Rylee's First Bday in 6hrs

I'm still internet-less here at the new house I rented so I might need to up my blog's post count via BlackBerry for the time being. Nobody from Globelines dropped by today so that's disappointing. Hopefully, someone will be here tomorrow so they can start surveying and would probably get me hooked up in no time. I'm crossing my fingers. I can't wait until next week. I'd be losing a lot of time for sure...

Rylee's First Bday is almost here with just under six hours left. He's on a late afternoon powernap right beside me on the king-sized airbed I bought as our temporary bed. He's healthy, as always, and will transition to a "higher" formula beginning tomorrow. The milk brand or make is called Gain Plus. I just wonder why milk for 1 year olds are a lot cheaper than milk for 6-months and up. Any ideas?

Anyhow, as you can see on the right side, I haven't been updating my Twitter a lot lately. Twitter via GTalk still doesn't work for me. I think I really need to use the real GTalk client for it to sync. I should be able to use JiveTalk on my BlackBerry by then. We'll see what happens later this week.

One cool thing I found out today was plurk over at plurk.com. Some people said it's way better than Twitter so I gave it a shot... AND boy were they right! It just looks like fun over there! I will probably add a widget on here later so I could link my plurk updates. I love plurk's timeline feature and the karma system, too.

More updates later...

Pac-Man Wins, TKO in 9

Great game. After nursing a big cut up his right eyebrow since Round 4, David Diaz finally dropped like a body bag with under 40 seconds left in Round 9. Classic finish in Pacquiao-esque fashion. w00t!

Go Manny Pacquiao!

End of Round 4

I saw blood on Diaz's right forehead or eyebrows, whatever you may call it. I think Pacquiao is going to win this!

Stay tuned!

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Sent from my BlackBerry

Pacquiao vs. Diaz

The game is on! Another big fight in the works.. Stay tuned. Go Manny! I wanna see your new Nikes!

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Sent from my BlackBerry

Rylee's First Bday Coming Up!

Baby boy Rylee's first birthday is just around the corner! w00t! Can't wait for it. He will be a happy 1-year old on Tuesday, July 1st. MJ and I are still trying to decide where we're going to celebrate his birthday. It won't be all about kids for now as he still doesn't have any friends yet--although he enjoys watching and interacting with them whenever he sees some play around.

Above: photo taken during Rylee's post-baptism photo session. He used to be small... but he's all big now and can actually walk! He can only say a few words for now though especially the local translation for milk, "dede" and I think that's cute. Babies are just awesome and they provide so much fun. They can help you de-stress but only sometimes.

There will be more updates as we progress towards his first big day!

BlackBerry Updates

The BlackBerry universe has been so loud lately. First, there's news about the coming of the BlackBerry 9000 a.k.a. BlackBerry Bold. Then there was the big BIS upgrade to BIS 2.5 which now supports HTML email, Hotmail integration and etc. This was rolled out in Asia Pacific first on the first weekend of June. Please check the thread I started on BlackBerryForums about BIS 2.5. The Americas will be getting their BIS upgraded next weekend as well. Aside from that, leaked pictures of the BlackBerry Javelin also started to come out on the web last week. Just today, Jibi from BlackBerryForums wrote an article on BlackBerryNews that the BlackBerry Javelin will have the BlackBerry 9300 as its model number. And it will come out stocked with handheld OS version 4.6!

Software-wise, the BlackBerry Desktop Manager version 4.5 has also come out. Read more of it here, courtesy of JSanders. It is confirmed that this version of DM is clean, good and should be issue-free as compared to 4.3. An ongoing discussion about this software can be found here as well.

The June-July period will see a lot of news and updates for the BlackBerry line. And it's all about the number 5! Why? Remember the BIS upgrade to 2.5? Then there's Desktop Manager 4.5. So the only missing piece then would be the device software version 4.5. Everything else would then be covered. I guess 5 is the new 8.

Stay tuned...

