Archive for September 2007
Portable Back-Up’s are a thing of the past.
Posted on September 18, 2007 by Ching under Sponsored Post.
I was browsing the web the other day looking for parts to build my dad a portable hard drive for his laptop. I came across this site that offered online back-up for next to nothing. That got me wondering, and I decided to do a little research. I found that on-line back up is the next big thing in digital storage. It used to be that if you had a lot of stuff to back up then you bought a drive, filled it up, got another and started the process all over again. Now we are moving into the age of online backup and anywhere storage. No more lugging around bulky hard drives that require power outlets or buzz away on the table top while your sitting at the library. Now you can access anything you store from anywhere in the world and have it at your fingertips. IDrive-E, a leading online backup service provider offers encrypted online backups up to 2GB for free and Unlimited storage for $4.95/month. It is easy to use, fast and secure. While there are other alternatives in consumer online backup space, IDrive-E is one step ahead of them in performance and features. Recent enhancements include near real time backup of frequently changing data. I truly think that this is the way to go for future storage needs. Its easy, it fast and you never have to worry about maintenance or space limitations ever again.
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Lay Off the Web MD
Posted on September 17, 2007 by Ching under Family, Life.
I woke up at four o’clock this morning due to severe chest pain. I thought I was having a heart attack. I ended up waking Brian up, much to his dismay. He said it was only heartburn. I never get heartburn, though.
It felt like there was a brick in my chest. It was like I wanted to burp but couldn’t but somehow I knew that if I burped or vomitted it would make me feel better. I really thought about trying to make myself gag with my fingers but then decided against it because that would just be too gross and painful. Then I coughed. I coughed a few times and white, cloudy phlegm came out. That actually made me feel better.
I was thinking that maybe my lungs were inflamed or something. On the up side the phlegm was white and not a gross green or yellow color. On the downside, I felt like I did when I had bronchitis minus the wheezing.
Brian rubbed some Vicks VapoRub on my chest. He figured that would help me breathe. It helped a little bit but it took a couple of hours before I could finally get back to sleep. Just as I started to doze off, the morning alarm went. I decided to call in a day of vacation and stay home. Brian and I agreed I could use the rest.
I slept until Brian woke me up around ten. The volume on my phone was set to super loud. It startled me. Anyway, I was going to go back to bed but after being abruptly woken up I decided to just stay up. I needed to read my book, Steve Kaplan’s “Bag the Elephant,”
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Shoot ‘Em Up
Posted on September 16, 2007 by Ching under Family, Flickr, Movies.
Please don’t be misled by the categorization of this blog entry. Shoot ‘Em Up
I enjoy a good action flick just like the next guy, but the movie has to be at least somewhat believable. Look at The Italian Job, the Bourne series.. These are good action films. Heck, even Grindhouse is good compared to Shoot ‘Em Up. Brian disagrees. He thought Grindhouse was really campy. I argue that it is supposed to be campy so it actually succeeds at achieving it’s objective. In Shoot ‘Em Up, I have no idea what their objective is.. It’s like an action movie that is comedic, but unintentionally so. Some of the scenes are so stupid and unbelievable that it’s funny. However, that’s not actually the goal of the movie so it fails its purpose. I think the critics were overly generous for giving it a C+ mark. Anyway, here are some pictures of last night’s outing.. (more…)
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Do It Yourself Flashback
Posted on September 16, 2007 by Ching under Sponsored Post.
My wife and I were going through some old web sites the other day looking at pictures from when we first bought the house. I got this wild hair up my butt and decided that I wanted to remove the old out of date wall paper from the walls. This was old 1970’s vinyl wall paper that looked like a bad acid trip. I first tried some wallpaper remover goo. this stuff was nasty and smelled like a wet yak on a hot summer day. when that didn’t work I decided to go for a more industrial method. I bought a wall paper steamer and used it to remove the wallpaper. this worked out perfectly, except for one small snag. The previous owners did not prime the walls before putting up the wallpaper. They simply papered over the sheet rock, creating a semi permanent bond between the sheet rock and the adhesive of the wall paper. this resulted in tearing and almost complete destruction of the sheet rock. Here are some pictures of the mess!
