bury me in this dress

I wrote this a long time ago (forgot when but prolly a year or two) but will only publish it now after I was able to transfer my company’s domain from them. I am posting this to warn potential victims. Caveat Emptor. Buyer Beware. When a deal looks too good to be true then it might not be a good deal at all.

In case you don’t know, I have another blog called Mukhang Pera which is where I blog about contests, ways to make money, promos, sales, etc. I transferred the webhosting of the blog to Kinohost early this year since it’s cheap and was recommended by a friend. At first, their service was so-so. I don’t know why I’m not getting notifications when the owner, Jon Towns, replies to my support tickets. I suspect he wasn’t able to configure the account he made for me properly. I let it pass but I should have paid attention that it’s a bad sign of Kinohost’s service.

Since I didn’t update Mukhang Pera often back then, I didn’t notice anything wrong until I saw replies to some blog posts and I never received email notifications which Wordpress sends when I get comments. I submitted a support ticket. I tried to wait patiently for support’s reply. Weeks passed and I was never contacted so I emailed Jon directly. It took him weeks to reply and while waiting and getting more and more annoyed, I googled him and Kinohost. That’s when I found out how bad the situation is. According to this blog post and the replies, Jon is 15-years old and he doesn’t know shit about running a server. Besides Kinohost, he runs Parade Hosting and who knows what else. He always comes up with lame excuses when he finally gets back to his clients. What’s worse is that if a client criticizes him, Jon will ban him. I couldn’t believe what I was reading at that time! In the meantime, I tried to fix my email problems blindly. I installed some scripts and fortunately, I was able to get Mukhang Pera to send emails. I began to take my blog seriously and updated regularly.

When Jon finally replied to my email, he said that he was sick with bird flu and that it was bad so he wasn’t able to get back at me fast. I’m 99% sure that’s just an excuse but I didn’t tell him I know but I didn’t acknowledge his sickness either when I replied, telling him about the email problem. The jerk never replied back. I figured I might as well keep blogging since I don’t know how to make him attend to my needs.

A couple of days ago, I was getting CURL errors when I try posting. I configured Mukhang Pera to auto-post on Twitter and Plurk when I publish a blog post. I make scheduled blog posts and I need Twitter and Plurk to announce updates because I get most of my blog traffic from there. I submitted a support ticket about the CURL problem and just like I expected, no reply. I just got so sick and tired of Kinohost so I transferred the domain to godaddy.com and purchased web space with totalchoicehosting.com which hosts this blog. Unfortunately for me, the email Jon used as administrator contact is his email. The transfer procedure email from godaddy gets sent to the administrator email so I still need Jon to fix it. I was fuming over this and decided that I would file a lawsuit against Kinohost. I emailed Jon, telling him to keep the money but approve the domain transfer. I also told him that if I don’t hear from him within 48 hours, I will resort to more drastic measures. My friend who recommended Kinohost also messaged him. Well that worked. He changed the email to mine. Then I was finally able to transfer my website.

I was able to find a good webhost after Kino but that too turned out to be a nightmare. I’m with Host Gator now. So far so good but who knows, right?

Well the blog is back but there is still a chance that it will get DDoS attacked again. I hope not. As you might have observed, a lot of blog images are missing. I couldn’t salvage them anymore. I also lost my food blog but I am still hoping I can recover it.

I got kicked out by my former webhost, TotalChoice Hosting. I used to love their service but they hardly lifted a finger to help me when BMITD was being DDoS-ed. Not only that. They kicked me out when I have just paid for the subscription for that month. I do not recommend them at all. Shame cos I used to recommended them to friends who are looking for a reliable webhost.

I think I know who are the people behind the attacks. My message to them, karma is a bitch. Remember that.

LOLWHAT?

@thegreatest showed this to me last night. mebbe I should sell my services. hrhrhrhr

Yoohoo, Sony Ericsson! I wouldn’t mind any of these

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfO-pfD3R5w[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03LAWuD6RvA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvY1U1vgurI[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPo9HDY0QQ4[/youtube]

or the Rachael phone

Last night, I was following the “progress” of House Resolution 1109 in the Congress. I was glued to twitter, plurk, and ANC up to the time the H.R. was passed. Feelings of disgust, alarm, outrage, and helplessness consumed me the entire time but I also felt sadness. Sadness because the rest of my family didn’t seem to care. Same goes for most of my contacts in Facebook who just kept on answering quizzes and playing online games just like any other day. Were they aware of what was happening? Hardly anybody paid attention to my status updates about the H.R. Didn’t they know that their future is at stake? I wanted to shake all of them but who am I to do that? After all, I was just like them earlier. I ignored the warning signs in GMA’s regime. I do not have the right to preach because I’m just as guilty as them. I just hope that they wake up before everything is too late.