Twittering via IM

It's a rainy Friday out here. It's been pouring down since early AM. I'm just too preoccupied right now updating this page's layout, fixing widgets' locations and how they appear plus there's twitter. And I think it's fun. The only issue I have right now is I can't seem to get through twittering from my GTalk IM account just yet. GTalk on my iChat is still stuck at "waiting for authorization." I guess I would have to use my brother's PC later on today just so I could isolate if it's a Mac thing that's holding me back twittering via IM. I couldn't wait as it's pretty much like blogging on Blogger via email...

I just signed up on Twitter!

Okay so I just took the plunge and signed up for Twitter. Thanks to mi amigo JayPads for the suggestion so I should now be able to begin twitter-ing in no time! Just so you'd know, all my twitters should be available over at twitter.com/ricpac. Go check that out will ya?

Now twit me, and I'll twit you back--no big deal, right?

Celtics In Six (Period)

Sorry I forgot to follow-through as I just couldn't believe the Lakers lost. I was rooting for them. My prediction was even simple: Lakers in Six. I guess I just believed too much in the triangle. Anyway, I'm glad the Celtics got it over with at home. It was murder out there. It's like every shot the Celts made in the fourth quarter was much like adding insult to injury or more fuel to the fire. So the final score was Celtics 131, Lakers 92. It was the most lopsided closeout win in NBA Finals history. I thought I saw the Celts had scored more points in the fourth quarter than the Lakers so, that about says it all for the contest. BTW, it's Paul Pierce who ran away with the Final MVP trophy. That's him and the coach, Doc Rivers, on photo above.

With the NBA Finals over, I guess we can all look forward to the Beijing 2008 Olympics in August. I'd be all glued to the basketball games by then in anticipation of some great games involving the United States. See you then.


*Photo courtesy of the NBA.

Lakers 77, Celtics 113

Looks like the Lakers are giving up now while the Celtics are going to bring home the bacon tonight. So who's going to be the Finals MVP? KG? PP or RA? I have no idea. I am sure, it's not going to be Kobe.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld

Lakers, Done In Six?

It looks like the Celtics are going to wrap things up tonight especially with a commanding 30-point lead with just under 3 minutes to go in the 3d quarter.

I think that's just too much for the Lakers to overcome. Stay tuned though...

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld

Tuesday Jitters

It's one of those Tuesdays, I guess. There's not much to talk about as not a lot of stuff happened. I just went to work early. Got back home to pick up gf and went to Body 'n Sole for a massage. She got for herself a full one while I only went for foot reflexology. It did hurt but it wasn't much like the first time.

As I was out on the road with her, I thought global warming was starting to get real ugly. I mean it was so hot around here as early as 9AM--ran through noon time and temperature (+humidity) only dwindled down around 2:25PM when it started to rain. Man, if I was on the field the whole time today I would've gotten sick, that's guaranteed. Imagine what I would've to go through if I was a field worker. I would have worked through sweat only to get wet under these crazy little mid-afternoon showers. I know it's not good news but I had to share it.

Anyway, more to the tech side now, OK so I actually resetted my MacBook Pro's SMC today. Thanks to this tip from Apple. I hope doing that would at least fix the screen issue I have experienced since I updated to 10.5.3. My brother even saw the phenomenon for himself when he tried to use the Mac late last night--that's after he woke it up by opening the lid. Oh BTW, I got the idea about resetting the SMC from Apple discussions specifically in this thread. It is very clear that I am not the only dude who has a Mac with this mess. At least I know I'm not special.

Sports-wise, I could only wish the Lakers are going to win Game 6 in Boston to push the Finals to a dead-end. That would be fun rather than tuning in to Game 6. But with the Celtics having their crowd behind, I guess it won't be that difficult to stuff the trophy in the bag. And KG would be all smiles for sure.

Updates from the BlackBerry world? Sure. Here it is--photos about the demo unit of the Javelin (the 3G-less BlackBerry Bold variant) have surfaced online. Check this feed from BlackBerryNews.com and enjoy reading.

Experiencing some local issues with my laptop

So I have had this baseline MacBook Pro for over a month now and have had no issues until I updated my OS X to 10.5.3 when it became available via software update. You know Macs are never meant to be shut down, you just let them sleep, wake them up and they're back in action--exactly as you've left them.

