i want to write but i'm mental-blocked

hold on, is "mental-blocked" even a proper phrase (or compound word or whatever)?

i got home early today because the office declared a semi-half-day, which pegged quitting time at 3pm. so i've been spending enough time on the internet clicking on the usual suspects, and i was running out of stuff to read. i did come across baddie's post this afternoon, which prompted me to think of my own rainy day pet peeves, which in turn reminded me that i almost had another klutz incident this morning.

...

(stopped current train of thought because it's getting really lame.)

...

then i came across jewel's blog, and i am reminded again of another dilemma of sorts.

ever since i decided to create my latest blog at wordpress.com, i've been (un)seriously contemplating migrating my main blog from blogspot. sentimentality aside, i am reluctant to move from blogspot because it is the only one that provides an email backup of my posts as they are published. and in my experience, the sidebar html widget is much more user-friendly than wordpress html widget. i was seriously pissed that this was the only site i could show off my last.fm artists and recent playlist using the flash widgets - multiply, lj and wordpress failed massively. and my plurk widget only worked here. in fact, blogger wins at widgets, period.

however, wordpress (and i'm using the free hosted one) has a lot going for it as well. it has more themes (blogger is seriously lacking in themes); there are "pages" which are similar to posts except that they aren't constricted by the date; there's a cool spam filter; there are "categories" and "tags"; and it's compatible with gravatar. the clincher, however, is the "read more" (or "summary") option (though i have to admit livejournal is one-up with the lj-cut). installing this option in blogger takes a bit of patience, some css knowhow, and a lot of hits and misses.

there are a few things that aren't found on either platform which i really really like, such as lj's multiple userpic (i haven't used up all 15, and my lj friends have lots and lots more on their paid accounts). lj also has a nifty lj user graphic, such as this one:under_crisis. it also has several fields besides the post title and tags, such as music, location and mood (and moodthemes are customizable!) and all of these can be specified if you emailed your blog post. best of all is the lj-cut, which allows the author to hide several non-continuous portions of the post.

expert bloggers have probably worked around my complaints and devised how their platforms could work for them. but i'm no expert, and i don't have the patience to get into the nitty gritty programming. so i'll just keep on wishing that someday blogger will create their version of the lj-cut, and i'll be the happy camper forever. or until the next hot platform comes along.

plurk! plurk!

wahahahaha! i succumbed!

in view of copycatting from baddie, and getting bored with twitter, i set up a plurk account. like i need another username-password combo.

is anyone else on my friendlist, aside from baddie, who's on plurk? please let me know. better yet, friend me? (desperado?)

housekeeping

just one day short of my first month on last.fm, i'm doing some cleaning up. in fact, i'm writing this post while taking a break from deleting scrobbles. there can only be so many plays of foo fighters' the pretender that i can honestly admit to. i don't think i can own up to having 700+ plays of the foos on my ipod since i bought the ipod, let alone since i joined last.fm. but i'm getting tired of the intense mouse-work deleting entails. we shall see.

i wonder, since i've finally re-synced my ipod with the itunes, if the multiple scrobbles will stop. again, we shall see.

i've also been organizing my 80gb disk over the last few days. though i've actually been adding files more than deleting them. which probably means i'll be using the wd my passport pretty soon.

email inbox has been a bit busy, with a few missives from my classmate on graduation-related activities: getting the cap and gown, paying for the grad fee and the alumni fee and the yearbook, getting photos taken. i thought my multiple strama enrollments made the biggest dent in my (parents') pockets; defense and graduation seem to be coming in at close second. hay, just to get a degree...

speaking of classmates, spent wednesday evening with girlfriends from strama (and also the prof) at redbox. all part of my vow to enjoy my life after strama. except that there's still that teensy problem of going home late and catching the last trip. and me wishing i still have a place in manila. wonder what i'll do if i had to go on "dates". if that ever happens.

