2008-08-26

Scam or Spam?

Pued po b akong humingi ng 2long sa inyo? I'm Anne, 21yo fresh grad po from bacolod. Gagawin ko po ang lahat ng kapalit na gusto nio, ma2lungan nio lng po akong makapunta sa mynila. Im willing to take the risks. MY job hiring na po kc ako jan sa smc-ortigas, sayang naman po kung madidissolve lng.. My picture po ako at supporting documents sa www.annevelasco.cjb.net - Anne

August 17, Sunday, 0900h and I'm busy experiencing r.e.m. when my cellphone in its loudest profile woke me up for the SMS received above. Anyone could get easily annoyed by this, but I felt different. Of all the scams-thru-SMS I receive, this is by far the most... I should say, elaborate. I even got to the point of checking out the said website. hehe.

You'd think twice when you see the webpage. (By the way, as of this writing, I checked the URL again and it now points to a different webpage, so it's a scam after all! But I'm getting ahead of my story). The girl tells her family history in the webpage, from how she became an orphan to the beauty contests that she joined just to support herself. She's currently living with a relative and, as what her SMS said, she's already accepted a job in Manila. She even has a copy of her transcript of records and a grad photo.

There are a lot of loopholes in that strategy (or modus operandi, as commonly used with criminals/scammers for that matter), and I'm not gonna enumerate them anymore. The point is that there really are people who would do anything to scam you, and my mobile number seems to be roaming (not as in I'm abroad) far and wide as I receive more scams, more offers of loans at lower discounts, more invites to something at somewhere, etc.

I'd rather have the endless forwards by my friends just because they are on unlimited txting. :)

2008-08-25

Bummer Monday - Not!

0634h : Woke up to a spicy tuna breakfast and a cloud-obstructed sunrise
0720h : Left the house still feeling sleepy
0834h : Arrived at Powersmash (Pasong Tamo), played badminton 'till 1230h
1300h : First time in the Powerplant Mall
1330h : Pepper Lunch at last!
1530h : Bogged down for the next 2 1/2 hrs
1900h : Addict mode - net-surfin'

2008-08-23

"The Queen no longer bleeds..."

...and she somehow resembles Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (the Philippine president) when she speaks. Nevertheless, "The Other Boleyn Girl" is my second best movie of the year next to "The Dark Knight". Well, my top three are: (1) The Dark Knight, (2) The Other Boleyn Girl, and (3) Wanted, and nothing more... because those were the only flicks I've seen this year. :D

She really looks like GMA!
Image from www.dvdizzy.com

This film's plot is kick-ass. If one is not aware this is based on a novel, one would believe this is what really happened. Of course I researched about it in Wikipedia, but the article was too long it bored me. I don't know if Henry VIII really had a bastard son with the other Boleyn girl. No twists, but full of the most mundane of emotions that drive the characters' actions and their attitudes towards others.

Anne Boleyn (Natalie Portman) is strong, cunning, and intelligent (only in the beginning), while Mary is naive and simple. For this, Portman overshadowed Johansson. However, I find that Johansson's portrayal of Mary brought out an exceptional actress in her. Anyway, if it was Portman, she would have done it all the same - but they would need to find a 'bitchier' actress than her to play the part of Anne. Since towards the end they somehow switched qualities (e.g. the other became weak, the other stronger), their acting styles were also swapped, so it evens them out.

I wonder why it only scored a measly 41% in Rotten Tomatoes?

2008-08-21

1.00 sparse fifo

  • Got through the most dreaded stuff for me to do in an APE today. No. Not the blood thingy, or needles thingy. Something you'd want to give right away to the nurse. Something that's placed inside a small covered cup you'd either wrap with tissue a dozen times, or keep in a bigger container (plastic or paper bag). Ewww.

  • Despite having finally passed that sample, I still felt gloomy at work. Saw the sun today after its no-show yesterday due to the typhoon *ahem* 'karen', but it didn't help either. God how I'd give anything just to be somewhere else. I don't know where my life's heading. Must be the 'small' signs I've been seeing/hearing at work. People around me seem to be getting somewhere. Or at least they're happy with themselves. I'm getting nowhere. I'm pathetic.