Now here's the story: there was that one morning in May I'll never forget. What happened was... I just let it sleep the night before some disaster happened. I just closed the lid and let it snore. I woke up early the next day and thought I'd get online first before the usual morning rituals. And then I saw this after I opened the darn thing (BTW I call this a post-sleep nightmare):

I took that photo just for documentation purposes. Ok, so then I forced reboot it and that somehow seemed to have fixed that issue. So I posted this experience on the two Mac forums I know and frequent - PhilMUG and MacRumors. I then found out I wasn't the only one who has experienced this ugly phenomenon. Some have commented it most likely is a video card or worse, a logic board issue and that I needed to have that replaced, much less checked up on by a certified Apple service guru ASAP. The problem I have now is that there's only one authorized Apple Reseller and Service Center in the city--Lifestyle Quality Appliances. I doubt their technician could even handle this thing but I am going to give it a shot no less especially that it happened again last night! Check the photo below:

I just woke it up after moving it from the living room to the bedroom. What triggered it this time though was when I opened PhotoBooth to take photos of my baby boy. And boom it happened again! The only line that crossed my mind when that happened was this: "If it happened two times, then a third time is absolutely guaranteed!" Now that just doesn't sound right. I guess I really have to start thinking about bringing this in and have it checked up on. All I've got to do now is back-up and make a few phone calls before actually visiting the service center myself. Good luck to me and I hope I can have this covered soon.

BloggerMail Test

This a test message to check if my bloggermail is working. No intervention needed. This will automatically get published on my blog. Talk to you soon.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld

So I've finally decided..

In the last few days or so, I was all trying to figure out which site I would choose to blog on to. It was just between Blogger and WordPress. There's just two choices. You know I have actually started with Blogger around May 31st and posted a few. Then I deleted everything I wrote a little after I imported all of them over to WordPress. The "Magic Button" was just tempting. It was that quick! But now I'm back to Blogger. At least I was able to figure out the differences.

Both are really fairly simple to work with. Here are the items that have helped me decide between the two top-notch blog sites:

1. You can control your blog's text font on Blogger, at least it's readily available on the post box. This is not available on WordPress. You would have to edit the HTML tags for that or change the template/theme.

2. Upload space-wise: WordPress readily provides 3GB. All I know about Blogger's is that you only get 1GB of space for photos due to its integration with Picasa. Although there is a workaround to this by uploading your photos somewhere, i.e., Photobucket or Flickr, and then link them into your blog, it is clear that WordPress has this feature in the bag.

3. There's lots of widgets available on Blogger and that's good. There's even the nice newsreel feature that lets your visitors read the latest news articles for a particular subject or topic listed on the sidebar. They just have to click the topic of interest and they get the news. WordPress I think doesn't have that.

4. And this last feature, amongst a slew of other useful features readily available on Blogger, is the capability to blog from a mobile device. They call this mobile-blogging or blogging-to-go. This is perfect for me as I am out and about most of the time. All I've got to do is just send an email to the address I have nominated, and boom--the email gets published as a new article. I think I have mentioned this before that Blogger and BlackBerry are made for each other.

Having said all those things, I guess I'm staying with Blogger even if I had deleted the initial page I have created last May 31st (sorry!). At least I'm back now and I should be better than I used to be a few weeks ago. There's going to be more updates soon as I will be working on this full-time now. With Blogger and as I have said, I can even post from my BlackBerry and send it from there. So much for push-button publishing and mobile-blogging.

White Water Rafting

Have you guys ever gone white water rafting? If so, then I guess you’re familiar with those classes of rapids everyone talks about whenever they get past all of them on any given course. We’re talking about the more difficult class 3-4 rapids… Are we? Well I guess if you haven’t tried the advanced course YET then you have a lot to read about on here.


Just fyi, I’ve actually (and successfully) just gone on my first rafting adventure last May 15th, on a Thursday if it matters. And yeah, I pushed the limit (along with my cousins) and signed up to go advanced. That trip covers around 30 or so rapids ranging from class 1-2 to the more adrenaline-pumping and exhilarating class 3-4s. The duration: 6-7 hours of nonstop white-water wet-glory… All I could say is that it was so fun and you’ve got to love every minute out there especially when you’re like risking your life in exchange for one hell of an experience. No pain, no gain. Now how’s that for a late summer thrill? I love outdoors!


