Better SMS balance message

Jul 24

ErinGarbage No Comments

I normally don’t frequently check my balances as a Php500 load usually lasts me 6 weeks. If my load runs out earlier then I can easily get a load from the Internet (hint: if you are near me I can send eLoads 🙂 ). I will be going to the province over the weekend wherein I have no reliable Internet as 3G/EDGE coverage in our Barrio is very spotty. I just found out that SMART has reformatted their balance SMS and it is way more informative than the old one which just contains the remaining balance and the time it was sent. The current format looks like this:

date/timestamp
Load Bal: P(amount)
Free Txt to
Smart/TNT:(amount)
Free Txt to all
networks:(amount)

Admittedly I would have wanted a few more information in there like the expiration but the current format will already run somewhere around 80 characters if the amount values are maxed out. I would assume that the carrier would want to keep the character count to the maximum allowed in a single SMS so I am already a satisfied camper. Kudos SMART. 🙂

ciao!

The nutrients is in the skin

Jul 12

ErinGarbage No Comments

Everybody said that if you want to get the most nutrients out of a fruit or vegetable then you should eat the skin, unless it is a hard/thick skinned fruit like coconut or watermelon[1] where we usually discard the skin and concentrate on the fleshy pulp.

I thought the same goes for the kalabasa (aka squash) until we saw last Saturday a cooking show in a channel we less frequently watch wherein Nova Villa said that the kalabasa skin should be left in the pot as it will soften enough to be as soft as the pulp. Our food today was ginataang jalabasa at sitaw (squash and string bean in coconut milk) so we tried leaving the skin on. The skin was suprisingly tender.

This is why it sometimes pay to watch channel surf and watch boring shows. 🙂

[1] Although I have seen a weekend morning show feature cook the watermelon skin being into a candy product.

ciao!