finally, i'm still struggling with the "read more" modification here at blogger. not that i've already tried it, but i'm thinking of the 200 posts that i'll have to modify as well to set the viewing right. oh whatever. basically the internet's too slow here and at the office for me to really work on it. i think i'd do better just sorting through my mba things this weekend. time to throw out some trash. and me a hoarder. what fun.

current playlist:

mariah carey, touch my body. i love the video, which features the geeky guy from 30 rock, one of my favorite comedies. i'm not going to admit to anyone that i have a girl crush on sexy mariah. nope, no way.

sting, ...all this time (the live album). i accidentally hit play on one of the songs and it all came back to me. this is one of my favorite albums ever. i have to look for the post (way, way back) that says why.

ne-yo, because of you. unlike my classmate rain, i can probably stand a guy who doesn't know ne-yo. as long as he loves either sting, u2 or radiohead. preferably all.

word of the day: tethering

thanks to the boy genius (www.boygeniusreports.com) for the word of thd day!

so that's what it's called. i've been using my mobile phone, a nokia 6170, for my mobile internet needs, even if i'm at home. our phoneline has a dinosaur 56K dial-up connection, and it can get messy if my dad has to use it or my mum has to make a call. we've been considering upgrading to a dsl plan, but for some reason we haven't made the big switch. which is why i rely on my company-provided smart line, and now on my personal globe line (which just recently offered the 5pesos/15mins browsing thank merlin) for connecting to the internets. now i'm making good use of my previously impractical high plan limit to waste countless hours composing (and not finishing) blog posts, or getting updated on my favorite harry potter fan fiction.

anyway, tethering is the term they use to describe that process of using the mobile phone (connected to the computer through cable or bluetooth) to make use of the phone's data connectivity. whew.

aaaargh

still doing the revisions, which should be submitted by saturday... ohhhh brother. here i go again.

still obsessing on my (incomplete) ai7 playlist.

still unable to scrobble my ipod on last.fm. why why why why???????? the problem started when i upgraded my software, then the scrobbling became patchy until it stopped altogether, then i upgraded my itunes, then i downgraded my last.fm software. nothing. i'm holding off
upgrading my ipod software though, i tried it today but my connection gave up. whuh. so, that's the biggest annoyance right now, bigger than the revisions. lol.

just posted my summer movie wishlist on my blogspot. so it's no longer summer here in the islands, so what? this is the start of MY summer. i wish there's a portable widget for lists though. so that i can just put them in my lj if i so choose. heh. like i've already managed to configure the sidebar already.

i am sleepy. even if it was already monday (actually, it's tuesday already) i still did my sleepless sunday bit. hurray for long weekends! the next one is probably late august, oh dear.

so good night, i have to brace myself for the new day :D (and the new workweek, traffic is gonna be hell urgh).

techie questions

my latest object of obsession in the internets is the last.fm application. it's cool tracking everything i've ever played on my ipod and at the itunes at work. i just wish the tagging for past tracks is easier, my connection especially at work is spotty at best. and it's tiring to have to tag every single track one by one. i hope they put in a mass tagging feature soon. (if you're on last.fm, check out my profile from the link at the right. -->)

i also just bought a new hard disk casing for the 80 gb hard drive i got last year - the one that was in danger of expiring before its time. it turned out the problem was in the casing and not really the hard disk, though i guess its days are numbered with the several drops (oops!) i've subjected it to. and that's why i bought a new 160 gb my passport. with all the movies i'll be ripping for the ipod, i'll probably need the extra storage soon.

which brings me to my next problem, which is a FREE dvd ripper that can rip by chapter. it's for the sting concert videos that i want to rip by song. so, help?

and i just also got into del.icio.us, which is a wonderful tagging device since my firefox bookmark list is loooooooooong. but who knows when i'll eventually transfer them to del.icio.us. bahhhhhh.

two princes and some lab rats

it's another sunday. and like every sunday before this one, i get allergic to work of any kind. and i watch lots of tv.