The whole time I was out there, I was feeling safe even with the odds that we had to go through which I had no idea what they were going to be like (remember: it’s first time). Good thing the word safety came in and was introduced even before pre-raft because we chose to raft with the Kagay guys who have such an established resume in the rafting business in Cagayan de Oro and in the rafting world, in general. So if you plan on going rafting sometime later, I would consider going out there with them. I’ll be going rafting again soon especially after a day or two’s worth of rain would hit the city — that would surely bring up the “danger” (and fear!) factor. It would be all perfect to blog about by then.

Just drive, don’t text

I couldn’t believe I’ve been through a car accident and survived to blog about it — the photo above should help me put everything into words. That all happened about 23 months or so ago, July of ‘06. I wrote about it on my old message board and here’s what the whole drama was:

i survived a rather really ugly car crash. that was back on the 17th of jul 06. oh yeah, everything happened like in a blink of an eye. i was driving on my way to work and it just happened. in full detail, i woke up early - the usual routine. drove my pops to the airport before i was gonna get to work. then downhill, i was checking the mirrors, applying not too hard on the brake pads. the last thing i remember was when i was trying to change a song on my iPod mini - which of course is what i use to serve as the car accessory - then boom it just happened. i hit something. “houston, we’ve got a problem.” i am so sure i never spent like a great deal of 2 seconds looking at the iPod mini screen. if that was my fault, i for sure have learned from it the hard way. check out the photo of the sentra above. it should at least tell you what i’ve been through. when i got the hit, all i heard was silence. all i’ve thought of was home - what have i done? good news is that i’m still alive. i always put my seatbelts on when driving. i made a couple of phone calls - good thing i had full charge. t’was a shocker. of all people, why did it have to be me? i guess i had to learn stuff about driving the hard way. after i got cleared by traffic authority and was driving it home, the only line that ran through my mind was this: “driving is a privilege, not a right.” that said, i guess my driving days are doomed. i was so scared. good news is that i was able to get through it. learned a lot. never text while driving. i never texted that day though, i was switching songs on the iPod mini for like under 2 seconds and i crashed. i had better texted that day. even if the result was still the same. well i think i did text someone just right before it happened. so there. there’s a lot to learn. at least, we should learn from the mistakes of others for we cannot live long enough to make ‘em all our own.

So that was it. All I’ve got to say now is this–don’t ever forget about the title I tagged this old update with: just drive, don’t text. If you do otherwise, you would ultimately become a liability on the road and might tremendously affect the lives of others, along with your own. Think about the risk.

CELTICS 3, LAKERS 1

In one of the biggest upsets in NBA Finals history (at least in recent memory), the CELTICS trounced the LAKERS on their own floor with a remarkable 97-91 come-from-behind victory. It was all LAKERS from the first half up until late third quarter when the CELTICS were finally able to start answering back. All that and the LAKERS squandered their lead (as much as 24 points) during crunch time. I guess it really isn’t over when it’s over.

I wrote off the CELTICS as early as the start of the third quarter but boy was I wrong. Who would’ve thought the LAKERS would lose that game? That for sure would be a heartbreaker for them. But that’s basketball and it was the CELTICS who came out BIG when it mattered the most. With under 40 seconds left, Ray Allen’s breakaway lay-up was the haymaker. That was just the highlight to the LAKER’s defensive breakdown in the second half. Sasha Vujajic probably gave up on that play thinking someone was going to cover for him from the weak side. Nobody did. And that was the game’s turning point from my perspective.

I would think it’s now safe to say that the CELTICS are going to win this series. And Ray, Paul Pierce and KG would be getting a truck load of bonuses plus the rings! Stay tuned.

*Photo courtesy of the NBA.

BlackBerry Bold to come out of Rogers first?

According to the BlackBerryNews feed, HorizonWirelessOnline has posted up on their website that the BlackBerry Bold may finally be coming out this month. The big BUT is that it would have to come out of Rogers wireless. Target release date: June 25th. It will supposedly come with HH OS 4.6, 4.6.0.60 to be exact.

