Oct 30
ErinTop of my head narrowband, rant, smart-wimax, Tech
Instead of having no internet connection I have a very slow internet. How slow?
— cs62.adn.edgecastcdn.net ping statistics —
53 packets transmitted, 29 received, 45% packet loss, time 52000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 4908.713/18702.236/32208.306/7853.188 ms, pipe 33
Yes, that is 5-32 seconds latency! If the site is not familiar to you that is what is being resolved by “pldt.speedtest.net”. That abysmal speed is leagues better than having no internet connection, right? It is as savory as like having a view of the beach from the safety of your prison cell.
Jan 18
ErinFLOSS, Gadget, Top of my head floss, raspberry pi, Tech
Yesterday pixie, my RPi serving as the torrent/dlna box, stopped responding. Rebooting it doesnt help as it eventually reverts to only having the red LED on which I have started to interpret as the system is not yet booted.
I pulled pixie out of its nook and hooked it to my monitor before rebooting it. It showed that the boot process is encountering errors when reading from the SD card. The process stopped while asking for the root password to start the file check maintenance, or Ctrl-D to continue the boot process. I plugged a keyboard and here lies the conundrum: this is a debian system and I have been administering it as the pi user. I have been relying on the sudo mechanism and never replaced the root password so I cant provide it. That realization blows.
No other recourse now but to pull out the SD card and have the partition checked on my desktop. A “sudo fsck /dev/sdb2 -y” command (because sdb2 is the partition assigned to it by udev) and ten minutes of automated fixing later pixie is back online serving its DLNA goodness.
Now I made sure I have changed the root password so this can be fixed without booting the desktop. Come to think of it, I am doing it also on my Ubuntu desktop. 😉
ciao!
Dec 31
ErinGarbage Garbage, pragmatism
The pragmatic in me kicked in and I realized again that problems are what defines our existence. Only the dead are free of them.
With that said I wish your problems will be sur mount able, your challenges manageable, trespasses against you forgivable, and your heartaches forgettable.
Year 2013, bring your best and worst. We already have gone through the millennium bug and the mayan calendar end. We are as ready as we are going to be for the next round. 🙂
ciao!
Dec 16
ErinTop of my head DIY, home
Two jumping “healthy” nieces and a cookie-cutter bedframe made out of rubber wood is not a good combination.
More
Nov 30
ErinGarbage home, repair
It started as a small drip
which an incompetent “plumber” sent by the Village maintenance head turned to a warzone slash swimming-pool
good thing my wife knows some good plumber sub-contracting for their company. The plumber was able to figure out that it was the Malunggay tree roots in front of the house that blocked the drainage pipe
so the tree had to go
And now our indoor sink is back to normal. Well it still needs a coat of paint but at least the sink is now usable. 🙂
Morals of the story:
- Always get a certified plumber to diagnose and fix leaks and blockages.
- Always get commitment that the plumber can put back whatever they demolish.
- Dont plant a shrub or tree on top of your drainage pipe.
Nov 09
ErinRubbish, Top of my head, Travel review, Travel
My wife and I embarks in our first out of town trip today for the last 3 years. Our plane leaves at 730 so we were at the airport by 5am to avoid any checking hassle. It was a good thing as the group of passengers ahead of our queue took a while as the counter crew, to their much chagrin, tried to explain to them the concept of “allowable hand luggage”.
We were done with the checking procedures by 545am. With stomachs grumbling, we scouted the food stalls and the choices were a bit meager: a rice/noodle vendor, go nuts donuts, Krispy Kreme donuts, Mrs fields cookies, chaikofi cafe, and two kiosks of a sandwich vendor. The rice-chowing Asian in me made the choices clear: rice toppings for me.
The pickings were limited as most of the menu items are not available. I settled for chicken asado toppings with coke in can, and my wife ordered the two pieces of siopao (asado and bola-bola) with bottled water. The bill was Php310. Pretty steep price so my expectations already rose up.Â
The food came in quickly. The asado came with 3 quarter inch slices of chicken with asado sauce and spring onion bits. The siopao were the size of teacups.Â
The food fare was, for lack of a more positive adjective, “geared towards the international palate”. The chicken was butter soft. Oh wait that was the plastic spoon and fork that came with the meal. You have heard the joke about siopao being made from cat meat? Well this is different as the siopao feels as hot as a cat’s nose. My wife’s first bite was a smorgasbord of flavor: she couldn’t identify the flavor. She ended up not finishing the second siopao so it was up to me to get our money’s worth. I am grateful for the Chili oil in the table because I don’t know if I would have done without it.
What’s good with the food? The coke in can was cold, and the Chili oil has the right spiciness and bite.
What was bad? Everything else. Next time you are in the area, choose the branded franchises as you would know what to expect. And don’t listen to the instincts of a hungry stomach.
The kiosk’s name is “Let’s Chow” with the tag line “mapapa-chow ka” (i think a weak play on the wow expression). All I can say on that is “pu-chow naman o” (my play on a local curse phrase). If I paid thrice the amount of a similar fate from 7-11 then I expect the flavor to be as good.
