Server LeSabre Being Failed Over

I dunno good French but seeing my dreamhost machine’s name with caps on gave me the idea of what the server name really means: The Sword. This day is one of those unlucky / lucky days of my hosting life. Unlucky in a way that my site went down for 12 hours due to hardware problems (they don’t really have control over that, though). Lucky in a way that LeSabre finally has new hardware to run on, which is good news for my sites.

Anyway, at first I got worried because I was one of those guys who first saw the GMail IMAP thing. I posted the news even before Slashdot has posted it. When the problem lasted for almost 12 hours I got more worried and tried to contact support. Gladly, Dreamhost’s support is one of the best in the world (am really planning on sticking to DH).

Back to my regular programming (like coding stuff).

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It was awkward… just this week, I planned on using Kirei to check my personal GMail account (jofellxcite [at] gmail [dot] com), and I kinda got frustrated for having GMail load my emails down my phone (even the settings I used for POP saying). Knowing that GMail used to have POP as the only protocol for grabbing emails from clients, it was pretty obvious that I should remove my account in my 8GB iPhone (I have tons of music, ebooks, and apps in it).

And then, I saw this article from TUAW: GMail Flips the Switch on IMAP Support. It really started my day right. Finally! A working version of GMail in my mobile phone!

Update: Just tested it and it’s really nice to see my labels as folders inside my account. I don’t remember ever seeing them in POP. I tested sending messages, and archiving emails, and they all work like your usual toaster. The only weird thing I noticed was a new label was added in my account called “Sent Messages” and contains all my IMAP-sent messages. Weird, but neat.

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Back in my personal email account (jofell [at] jofell [dot] com), I saw this great news from BlogRush:

————————————————————-
Congratulations!
————————————————————-

You are receiving this update because your blog has passed our strict
Quality Guidelines and criteria — we believe you have a high-quality
blog and we are happy you’re a member of our network!

At first, it looked like SPAM. I even thought it was just my daily dose of emails reminding me to take Viagra (I wonder where they got that idea, though), but reading more of the email made my day.

Ever since I used BlogRush, it has directed a fair amount of traffic to this site, giving more value to Dreamhost’s “n” gigabytes of bandwidth. And knowing that I was one of the privileged BlogRush network-ers and, according to founder John Reese, 10,000 unfortunate bloggers lost their privilege of being in the network sounded like a promise that I could get more traffic from this. I really hope they could do it and I sincerely wish them good luck.

Now, back to my old habit of wondering why I’m receiving Viagra SPAMs.

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There was a comment on my very first post in this blog, and I kinda wondered if you non-Filipino-speaking people out there understood a single word out of it. Well, here it is, and I’ll try explaining to you the tough cultural references from that post. (Note: My previous blog was in Filipino, but I suddenly decided to write my current posts down using English, so it could be read by more people. Also, I’m just doing this because I think it’s a good communications exercise for me to express my thoughts on both languages.)

*** Filipino content ***
Hayy salamat! Pagkatapos ng 80 years (OK, siguro mga 5 months lang), nagbalik na naman ang makulit, ngunit wala nang na-rekober mula sa lumang site, na tanghalan ng aking bunbunan, ang jofell.com. Sa ngayon, maghahalo ang balat sa tinalupan. Alang-alang sa mga nagbabasa nating mga internation poreyners (kung meron man), at sa mga nag-aala-Amerikano nating mga kababayan, may posibilidad na magsulat po ang inyong lingkod gamit ang wikang Ingles upang mas lalong maintindihan (o mapag-awayan) ng ibang tao ang aking pananaw sa mundo. Sa ngayon, hintay-hintay lang at makikita niyo na ang mga susunod kong sulatin. Salamat at magandang araw.

