LefthandedLayup.com

Category: Uncategorized

  • At Attempt To Write My Story – Part I

    Apparently there’s been a great upsurge – well at least in the blogs that I read – about getting out and starting your own biz. And obviously I’m all for it. I mean duh. I’ve been ‘freelancing’ for several years now, my last job having ended at the start of this decade.

    But you know, sometimes I have to admit, I have my reservations about reading all that advice. I mean, I know it’s all helpful and all, but honestly, and coming from someone who’s been there and gone through all that, if you really really really wanna get on your own biz, then you really don’t need anyone’s advice. To paraphrase a really overused slogan of a company I’m trying to court advertisement pesos from: You Just Do It. When the bug hits you, and you are consumed with wanting to bring to life your idea, then you don’t really have no choice, and there isn’t anyone out there to stop you or tell you otherwise anyway. You just go ahead and do it.

    When I was employed, I had the typical issues anyone in the IT business had then. I was overworked, I didn’t like my superiors, and I was a little confused as to where I was going with it all. Money was, admittedly, not a problem. (And please, at this point, I won’t apologize nor want to feel apologetic for being completely honest about such things. So I was paid well, I’ll admit it, and that’s how it is. I’m not trying to brag or anything, I just want to be completely honest.) I also didn’t have any problems finding work. There were lots of people whom I could call to get a job.

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  • Parents Ponder, Phoebe’s going, and yes, Another server memory upgrade

    First off, congrats to my main girl Jen for hosting a terrific parenting event for Mom.Exchange.Ph, sponsored by Verdana Homes, last Sat the 16th, at Coffee Tea Bean and Leaf (is that right? or something like that. I mix up that name often.), at the Convergys Building Makati. I peeled my lazy ass off bed early in the AM to get there by 9 to record the proceedings. A bunch of moms, some kids and a stray dad were present, along with fotogs and PR people. Jen did her mom thing with other moms and the resultant incessant chatter was indicative of true success afa im concerned. This is our first co-produced and sponsored event for Mom.Exchange and man am I am way happy and all proud of Jen. Parents Ponder is now a monthly thing and nothing but good things are gonna come out of this I tell you. If you’re a mom, and am interested in joining up, I’ve setup a page here.


    Jen doing her thing.

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  • Phoebe don’t like cables. Only does Wifi.

    I spent waaaay too much time trying to get the Davicom USB NIC to work on Xubuntu 7.04 on Phoebe (my laptop. I name my PCs after funny sitcom characters. The others are Tobias and Kramer.), as detailed here, and finally gave up. First, it was difficult trying to get Make to run in the first place. Since I didn’t have a net connection (I’m installing a NIC remember?), I had to make do with the install CD, and work with Synaptic which I wasn’t familiar yet with. Strangely enough I had to include the CD as a source of packages even after it already mentions the CD as a source twice (looks like a bug).

    I finally got Make going by following a recommendation to change the line "#include <linux /config.h>" to "#include <linux /configfs.h> in the dm9601.c file. But my issues didn’t stop there, as after I finally had a hold of the precious dm9601.ko file Make produced, and added it to my modules, it then wouldn’t recognize my USB NIC at all. I read somewhere that it worked for some other guy after a series of reboots and plugging / unplugging, but after several tries of that I got nada.

    I gotta tell you after working on and off on that thing for a week, I was severely disheartened (yeah it’s that serious. Serious enough for me to call myself severely disheartened.) I was about to ditch the dang notebook in when the weirdest thing happened – the USB WIFI NIC worked instead.

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  • Aspiring DIY Online Publishers: Learn Photoshop

    You know I’ve been blogging for almost 8 years now, and am still constantly floored as to the fact that what I write here is actually read by real people. I know that sounds nuts, since this is, of course, a blog on the in’ernet for chrissake, but I just checked out my ‘Just a few thoughts before I hie of to ZZZ land’ post last May 21, and the counter there says its been read 2412 times.

    Now I know that counter can be wrong and is nowhere near as accurate as I’d want it to be, but 2412 times?!?! Even if the right number is just half that, I’d still be floored.

    The reason why these things surprise me I think, is really because I really just write for myself when I write on this thing. Now I know that sounds like a whole lotta hallelujah, but that’s the truth. Stuff happens to me, and I wanna write it here so I won’t forget. Writing it here, I get to put a date and time stamp on it, and maybe two or three folks, like, say, a batchmate or a relative, will check it out and chime in with their own thoughts. Perfectly reasonable, right?

    But 2412?!? Wow, if I say so myself.

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  • Sometimes I wish

    I could just spend my days writing movie reviews or expounding on my thoughts about Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, or whomever is making the news in the NBA these days, on my laptop at some coffee shop (with free or as free as possible wifi), and just live off of that.

    There was a time I thought it could be done, but the fact that almost all the blogs I sent writing applications to rejected me, I think, was a sign that was not meant to be 😛 . Which is good, if you think about it, because it helped me to decide to make my own movie review and basketball blogs, and heck if I’d rather enjoy the fruits (what fruits?!?) of my own writing rather than someone else.