In case anybody wants to know what the passing of House Resolution 1109 entails, it means that the Congress may now propose amendments or revisions to the Constitution with just 3/4 votes of all its Members. Amendments to the constitution is fine but now is not the right time. And definitely the way the House of Representatives railroaded the passage, blatantly disrespecting the outcries of the opposition and ignoring the opinion of the populace, is deplorable. This shouldn’t happen in a democracy. Furthermore, what happened is illegal. It disregarded the Senate and the passage was done in haste. Too hasty in fact which makes it even more suspicious. Just look at these proposed Charter Amendments:

Matrix House Proposed Charter Amendments

The changes (deletion of Congress and Senate, Parliamentary system, etc) if approved will affect the lives of ALL Filipinos. It will give politicians who want to hold on to power more time to do so. Politicians who betray us citizens over and over again. So let me express my indignation.

I say no to apathy!
NO TO CON-ASS!

Other blog protestors:
Stop Gloria Forever Moves! Kick ConAss!
Please Let Me Vote on 2010
I, Filipino Citizen
The Assembly’s Statement on the Plenary Debates on Charter Change
Dear Congressman Nograles
Oppose Constituent Assembly
In the Grip of Electoralism
Lighting the Beacons for a Phoney War?
There’s A Reason We Call It CON-ASS
House Resolution 1109 and the People
Have You No Shame?
The Pronoun ITS in Con-Ass Rez

If you have a blog post against Con-Ass and want to be added to the list here, just let me know.

I’m taking my cue from Jayvee’s post, I want to express my indignation at what Espela Sales’ “palusot” regarding the taxation on the importation of books.

The treaty has provided for duty-free importation of books to guarantee the free flow of “educational, scientific, and cultural materials” between countries and declared that imported books should be duty-free.

But Sales reportedly brushed off this argument, saying novels and reading books are “not educational.”

The imposition of duties on foreign books has caused book importers to reconsider future importations due to higher importation costs for the books.

Filipino is my mother tongue. That’s the language we use in the household. Growing up, I was a lazy student who didn’t pay attention to grammar lessons. I was anti-social too and discovered the magical world of books. It was a form of escape for me and I devoted hours reading my Archie comics and young adult books instead of reading my school books. But you know what? My grammar improved immensely because of those “non-educational” books. You will just have to believe me when I say that my English was atrocious before I started reading.My view of the world broadened because of those books as well. I became familiar with the Western world, a knowledge essential to the hundreds of Filipinos working as call center agents. That knowledge is not the same as when watching foreign shows on TV.

I suspect Sales is not an avid reader. Otherwise, she wouldn’t say such things. Reading stimulates the mind. Neurons are fired up whether a person is reading a trashy romance novel, a comic book, or a 700-page dissertation on the evolution of man. Other countries are encouraging their citizens to read more instead of watching television. By imposing taxes on certain types of literate, Sales is discouraging literacy. Books are already expensive and adding more taxes will them even more unaffordable. Actually, I believe that the government should subsidize a small percent of book costs but that’s too big a dream.

Sales should put a stop to her bullshit unless she wants the Filipinos to end up using text speak as the national language. If the taxation pushes through, she deserves a place in Friendster hell.

PS

I guess I have a lot more reading to do since it’s book blockade, not book blockage *facepalms*

Just let me rant for a bit here. I feel left out that I didn’t get an invite for the “secret” Sony Ericsson thingy where almost all of Filipino bloggers I know got a free SE phone. I’m no problogger (even if I have some side projects where I’m trying to earn from blogging) but I’ve been blogging since the late 90’s. This blog alone is already 4-years old. Given I’m not popular in the Filipino blog scene and I hardly go to blog events (I seldom get invites anyway), I’m a Sony Ericsson fan since the T68i came out. Ever since then, I’ve gone through several Sony Ericsson phones. Even my current one, a P1i, is made by them. Heck, I’ve blogged about SE phones here and in my past blogs. I don’t know why I didn’t get invited but I somehow feel that it’s a confirmation that my blog is nothing to the Pinoy blogosphere. I feel bitter sometimes when I see my friends use their free SE phones. I’m human, I get gadget envy, and damn the phone looks really nice. Maybe this is what I get for having a nonsense blog. In spite of the bad feeling, I’m still a fan and I won’t let this silly thing affect my phone choice decisions but bext time I see any of my friends use the phone they got from the event, I’ll just close my eyes and try to think of more pleasant things.