*** Start of my translated text ***

Finally! After 80 years (OK, maybe 5 months), the unrelenting, though I had nothing recovered from its previous state, theater inside my head (“bunbunan” is like the area above my forehead, which we Filipinos usually point at when we talk about our brains) has finally come back: jofell.com. Right now, may the flesh combine with the skin (basically, the idea was that if you fight someone, you won’t care if the enemy’s flesh gets mixed up with his skin, and I wrote this down because before, I was really against posting English entries as if Filipino bloggers make themselves one of the elites, or maybe very intelligent writers)! For those who are “internation poreyners” (a humor phrase for international foreigners, which is kinda redundant and moronic, not oxymoronic, mind you) who read my posts, and for other Filipinos who really try hard on becoming American-ish (Ouch! I’m getting attacked by my old self!), I could possibly write using the English language for you guys to understand (or get mad on) my perspective of this world. For now, just wait and you’ll see my next posts. Thank you and good day!

*** And my current comments ***

Wow! I was harsh! Anyway, I still believe I need to write stuff using my native tongue. I’ve been itching to write one, and I miss my Filipino sense of humor. Maybe create another blog about me being a (typical) Filipino?

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Aside from being noisy and ultra-annoying, it relays the worst and dumbest impression of how Linux really works. But before I dissect this SWF file’s a$$, lemme show you what I’m talking about.

(I removed the flash video here because the music, or whatever you call it, is really annoying. I dont want to lose traffic, basically. Anyway, here’s a link to the flash movie)

1. Remove all file extensions
Seriously. Linux do also need file extensions. One question that comes in mind is will removing or altering the extension f*** up your system? As far as I can tell, my mac and my linux box still knows a zip file if it’s a zip file, and they could still index or preview files with their needed programs.

2. Export the entire registry into 56000 text files
Because if you don’t, you’ll experience tough scraping of your hard drive, not to mention a higher probability of having your system files be corrupted all at the same time. Also, only 1 file will be target for possible attacks, and that would be losing without a single flick on the enemy’s lashes.

3. Scatter these files all over your hard drive and give them short and meaningless names
I personally disagree with this. I was a Windows user before I got into using linux, and what I can say is nothing in a normal Linux system could you see weird names. Even hardware is named accordingly, like hda or hdb1. Have you guys tried digging inside the dreaded C:/Windows/System32 folder? It’s like being the most typical blonde girl looking for burger in Ethiopia.

4. Make sure some of them end in d and begin with a dot
… which contradicts #3. Files that “weirdly” ends with d are “daemon” tools. They could start up a server or begin a normal computer chore. Files with a dot means they are invisible. How do I know in Windows if a file is hidden or not? Only God knows… or the system administrator, or whoever made that file invisible in the first place (I used to hide my collection of mature content in a hidden folder… I was young then and impulsive).

5. Downgrade to Windows 3.1 to get that “square windows, jaggedy font” feel
This is the normal impression of a Linux machine. Maybe this guy made this flash movie some ten years ago, so I’ll spare him the spits.

6. Remember to type in all lowercase, pretending that your file system is case sensitive
The first best thing that I saw in most Linux systems is Bash, which is the command line thingy that lets you send text commands to your Linux box. What’s good about it is that I can do autocomplete of paths and commands, making file capitalization the least issue and file cloning easier (I just capitalize a letter and I have a copy of the file retaining the filename-as-description idea).

7. Create DOS batch files for common commands, only with smaller names
So? I think I heard tech guys talking about the “e” word… EFFICIENCY.

8. Uninstall your printer drivers and use only “Generic Printer Driver”
This, I have to agree. It was never easy for Linux to setup an unsupported printer. But, if a printer is indeed supported by the kernel itself, there’s no need to dig through that disc-hole just to find and install its driver.

9. Buy a stuffed penguin
I don’t have one which doesn’t make me a non-Linux user.

10. Talk about BSD, NFS, EXT2, GNU, GPL, FSF, and Open Source Software
I guess it’s better than going through the same bull**t of trying to learn the same tool every two years (and having such sessions costs a leg), like, say, Microsoft Office? Besides, we talk about them because we love them.