after watching oprah on the hallmark channel, i stuck around for the dateline interview with william and harry. yep, THE william and harry. like most people i'm fascinated with royalty... well, we're all fascinated with what we can never have, right? but as they were sitting there conversing with matt lauer, all i could think of was just how comfortably (or not) they were doing that interview. if i'd been sitting there like that for the time it took me to watch them, i'd be really itching to move. and william isn't as cute as i'd imagined him to be. not all the time, anyway.

good thing axn was just one channel away from hallmark, because during breaks i got to watch csi. tonight they aired the one episode i wanted to see this season: lab rats. the one where the bida aren't the csis or even jim and sofia, but -- you guessed it -- the lab rats. archie kao, wendy sims, some other guy i didn't know, and of course david hodges. i finally understood the fascination some kids over at fanfiction.net had on hodges. and why they raved over this episode. for once, the guys doing the back office work -- where the brilliant greg sanders used to rule when he was dna tech -- got the spotlight. and the writers gave them real cred by leaving hodges to come up with a vital connection for the season's story arc. enough gushing, i'm just waiting for miami ink to come on.

i also got a new keyboard today. not that i'm really pissed with my laptop's keyboard, but the full size one does make an easier time of it. i haven't tried out the number keypad yet, which is the main reason i got this keyboard. i got a number keypad for the laptop a few months ago, and while it's cool to use (especially for us dealing with numbers most of the time), the num lock function takes some getting used to when you're typing letters at the same time. nothing really beats a full-sized keyboard.

lastly, an important update on the blackberry curve, my dream gadget. the next-gen curve, i think it's 8320, will have wifi. thank god. and maybe 3g? hopefully. like, the main use of this gadget for me is mobile surfing! hello?!? plus, the external sd card slot. man, i am so loving this. it's brought me back on steady ground after i saw ziel's o2 xda (the one with the sliding keypad). i was really seriously thinking of getting a touch-screen device instead. or a nokia e61i which loyalists say is just as good as blackberry (among the non-touch screens). so, here i am still, waiting for the perfect timing (and pricing, and budget availability) to get my blackberry.

just some buzz

thanks to pk for the video clip of m5's makes me wonder. i couldn't play it on my office pc (it has *gasp!* windows media player 2) and i can't wait until i got home... so i bugged officemate larsen, who also loved the new album, to play it on his pc. most people think adam levine is so hot and i'm no exception. dunno why i brought it up, it's such a boring subject. but sorry, this is my blog so i'll do what i want. so sit tight while i sing along to makes me wonder, live @ aol version. (thanks to doug for this one!)

...

ok, song's done.

---

there's a rumor going around about a hardy boys movie, starring tom cruise and ben stiller. actually, it's almost a done deal. but the general consensus seems to be: take tom out of the project. can't imagine him as frank. really. and he's too short. the fanfic i read suggests keanu reeves as frank and matt damon as joe. i'm not that sold on keanu, either... too brooding (or in pinoy slang, o.a.) i like matt just fine, though owen wilson might be a more obvious choice for joe. and after racking my brains, maybe eric bana for frank. yay! that's because i saw lucky you a few weeks ago. it has to be a perfect match, because i love frank! but right now, it just doesn't look good. what can i expect, since frank didn't end up with nancy...

---

ever since i've heard of blackberry i've always wanted to own one. when before i preferred the look of palm, the new bb models are the machines to beat. i'm currently setting my sights on the newest, the blackberry curve. by the time it gets here or maybe in singapore, i'll hopefully have enough money to get it. i wish.

what a bummer

just got word last week that blog city's free blogging service is on its last legs. so this is the start of my nine-month migration to blogger, my next-oldest blog. just as well, i think i will need those nine months knowing how quick i act on these things.

i'm naturally a sentimental person, and i refused to give up blog city because it was my first ever blog (now over 3 years old), even after i put up 3 more. but i also refuse to pay for something i can get elsewhere for free. maybe i would for something else more important, but not a blog. it's just as well i've become fascinated with multiply, so i won't be missing much what i've already done to my old blog. and i'm really enjoying the cross-posting feature... though there seemed to be some bugs i needed to fix with some entries.

so i guess starting today my blogspot will see much more action than it has in the last few years.

what you see is what you buy

i had only one thing in mind coming out of the office that afternoon: get those damn radiohead cds. and i did.

so, finally i have a radiohead collection! i actually bought all three cds last friday. heheheh. and the weird thing is, i haven't even listened to all of them... i didn't even finish ok computer... gaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!