Nov 07
ErinGarbage, Top of my head Garbage, house, musings
Since we moved to Pasig to cut down our daily commute time we have decided to offer our house in Binangonan for rent. Most if not all who inquires keeps on asking if we want to sell it instead.
My wife says its the aura. Some houses have this light and welcoming aura while some would imbibe a dark and heavy feeling. Ours belong to the first category but I think it also has something to do with the people who live there. 🙂
More “as-is” pictures here.
Aug 15
ErinTop of my head Garbage, Work
I hail from a middle-class family but I was able to play in the houses and offices of our more well-off relatives. During those times I always associated the “table” as a symbol of power and success. My mother is a public school teacher and I attributed her position with her photo clippings and plastic covered wooden table. I dreamed that someday I would have a table of my own that would bear the title of supervisor, manager, or simply put a boss.
In the childish view of somebody who have observed how hard it is to do manual labor, the “table” espouses a position of power; a capacity to make other people follow my whim. I would sometimes pantomime signing papers and giving people tongue lashings. It seemed like an easy life wherein my job entails sitting on a chair and transforming pieces of paper to near priceless artifacts with the simple flick of the pen in my hand.
Fast forward 25 years or so later and I can only shake my head on the foolishness of that dream. I could say that I am a supervisor but my work has not gone lighter than when I started. I am writing this piece after taking a break on my 15th hour since I started working. Those who are higher than me work more hours than I do as they seemingly take on a lot of tasks and projects. If I could talk to my past self I would have said: your dream is good my so innocent friend, but you do not understand the gravity of the responsibility that comes with that luxurious job. Tasks do not come easier as you progress your career. On second thought, jobs worth keeping become more complex and more frustrating.
Salut to all who thinks moving up the ranks mean less work. Cherish your innocence while it lasts.
Btw, I heard CEO jobs are actually easier… 😉
Jul 22
ErinGarbage Garbage
Hailing from a rural area, my family never had a credit card. In fact hearing all the horror stories with its abuse, our view of its use borders in calling it as the spawn of the devil. After I graduated in college and started working I pretty much stuck with the “cash only” principle. That principle could not go wrong as it forces one to live by one’s own means, dispensing only cash that is available to you. That in itself is a fallacy that I will touch on later.
The company I worked for issued me an American Express gold card when I was assigned to Finland. The card remained largely unused as charging something on a plastic is a very alien principle to me. I even made it a sport heckling those call center agents who hawked pre-approved cards. However a couple of years ago I gave in and got my own credit card (with an extension to my wife who also dislikes using credit cards because of her own personal reasons).
What happened? My reasons were actually simple when you think about it:
- The argument of keeping within the “cash only” transactions will result to living within your means is definitely not true. It can help if you don’t have the necessary willpower to known when you can and cannot afford an item but its not enough. Even without credit cards one can easily fall into deep debts. I have seen that happen. Any vice and addiction can turn around one’s fortune as quick as a stock market crash.
- Living within your means can extend to credit card use, with the bonus of having the convenience of plastic. I don’t charge anything to my card that I cannot pay the next day. The next day, not the next payday. This is where willpower comes into play.
- Credit card allows me to pay the exact amount. Unlike in the US where every penny counts, the Philippine centavo has fallen away into obscurity. How many people today can say they still have seen what a centavo looks like (yes the one with Lapu-lapu). Groceries and department stores are rampant in specifying amounts to the lowly centavo but does not have any change to spare that they round off the amount to the nearest 25 centavos. My credit card is from my bank so I can pay the exact amount down to the centavo when I settle my bills online. Every centavo counts, right?
- Ease of accounting. My online statement allows me to keep track of my expenditures. I use Budget Pulse to keep track of my liquid finances and even if I miss entering my expenses daily I can always fall back on the bank statements to keep my accounting sane.
- Freebies. My credit card has some nifty freebies every 3 months; may it be free pizza, frozen delights, pulvoron or fast food goodies. The amounts needed to avail these have gone up but if I total all the freebies my wife and I have availed then they would have already paid for the yearly membership fee of our credit card. Which brings us to…
- Almost free membership. Well I still need to pay Php1500 per year but for the last 2 of the 3 years I have been using the points earned by my credit card to pay for that yearly membership fee. This year the rep waived the membership fee and reversed the charge on my credit card because of my good standing, and also because I called. 🙂
I only maintain 2 credit cards: the one from the company which I dont use and the one I have now. Overall its a good deal as long I keep on minding how I use our credit cards.
ciao!
Jul 01
ErinTop of my head housebandry, humor, kitchen
Remember that foolish game played by female teens wherein they pluck the petals of roses while alternating between “He loves me” and “He loves me not”? I found a healthy alternative when we had to trim the Malunggay (moringa) sapling in our driveway and found myself delegated to “pluck the leaves” duty. 🙂
I gave up after the fifth or sixth branch. We already had enough for the Monggo guisado as well as have some extra for the other dishes that dont usually get the Malunggay treatment.
And of course she loves me. 😉
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