Jun 24
ErinRubbish
Yesterday another kid has the misfortune to have a parent who thinks I will be a good godparent. Carlos Tristan Corpuz, a 7-month old kid, was helpless when he realized that I intend to honor the agreement I had with his father and show-up in his christening.
Carlos makes number seven after Amboy, Gabe, AG, Ian, Io, and Jayda. Hopefully I can be a godparent to him in the full extent of the word and not just in paper. I dislike the latter because I think being a godparent is a heavy burden since a godparent is like a parent who needs to devote 100% commitment and not just during Christmas season. Except for a few, I actually refuse godparent notification if I cannot see the kid in a regular basis. My parents warned me that when my time came to look for godparents for my kid(s) then I will receive karma and also be refused. I just laughed at it and retorted that if they don’t want to be my kid’s godparent then that is perfectly fine because that means they are honest. I am not after having a doting godparent, I want somebody who can straighten out my kid like I would.
The baptism was held in St. Peter the Apostle church in Malate, Manila. Carlos almost had a baptism that I want for my future kid(s): a solemn rite all of his own with no screaming other babies and chatting attendees that I do not know because they came with the other babies being baptized in bulk. The baptismal “chamber” in the church was nice, complete with a marble pedestal where water will be poured on the baby’s head.
What merited a -1 in my book was the officiating priest. He was so haughty and full of it (or Maangas in Filipino street talk) that I was tempted to flaunt my preferred agnosticism on his face to make him aware that his superiority to me is just in his head. I think the priest was feeling special when he asked what Kit and Tetet was asking the “Iglesia ng Diyos” for Carlos. Tetet replied the usual spiel a proud momma would: good health, good upbringing, etc. The priest asked Kit the same question and Kit replied something similar but added through “occasions like this” referring to the baptism. The priest then launched in a “shame on you” tone about his question not being answered and ranted of a spiel about they should be asking the Church to baptize the kid. What a maroon and thick-headed priest, if you cleaned your ears that morning and went down a few steps on your pedestal you would have realized that your preferred answer was given to you albeit from a father’s heart and own words. If you didn’t get your preferred answer then any good facilitator would have coaxed the answer out by providing guiding questions like “do you want the Church to baptize your child and blah blah blah?”. You, err your church, didn’t actually accepted payment from us so you can embarrass us, didn’t you? And attitudes like that is what keeps me away from returning to being a Catholic.
The priest cannot even remember Carlos’ name and he was the only kid being baptized in the rites. Err, Father the kids name is on the sheet of paper you haughtily asked was attached on the receipt and is under your hand resting on the pulpit. Checking it twice to get the name correctly is alright, but did you have to check it everytime you need to say the kid’s name? If Carlos’s name was very unique then probably yes but “Carlos”? sheesh…
Next time somebody asks me to be a godparent, I will first have them verify if the priest allows non-Catholics to stand in the rite. I am officially changing my religion from NPC (non-Practicing Catholic) to Agnostic.
ciao!
Jun 17
ErinGarbage
I have officially ditched Sage rss reader in favor of Google Reader. GR allows me to centralize all of my feeds and lets me read a lot of the blogs that the Websense in the office blocks. I couldn’t comment on most of them though.
Bad Erin. But I stopped caring when they refused to listen. They say apple, I say banana. In the end they still got a fruit. 😛
ciao!
Jun 17
ErinGarbage, Technology
Sometimes the cause of the problem is glaringly simple that you could smack yourself in the head when realization hits you.
Ever since I brought home both Paquito (my IPaq rx3715) home with my Dixie, the DLink DI-624 wireless switch, I was no longer able to make them communicate like what I was able to do in Helsinki. I already tried resetting the device but still no dice. Since I was not able to get any connection from the free Wifi in Robinsons Galleria and Pioneer I decided that it might be something in the PDA. Unfortunately there is no update available so I chucked the task in my backburner until I get an inspiration or new information, whichever comes first.
A couple of weeks ago my Lala, my Mandriva installation in my laptop, lost her ability to connect wirelessly to the switch so I was forced to leash her to one of the LAN ports. I already tried reloading the PRISM driver and ndiswrapper but nothing was working. My schedule is to hectic that I decided to just let Lala be leashed for the time being. What makes me squirm is that Stubborn, my Windows installation, is able to connect to Dixie without any problems. Trying to bring up the wlan0 in Lala always churns out an error that it cannot set the WEP key. I viewed it and everything looks fine. Another dead end, it must be one of those updates that I let urpmi download and install…
Last night I was tinkering with Dixie’s web admin interface and happened to click on the Wireless page. Then I noticed something that burned a light bulb in my head; three of four digits were in a different order! I double checked the one I have in mcc and lo behold, Lala have a different key! Eureka, and gundammit! I was elated that Lala was unleashed again, and I want to kick myself for having to subject Lala to the humiliation of being chained to Dixie. I still cant figure out what happened and how the config WEP keys got exchanged in Lala but not on Stubborn is something to figure out at a later day.
