Merry Christmas!

Lola Meming came over to celebrate Christmas with us. Thank you Lola for coming over and for your stories of lolo.

No one in the house is a good cook so we almost always order food from restaurants during celebrations like this.

Anyway, I don’t want to spend too much time writing this post so I’ll just enumerate the food we had. I have my kuya to thank for all the food deliveries:

• Yellow Cab thin-crust pizza(4 flavors) with potato wedges na may hindi masyadong masarap na garlic sawsawan
• Amber restaurant:
  • big bilao of pansits (malabon, canton, bihon)

  • 15 pcs barbecue

  • 2 boxes of pichi pichi (15 pcs)

• home-made buko salad
• buko juice and Root Beer

Sadly, much of the big bilao of pansit spoiled this morning and we’ve consumed just 1/3 of it.

Merry Christmas/ Happy Holidays to all!

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His last few days were filled with suffering. He was battling with cancer of the liver(or cirrhosis, I’m not sure), incurable at its stage and his age. He was bedridden and very weak, ate very little and went blind. He was just waiting for the right time, so to speak.  His heavy smoking must have taken its toll on his body. No matter, I’d like to think he died of old age  and not of a disease. He was relieved of his pains at that  night of March 25

They were here in our house last New Year, Lolo Asiong and other relatives from Pangasinan. And it was a happy happy double celebration. My father’s birthday is on December 30 so we always celebrate New Year and his birthday at the same time. It was the first time that they went here to celebrate these occasions and I’m glad that they did. Aside from getting to taste good, cooked food instead of take-out orders from restaurants, I was able to celebrate the event with my relatives here  in my comfort zone. For Lolo Asiong, it was the first and the last. He was still strong back then. Who would have known that 3 months later he would fall terribly ill and die. Lolo Asiong’s gift to my dad, his presence, was also his last. His last words to me (and sadly the only ones that I can remember, ever ) were “Magagalit na sayo and Diyos nyan. [God would not like what you're doing]” commenting on my studies.

He will be interred tomorrow, April 2. His wishes, I’ve heard were “Ilibing ‘nyo ako sa may lilim para ‘di ako mainitan at sa may bungad lang para kahit dumaan lang kayo, maaalala ‘nyo ako“Read More:

• Merry Christmas 2011!
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• Goodbye ate Agnes
• Pinoy Sablay(Fail) Quotes
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I’m a control freak when it comes to programs that I use. I want them to work exactly how I want them to that’s why I carefully read all the program settings/options available. That can get annoying if you reinstall applications from time to time especially those with many options.

This is a list of the Yahoo Messenger options that I changed after installation.

*There’s a newer, bloated version of Yahoo Messenger. I’d stay at 10.0.0.1270 for now.

General

• Untick. Automatically start Yahoo! Messenger
  -slows down computer start-up
• Untick. Show Yahoo! Messenger Insider
  -don’t show the annoying window that pops up every time you log-in
• Untick. Automatically sign me in when I click a Yahoo! link in Messenger
  -manual sign-in only
• Untick. Enable system-wide shortcut keys to activate Messenger
  -useless feature

Alerts & Sounds

• Untick all. Alert me when I receive a message in Yahoo! Mail
  -removes the icon at the notification area that appears whenever you receive an email
• Tick. Alert me before downloading a Yahoo! Messenger update.
  -no auto-updates please

Appearance

• Compact View
  -less junk, see more

Archive

• Yes, save all of my messages
  -save everything. My friends send me links sometimes and these logs act as bookmarks. Log files are encrypted so you can’t just open them like a text file and read all the messages. Log files at ..\Yahoo!\Messenger\Profiles\youremail\Archive\Messages\contactemail

Privacy

• Untick. Allow Yahoo! websites to show when I am online.
  logs me in to other Yahoo websites when I’m online on YM? NO
• Set to 5 min. Show me as “Idle” if I don’t use the computer for 5 minutes.
• Untick. Allow plug-ins to set clickable status messages.

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She is my cousin, the eldest on my father’s side. But we weren’t really close. When I was still a child, I didn’t get to play much with her because she was a lot older. She is an ate figure to me, someone I respect very much. And I don’t have any bad memories of her. All I can remember is that she is charming, beautiful, very kind and intelligent. She is a responsible daughter and a caring sister to her five siblings.

