCI slots, two SATA slots, Socket AM2+, Nvidia chipset, DDR2 1066, 10/100, etc. etc.

And there is my PC casing, mobo - less, ready to be mobo - fied!

But first, lets slap in the new power supply.

…

…

as well as that new tin plate that goes out to the back..

I install the processor beforehand. Need to be careful with this, so better do it on my desk.

And there it is. An AMD 64 Athlon, Socket AM2, LE-1640. Pretty run of the mill these days. But I’m going for reliability and its more than adequate for my needs.

So anyway we proceed with the unboxing!

.. and the unboxing..

.. ok we got the fan..

.. and more unboxing..

.. jeez how many trees do these people cut down for their packaging?

So there it is, the processor and the fan.

A better look at the pins.

Here’s the bottom of the fan, with that pasty white substance it needs for cooling. DO NOT touch that.

Ok this part you need to do quickly to avoid dust (yes I washed my hands first). There’s a hinge on the side of that white area where the processor’s gonna get slapped in. You’ll need to pull it upwards like this.

At a corner of that white area is a place lacking a pinhole, with a triangle that stands out. The processor also has a corresponding corner with that gold triangle. You need to match the two.

So you align the two, and just slap that in there nice and tight.

Then proceed to swing the lever downwards, snapping it in.

.. like so..

.. and lock it in place.

There it is, locked in place. Kinda like a safety pin.

Now for the fan! Match it against those black locks at either end.

Here’s one end. You start with this.

Here’s the other, with a lever. You put this in last. Once you get the lock to go one side, get the other lock to go in this way.

After which you swing the lever from one end..

.. to the other, like this. It looks complicated, but trust me it was waaaay harder back in the day, without these levers. You had to use a flat screwdriver and lots of muscle, risking slippage and driving a gaping hole straight into your motherboard.

That big black fan needs power, so here’s where you plug it in.

Tada!

Now to get it in there.

There are screw holes on the mobo and corresponding ones where the old mobo was. It’s just a matter of finding them and screwing it in using the old screws.

like here..

.. and here.

There’s a big black 24 pin power cable from the power supply to the mobo. Slap that in.

And now, the RAM. A Corsair 1gb. DDR2 667MHz piece. My mobo will take up to 4gb., but the farthest I forsee myself buying is 2gb. in the next year or so. Maybe not even if it’s fast enough.

Slap that in Slot A1 (or something like that). It’s usually the slot closest to the processor. At least for Asus mobos, dunno about others.

It’s only got one PATA slot, the computer industry’s attempt to get us to move to (useless) SATA. I have a PATA hard disk and DVD-RW, so I slap that in.

There’s also a power cable from the power supply going to an area near it. I really don’t know what it’s for, but the power supply manual (yes I read the manuals), says I should or it won’t even start. So I do it.

And now the tricky part (we’re almost finished)! The dreaded front end power button, LED hard dish and power lights, reset button and USB connections.

Dreaded because each tiny pin cable is individual and has no relation to the other, so you can easily mix this up and FRY YOUR MOBO. I’m not kidding. The reason they’re all apart is because PC Casings are all different, so they can’t standardize.

I have to get these..

.. to connect here..

.. following these instructions. I get it right eventually, but it wasn’t easy.

And now the finishing touches! The all - important stickers!

To prove to one and all who enter my work area (like, a nephew or two), that I am using an Asus board with an Athlon 64 Processor! Fear Me! (yes those other stickers are from other PCs I’ve set up. There are more on the front of the PC).

Now for a little cleaning.

Make sure everything’s bright and shiny, to welcome in the new mobo. Then a deep breath… and..

It Works!

.. everything looks alright..

Everyone say hello to Kubuntu 8.04 LTS!

And we start our installation journey.

And with that, ends this picture story. Obviously its working now, since I’m using it to write this post!

Mind you, this isn’t a pro - Linux or pro - anything rant. I don’t own a Vista PC to begin with, and like I said in a previous post, I don’t find anything wrong with it either. I’m using Vista Home right now on Jill’s PC, and I’m doing just fine. Some isues here and there, but mostly, it is, albeit superficially (primarily because most of it’s ‘improvements’ are cosmetic) can be considered a step up above XP.

Having said that, one might assume though that there was something wrong with XP to begin with, or at least missing a feature that’d necessitate an upgrade.

By now however, after Vista’s been around for a while, the answer to that is no, N-O, there is no truly compelling issue to ‘upgrade’ to Vista. You might be compelled, just because you wanna see your computer do this:

Above is a screenshot of me doing a ‘Windows key + Tab’ maneuver, which lets me switch to another application in a very fancy way. Or you may be interested in doing this:

A screenshot of Vista’s Parental Controls.

But I’d be lying to you if I said that the Compiz isn’t as impressive, screenshot here (and more jaw dropping effects here):

or that Norton can’t do Parental Controls better or at least similar to Vista.

The point of this post is moot. People who have already bought Vista have bought it, period. It’s money spent, money you can’t get back.

