The Whitehawk

Thanks to my friend’s motivation I’ve decided to start my very first meme and see if it happens to catch on. So basically the intention is to find out what people have gotten from blogging. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a material possession, it can be something like a new job, or a reference in your community, or simply a personal achievement.

Blogging has given me:

• Playstation Portable
• Cellphone (Sony Ericsson K750i)
• Universal iPod Dock and Apple Remote
• iTrip Nano for the iPod Nano
• Over 3 dozens of various Manga books
• a nice Microsoft Wireless Laptop Mouse
• Various Web Design books (around a dozen)
• Various DVD Movies (around 20)
• Various assorted clothes (I can’t really recall how many)

There are also other things which aren’t material, but have helped me a lot over the past year. Blogging has allowed me to take my mother out for dinner for instance, which was something that I always wished to do. It has also allowed me to give my girlfriend a special gift from time to time.

In terms of personal achievement, even though I don’t intend on following journalism as a career, it has allowed me to take advantage of the writer’s vein from my father, who was a journalist for the longest part of his career, and my mother that was also involved with journalism.

David Peralty, what has blogging given you?

After submitting this blog to the [tag]9rules[/tag] network I noticed that their title page changed with each refresh, and with each one, showed one of the original 9 rules from their 1993 homepage:

1. Love what you do.
2. Never stop learning.
3. Form works with function.
4. Simple is beautiful.
5. Work hard, play hard.
6. You get what you pay for.
7. When you talk, we listen.
8. Must constantly improve.
9. Respect your inspiration.

Though I think that rule #8 is mostly a consequence of #2, I agree with all the rules. And, I’ve been following some of them without even knowing that 9rules had “adopted” them as their own.

Though this isn’t new (at all), I think that it’s nice to review some good mottoes for your life, from time to time.

Just in case you’re wondering which rules are the ones I try to follow, they are #1, #2, #3 and #6. Not that I don’t follow, or disagree with the others, but these are just the ones I “emphasize” the most daily.

Sorry if you ran into any problems accessing the page during the update, but everything should be alright now.

As you may or may not know already, I’ve been working a bit on the version 2.0 of this website. Originally, I wanted to use Wordpress as the content manager, however, due to the different data I wanted to put on the sidebars, I ended up using static pages. This time around, I’ll adopt Wordpress fully on all the pages, and I intend to “break” some of the barriers of the site and give it more white space compared to the current design.

Here’s a sneak peak at the work-in-progress header.

I think that everyone and anyone who has already update a firmware for any hardware they own always get a bit stressed by it. Specially when it happens to be a slow process.

Well, today I decided to update my cellphone’s firmware (the SE k750i) and I started to completely stress out. I seem to be having some problems with my power box. And whenever too many things are on it starts emiting a small buzz. But it hardly ever happens.

Just when I decided to start the firmware update, it decided to start buzzing. So I started running all around the house shutting down every light and everything else connected to the electricity. Thankfully, nothing bad happened, and the phone is updated and working perfectly, but it certainly gave me a big fright. Next time I update the firmware of any external hardware I own it will definetely be on my laptop.

Well, it’s been a while since I wrote here. But there’s a very good and legitimate reason for that.

After months of torture, brainwash and daily conversations about it, my friends have finally done it. They got me playing World of Warcraft. And I’m enjoying every second of it

Things should get back to normal once I lose this inicial urge to play the game. In the meantime, feel free to drop me a message on Grim Batol (Europe), my main’s name is “Guts”. I’ll see you, or kill you, there

I am lost for words. Readers, this is possibly the worse (or should I say the best?) and unimaginable case of human stupidity that I have ever witnessed on this island. Please bear with me, and my lack for words, as I explain what I saw.

A law was approved quite a while ago, I don’t know the exact date, but it should be somewhat close to a year now, and the law forbids anyone from spreading water with mixed detergents on any public road. The reason for this is obvious, and where I live this law made a huge difference. As you see, this island is full of mountains and we have no plains, it’s either uphill or downhill, depending on where you’re heading. So if you’re driving down a road (which are usually steep) and you come across a wet part mixed with soap you will be completely defenceless in case you need to break.