That’s according to the research of this man.

Douchebag

According to this here article, Hideto Tomabechi theorizes that the sound of a crying infant elicits psychological and physical responses in women. That includes increase in breast size in preparation for baby feeding. I have serious doubts about his theory…and sanity. I wouldn’t trust anyone with a lopsided wig. The article says he helped deprogram members of Aum Shinrikyo, that doomsday cult which exposed commuters to nerve gas in Tokyo subways. It’s possible that he got a whiff of it. Seriously though, there’s nothing to lose. It’s just a downloadable ringtone, right? A ringtone which might have a subliminal message embedded in it to kill kill kill. I want to have bigger breasts but I’ll pass on this one.

UP’s Adjunct Professor of Geology, Dr. Kevin Rodolfo is against the reactivation of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant being pushed principally by Rep. Cojuangco and Rep. Mikey Arroyo. He protests the distorted use of scientific data by advocates of the nuclear plant’s activation. Here is the email in its entirety.

Justifying the Activation of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant: More Official Abuse of Scientific Data
By Kelvin S. Rodolfo

Since beginninig to study lahars at Mayon Volcano in the 1980’s, my data, if judged “inconvenient” by various governmental entities, have been trivialized, distorted or disregarded. The story of the corruption-ridden building of lahar dikes at Pinatubo in the 1990s is well known. More recently, Dr. Fernando Siringan of the Marine Science Institute and I continue to battle the life-threatening Kamanava flood-control project of the Department of Public Works and Highways. That 5 billion peso project either ignores or trivializes our data, confirmed by NAMRIA, that show Kamanava unevenly sinking several centimeters per year. The project also blatantly minimizes the heights of storm waves and surges that would obliterate the dikes and river walls during a major typhoon.

Now, a new problem. People who are eager to reactivate the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant are dangerously misrepresenting scientific data, including a paper published in 2005 by Ms. Joan Cabato, Dr. Siringan and myself on the geology of Subic Bay, which, of course is adjacent to the Bataan peninsula.

Our work took several years. From a slowly moving boat or ship, we gathered 125 kilometers of “seismic reflection” data, in collaboration with the Mines and Geosciences Bureau and the National Power Corporation. That method puts powerful pulses of low-frequency sound into the water. The sound passes down through the water and into the layers of sediment below the sea floor. Some of the sound is reflected back upwards from the different sediment layers, and is collected by phones trailing behind the boat. Electronic equipment automatically makes a detailed picture of the structure underlying the sea — in our case down to a depth of about 120 meters — much as if we took an X-ray of it.

After we processed the data and prepared the manuscript, it underwent rigorous scrutiny by our geological peers in the Philippines and abroad, before it was published in the international Journal of Asian Earth Sciences. I am proud to have been part of that effort, which earned a Masters degree for Joan Cabato, a very bright young woman who recently earned her doctorate from the University of Heidelberg in Germany .

Recently we learned that Hon. Congressman Mark Cojuangco [5th District of Pangasinan] has filed House Bill 4631 of the 14th Congress, “Mandating the immediate re-commissioning and commercial operation of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant”.

The Bataan nuclear plant is situated on Napot point, near the east coast of Subic Bay . We are dismayed to find that the Explanatory Note to the Bill cites our work as certifying the safety of the site:

“Top geologists have evaluated Bataan and, with the exception of Mt. Natib which is a dormant volcano whose last eruption was estimated to have been between 11.3 to 18 thousand years ago (Cabato et al. 2005) and which is ten kilometers (10 km) from the BNPP, could find no anomalies in locating the plant there.”

First, the BNPP is not 10 kilometers away from Natib, it is on Natib, which constitutes the entire northern half of the Bataan peninsula.