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i love gadgets. i've owned my fair share, from mobile phones to discman to palm pda to laptop. even if i can't afford to buy everything i wanted, i still keep pretty updated. it helps to be friends with i.t. people and when your seatmate at work has a cellphone business.

the problem with losing your mobile phone is that it forces you to choose among all the different kinds available in the market today. ultimately i really wanted a blackberry, ever since i noticed its steady improvement from mere organizer to mobile email device, though it's running behind on the aesthetic aspect. however, wanting a blackberry might point you in the direction of the smartphones, with the pda plus camera plus music player. and these phones don't come cheap. i'm thinking p990, but it hasn't come out yet. w950i would also be great, but it doesn't seem to be worth spending that much money on it and get no camera. i mean, if you're thinking of spending a whole lot, better get all that stuff in.

on the other hand, i'm thinking of getting a simpler phone as a stop-gap. the whole point is having a mobile phone with little clutter, just the basic call and text (and maybe gprs for when you get bored) in color display. without the color, i would have just gone back to my trusty 6-yr-old nokia 3210, except that it's like having a brick in your bag. i almost bought the motorola l6 when my cellphone-dealing officemate took me with her to her supplier, and she got the pink one for herself. it was so cute! and so light! and it has cool games!

but the thing is, if i had gotten that stop-gap phone i would still have wanted the pda phone thing, and it would have been an additional expense with little use. i still have that company-issued mobile for the basic functions (i was soooo lucky i had it because i would have been incommunicado for the last 2 weeks). so what's stopping me from getting the pda thing? well, aside from the usual budget restrictions (my money is planned down to the last centavo until september next year), there's the confusion on what model to get. as i said, p990 is the frontrunner but i'm trying to look for other suitable contenders. besides, it appears that the p990 radio will not function with a bluetooth headset and it's so important for security reasons. though why i keep harping on the music functions when i'm planning to get an ipod video anyway (with matching ituner)... i'm just really mixed up i guess.

here's where you come in. i really need your thoughts on this. should i get the stop-gap phone, and which model? the blackberry, though it doesn't have a radio and it looks too formal? the p990 or some other pda phone, like the motorola q? should i go for a phone with video call functionality? should i disregard the radio because of the ipod i'm planning to get? or should i discard the ipod in favor of the sony walkman functionality? so many choices, so little money. and to think they'll all be obsolete in three years' time.

song of the week: marty casey, everlong (from rock star: inxs)

q&a

i have a question. how do trackbacks work? what if i saw a blog entry on someone else's blog, and i want to write a whole commentary (not just a paragraph) based on that entry? obviously i've read the primer from the blog city admin, but i'm too lazy to look for the actual configuration... or how to get permissions and all that stuff. and honestly, i really don't have the time to do that right now. in fact, the last five minutes i spent writing this entry would have been better spent on something else. but that's just how i am.

staying alive (the morning after)

what happens when you pull an all-nighter, with none of the results you were aiming for to begin with.

it's back to reality.

i got to work late again, for the second straight day. though the guard here at the office offers consolation whenever i complain ("ma'am, officer ka naman eh"), i really dislike being late for work. i do try to compensate by staying the whole nine hours, but it's a bit hypocritical when it was my fault in the first place.