She died of rectal cancer at around 8 am this morning, Dec 17, 2010. She was young, just 34. She had 2 children, 2 and 5 years old I think 3 and 8 years old. When I heard the news, I felt my heart weigh down in shock and disbelief . I didn’t even know she had had cancer for several years already. I guess I am too absorbed in my own world, and I feel bad for myself. The last time I met her was in her wedding, and that was many, many years ago. She went to the US to work. She is a Tourism graduate and she was sent there to work in the Philippine embassy.

I don’t know why I am so affected. Every time I think about it, I feel sad and my eyes become somewhat teary.  Maybe she reminds me of what is to come, an impending end, the inevitable truth. And I am afraid of it — afraid not for myself but for others dear to me… my… mom… And maybe because she is an ate figure to me — a perfect one that is. I don’t have a real ate (older sister) or a real sister. She is someone I look up to.

Goodbye ate Agnes… I hope you’re happy wherever you are, watching over your 2 children and your family here in the Philippines.

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[+] Beautiful — lyrics — Christina Aguilera

[+] Nothin’ on You — lyrics — B.o.B ft. Bruno Mars

[+] You’re Beautiful — lyrics — James Blunt

[+] Beautiful Girls — lyrics — Sean Kingston

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Explain in 100 words or less why you should win the mouse. You can tell us through Twitter, Facebook, or the comments section below but make sure you keep it to 100 words or less!

The top 2 winners were to receive exclusive Dragon Age items, in cooperation with EA, the game’s publisher. The winning entry was supposed to receive an exclusive G9 Logitech Dragon Age Laser Mouse; the second, a rare Dragon Age: Origins t-shirt unavailable in stores and whose copies were given out only in a special BioWare event.

The contest sounded simple enough so I decided to join. My contest entry, which I wrote and thought of very carefully read:

Dear GreyWardens,

I desperately need your help with my plight(not the blight). When I’m not slaying darkspawn, I play mostly RTS (Warcraft III) and oh boy, I’m very competitive at that. Just imagine all the keyboard mashing and mouse clicking (high apm, actions per minute) and you’ll picture the state of my mouse and keyboard. Their age do not help either — my keyboard is turning three and my mouse about two. The left click button of my mouse has started to deteriorate recently, requiring me to click harder before it responds. I need a new mouse.

StarMars,
desperate gamer

Several days after I posted that on the comments section of the contest page, I received an e-mail from the post author. Guess what! I won the first prize. So I sent them my postal address and additional details and what-not.

Two weeks had passed and I still had not received my prize. I was beginning to think that the contest was one big April Fool’s joke since the contest was posted on March 29. I contacted GreyWardens.com on Twitter but all they said was “finalizing everything…”.

I haven’t received anything up to now. The contest post still reads: “Finished! Win An Exclusive G9 Logitech Dragon Age Laser Mouse. Update: The contest is over. Thanks everybody for participating. We will announce the winner very soon.” Where the prizes went and whether there was a real contest or not — I have no idea.

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The theme of my computer is dark and black. It is more pleasing to the eye specially when the light is off.

I usually have a lot of icons on my desktop. When I download stuff from the internet I save them on my desktop and oftentimes I forget to move them. These icons occupy a lot of space on the left side of my screen so in choosing my desktop I always look at the design of its left side. I want the icons and text clearly visible so I almost always pick those wallpapers with dark mono color on the left part.

The wallpapers I use may depend on the game I am currently playing or something I am very interested in.

I tried taking a screenshot of my desktop with the icons on it but “cleaning it up” before taking a screenie takes a lot of time so I decided to just post the wallpaper. I guess I got a lot of crap on my desktop that I don’t want others to see.

Added: Nov 30, 2010

1280×1024 | 2.18 MB | PNG

I have been playing Monster Hunter Freedom Unite a lot since I bought it a few days ago so I gotta have a MH wallpaper too. This is also the first true 1280×1024 ratio wallpaper that I have used since I last changed my monitor.

1920×1440 | 1.47 MB | JPEG

A beautiful dark-themed wallpaper featuring northern/southern lights (aurora). I got this wallpaper from a desktop theme called “royal remixed”. I believe this is also included in the set of wallpapers provided in Windows Media Center Edition.

My old wallpapers

1440×900 | 79.4 KB | JPEG

The design is simple but elegant. The images are soothing and not distracting.

1024×768 | 303 KB | JPEG

This has been my wallpaper for years. The four races in Warcraft III are represented at the mid with Thrall overlooking them. The icon at the lower right portion is the mascot of WCG. I got this wallpaper from the hard drive I bought from Villman with the gift certificate from WCG.