But if you were happily using XP before Vista came along, that announcement is basically saying that it’s money you shouldn’t have spent in the first place, or at least until 2014.

using this code:

<a href="{commenterurl}" target="new"><span class="stats"><strong>{commenter}</strong></span></a> on <a href="{url}"><strong>{title}</strong></a> <a href="{commenturl}" rel="bookmark" title="{commentdate} at {commenttime}">: <em>{commentsnippet:50}</em>...</a><br><br>

Then added gravatars where it showed up like this:

using this code:

{gravatar:32}<a href="{commenterurl}" target="new"><span class="stats"><strong>{commenter}</strong></span></a> on <a href="{url}"><strong>{title}</strong></a> <a href="{commenturl}" rel="bookmark" title="{commentdate} at {commenttime}">: <em>{commentsnippet:50}</em>...</a><br><br>

but I couldn’t align it properly, so I resorted to good ol’ tables, resulting in this:

using this code:

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="4"><tr><td valign="middle">{gravatar:32}</td><td><a href="{commenterurl}" target="new"><span class="stats"><strong>{commenter}</strong> </span></a> on <a href="{url}"><strong>{title} ({commentcount:no comments:comment:comments})</strong></a> <a href="{commenturl}" rel="bookmark" title="{commentdate} at {commenttime}">:</td></tr>
<tr><td colspan="2"><em>{commentsnippet:50}</em>...</a><br><br></td></tr></table>

and if you noticed, added the total number of comments per post as well. There’s a whole shiteload of switches and options on the Plugin Author’s site, guaranteeing hours of happy geekiness that promises to rob me of a life.

here’s how it looks like on KE:

Must.Resist.More.Tinkering.

First things first. Joe, my ancient car, is quite a capable performer primarily because I care for it quite regularly. That’s not to say I spend a fortune on it, which I can’t even if I wanted to, it’s just that I’ve always been a gearhead, and having an old car is akin to having a toy to play with everday. Many times I had contemplated on selling it, but always I hesitated because a. What would I replace it with? Regardless of how old it is?, and b., aforementioned ‘toy’ reason.

Today, Joe made me proud. The area near the gigantic golf ball where you turn left from Ortigas Extension is notorious for flooding, and for whatever reason, I completely forgot. And so when I was following a larger vehicle on my way towards it, I realized that the water was deeper than I thought and getting deeper still. Pretty quickly I arrived at a no turning back point, and water was pouring into the car from underneath the door area and from wherever it could come in (told you it was old). Little kids were starting to cheer me on, I pumped up the gas, modulated the clutch, revved it high and mentally crossed myself. It was getting deep, deep and deeper still, and Goddam it the Corolla in front of me was slowing down.

Anyone who’s ever crossed a flood knows that’s a big mistake, but slow down he did, so I was forced to turn to avoid him, going into even deeper water. I revved Joe even more, and forged in. The logic is, if Joe is gonna stall, then he should stall on dry ground, or at least close to it. Whatever happens, I am not gonna stop Joe. So I revved revved revved, and Joe fought the water like the boat that he isn’t, and before we knew it, there we were, in the middle of the intersection on Ortigas Extension, water pouring out the car same way it came in, but on dry ground.

I kept revving, and coasted in front of a BPI branch’s parking lot. I didn’t wanna let go the gas for fear of him finally stalling, so I just revved it up and down for a minute or two. Mind you, it was pouring rain all the time. There were few cars, and I was seriously wondering what the hell was I thinking, sitting in my soaking wet car, wondering why I wasn’t home dry in my room, Joe dry in the garage.

Then I finally let go the revs and let Joe idle, and it did, and for the life of me it sounded like a self - satisfied purr after I just asked it to do the impossible and was now contemplating success with a wry grin. I’d like to think it wasn’t boasting, or goading me to make it do more. Rather, it was given a task, succeeded marvelously, gave me a wink and was now just waiting for the next job. I took a glance at the flooded area, and saw a 90’s issue Corolla and Nissan Sentra, stalled, their owners standing around while little kids and tricycle drivers tried to help push them.

But Joe? No.help.necessary. Joe’s engine purred the sweet, rhythmic beat it always does, possibly even sweeter now more than ever. I’d hear a fan belt pully squeak a little from the water, but only a bit, then it’d just go on purring.

All that cleaning and tweaking and tuning paid off. The carbon on Joe’s spark plugs are squeaky clean. No oil, no weird white residue, just the pinkish glow of a healthy, cared for engine.

And now, add ‘well - loved’ engine as well.

We named it ‘Joe’ because it was so average, hence ‘Average Joe’. An everyday, ordinary car. Today though, I think I finally saw a bit of personality in him. And for that reason I think I’m gonna hang on to Joe.

Fans of Neva’s famous Leyende Organic Products will be able to chat with her live. They can ask questions, talk about her products, or just say hi. This is a great opportunity for Neva to touch base with the legions of female readers who have always been interested in her products as well as those who are already loyal buyers.