This morning after a quick morning nap the light bulb flickered again. What if the same problem applies to Paquito? I switched on Dixie and reconfigured the WEP key again. After a few sputtering handshakes later Paquito was online! All this time Paquito have a different WEP key sequence. My LASIK procedure has done something more than sharpen my vision, it also jumpstarted a portion of my brain.
Typing this in Paquito, and the theme I have sucks when you are viewing it from a portable. The menu column is hugging all the real estate and all the texts are squeezed on a 8-character column. Putting the display on landscape mode is better but only by a slight margin. And for some reason I cannot complete my reply on Apple’s comment on the previous post. I think I am hitting something that makes pocket IE go back to the previous page. I have to reinstall minimo into Paquito. Would be super if Opera for pocketpcs is also free like the desktop counterpart.
ciao!
Jun 11
ErinGarbage, Top of my head
The LASIK was a success, or so I would like to believe! 🙂
Although my glasses has been replaced with a dorky protective google (two of which I have already broken in a span of 1 day), I am pleased with the results. My vision was not a perfect 20/20 but something along the lines of 20/25-30. Not bad coming from a vision that has a lens grade of 525/500 for each eye. I am willing to sport the dorky to the extreme look for two weeks as long as this dream vision lasts for at least ten years.
I am getting ahead of myself. I went on a half-day leave last Friday for the scheduled LASIK procedure (I still dont want to call it an operation). My loving wife met me in the 10th floor of the Phinma building at around 1PM before I went into the preparation room. The whole prep time was about an hour long, about 90% of which I spent snoring on a very comfortable lazy boy chair. I think the mild sedative they gave me have something to do with that.
When they brought me inside the LASIK room I was pretty scared. The reason being is that I forgot to ask Dr. Ang (the eye surgeon) how would they cut the flap in my cornea or if they have an instrument that would make my eyeball stationary. Face it, it is not normal to be unwavering if you see a blade a few millimeters from your eye. Dr. Ang was very cordial and said that I don’t need to worry about it, so I didn’t.
They made me lie down to an operating table with a specially-molded headrest that would minimize head movement. Dr. Ang talked to me throughout the whole process and keeps on reminding me to stare straight to the red blinking light. They placed something like a reverse vise on my eyelids so I wont blink. Then when it was time to cut a flap, Dr. Ang said he will place something in my eye which will darken everything and that I am to say when everything has gone completely dark. After everything went dark he said that I would feel a vibration for 30 seconds. I would assume this was the point that they were already cutting a flap. Again I would like to say that I still havent felt anything but I am completely aware of my surroundings. 🙂
The whole process then continued with my restored vision. Dr. Ang said my vision will scatter which I think was when they lifted the corneal flap. Then he said I would hear something burning but that is perfectly normal. In the background I can hear the hum of the laser and a nurse counting “25 percent, 51 percent, 76 percent, 100% percent”. Dr. Ang then placed back the flap and smoothened it with what looked to me like a small spatula and a thin wire. Then they repeated the process on my left eye.
The whole process lasted around 10 minutes. Then the nurse instructed me about the drops that would need to be administered for 2 weeks. They gave me a protective googles whose ear brace I managed to snap during the night. When I came back the following day for a checkup, Dr. Ang said there is a foreign object in the lower end of the flap and he would need to open the flap again to clean it out. So the short visit stretched to an hour since I had to go back to the LASIK room. The cleanup only lasted a few minutes so I spent much of it dozing on the lazyboy. /lol
The good thing about it is that since my wife works for Rockwell Land Corp, I was able to avail of a whooping 25% discount on the whole package cost. Neat!
Here is to a clear and lasting recovery!
Jun 03
ErinGarbage
Yesterday we went to the Asian Eye Institute for a LASIK screening exam. If you have not yet visited it, getting a LASIK treatment is included in my wishlist.
Anyway, after a few gruelling (or make it stomach grumbling) 3.5 hours, the medical team in the institute deemed me qualified for the procedure so I have scheduled a treatment next Friday. My vision is still blurry due to the dilation but I can now read printed text when using my glasses. Last night I was kinda worried because even if I can read without my glasses, putting them on makes the texts look blurry. Reading far and large texts is not an issue though. One peeve is my eyes seems to be more sensitive to light since the tests yesterday.
The tests yesterday seems a gamut of eye-drops, looking at a far-away object through a special machine, and the dreaded eye-dryness test. The dryness test involves the eye doctor putting some mild eye anaesthesia (this should have been warning enough) and then slipping two thin slips of paper in each lateral tear duct which happens to be conveniently located under each eyeball (yeoowww!!!). I had to look forward for three minutes while two strips of paper happily protrudes from my lower eyelid. grrr….
My wife asked me if I am not scared about the procedure. Of course I am scared, only stupid people claim they are no scared if something valuable (like eyesight) is on the line. But I am fed up with my dependency with my eyeglasses and not being able to enjoy activities like going to the beach and swimming because I have to protect my glasses. I also dislike going to the optical shop whenever some screws in my eyeglasses became lost, or if my eyeglass frame needs replacement because I somehow crunched it between two hard/heavy places.
Here is to having a better eyesight next week. A 20/20 vision would be nice but I can settle for a grade that woudl allow me to see something from far away without scrambling for my eyepiece. 🙂
ciao!
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