Wait…

Do I hear Windows people screaming now? I suggest you guys “talk” about a better strategy instead of screaming… it’s bad for your windpipe.

11. Become a communist
This is the dumbest “step” ever. As far as I know, communism calls for this single resource where everyone equally gets a chance to get stuff from it, but has everyone forced to contribute back to it. Sounds like GPL right?

Wrong. All people might have equal opportunities for getting Linux, and we may be required to share that privilege with other people. What’s wrong with sharing?

Open Source, in general, encourages competition, of getting the same kind of technology or resource from different sources. It’s not a battle of communism vs. democracy here, because in the first place, though software could be political, we’re not left with two sides only. FOSS can even represent democracy (like pure democracy that I learned from my Social Studies class, much like Sparta and Athens) where the entire community decides which is good, necessary, or criminal. The question is, do we prefer to live in a bazaar-type of world, or a dictator kind of living where only one body decides what we could do to technology and business?

12. Remember the $ sign in Micro$oft.
Though I may agree with this (I get easily annoyed to people who do this in emails and forums), the reason why geeks like to put it “there” is because there is this reflex to antagonize Microsoft. People, this is not a soap opera, for Pete’s sake! All we geeks (I even dunno if I deserve to be called a geek) have to do is to DEAL WITH IT, and using remarks like this won’t capture the other side’s attention. Explain why things got bad with Microsoft. Make people understand what we are advocating. Make us look smart. The only thing we show with that dollar sign is a barrel of whining.

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I was really laughing my ass out while watching this! It makes me wanna buy one. (LOL)

I really liked the part where the kid says, “I hate you too! You’re not the only one with issues!”

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UneasySilence’s Blog Post About Picasa for Mac

Really late. What I actually need is the iPhoto ‘08 plugin so I could upload my photos to Picasa. It’s been quite a while since I uploaded my last album to Picasa, and having no Picasa plugin for iPhoto ‘08 made me create my own (note: sluggish) gallery website. At least there’s a way for me to upload my photos in its original resolution, with a bunch of plugins for me to choose from. Besides, Dreamhost is giving me gigabytes of storage to be used for anything I could use it for.

Speaking of Dreamhost. I noticed that I hardly scratched my weekly bandwidth and storage consumption, and thought how the hell can I fill the limits up? Dreamhost seems to be too good to be true (and I’m very glad about it) considering its meek price of $10 a month. Well, that’s a lot if you compute it per year… but hell, it’s still cheap!

Anyways, before I go off-topic, here is the link to download the latest Picasa version for Mac. According to this announcement, the only significant changes they made were: (1) Picasa being built on top of the public Google Objective-C GData Library, and (2) support for iPhoto 08.

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Everything in my iPhoto will now be moved to my gallery website for backup. I always wanted to backup my pictures. Dreamhost really is the best!

You can go to gallery.jofell.com to view my pics.

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I know, it’s killing me not to blog about anything at least once a week. But lately, I’ve been busy brewing a new product for Xackup. Well, actually it’s not that new at all, and it’s called iTenna and yup, I coined the name, as for Bandwagon and Maildrive. Terence even told me that I should be putting up my own advertising firm to give names for products.

Anyway, if you were subscribing to my blog, you might’ve noticed the leaked news I posted here. I’m now pretty confident to tell you guys that yeah, I’ve got me an iPhone. Hehe. It really feels good to tell it now, without the thought of people thinking as if I’m bragging my gadgets. I only had him for almost two weeks, but I’m so loving it, I named it “Kirei”, which means pretty or lovely in Japanese. The moment I first laid eyes on it, for a second, I thought I forgot beautiful Wonderwoman (it’s her alias). Of course, I have no right to really really brag about it, even if it’s the most beautiful gadget I’ve ever seen and owned, because: (1) it was only a gift from a very good friend; and (2) I honestly hate people who brag about material stuff, or any stuff at all.