This also serves as a prelude to her launch of Beach Bomb, a his and hers cologne, at Sanfo Treats Alabang Town Center. An all day affair, this is yet another opportunity for Leyende’s followers to come and talk to her, live this time. People will get the chance to say hi, buy items at discounted rates, and check out the tasty sweets at Sanfo Treats.

Finally, this is also the first ever LiveBlogging event of its kind in the country. Kikay Exchange is harnessing new technology to reach out to loyal readers of the site via a new, exciting method - LiveBlogging. Using this, readers will be able to interact in real time with a guest and the website admin in a moderated environment. This is a promotion method never before used or even introduced in the Philippine market, and Kikay Exchange is at the forefront once again.

About Kikay Exchange: Place text about Kikay Exchange here.

About Leyende Organics: Place text about Leyende Organics here.

About Sanfo Treats: Place text about Sanfo Treats here.

Editor’s Note: The URL for Kikay Exchange is http://kikay.exchange.ph. You may contact us at ghmercado(at)gmail(dot)com.

(Above is my press release for our event. Booyaaaashaka!!)

It runs Vista, which is funny because at the start of this month, I started out to use Ubuntu. After trying out the Chief’s Nvidia 7300 GL video card, which he kindly sold to me for a much discounted sum, I then tried my hand at Kubuntu. Then before you know it, I am now using Vista. The PR folks at Microsoft couldn’t possibly write better copy than that.

At any rate, my mobo fried not because of aforementioned venture into other Operating Systems, but plainly and purely because it’s old. As in old, slapped full of band-aids old, and had been teetering along the edges of the foreboding abyss of wherever dead motherboards go for years. I credit my own McGyver like skills for keeping it alive all these years, but even my desperation inspired abilities to revive old things has its limits. Once I inserted the new vidcard, it caused a mobo heart attack, and slowly went in the ICU.

And now, it is a hunking dead piece of metal, its spirit no doubt freely surfing in in that big motherboard heaven in the sky. A better place for my long suffering mobo.

A review of Dagny is probably forthcoming, knowing how I like doing that sort of thing. Same as well for Vista, which inspite of what people might think, I’ve never really had a problem about. I actually *gasp* kind of like it, and understand why MS made it the way it is. But then again I’ve not used it for long, so we’ll see.

Also, gotta buy a new mobo, AMD processor and RAM in the next week or two. I’ve been checking and it doesn’t appear to be as painful to the wallet as I thought it’d be, or at least, way less than it used to be.

Later then. For now, back to work.

Then we’re going to the Hippie Flea Market at Makati Ave., hopefully to figure out a joint venture we’re trying to finesse.

The dang leprechauns made it 3-1 against my purple and golds, rendering my ‘Lakers in Six’ prediction completely inutile, proving to the world what most good friends already know - that I do not know what I’m talking about.

Further, I wanna go to the gym and / or watch The Hulk, but its payday today, and unless I can drive thru traffic the same way Ray Allen drove to the basket sans any semblance of defense whatsoever like this morning, my ass is limited to either Ever Gotesco (no way), Sta. Lucia (still too far), or SM Taytay (hmm. possible).

It’s a nice day today. Every year at the end of summer, God treats us to these absolutely fantastic sunsets that take my breath away. I’m an old sumbitch, but looking at the sky during the hours between day and night is still fantastic in my book.

And because I’m old, I’ve learned to take good with bad. So while I suspect that smog and the thinning ozone layer is the reason why the light from the sun looks that way, they still make pretty orange and yellow shapes through my window, and they’re pretty.

I think I’ll try out SM Taytay.

I’ve completely installed Ubuntu Horny Herod and here are my notes. BTW I know that’s not the name, I’m just protesting against the downright fugly name. Can’t they give it a proper, cooler name? I mean, ‘Hardy Heron‘?! I can’t imagine the general populace to get turned on by that name, really.

Anyway, here’s some thoughts:

1. Downloading the Ubuntu Torrent was a breeze. Installation isn’t for newbies as I chose to do manual partitioning instead of the guided stuff, which confused me more than helped. I had two 40gb. partitions and I wanted to install Ubuntu on the first (NTFS) partition, while retaining access to the 2nd (FAT32) partition. Otherwise I kept the rest at default (monitor, keyboard, network settings, etc.) and that’s fairly a no brainer. Newbies won’t have a hard time installing on a fresh machine and IMO, this is just as easy or easier than Win.