And while it may not come as good news to some BlackBerry addicts like me, that shouldn’t come surprising enough at all. I mean with RIM based in Canada, I think it’s only fitting that the Canadians would get their hands on them first before the rest of the world does.

So I am really, really excited now.

*Photo courtesy of BlackBerryNews.

Top Blogs in the Philippines

I just found out about this while heading over to read some tech news and reviews on the YugaTech blog. Apparently, the country’s top blog spot belongs to someone who offers some really cool and nifty friendster layout designs. You can find the running list over at TopBlogs. I am just unsure if they update that real-time or daily. I could only guess but I think they have set a default minimum delay, like 60 sec. I can only be certain about one thing though — a lot of our folks around here really visit Friendster a lot too often. Now, whether that gets a lot more hits coming from the Philippines than hits to Google coming from everywhere else, could be anyone’s guess at this point.

So I’ll let you in on a secret: this blog’s objective will be to get on that list soon. Hopefully. But I would need an audience first and would need more work to get it done. No pain, no gain. So good luck to me.

Hello from WordPress!

So I’m welcoming myself to WordPress.com. I just tried importing my other recently-launched blog on blogger.com and t’was too easy. All I did was just hit the Magic Button and that was it. I hope the photos came with the posts too. Now I really have no clue which service is better or not but one thing’s for sure, blogger is part of Google so that should matter a lot. But here I am on WordPress and I think it looks clean. Plus, there’s like 60 other template designs that I could choose from. I think that’s a lot. So let me try to remind myself to be here often. I also hope I can finally get that ricpac.net domain, soon.

New iPhone in the news!

Let’s start with the old news first, so here it is… I am not sure if you guys have heard but the iPhone will finally be coming to the Philippines sometime this year. Although it’s still unconfirmed if it’ll actually be here come Q3, one thing’s certain–it’ll be here in the second semester! And guess which carrier is going to carry it? It’s going to be none other than my favorite, Globe Telecom. Please read this link for the official Apple News article re: the deal that sealed Globe Telecom to deliver, release and support the 3G iPhone > Globe Telecom and Apple Bring iPhone 3G to the Philippines

And this just in! Apple just announced today that the new 3G iPhones will be released on July 11th–that’s a week after the US Independence Day. It’ll have the same features as with the first iPhone and more–like built-in GPS, 3G and would now include support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. That only means the iPhone will be competing with the BlackBerry in the push-email category! There’s also real-time contacts and calendar sync OTA. And what also makes it a great buy (at least for me) is that it’ll be sold starting at $199! So that’s twice as fast for half the price. Plus it now comes in either black or white versions and will be available in 22 countries on it’s initial release in July. Read more here > Apple Press Info

While I am eagerly waiting for the release of the BlackBerry Bold, I certainly can’t just let this 3G iPhone pass. I will most definitely get it.

Love is a temporary madness

Check out what I had written before about love being a temporary madness. I think I wrote this circa-2005 and this was on my old tripod page as well.

Love: temporary madness > love is a temporary madness. When you fall in love, it erupts like a volcano, then it subsides. When it subsides, you have to make a decision, you have to work out whether your roots have become so intertwined together that it is so inconceivable that you should have to part from it. Love is not breathlessness, it is not a desire to make every second of your lying moments of the day imagining she is kissing every part of your body. Love is just being in love which any of us can convince we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has been burned away. Love is love after all the excitement, the fun and everything. Doesn’t seem interesting, does it? But it is the truth.

Work, work, work...

Work’s been ugly these past few days. That’s because something was up with the numbers and they were nowhere close to the desired levels. I just got off from work today after spending way too much time analyzing the trend that involved a dip in a very important metric that defines cost. But oh well, work pays the bills so I’ve got to deliver and make some adjustments in the other life.

I’m almost going into my rest days so I should be able to continue moving the old stuff to here by then and delete the webpage I had created a few years back. Once I have moved all that’s needed to be moved, I should be able to keep up with the updates to this blog whenever I can. So until then…