I sleep with Kirei every night, even if I am at home or in the office. I never had a night without her small pair of lips in my ears. She’s really a beauty. I even hear her in my dreams as if giving soundtracks for every soap opera I have inside my head. I can’t stand taking my eyes off of her for more than 2 hours. I always have this instinct to always check on her, especially when she’s very quiet. I always turn her on, and she, in return, gives me the groovin’! I’m like a silly nerd dancing to the tune of “Livin’ La Vida Loca” every time I hear Ne-Yo’s “Because of You”. It’s just… crazy! Crazily falling in love with a… thing!

I can’t believe I just wrote a nerd blog.

Nielo and Kirei in her box

Setting her free

I can’t sleep the moment she came

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Yeah, yeah, I already saw the Desperate Housewives premiere pertaining to med schools in the Philippines. The first thing that came to my mind was, “Where the hell did that come from?” Of course, being a proud Filipino, the initial reaction was why are these people writing such harsh lines for a race they don’t even know about? I was even supposed to blog about it, but I calmed myself and thought, why would these uneducated people (about Filipinos, that is) think badly about our med schools? Maybe there was something we really did big that started this “vista” of how we produce doctors and health care professionals.

It was no big deal, actually.

Until I saw ABS-CBN News’s top-of-the-hour-news.

The Hard Truth

A friend of mine told me it could’ve been caused by the Nursing Licensure Examination Leakage Controversy. If you’re a Filipino, you might remember the month-long drama about the issue. It could be *the reason*. We do give diplomas for doctors here in the Philippines, and even the ones with top honors go abroad to be nurses. Was it because the doctors really need money or was it really because doctors here were big-ass experts in nursing? I really dunno the difference between the two courses, except for the fact that the other one spans more years than the other.

Honestly.

Do we really have a competitive edge when it comes to medicine? Can we really face these Americans and prove to them that we don’t only do appendectomy and circumcisions?

I heard we really have good doctors here in the Philippines. If we do, stand up to those writer-slash-bastards who wrote that bit. But if I see even a single hospital who doesn’t know what to do to a patient who has dengue, and if I stop hearing Filipino politicians or elite boxers going to the US to fix a dislocated kneecap or a sore throat, then I suggest our med community (and attention-grabbing politicians) to stop bitching and start improving on stitching patients.

The Soft Spot

But really, what does it make to be a good doctor? Is having that “much coveted” license like a badge to be boasted to those who don’t have it, or a gift which always concerns matters of the heart? I remember a few episodes in Grey’s Anatomy with Cristina Yang discriminating vets and dentists. Is Cristina or Gregory House the epitome of US doctors? Doing heart transplants, while being heartless at the same time? Of course, there is a saying that establishing ties with patients is a bad thing, and we shouldn’t be caring if they are bitter doses for their “clients”. It is a necessity that they keep the patients alive. At all costs.

Did I say “cost”?

There was this recent documentary by Michael Moore called “Sicko“, which exposes the sick personality of US Health Care. It was really disheartening to hear that the interviewees dies after a few days. And the cause is not a big-ass tumor or a spreading virus. It’s the hospitals tolerating their patients in exchange for big greens.

Here in the Philippines, you’ll see very dedicated doctors and health practitioners climbing mountains just to reach sick people from every corner of the archipelago. I even have a friend who does outreach programs to places with island tip-to-tip locations. We’re not jungle-ish. We do have jungles here in our country and we’re proud of them. Go to remote places and you’ll see a doctor passing from one mountain or typhoon to another, to treat ill natives. Their knowledge may be limited, but at least, they stay with the Hippocratic Oath.

Try that to hypocrite Harvard Med Graduates who depend on insurance company money.

And the chart says…

I know our doctors may be lacking skills, and those who have competitive resumes may be replacing their brown straw hats for green cards. I say, I’m even glad that those bastards are there in the States. American doctors may have good guts. We have the healthiest of hearts. (Talk about the number one killer disease in the US)

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