2. On the other hand, updating after installation took an hour ++, which again can turn off newbies eager to get going. I played around with it a bit then realized that Update Manager had something like 129 updates raring to go, so I scheduled to do that when I watched TV instead.
3. The default burnt orangey theme is ugly for lack of a better term. It dawned on me that Kubuntu (KDE powered Ubuntu) might’ve been the better choice, because KDE was (is?) known to be the prettier one and Gnome the more hardcore. I’ve switched to the clearlook theme and its prettier, but to get really mainstream, we need ’stunning beautiful’ rather than just ‘passing good to look at’. Need to check options here.
4. For my own needs, I immediately installed Bluefish, which I’m using to write this. From what little I’ve used, it’s just as intuitive as my previous favorite, Homesite. Also installed Filezilla, and then realized I didn’t back up the URLs and passwords of my FTP accounts. Brilliant. Spent an hour or two setting that back up to spec.
5. I thought I’d get working on WINE to get Photoshop 7 going, but I worked on GIMP a while ago to resize a few pics and, true enough, (some) of the keyboard shortcuts and commands (seem) to be applicable. I really need to figure out whether Photoshop will really work on this or not so I have to install it, but if GIMP can do the everyday stuff without me having to relearn everything, hey why not?
6. This package bundles Firefox 3 Beta 5, which improves on auto - complete when you’re typing in a URL on the browser, giving you lots of choices, which is cool. I certainly hope Firefox improves from the extremely buggy previous versions I was using the last time. For a previously no - name browser brand to make it in the cutthroat industry they’re in, they’ve gotta not drop the ball. Unfortunately, I’ve been less than happy with previous versions so I’m hoping this one doesn’t suck.
7. The most contentious issue that needs to be dealt with is that of the instant messengers, which if we’re gonna introduce to internet cafes need to act and look as much like Yahoo, MSN or Gtalk as much as possible. Without which, we’re gonna have some issues. I’m trying Pidgin right now, and Kopete afterwards, so we’ll see.
8. Lastly, gaming needs to get done, so I’ll try Warcraft first, and maybe some other popular thing like Counterstrike later.
9. I’m due to upgrade my PC soon, so I’m really looking forward to getting a better video card to handle Gnome’s fancy window switching and other effects. Now that’s seriously cool stuff. Dragging and dropping windows and coolly moving across windows can really get people’s eyes popping. Even I’m kinda floored by it all, moving things around this way and that. But it’s a resource hog, obviously, and one that my 4 year old PC can’t hardly hack sometimes, especially, I assume, if I start using WINE and such. At any rate, that’s in the works.
10. Incidentally, as mentioned the video card issues are my biggest problems. Scrolling up and down gmail is a pain, as it struggles to cache. I’m positive the issue is either on a setting or a different driver altogether (I’m using something that sounds like an alternative ‘try if you dare’ video card driver), but right now it’s extremely sucky and slow. I’m sure there’s a fix somewhere, it’s just a matter of Googling.
11. And finally, I need to start learning keyboard shortcuts asap. Keyboard shortcuts is possibly the single best technique one can do to improve productivity. You can cut down the speed of writing a blog post by at least half by learning how to quickly turn on / off apps, move them around, resize them, etc. I think it’s this single thing that kept me from doing the switch. The idea of relearning years of shortcuts made me ache. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to assign shortcuts to apps I put in the panel, and the help is annoyingly unhelpful.

The PLUG plan to introduce a distro specifically for internet cafes was instigated by myself, really, and was brought about by clamors from a cousin who owns a cafe and some people in the mailing list as well.

To my mind, I cannot see a better purpose for the Philippine Linux User’s Group other than to embark on, albeit ambitious, projects like these. I’ve decided I wanted to embark on an advocacy, and as such promoting FOSS and Linux seems to be right up my alley - something that I think I can contribute best in. I say this in the light of the fact that we, as individuals, have the opportunity now more than ever to join and / or to start in a plethora of choices of activities such as these. While I can, for example, spend time in charities and such, I think my effectiveness doing so would be limited. On the other hand, promoting Free and Open Source is something I can really sink my teeth into. Something that I understand and therefore can see that I can make a big difference at.

And so we start with this, one user (me, today) at a time. This’ll take at least six months or so, given work schedules and such, but we’ll get there. In iCafe parlance, all their bases will soon belong to us.

Anyway, am writing here my thoughts on the 3 plugins that I tried for this purpose. Am doing so to remember them and possibly help others save time. Who knows, I might actually get the energy to write my own plug in after all this mucking about. I imagine a lot of people would appreciate it, and besides there’s thankfully no need for javascript, just php extracting from mysql in a specific way. The usual stuff.

asideshop - most full featured but does not allow for posts on sidebar.

sideblog - shows much promise but does not support wp 2.5.1

miniposts2 - works great but does not allow for categories. Posts that end up on the sidebar are selected via a ‘this is a minipost’ button on Wordpress’ write page. I want whole categories to show up on my sidebar separately. This one will not differentiate by category.

I’ve basically narrowed my issue down to Wordpress’ ability to count posts. I need to figure out how that works and learn how to use < ?php rewind_posts(); ?> properly to make it restart each time. I’ll get it right soon enough.

Anyway, I’ll park this baby for the day. Time to go to Alabang and watch SATC with The Jill.

My Scottish Boss: “Never stop asking (your proposal’s status) until you hear a ‘no’“, is something I still tell myself today. Until I hear a flat - out NO, then the game’s still on, and you work like a dog to get it approved. Makes beautiful sense.