Second, none of the “top geologists” with an intimate knowledge of Bataan has called Napot Point “safe”. Dr. Ronnie Torres, now at the University of Hawaii , warned of volcanism and faulting at the site in 1992 while he was still at Phivolcs: “Natib volcano does not erupt very often but could still erupt.” As a rough rule of thumb, the longer a volcano is in repose, the more time it has to store eruptive energy.

 Third, Dr. Ernesto Sonido, formerly geophysics professor of the National Institute of Geological Sciences at UP Diliman, collaborated with Mr. Jesse Umbal to write an exhaustive, 38-page analysis for SBMA of the geology and geohazards of the Subic Bay area. Jess Umbal is one of the brightest, most competent volcanologists and geologists I have ever worked with. He earned his Masters degree at the University of Illinois with me during the Pinatubo eruption. Sonido and Umbal adjudged Natib as “potentially active”. It is important to recognize that Natib, like Pinatubo, is a “caldera-forming” volcano. Volcanoes of that type characteristically have very powerful eruptions separated by long repose periods. Sonido and Umbal have documented two Natib eruptions that formed large calderas. Sonido and Umbal also studied the system of faults exposed on land in the larger region. They estimated the recurrence period for earthquakes of Magnitude 6.4 to 7.0 at 22 years; of Magnitude 7.0 to 7.3 at 59 years; and of Magnitude 7.3 to 8.2 at 157 years.

Fourth, Drs. Cabato and Siringan and I did not estimate the age of Mt. Natib ’s last eruption in our own paper on Subic Bay . This is what we wrote:

“A breach in the caldera of Mt. Natib is the most likely source of a presumed pyroclastic deposit in the eastern bay that is associated with sediments about 11.3–18 ka [11,300 to 18,000 years ago], indicating that a Natib eruption occurred much more recently than previously documented for this volcano.”

The objective of our research had been to study the geologic history of Subic Bay . As is common in science, we discovered facts beyond that objective. By accident, we found evidence of a Natib eruption much younger than the 27,000 year old one previously recognized. To determine the latest activity of Natib would require a systematic study of the volcano. If we could cut the age of the youngest recognized eruption in half purely by accident, what are the chances of finding an even younger eruption? (more…)

Hi, my name is dementia and I’m a shopaholic. You’d know this by know if you’ve been following my blog but if you are new here, let me tell you about my adventure.

I’m an impulse shopper. My most recent catastrophe was during my trip to Hong Kong last New Year. I wasn’t intending to buy much since I just purchased my macbook last November and it left a big dent on my bank account. My family was staying in Marco Polo Gateway and it’s right smack in the middle of Harbour Square Mall. My sister went to a nearby tech hub to look for a gadget for her boyfriend and on our way back to the hotel, we decided to make a detour inside Harbour Square just to window shop. That was when I saw the Vivienne Westwood store.

Vivienne Westwood is one of my favorite designers and I’ve been pining for a Westwood bag for years. So when I saw that store in Hong Kong, I just had to enter and enter I did. I suddenly felt that I needed a bag, a pair of shoes, and a wallet. I charged all of them to my credit card and because I bought so much, the sales attendant asked me if I wanted to get the discount card. I said I want it and she informed me that I will get a 20% discount if I get another item. I browsed every nook and cranny of the shop until I decided on a pair of sunglasses which I also charged to my credit card. I left the shop with a big grin and felt so high because of the shopping spree. The joy abruptly ended though when we got back to the hotel room.

What I bought plus some freebies

My mom went ballistic when she found out how much I spent. I racked up more than 60,000 pesos in 1 hour or 2. Mother got so mad at me which pretty much ruined the trip for everybody. She said I need to sell some of my possessions because she won’t help me in any way anymore because of a previous credit card debt which she bailed me out of. When we returned to the Philippines, I sold my old ibook, some of my toy collections, my ixus camera and almost my Nikon D80. They’re not enough to pay for my credit card bill which I got the other day.

Despite my money problem, I’m happy I bought my Vivienne Westwood items especially because there’s no Westwood store in the Philippines. The question is, did I learn from my lesson? I honestly don’t think I did.

Catch “Confessions of a Shopaholic” in cinemas on February 18, 2009!

In case you haven’t heard yet, there’s a possibility that the earth will be sucked into blackholes on Wednesday when CERN tests the Large Hadron Collider. So if ever that happens, it’s been nice blogging here. I should do something special, in case the world does end.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM[/youtube]