1280×960 | 209 KB | JPEG

1279×959 | 32.4 KB | JPEG

1280×960 | 182 KB | JPEG

[Note to self: I used the "gallery" shortcode of WordPress to display all images in this post]

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I started using Twitter on October 11, 2008 with my first Tweet “I’m starting my twitter.” At first, I was just curious about how this service worked. It was rapidly growing in popularity back then  and I just had to try it.

I use Twitter mainly for short messages. So-called microblogging, these posts are too short for a full blog post. It suits me well because I do not like writing wrong sentences and paragraphs. Oh, I do love one-word tweets.

I love sharing links I find on the web. Twitter is like a bookmark. There are times when I go back to my past tweets to find an interesting link I shared before but have forgotten.

Twitter is my online diary. When I want to remember a particular event, I make a tweet — same purpose as marking a calendar with special events.

Lastly, I do answer the question “What are you doing?”. I may tweet the food I am currently eating, my current mood and the website I am reading.

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My friend likes to download “free” stuff from the internet so that’s probably how his account was jacked. I was surfing the web when I got a message from Long (English translation of my friend’s Vietnamese name and that’s how I call him). His greeting was

Long: hey are you around?

I think the hacker sent this message to all contacts of the account to see who’s online at the moment.

StarMars: ?

Long: hahahaha, I’m in SHOCK right now..

That sentence was meant to catch my attention and it did.

StarMars: why

Long: http://somesite.com – WOW use that real quick and tell me its not crazy..

StarMars: …

Long: they are soooo right! lol what’s it saying for you?

At this point, I was having suspicions already. He sounded different. My Vietnamese friend does not speak straight English.

StarMars: wtf rofl

StarMars: i see nothing

Long: uh oh, you must of made a mistake

StarMars: blocked by my firewall

Long: DO IT! I DARE YOU…

I actually clicked the link he sent me and it was blocked by my firewall or Firefox. He knew he can’t trick me so he said “I dare you” to sway me into accessing the site.  Too bad for you, I’m not your regular internet guy who can be easily tricked.

StarMars: who are you?

StarMars: whats ur name

Long: real funny, be back later lol

Long: guess…c’mon u seriously dont know who this is?? lol i gotta run

He was out of options and this was his escape phrase. He knew his identity was exposed.

StarMars: whats my name?

StarMars: idiot

StarMars: who are you

StarMars: noob

Long: lol funny..i gotta run

Long: real funny, be back later lol

StarMars: idiot

StarMars: u cant spam me

StarMars: noob

Long: plz u have to tell me, fill it out..I have to know if your results were as crazy as mine lol

And I thought he gave up already…

Long: nah, I am a vegetarian… no spam for me! haha

StarMars: i have firewall and firefox extensions

Long: k

StarMars: that block ur phishing site

Long: hahahaha, I’m in SHOCK right now..

That was the last message of the hacker. I was feeling a little bit evil and playful so I teased and taunted him just for the lulz. xD

StarMars: hows life?

StarMars: u there?

StarMars: hello

StarMars: im in SHOCK right now too

StarMars: rofl

When my real friend logged on, I told him what happened though I was surprised the hacker didn’t change the password. He wasn’t aware of it and he just laughed it out. I don’t know what else the hacker did. Who knows if one of the other contacts fell for it. I certainly hope that Long does have a different password for his important accounts like ebay, paypal, etc.

Hacking/phishing attempts like this are called social engineering and are very dangerous. In my case, the hacker assumed the identity of a trusted friend so he got me to visit his site. It pays to have an online protection. People who always use the internet should be aware of this.

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I know my computer is 2 years old but still I haven’t run into major performance problems. The biggest problem is that my video card is not DirectX 10 compatible so I can’t take advantage of the graphical improvements in newer games.

• Microsoft Digital Media Keyboard 3000 @ P1600
• Samsung 1 TB @ P3,800
• 600 W Power Supply @ P600
• AMW 19-inch LCD from Uncle Danny
• Core 2 Duo E6750 at P9,600.
• MSI P35 Neo at P6,000
• Logitech G15 Gaming keyboard, 1st ed – WCG prize
• Radeon x1950 – WCG prize
• Logitech Dual Action at P1000
• Ipex 17 inch CRT 2nd hand monitor at P1,200

Old Parts

• Power Color Radeon X1950 Pro, 512 MB went to my bros’ computer
• Ipex 17 inch CRT – failing monitor; discarded
• 160 GB HDD IDE – went to the other computer
• replaced 540 W Power Supply from the casing with 600 W

Read More:

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• My first Youtube video
• My chat with a hacker
• My main Warcraft III account sold
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