Another was when he’d either catch me losing focus when chasing a deal or concentrate too much on a non - profit goal, he’d sarcastically (but jokingly, mind you), say “Oh it’s ok we have more than enough money!“. Applicable almost to all things I do. Whenever I remember that, it puts my thinking right straight and center almost immediately.

And finally, the most compelling thing I learned from him was to observe the concept of “Fair Market Value”, in action. This is a guy who I know completely lived in the concept of offering the exact value he feels a service or product should cost, no more no less. He hated, and was absolutely livid with anger at the concept of ‘tawaran’. As far as he was concerned, if he offered something at a certain price, that includes a fair amount of profit on his side, and a fair amount of cost on the buyer’s side, and he was absolutely transparent about it as well.

The high points with working with him involve actually seeing him GET UP AND WALK OUT of meetings when customers starts asking for a ‘discount’. Not only does he feel these are unwarranted, but I believe he actually saw them as an insult to his character. From what I understood, he felt he was running an honest business and making honest margins, and so when someone asks if a ‘discount’ was available, he felt they were insinuating that he was overpricing them.

I tried to argue with him our Pinoys’ point of view (which is compelling in its own, quaint way), but I fully understood where he was coming from as well, and came to experience this first hand later when I was pricing my own services. The concept of tawaran maybe a popular street hawker’s technique, but it really doesn’t belong in business.

I realized that in order for business to properly evolve, TRUST must prevail. A buyer MUST trust the seller that his prices are fair. On the other hand, a seller MUST trust the buyer in the sense that they will understand and appreciate the fair price offered them, and reward them with continuing business.

If there is trust, a buyer will continually seek out a seller, and the seller’s business will grow and provide more value to the buyer, and overall the economy will succeed. It really is as simple as that.

As an aside, I look upon the current Meralco issues as essentially, a breakdown of that trust. Someone, either the seller, the buyer, or BOTH, is lying. Meralco with its layer upon layer of inexplicable charges and taxes, and the gov’t, c/o GSIS, with its strange timing and attack from all corners approach. Either way you can’t be sure they’re working to provide a fair price for electricity inspite of the headlines because of the lack of transparency and general underhandedness with which negotiations are held. In other words you can write as many contracts and proceed to as many courtrooms as you like, but if there is no trust, all these will fail.

At any rate, back to my topic: It may seem insignificant when you’re talking about P10 - P100 value street hawker items, but in the long run even small items costs are compounded over time. Even more so when we were dealing with six to seven figure contracts. My ex boss didn’t discriminate from either. He’d walk out whether we were talking about a P5,000 deal of a P500,000 deal, if someone started to ‘tawad’. It made for some pretty dramatic meetings.

Looking back, I understood he was a graduate from the school of hard knocks. I remember him for genuinely caring for us, his employees, and being the most hard working salesman I’ve ever met. You either liked him instantly or hated him at first, then grudgingly start liking him. You either understood him or not.

He believed in what he believed, but I think he runs himself ragged doing so, as I assume its very tiring to be him. I dunno if I’d like to be like him exactly, so I’ll just take what I learn from him instead.

I was a newbie then and little did I know I was getting a great education. It was important for me to have met and worked with men like him. At the time however I was wondering what the hell did I get myself into.

it has something to do with a post I wrote on BallEx the other day, where I put this pic up of Ginobili.

Aren’t those shoes cool? And the way it looks like its built for the Spurs? I know mine aren’t the same but they work out anyway.

At any rate, I also like the term ‘Up Tempo’. It reminds me of one of my fave Fat Boy Slim songs:

Then at about the time it turns out there were hundreds of them I realized what would be a cool way to call them - Ninjians.

And I laughed at myself, which was inopportune, because who laughs when the heroes are being chased by Ninjians, right? Then I laughed some more, because I used it in a sentence. I’m laughing right now, actually. Hahahahaha!

Man that movie sucked.

See I was trying to get the valid XML feed for a particular Tag or Category from this blog, a process I’ve instigated on PLUG’s mailing list, so that the PLUG website can aggregate feeds tagged as ‘plug’ or ‘open source’ or ‘foss’ voluntarily submitted by its (currently 130+ strong) membership.

The problem was when I try to get the feed URL, for example:

http://www.lefthandedlayup.com/index.php/tag/plug/feed

I get this error:

XML Parsing Error: xml declaration not at start of external entity
Location: http://www.lefthandedlayup.com/index.php/tag/plug/feed
Line Number 2, Column 1:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
^

After weeks of searching and asking at the Wordpress Forums to no avail, I’ve finally tried validating at Feedvalidator, which recommended amongst other things, I check my wp-rss2.php.

And there I found it. What looks like this:

should be like this:

In short, remove the spaces on line #9 on your wp-rss2.php. Now it’s validating. Check it here.

Can’t wait to apply it on the other sites. Basketball Exchange, in particular, has got XML errors up the wazoo.

At a place I can wholeheartedly recommend BUT wholeheartedly NOT recommend at the same time.

Wait for my review at Kikay :)

dang. Or maybe its just because it’s a bank app, which basically means we expect zero errors. Yeah, probably that’s it. Quite dispiriting, this.