I learned my lesson and am starting on some smaller projects in the house. I will be remodeling my whole house but this time I learned a few helpful tips from the “Do It Yourself” website. The have all sorts of great tips and classes that you can take as well as forums and videos. I learned to build a bookshelf, put down flooring and hang sheet rock. I have learned so much that I think this will be a different experience than before, knowledge is power and I have learned more than I even knew before. Hopefully I will be able to show some pictures soon of the finished product, this time I am prepared and not just jumping into a project head first and blind. Thanks to the DVD’s and the many project notes on the site I am prepared to tackle anything.
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Old Blog Entry from 1998
Posted on September 15, 2007 by Ching under Life, Travel.
These are two of the blog entries I wrote about my last trip to the Philippines. It’s hard to believe it has been almost ten years. I think once we find good homes for the animals, Brian and I will have more freedom to travel. I would love to go back. I’d love to bring Brian. He’s never been so it will be really exciting and fascinating to him. I want to show him my home town and introduce him to friends and relatives. Someday we will go. For now, at least I have old journal entries to relive memories.
July 17, 1998: Fat Tuesday
we had a lot of fun last night. sheryll came over and found me and she went and fetched eloisa and maricel. the five of us (counting my sister) all went out to dinner at fat tuesday. i had quite a bit to drink… one mudslide, a gulp of jen’s blitz and several screw drivers. in a way you could say that i made a fool of myself — but was too drunk to realize it at the time. i felt i was entitled to it, though. i suppose i was just way too ecstatic to finally see everyone (after five long years of exile here in kansas)…
speaking of ecstatic, the band that played last night was called “ecstacy” or “X2C” or something that sounded like that. they were pretty cool about everything, despite my obvious intoxication. i suppose i was pretty funny to watch. everyone was probably laughing at me. my sister says whenever i went up to dance with/alongside the band my big gut kept peeping out from under my spaghetti-strapped top. she says it’s not that i look stupid dancing — it’s not like i CAN’T dance. she says i looked pretty cool (i was a little relieved to hear this), but my drunken state was pretty apparent to everyone in the room.
i went to see benjie today. he looks much better now than he used to. he’s still very nice. still kind and generous, but he has this girlfriend. it’s not like i continue to pine after him or anything — i mean, i’m over that (i think). mostly i’m just holding on to old, decrepid memories that don’t even exist outside of my own imagination.
July 20, 1998: Tabuc
today is our first morning here in tabuc… i haven’t written in a while as we were kind of busy. things have been quite hectic the past few days.
my friends and jen and i went to MARS last friday. it was packed. it felt pretty cool to be lost in a crowd of beautiful people. after a few minutes there, we took off to do a little drinking next door at the cable car.
would you believe a bottle of cuervo gold costs a couple thousand? sounds like a lot — but it’s in pesos (philippine currency). they just tack on way too many zeros at the end of everything. if converted to our currency here, it should be about the same if not cheaper.
we did (body) shots… we did a lot of sitting around, catching up and bullshitting. i wanted to return to MARS and do some serious dancing. however, after the tequila shots, a few sips of HIV and the complimentary mudslides (offered by the owner) which we didn’t even finish — i don’t think — i couldn’t even walk, let alone dance. they said that jen and i were sooo drunk we were puking our brains out. i guess we both went a little bit overboard. i mean, wouldn’t you? from so many drinking restrictions here, to total freedom.
it’s funny i noticed an odd similarity… here in kansas they stop serving alcohol after midnight. over there, at fat tuesday’s the other day, they stop serving water after midnight. you can drink as much booze as you want, but if you need water: tough. funny, huh?
jen and i got home around eight am the following day. mom was a bit furious for we had to leave for the airport by ten… everything was blur. jen was still pretty much the vegetable, to the extent of puking at the end of our flight to cebu where we were met by my dad’s brother cyrus.
tito cy still hasn’t changed. he still looks pretty much the same, only chunkier now. we stayed at their house in dumaguete overnight, because jen and i were still pretty exhausted from all the exertion.
then we went to opao, across from the elementary school, to visit with my paternal grandparents. finally, we get to tabuc. i saw a lot of familiar faces from the days gone by. my heart teeming with joy —
it feels good to be back.
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