There’s this issue that had us stumped for quite some time. Our chairman had been complaining that he could never access his online bank account. He always gets an “under maintenance” notice. But whenever we go to his computer and access it, it was perfectly okay. Anyway, on the umpteenth time that he asked for help, I finally decided to watch how he accesses the site. It turns out that he use Google Mail as his home page and whenever he goes to any other site, he inputs the URL on the Google search field instead of the browser address bar. This does make sense from an ease-of-use point of view. But unfortunately, Google returns a link that turned out to be obsolete. When you click on it, you almost wouldn’t know it is obsolete because the page displays the exact same “under maintenance” notice as when it is really under maintenance. We really shouldn’t take for granted the actions users make.
Month: April 2008
A few weeks ago, when Crissy’s 29th (friends!) birthday was still coming up, I suggested that she celebrate it over the weekend closest to her birthday. And since I have been wanting to surf since last year, I also suggested surfing as part of the activities ;) She agreed saying Jim is also interested in surfing. So yesterday, we went with a bunch of friends and officemates, to Crystal Beach Resort in San Narciso, Zambales.
Crystal Beach Resort is a pretty big and spacious resort. They have a wide soft sand beachfront and the water is clean and quite shallow for quite a distance from the shoreline. Cogon-roofed huts of various sizes and purpose are line along the shore or interspersed between rows of pine trees. There is a liberal amount of concrete use but otherwise the whole place has a rustic feel to it. The only thing that spoils the atmosphere is the presence of videoke machines. I guess there’s just no getting away from these infernal machines anywhere in the country.
When we arrived, the waves were not strong enough so those who us who weren’t sleeping bummed around the beach. We finally started surfing late afternoon when the waves became stronger. We started on the sand with surfing theory then it was off to the water where the instructors taught us how to actually apply it. Of course, all that flew into the wind as we repeatedly mounted our boards, paddled to speed up (assisted by a push from the instructors), popped up, and wiped out.
After about thirty minutes of this, our skins were red and raw from all the chafing against the surf boards. It was then that, in a moment of enlightenment, I realized what a rash guard is for :P All the pain, however, is forgotten when you are able to catch a wave and ride it (not that I caught many, I think I really only caught two). Pure exhilaration!
Can’t wait till the next time.
This afternoon, I dropped by three Shell gas stations looking for E10. They all had none. On the third one, I gave up and decided to just top up with regular unleaded. As I was filling up, I chatted with the pump operator and he mentioned that a lot of people are loading up with E10, including even tricycles. Guess the price of gasoline is now at the point where people will actually look for, even demand, alternative fuels. It looks like we can expect an increase in the number of fuel-sipping diesel and hybrid cars. Currently there’s only the Ford Focus and the Hyundai Getz diesels out there. We can also expect more biodiesel and ethanol mixed with our diesel and gasoline, respectively. I sure hope alternative fuels continue gaining momentum so that we can finally bid greedy OPEC goodbye.
I don’t know but lately I’ve been finding things to be pretty expensive here. Take for example a Nalgene bottle. It is priced online at $5.95 or P250 at the current supposed exchange rate of P42:$1. But it is priced at up to P900 or an effective rate of P151:$1!!! Another example, an Oakley Square Wire. It is priced online at $150 or P6,300. But here it is priced at P9,900 or an effective rate of P66:$1. Finally, there’s the soon to be released Asus EEE PC 900. According to Yugatech, It will be priced in the US at $549 or P23,058. But it will actually be priced at P33,900 here or an effective rate of P61.75:$1. Hardware, software, books, medicine, even hair gel… the story is the same. Whether due to bloated profit margins, VAT, tariffs, or whatever, it seems were we’re being screwed by both greedy capitalists and, worse, the government.
I’ve been meaning to upgrade to WordPress 2.5 since it came out way back end of March but I was always either busy or lazy. But I finally did tonight while waiting for the time. But of course, I still just took the 5-minute upgrade procedure. As you can see, it worked :P
So what’s new? A lot. According to the release notes: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages.
I’ll see how nice or not these things are soon enough.