Obviously I’ve even less energy to go to the gym and its almost two weeks now. The result? I feel guilty about not getting work done and not going to the gym, so not only do I have a pounding headache, I am super annoyed at myself as well.

Sigh.

Times like these I try to channel Karl Malone. He said in an interview once that his ’secret’ is that he works out more than anyone else in the league. While everyone is out partying and living the life of a superstar - athlete (this was the 80s when physical training was considered either gay or faddish), he was in the gym pumping weights, getting himself bigger and stronger so by the time the season starts he’s pushing 40 points while everyone’s just shaking off last night’s hangover.

Then there’s Larry Bird (and also Chris Mullin), who practically lived in the gym. Back in the 80s his training regimen was to just ‘run and shoot hoops all day’, while his specialized diet was 7-up and popcorn, to lose 20 pounds before the 1987 Playoffs. 7-up and popcorn. Jesus.

Anyway, he realized something was wrong, so his physical therapist gave him a notebook full of flexibility, cardio and strengthening exercises and nutritional guidelines. The result? 47 points at the 2nd game of the 1987-88 season, and a 44 point, 22 rebound game against the Pacers.

And you wonder why our Dads idolized him?

A decade ago I could dunk. I know thats hard to believe now, and I don’t blame anyone if they don’t. But I could, and I didn’t even think anything of it, thinking I always could.

Now, I’m pushing 220lbs., and going through emotional ups and downs due to whatever the fuck chemicals going nuts in my system. Is it too much sugar? Too less? Is it what I ate the other day? Did someone slip some monosodium glutamate in my food while I wasn’t looking? It feels like I’m having a fucking period. From one moment, super productive, to the next, wanting to sleep all day. WTF.

Each time I find myself flat on my face, I pick myself up and get back in the race.

or this one?

I learned a few things about myself plus a few observations. Lemme break it down so I won’t forget.

1. Detailed pics of the sites won’t show up well on a not - so - good projector.
2. Ten or more pages can translate to more than an hour.

3. Don’t get too caught up in yourself and stop to ask if there are any questions. This is probably because I’ve attended so many seminars and talks where the speaker would stop to ask if there were any questions and embarrassingly, there would just be quiet. When I asked people to ask questions at almost the end there were more than 6 I think, increasing the time.
4. Wear a watch and time yourself. I forgot to and I had no idea how much I had already taken up, and was looking for visual cues from the stage manager to tell me how much time I had left.

Otherwise I think it went well.

Not that I’m gonna do this anymore though. It was just so tiring and let’s face it, I’m such a lazy ass when I’m doing something out of my element. Many times days prior I quit working on the presentation to work on the sites instead, which really is what I’d rather do. Just sit on my ass, write and tweak code, and express myself via my sites.

Besides I’m not particularly clear why I did that in the first place. It wasn’t like I’m a chronic attention seeker. I honestly just wanna open up and help others understand how to make really relevant blogs, instead of the self - indulgent nonsense I see most of the time. The internet really can help turn things around. Blogs are an obvious, easy, individual and fun way of doing so. Posting up nonsensical self - serving garbage isn’t gonna help.

I’d like to think my sites put things in perspective, and if there’s anyone that wants to know how to do it, I’m right here.

Just not via another seminar. At least unless maybe I get paid well for it (someone actually asked if I hold seminars). Even then I’m not completely comfy with that idea, primarily because if you really wanna use the net (to blog or whatever), just go and do it. Don’t base it on me nor anyone, just find your way and do it. Same with any other business, go right in, head first, and do it. And besides, everything you wanna know about my blogs is all right there for everyone to see. Don’t copy, just adapt and use it your own way.

I figure IV - 4 is the interesting part. The rest is just me taking up time.

1. Introduction
2. Who Am I?
3. My Blogs
   Basketball Exchange
   1. Stats
   2. I Work With
   3. Content Type
   4. Services
   Mom Exchange
   1. Stats
   2. I Work With
   3. Content Type
   4. Services
   Kikay Exchange
   1. Stats
   2. I Work With
   3. Content Type
   4. Services

4. Blogging, The Press, Public Relation Companies - How It All Works
   1. What The Press Wants
   2. What PR Companies Want
   3. What PR Company’s Clients Want
   4. How Bloggers Can Position Themselves To Take Advantage
   5. How To Get Yourself Invited To Events
   6. Be Realistic - Know what they want from you, Know what you can give to them.
5. Boring Tech Stuff
   Hosting
   1. Mobilehive
   2. Rimuhosting
   3. Tri - Isys
   Software
   1. Wordpress
   2. PHP BB
   3. Wikimedia
   4. Shopping Cart
   Skills
   1. HTML
   2. Php / MySQL
   3. Live and Die with Photoshop
   4. Writing - Just how important is it?

Again, it’s 4-5 PM on the 21st (Wed), World Trade Center, Roxas Blvd.

Federer is gonna try again and Nadal will have something to say about that. But the big story is Henin’s early retirement, which kinda pulls the rug out of Sharapova’s bid. A pity since she’s looking stronger than ever.

