My First Blog, Actually

(I was browsing my multiply.com site and saw this one hidden. Then I remember, this is my first shot at doing a blog. Since I’ve also posted this in our company’s internal site, I deleted its name here. (hint: Only the paranoid survive)Some of the practices in this blog though may not be true anymore. Rest assured, I still respect the Pedestrian lanes.)

I like walking around our company’s campus a lot. Why? Because it is here where most, if not all drivers would abide by the speed limits placed on designated lanes. It is also where drivers and commuters wear seat belts too; motorists would patiently wait for the pedestrians to safely cross the street before they proceed driving. In today’s world, this is almost too ideal.

Day in, day out this commendable practice goes on inside this pedestrian-friendly campus. Lately though, I’ve observed that the entrance gates seems to look like pit lane entrances and the exit gates like pit lane exits. The former is where speeding employees would brake to follow minimum speed & the latter, is where outgoing employees would rev their engines & hit the gas and dash to their destinations just like F1 racers do. I always wonder if these gates are warp zones where every driver is zapped into a different world from where they’re currently are.

Frankly, I was guilty of this act too. I’ve been driving back and forth for almost one and a half-year already. I admit I drove like hell outside the campus during the first year. It was a very good thing (company name) had this on-line Defensive Driving course & it got me enlightened somehow. Still, I would still drive aggressively but would be cautious, up to the extent of counting thousand 1, thousand 2, thousand 3…to estimate my distance from the car in front of mine. At least.

Then this time came for my wife to learn how to drive. Eventually, I came to be her “boot-camp” coach whenever she would drive to and from work. I was wondering every time though that despite my conscious effort to lecture her on the proper and safe way to drive, we would end the driving sessions in frustration and disappointment.

What went wrong then? Well, I’m a firm believer that “a good teacher, makes a good student”…in this case, teacher – me, student – wife…bad teacher, bad student. It was this driving encounter that made me realize that I could be a big factor indeed. How can I expect her to follow what I’m teaching if she doesn’t see me doing it. And so the saying goes “Practice what you preach”.

It’s almost two weeks already since I’ve been driving defensively & coolly. Now, there’s lesser mad honking, lesser unnecessary overtaking, more consideration, and more courtesy. And for those who don’t know, it feels good all the time.

And guess what, just this weekend my wife was on the wheel from our home to our favorite hang-out, almost 20kilometers away & she did perfectly well, almost perfect until it was time to park…but then again, nobody’s perfect. She’s currently grounded. Just kidding.

So please if you value safe driving inside _____ (company deleted), I encourage you as well to do it on your way to and from home. Someone’s waiting for the pedestrians to come home. And so does yours – your family.

My Blog Machine 2.0

“Every new beginning comes from other beginning’s end…” (Closing Time by Semisonic).

Finally, my old Blog Machine has to go. The 5+ year old Pentium III 800 MHz PC had to end his throne in our bedroom and give way to what I’d call my Blog Machine 2.0 powered with one of the latest Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz PC.

The old machine had been a part of our life since it was given to us for free. During its early days it has opened our eyes to the wonderful world of the Internet. It has helped us appreciate the then famous (or infamous) Napster. Despite enduring the dragging speed of dial-up connection, I had endured over the night downloading of what I’ve known before as just free music (It’s now technically known as piracy). I still can recall one person begging me to keep my connection open just to download Midge Ure’s Dear God - which happens to be one of my most coveted songs even until know (hint: 80’s fan).

Of course the old Intel machine introduced me likewise to one of the wonders of Web 2.0 – web blogging or just blog. Since I’ve got this frustration of being a writer, I finally found one medium to share my thoughts and practice my writing skills, if I may call it (or worse, if I actually got it). It was in this machine, where I drafted and published my first blog.

As everything will come to an end, the old guy was laid to rest. Some of its parts were taken out (i.e. cannibalized) for the new guy. Some were given away, to maybe meet other old PC’s that hopefully start other people to learn the basics and be awed by the World Wide Web. If there’s a PC heaven, I know his soul will be there.

For the new guy, he still has got a lot to prove. It’s been with us for just 2 days but so far the promises of an Intel Dual Core processor haven’t failed and continue to amaze me with its power. I’ve already made it to download applications from the Internet, rip music and capture videos from our Sony handycam. All of which were done simultaneously (multitasked). The result was just great. No glitch. Just pure performance. Yet. If only writing skills improve together with the upgrade of a PC.

Oh, before I forget. I’m now playing a new game in this PC. It’s the modern, action packed, adrenaline pumping, graphics-unforgiving game of….Spider Solitaire. LOL. I’m growing old. Ti abi.

Internet for Oldies

This year’s Christmas vacation, we’re introducing (if not intimidating) our parents to the modern world of computers. It has been a week already and most of it were spent on buying a new pc, setting it up for internet use and an almost never ending tutorial for our mother on how it will be used to connect to the internet.

I can still remember that more than a couple of years ago, my wife and I gave my mother a cellphone for her to join the SMS generation. I can still picture her laughing out loud upon discovering that she had just sent a text message to herself. Luckily after some patient sessions with my wife (with the unnecessary texting even when they are a couple of feet apart) she learned the basics slowly and was able to send us messages while we are at the airport on our way back by the end of our holiday vacation.

Now is her time to transition to the more complex world wide web.

Fortunately with some organizational and training skills I acquired from work, I got to somehow manage and make the sessions less stressful by labeling almost every wires on the back panel, capturing actual hardware pictures and screenshots. All of which were then transferred to a Word document as a training material, printed and had it available for her to refer from it while doing the start-up from the very beginning - from plugging the AC cord, powering up the UPS, powering the CPU, logging into Windows XP and then connecting to the internet via dial up.

And it doesn’t stop there yet. Once connected, more questions poured in. “What is an icon? What’s a double click? Why double click on some and single click on the others? What’s a domain? Why’s there an @ character? What’s a shortcut? Why’s the Window’s Start button got the Turn Off computer option? Why did the message turned to Read (status) when she hasn’t even finished reading it?”. And these, are just a few of the long list of “WH” and “How” questions that I never knew would come.

Despite all that, I think my patience is paying off. She’s already sent a couple of emails to my sister abroad and some to a family friend. She’s already started surfing the web and had already filed some of her Favorites which she checked a couple of times if it is still there. Just to make sure, I guess. I think my “relocating building” analogy is a bad one.

Though seeing the progress happening, today I checked some books in our local bookstore expecting to see some computer self-help book applicable for people like my mother. Well I saw Basic C++, How to Upgrade your PC, Do-It-Yourself: Fixing a PC and other books with Fundamentals written on it which when I opened contained a lot of computer jargons that would only reassure me that the new PC at home will never be opened again once we leave home back to work.

I come near a book from local authors “Internet Fundamentals” but lacked the basics on the PC’s operation. If I would have expanded my self-authored material, I could have made some bucks out of it. It’s so frustrating, but so far I haven’t seen a book with a direct approach to Internet for Oldies. Hopefully, I’ll chance upon on it at Powerbooks once I get back to Manila.

I’ve got few more days here in Bacolod. Tomorrow I’ll be teaching my father. Fingers crossed.