---

so i stayed up until 3 this morning. big deal. the other night i fell asleep waiting for my roommate to finish with the bathroom, so obviously i accomplished nothing. last night i managed to tweak what little i have of my paper, but i got preoccupied with backing up my mobile phones. however, my biggest accomplishment was not my paper, but finally getting internet access through gprs. yippee! i can now check email, friendster, and my blog at my convenience anytime and anywhere through my underutilized globe plan, using my laptop. no need to be limited by the library hours at agsb, though i would still love to go there because of the connection speed. and i wouldn't be at the mercy of the sky-high hourly rates at my neighborhood 24-hour internet cafe. plus, i would be spared from endless scrolling when i use my phone gprs. i am so happy, i can almost imitate tom cruise on oprah. almost.

this is one instance when a bunch of bad decisions work out after all.

---

i started late last night because i met up with roge and ness at galleria earlier. i felt a bit guilty about not putting my strama first in my life, but when did i ever? so i decided i might as well go, and to paraphrase stephen covey, i also wanted to invest in my emotional bank account especially with roge. (or did i just feel coerced? just kidding, roge!) we had a great time window shopping, eating at chef d'angelo and chatting over coffee at starbucks. we were reluctant to end the night, but it's a workday and reality should be faced eventually.

---

i'm in lss (last song syndrome) mode again, and my song of the moment is stranded by plumb. but what i want to hear now is the jennifer paige version, which is the first i heard of the song. of course i'd prefer to get an mp3 copy (hint, hint) but for now i'll try to bug the guys over at klite... anyway that's where i heard this song in the first place.

huwag mo nang itanong

date: 09 june 2005 (thursday). time: 2.50 a.m. what the heck am i doing staying up till the wee hours?

---

finally! i've got my internet over gprs working! thanks to a few hours tinkering with my 3230, pc suite 6.5 and my trusty laptop (which would have been better used editing my strama background -- sheesh!), i am now on my way to internet freedom! can't forget my new mobile phone plan... ooops! the smart gprs configured in my office mobile (a 6600, so technically unreliable) wouldn't work. for that matter, gprs over bluetooth wouldn't work. so i relied on my globe connection and my data cable, incidentally from my aunt's 7610 (tenkyu ene!).

so after that techie outburst, i just meant that i'm doing this in the safety of my room and not in my suking internet cafe at makati ave. now i have proven that globe does make great things possible. and i won't be hankering for a blackberry in the near future.

---

i've been trying to make some headway for my paper, which is why i'm still up. but heaven knows, that's not why i managed to stay awake. pretty soon i'll have to go back to my open word documents, and my radio station will eventually lose its appeal as the hour hand approaches 6. the wisdom of staying up late has been debated over and over in my head, especially in the aftermath. but even if this is the worst time to get an insomnia hangover, *you gotta do what you gotta do*.

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guess i have to thank the dj for at least playing great songs, like this eraserheads track from cutterpillow.

mistake no. 3

originally posted on blog city

today i finally finished my first post for my friendster blog.

...huwaaaaat? another blog?!? as if i'm still updating my blogspot!

i almost gave up on the friendster blog. the site is soooo sloooooow. and setting up the configurations took me several days. however, i needed a new blog that will not identify with this one. the contents of this one are too sensitive for just anybody's viewing.

the friendster blog takes some getting used to, but i think i'm getting the hang of it. and some of the features provided are really cool, which for a web novice like me would be pretty difficult to set up here. i do think i'm getting the best of both worlds.

as for the thoughts dug up from the innermost recesses of dreamland, they stay right here.

no nonsense

i've heard of net stalking from some people but i never really took it seriously. the worst i had done was look up my crush at friendster, but i never did link up with him.

so last sunday (see previous entry) i decided to net-stalk just one person: me. i was curious what dirt google could come up with.

the outcome: 2 pages. and true-to-life links? a grand total of... 2. both from the actuarial society website. bo-ring.

at least, i finally saw the announcement they posted when i passed my first (and only) exam.

much more interesting was seeing my uncle's name (he passed the bar last year) and some other people who share my surname... and i know for a fact that our surname only belong to a handful of people.