Ahh Sharapova. Wait, what was it I was talking about?

Oh yeah. I’m not gonna get any sleep. Strangely enough, I force myself to wake up at ungodly hours for the Opens more than the Playoffs. Not even the NBA Finals. I dunno why. Probably because I’ve been doing it since kidness I guess. Hard habit to break.

Senseless post this. I think I just wanted to post that picture up. Shutting up now.

But to those who want to make a change in this world, you can’t go wrong in finding inspiration at the ostentatious, silly looking man in the top hat who, crazily enough, finds beauty in the Philippines. What an out of this world opinion, right? I mean, isn’t the logical thing to get the hell out of here?

And so to you Carlos, whose tour I wanna join one day but probably won’t do anything about (being a loser), here’s my little post on my blog that serves to say how much I admire you, and people like you, who work against the literal tide of humanity making a beeline for the exit.

And secondly but no less as importantly, thank you for qualifying what I had known all along, but wasn’t very clear to me until I subscribed to, and read more about you and what you do, via your blog.

It’s the realization that I love my country, and that I want to be a part of fixing it.

This bothers me obviously, because now my extreme handsomeness and rugged muscularity is all over the world to see. Sigh. As if I have enough problems with the pap.

But seriously folks, this is exactly what I didn’t wanna happen, especially given I represented Kikay Exchange. It was a workday and so I went on Jill’s behalf, then bang, I got my ugly mug taken in the middle of sipping the stuff (which is delicious btw - no I’m not obligated to say that).

I am often invited to numerous events and this coming week I already have three. Many of these are women related due to Mom and Kikay, and so it’s appropriate that as much as possible I try to drag a girl along to represent these for the photo opps. Unfortunately, this ideal is not always available, so I try to keep a low profile and just keep an eye out for things to write about (which should always be first and foremost in every blogger’s mind, especially when they are invited to events. I’ll be talking about that in my talk this week).

I’ve been pretty successful avoiding the cameras for the past two years, until today. Now I’m listed there as “Gary from Kikay.exchange”, (why do they keep missing the “.ph” btw?).

Well, anyway here’s my two cents about bloggers as ‘personalities’:

This seeming rush of publicity is very new to me, given I had always been the one giving it and so now the tables are turned. My take? I think it is unfortunate that the blogging world has a tendency to focus on personalities as opposed to the content they produce.

Let me make my philosophy on this crystal clear. The ’star’ of the show are my websites. People like Kikay, Mom and Ball Exchange because of the content we produce for it. They don’t like it because of Gary Mercado, Jill Sabitsana, JenCC Tan and John Dacanay. They like them because of the content we just happen to have produced. The spotlight is, and always should be, on our work, not on us.

This philosophy I learned when I was writing for the Inquirer. Did I believe for one nanosecond that the VIP treatment accorded to me by some of the biggest companies in the country was because I was Gary Mercado? HELL NO. They treated me, and I admit - almost like royalty - because I wrote for the Inquirer. Assuming that I’d get the same treatment otherwise is stupid. I completely understood this, and tried to work as best as I can within that framework. All the good writers I met via that stint, and I met a lot, understood their roles as well and accepted it. That’s the way the world works. We all knew our place and enjoyed it.

However, I’m not without accepting that things are different in this scenario. And besides, I see some advantages to it. For example, I am itching to launch a service on Mom Exchange that holds great promise, but unfortunately needs a lot of input from users. Sharing information is the spirit of the Internet and is also the best way to use it (why do you think I used the word ‘Exchange’?). It’s not gonna work if I just do it myself, so I will *gasp* need to actually meet people and show my face to them to ask their cooperation.

Now, if I keep my name out of Kikay Exchange, I do so even more for Mom Exchange. I am sooo afraid of confusing it’s audience when they realize that a guy, a single and non - parent at that, is running their (obviously much loved) website.

But over the past few months I’ve realized that it has its advantages, and I will give it a try. So from now on, I’ll try to use it to my advantage. This is uncharted waters, but if it works to help my sites become a better resource for the industries that they are in, I think it’s worth trying.

Well, here’s what happened.

About 3 weeks ago Jill and I were interviewed by QTV’s Fit and Fab, a beauty - wellness - fashion tv magazine type show hosted by Theresa Licaros and Maggie Wilson (no they didn’t do the interviewing). Topic was primarily the Kikay Shop for an online shopping segment.

At any rate, it took a half day off of a workday (and a very hot one at that) at Jill’s house. I shared my supplier’s contacts as well, all of whom were Multipliers and engaged in selling on their own.

Wednesday came along (the 14th) and with bated breath we waited. Finally the show started (10PM), and we watched, waited, watched and waited some more. Finally the segment re online shopping came. I watched one, two, three of my recommended suppliers’ interviews! They looked great and I felt happy for them (because they really are great). We waited, watched and waited .. and waited.