    At any rate, all is good. I still get to write in coffee shops alongside my honey, and we talk about the sites and any such thing we might find relevant at the time, and I tell you, it’s hard to find a better more complete peace in the world than at that very moment, when all you hold dear is near you, and everything you value in your life is accounted for and in good shape. People with hate in their hearts should feel how that feels, if only to know that such things are attainable.

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  • Thoughts on Heroes, JLA and The Sopranos

    I got a complete copy Heroes the other month, admittedly caught up in the buzz, and sadly, I’m not very impressed. It was interesting at the start, but soon that gibberish Suresh is mumbling at the start starts to grate on you, and you realize that, dang he isn’t making any sense at all. Everything else goes downhill from that.

    From the predictable plot to the inconceivable ‘I’ve got super powers, woe is me!’ idea, I just watched the thing to find out what’s gonna happen at the end, and even that was stretched when in the last three or four episodes, they obviously had run out of things to say, they were stretching as hard as they could, and the thing was slowing down to a goddam crawl. Case in point, that subplot about parents getting separated and their kid insisting they get back together? The kid was being an unreasonable brat, and was hardly worth sympathy. And now he can control machines. I can understand flying, also traveling in time, but controlling an ATM to give up cash? Dude.Come.On.

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  • I haven’t been updating this much because

    I’ve been worried about my host server’s RAM consumption, which at 352mb. has once again proven not enough. Last night it started to kill processes again (usually mysql), and the sites weren’t connecting. I checked Analytics and at some point around 10PM, visits spiked to almost 100 just for kikay for that one hour, and dived after that, indicating a mysql crash (since the sites weren’t loading anymore, the visitors left). At this very moment Kikay is loading like molasses and I’ve already sent an email asking what’s up.

    So anytime I wanna blog here, I actually think twice because I know it’s just gonna tax the db since we’re on the same host, even if just one bit. Last night I finally got email to work and stopped short of installing Spamassassin when I realized it can be a big RAM hog as well, even though I know it’s necessary.

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  • Unbelievable.

    lebron james

    Lebron James has come up with a performance we all knew he was capable of and we all had been waiting for. In a double overtime victory, the Cleveland Cavaliers have taken one game ahead of the Detroit Pistons 3-2.

    Here are the stats: 48 points, 7 assists, 9 rebounds, 10 of 14 freethrows and 2 out of 3 three point attempts, two at each overtime period, both just at the right moment to steal the thunder away from Detroit whom at various times looked like they were about to pull away.

    In a performance heralded as ‘one of the most spectacular in NBA Playoff history’, the game itself was a heart pounder, with 22 lead changes and 16 times tied.

    Read the rest at Basketball Exchange.

    P.S. I’m gonna start reposting basketball exchange posts here. Not that it needs any more of a push, but it helps, just as my reposting my movie review posts at movie ex helped that site 🙂

  • I’ve always wanted to be a writer

    Since I can remember. Which is why it was very difficult for me to make the decision to finally decide to forego contributing to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Partly because I had been doing it off and on for five years, and partly because it is just time for me to do so.

    Events of the past few months have seen my schedule reach toxic levels. Just last night I realized I was doing two different things on two computers, one of which was beside my bed as I lay down trying to keep from falling asleep. I did so anyway, and woke up at 1am and 3am to work on them even more. It has been that kind of busy for me for the better part of the last few months now, and I just cannot find the time anymore to do the necessary things to remain as such, which is primarily, attending events. Writing about these is easy enough, but all the necessary events and event – related stuff is just too much of a time – eater. Since I feel I cannot do a good enough job, I therefore feel it apt that this responsibility go to someone else. In my mind, someone younger and who’d jump at the chance to experience these, as I did when I started out.

    And with that I close with finality an important chapter of my life. Mind you I’ve always known the time would come, and it’s one hundred percent clear to me that this is the best thing to do. I can’t say I don’t hope that others would feel the same, and sadly that is not the case. But having said that I wish they’d wish me the best as well, as I would always, always do for them.

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  • Server RAM Upgrade. Again.

    From the server grease monkeys at my host:

    Hi Gabriel, I logged into your server to investigate the problem and I’ve found that
    you’re in dangerous territory concerning memory:

    > root@exchange:~# free -m
    > total used free shared buffers cached
    > Mem: 256 250 5 0 0 1
    > -/+ buffers/cache: 249 6
    > Swap: 95 95 0

    That shows you have 6MB of free RAM, but at some point you’ve exhausted
    your entire SWAP Allocation (see last line). If the load had been any
    greater, your server would have been killing processes (which would show
    in /var/log/messages) in order to remain stable.

    So to make the long story short, I had to buy 96mb. more RAM to handle the load. The load usually spikes around lunchtime, exactly when the office girls take a break to check out Kikay. I know that sounds funny, but it’s my best guess and historically, our stats support it. During weekends, hardly anyone views it, with less than ten views per hour. Then on weekdays, especially around noon, 30+ views per hour, viewing as much as 82 pages at the same time.

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