interesting is the fact that another girl shared the same first name with me (like, same spelling pa!)

guess i don't have too much to worry about, huh. and i thought i was gonna have to come out re: my secret life as a secret agent.

things you should not be doing

...when you're rushing a submission that is so post deadline. hope my boss never sees this.

on a typical sunday night i find things to do that i should have done earlier in the day at the very least. like ironing my uniform (only now it's my office uniform and not my sky-blue pleated skirt last worn ten years ago). or looking for papers from an actuarial seminar n years ago. or burning this cd that i so needed to hear this week. or packing my bag with suitable friday office wear. this last one i usually manage to finish not earlier than 10pm every time.

so after doing some of abovementioned examples i decided to open my trusty laptop and -- what the heck -- burn the internet lines again, before settling down to finally finishing my long-overdue analysis. no, i will not surf. i will not spend unnecessary time linking my music file collection with the matching album photos. i will not check out every friend's account on friendster. i will not look for parokya ni edgar tabs. i will not post a blog. but i forgot to confine myself from bloghopping.

while i was checking my 3 regular email accounts, i opened my primary blog (i am such a net addict as you can see) to check if anyone posted a comment yet. not unusually, nobody had. but my best friend left me a message on my blog board. hmmm, so she does remember my addy.

then by sheer luck i followed my link to drei's blog. of all the blogs i've linked to, drei's is probably the most active, and a good read too. to pass the time while loading the statistics pages i read the other comments to his last entry. that done, i remembered that i couldn't find his link to my blog. it wasn't where i last saw it. then i discovered it was transferred to another category (you have to clue me in on this one, drei). and me being the curious person i am, hovered and clicked like there was no tomorrow...

to make an already long story not much longer, i got sidetracked from looking up historical gdp figures because of all these cool blogs i kept stumbling on. there was even this girl who had blog entries with titles from ebtg songs. and i knew from experience that an ebtg fan is hard to spot. before i knew it, it was almost one a.m. whoa! time to pack up. but not quite.

ok, now it's time to do my killer analysis. mood killer, vacation killer, sleep killer (i swear, i kept dreaming of this paper sunday last week), whatever. this thing that is becoming my waterloo. if i ever get to finish this thing (which i sincerely think i really have to, you know), i swear i will break the bank and celebrate. who cares if my cards are almost maxed out and i have no excess cash come payday.

if i could only spew out the same amount of coherent paragraphs to match the drivel i just wrote, i'd be made. for now. and my three-hour countdown starts...

too much time on my hands

because i view a lot of blogs in this server and i get tired of typing my url everytime, i created my own blog. a really brilliant reason to get an extra blog.

check out my original blog: http://politicsaside.blog-city.com

in trivial pursuit -- the friendtest of knowledge

games really intrigue me. especially mind games. no, i don't mean the ones where adults play at relationships or engage in one-upmanship. i meant board games, trivia games, the dell multi-puzzle books, even the "how green is your mind" portion of the morning brew. so i could hardly wait to get to an internet terminal when joe invited me to his friendtest site.

honestly, i was so blown away by the concept of friendtest that i constructed a quiz of my own soon after. i was curious how much my friends know about me. a lot of them probably know the basics, like which high school i went to or what career path i was following. but more importantly, i wanted to know whether they knew enough to make certain inferences into my personality. besides, i couldn't resist the challenge of tripping people up.

as it turned out, the first quiz i did was too hard, even for my best friend. sad, isn't it? but i do admit that i intended it to be tricky, because i didn't want it to be a giveaway. i mean, there is an obvious answer but sometimes it's not the correct one. so i relented and constructed an easier one, and fortunately my best friend was the runaway winner (so far).

so anyway, i guess i'll wait for more of my friends to take the test, as it's too early to close it yet. maybe afterwards i'll know just how much of myself i've really shared with these people, and i guess i'll take it from there.

http://politicsaside.friendtest.com/