Until finally the segment was over, and they moved on to commercial and another topic. Could it be our own interview was scrapped? We waited even more until finally, the show was over, and there it was, our names on the credits. But unfortunately, no interview.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it that night, but when my head cleared the day after I realized what happened was, basically, we just wasted our time. I could’ve just shared my supplier’s contacts even before we met, and not have to do that interview. It’d have spared all of us so much time and effort. Not to mention Jill’s time and effort as well, and also her sister Krissy’s.

In other words it was a whole lot of effort, excitement and waiting for zero result. For nothing. And afterwards I wished they just didn’t contact us at all. I know it sounds vain to want to see ourselves on TV, but truth is, I felt used. Like a dunce. A loser.

Of course, how they write their show is none of my business, but remembering all those years writing for publications I don’t think I’ve ever inconvenienced people so much to come up with nothing. We didn’t even get an explanation - although looking back maybe it’s better that way, since the time’s been wasted already and there’s no way to get it back anyway.

Looking back, the only thing I think I’m taking away from that is that I should be more careful with future interviews, and also, that I don’t think it’s a good idea to disappoint the people behind Kikay Exchange. Of course, we’re not going to ‘retaliate’ or do anything stupid like that. It just feels like a really bad move to get on our wrong side, you know? Not a smart move at all.

Thank God Cuz’s wedding yesterday was terrific. Happy Pics to follow.

We’re hoping that you could do a 30-minute to an hour talk about blogging as a business venture. I would have chosen from our blogger-attendees during the 88DB Bloggers Night last month but I deemed that your Exchange sites are more successful than other blog sites. Since it is a short talk, I think you would be able to come up with a minimal presentation. A projector will be provided.

Man they sure know how to get a guy’s attention. But then they said this:

I will give you two choices for the schedule. It’s either May 21 (Wednesday), 5-6 PM or May 22 (Thursday), 4-5 PM. You don’t have to worry about the audience, Sir; they told me that the number of people / jobseekers tend to increase in the afternoon.

The bold parts probably hinting that there might not be too many people.

But then I decided why the heck not. It’s time I share some of the stuff I know, and if it helps even just one dude make a good blog why not right?

So yeah, I’ll be there on the 21st, 5-6 PM, World Trade Center. I promise to teach anyone who’s interested everything I know that could be the reason behind Basketball Exchange, Kikay Exchange and Mom Exchange’s relative popularity, plus my views on how to make a relevant blog that’s worth visiting often.

Or, at least everything I’m comfortable sharing. I will try my best to make it worthwhile.

EDIT: Moved to 4-5 PM, still on the 21st.

Not only that, he doesn’t even apologize, merely replying after I texted him about it that it’s been relisted and it’ll be back in a few days. Yesterday he then texted to remind me of payment, after which I said ’sure, just put me in your calendar (so it wont happen again) ok?’, to which I got no reply. EXCELLENT service right there, don’t you think? Especially considering I sent a fair share of business his way when I was still in the web design business. I’m just glad this is just a personal blog and not a critical service like the Exchanges. If I were still hosted at his service (he was my first host), I probably would’ve made a personal appearance to wherever he is in Laguna.

Anyway, to better things. Yesterday was my first basketball game in a long time and I felt good if it weren’t for the lingering effects of my cold from the past week. This after I thought I’d come to actually ‘retiring’ from playing. Credit Gold’s Gym for not hurting as much afterwards, which isn’t to say I don’t hurt now, except it’s a good kind of hurt instead of the ‘oh my God I’ll never walk again’ type of hurt.

Not only that but instead of just resting my tired, old bones I feel good enough to go to the gym tomorrow. I’m looking forward to the bike with the back support (as opposed to another type of bike without one), which helps old fogeys like me with back and knee issues. I wanna pound that thing for at least 30 minutes cumulative, interspersed with weights and stretching to help stamina and generally work some weight off if such a miracle is at all possible.

In a perfect world, all I’d do is gym in the mornings, hit golf balls all day and analyze basketball games for a living, dispensing my loads of crap wisdom towards my waiting, loving mass of worldwide fans. Yeah, the more I think about it, that’s exactly what I’d picture a beautiful world to be. Considering I get to go to a Class A gym regularly and dispense my opinion on basketball (logic - deprived or otherwise) on a regular basis, I can’t complain. I just need to work my ass on getting a sponsor or two for BallEx and maybe I can work on the golf part.

Can I just say, WHEEEEWWWWWWW!

What I was working on needed a new db installed and I foolishly created one that was too similarly named to ballex’s DB. I made a few mistakes installing it so I decided to scratch it and start over by deleting the DB and - guess what - I deleted ballex’s instead. I definitely heard an audible gasp for air when I realized what I did.

Thank GOD I have Wp-backup, because if I didn’t I don’t know how I’d face the mirror everyday. We put in pure blood and guts in that thing, and to just delete it oh so casually would absolutely just kill us.

Nyway enough drama. I’m going for a walk out. I’m still not 100% after my bout with the flu, but I’ll be ok by tomorrow for sure. Oh, and I’m setting my backups to DAILY this time.