Usually, people respect this law. But apparently, not right in front of the central police headquarters of the island.
The police headquarters is placed on one of the corners of a crossroad. And on the opposite corner, a store decided to wash something with water and soap, and the water was running across the road, just before the intersection.

So if any car happened to come across another coming from the right, a disaster would have occurred right in front of the station. Oh, did I mention that the main entrance of the HQ was “aiming” at the slippery road?

I don’t know what else to say. People (generally) think that Americans are stupid. I’d say to them, think again!

Today I called up Vaio-link, the sector responsible for Sony laptop and PC repair. And let me say that I was surprised, not in a negative, but a positive way.

The lady that attended me was very nice, she didn’t seem like your average secretary which knows absolutely nothing about PCs and she was able to understand the problem and report back (after getting confirmation) that the laptop was indeed still under warranty.

So, I’m going to be completely laptopless for a couple of weeks, but at least I’m happy that I can have the problem solved. So thumbs up to Sony, they won a few points in my consideration, at least their assistance service did.

[tags]Sony, Vaio, Vaio link, vaio warranty[/tags]

Well, something very unfortunate has happened.

When I formatted the laptop and reinstalled everything again, I forgot to change the default setting for when you close the the laptop. So I accidentally closed the lid, put the PC on standby and drove around with it turned on in my car. The result was a busted harddrive, so now I’m mobileless…

I’m going to try and get support, however, only today did I realize there were no “offices” on the island to repair Sony PCs, so it will have to be shipped to the mainland probably.

So, I don’t know if I’ll be able to blog as much as I did last week unfortunately, but I’ll try my best to keep this active. And don’t worry, I’ll bring back some more stupidity and an anime review when I do write again (I’m watching Full Metal Alchemist at a very fast pace, and enjoying every second of it)

Before explaining the “how”, I’d rather elucidate the readers first, on what I call the “suit and tie status”. Let’s say there’s a guy named Bob (oh come on, everyone uses Bob as a generic name for stories, and you almost certainly have an uncle named Bob too so it’s a familiar name).

On Bob’s day off, Bob puts on his average clothes: shoes, pants, and a shirt and walks into a computer store. After being ignored for 10 minutes, one of the employees finally notices (or pretends to have just noticed) that Bob was in the store. So he walks up to Bob and says the most irritating phrase shop employees can say to customers:

“Can I help you?”

Regardless of which question Bob asks he will be answered in the worst and shortest way imaginable. Unable to empty his wallet Bob leaves the store with a sad expression upon his face.

But Bob is a stubborn man, so on one of his work days, when Bob happens to be using a suit and tie, he walks back into the same store. As soon as he comes in, the clerk is alerted by the security camera that someone with a suit and tie has just entered the store and therefore proceed to put on the patented “happy employee smile” and walk up to the customer with it and change the tape in which they address Bob:

“Good morning sir, and welcome to our store. My name is Marc, and if you need any assistance whatsoever I’d be more than glad to help you out.”

This, my readers, is the “suit and tie” syndrom. Feel free to try it out in real life, it works wonderfully well.

Well today, I experienced a similar effect in the Super Market. I walked in with my laptop backpack and went to the counter for her to keep it there while I went inside to purchase some things. When I was taking off the backpack, I accidentally pulled the phone cord which was connected to my iPod Nano, causing it to fall from my pocket. I bent my knees and picked it up, and when I rose everyone was glaring at me as if they were looking at Tom Cruise.

The lady behind the balcony whispers something to me with the same glare, which I misunderstood to be “You can leave the backpack here”, but then she repeated with a bit higher voice and said “You can take your backpack with you sir”. At this moment I thought to myself “this is odd… I’ve been here like a hundred times and I’m always asked to leave my backpack outside”. I went to pickup some tissues, which were quite near the cash-registers and promptly returned. When I reached the lady in front of me stepped aside and said “please sir, go ahead”.

I thanked the kind lady, and promptly payed my tissues and left and found the clerk that told me to carry the backpack smiling back.

Perhaps if you lived here you’d understand, but this is not normal at all. I don’t feel like dropping my iPod on the floor every time I want to be attended nicely, but it’s certainly worth a shot again in the future.

[tags]iPod, iPod Nano[/tags]