  • The Tennis Masters Cup on November will be held in Shanghai - for the last time. Next year they're moving it to London. One of my college kadas told me she knows a place where we can stay for free. You guessed it. She's chinese, of course. Checked how much the round trip airline tickets will cost, but not the event tickets yet. Affordable... So far. I'm gonna do all my best to convince Tin & Teddy.

fifo empty.

2008-08-17

Pusakal Tragedy

Warning: If you're eating something right now, most specially if it's siopao, you may want to finish it first before reading this post.

A few weeks ago, as I was backing the car in our garage, I found a pusakal - a tagalog portmanteau of pusa (cat) and kalye (street) - lying dead stiff. At first I thought she may only be sleeping, but it's impossible for her not to hear the 'cat-frightening' sound of the diesel engine once I started it off. My suspicions were confirmed when I came near and nudged her with my foot. Tsk tsk, poor thing. What could have caused her death? It's very unusual considering the only times I see a dead cat is in the middle of the street with all its innards now 'outtards' its body.

That cat, together with her two babies, always stay in the garage. Sometimes at night I would also catch them all huddled up together on the doormat. Whenever I'm about to start the car while they were resting underneath, they'd get startled and would scamper out of the house. Cute. The only annoying thing they do is to scavenge for food in the trash bins, messing up our street.

Aww sweet!
Cozying up underneath the family car.

Oops, must've heard the digicam click.

We never had a pet animal at home because my brother had asthma when he was just a kid. Now that he no longer has it, we still didn't get one simply because we were too lazy to get one :D. Enough digressing... These cats seem to like staying in the outer parts of our house that at one point I even asked my mom maybe we could 'adopt' them as our household pets. They were too cute and pitiful to be homeless. Too late now, though. Mommy cat has passed away (I don't know where my cousin buried her remains) and just a few days after, another tragedy had befallen her family.

Following her mom in the afterlife, the little one was gruesomely run over by some asshole. I didn't witness the actual killing. I just found the body all ready for an autopsy one lot away from our house. Oh dear. I can hear them meowing all night looking for their mom, and now one of them was brutally killed in the midst of their search. I never knew what happened to the other one, though. Maybe s/he left the place to forget everything that happened and started to move on. Or maybe she went all crazy and committed suicide somewhere else. Either way, I'm sorry something like this had to happen. I guess I'm partly to be blamed. Anyway, I wish their fat feline friends in Japan could file petitions for them. I'll check with the Japanese embassy.

2008-08-11

D-uh!

Yesterday I tried out this PayPerPost thing that one of my former officemates has in his blog. Upon reading one of Rod's posts that says the stuff is real and he has already earned $, I decided to give it a try. Actually, I've been seeing this PayPerPost for a long time already on some blogs while I'm blog-hopping. What really pushed me to click on it was because of my mild OCD (if there's such a 'mild' thing).

You see, I have this OCD sort that I myself have diagnosed. I'm kidding, ok? Well, some articles I've read way back told me so. Anyway, now I'm working on 'cleaning' my music files to be synced with my iPod. By cleaning, I mean that my music files has to be all of these:
  • Filename should have this format: Artist - Title.mp3/wav

  • Correct album title, artist, song title, and album artwork

  • No year, comment, and track no. information

  • +40% volume adjustment level

My OCD-ness before was actually only on item no. 1. Had Eugene (an officemate) not told me about stuff he does to his music files, it would not have added the other 3 items to my misery. So to satisfy this expanded OCD-ness, I searched for software that will make my life easier in performing the said file modifications. Unfortunately, the best ones are only free for 30 days. Buying the license will cost me around 20 bucks. Now going back to Rod's post, he stated there that he earned the same amount. Ooohhh. Instead of dedicating most of my computing time in editing the files just to make full use of the 30-day trial, why not: (1) Try the PayPerPost, (2) Earn $20, (3) Buy the license, (4) Get to edit the files wherever and whenever I want to (or, whenever my OCD strikes again). Sounds simple, eh?

In the end - er, not really, I'm not yet even on step 4 - I got this reply from PayPerPost:

... Unfortunately, as per our terms of service, submitted blogs must have at least 10 original, non-sponsored, quality written posts in the past 30 days in order to be accepted to our Marketplace...

which leaves me stucked at step 1 and wondering where the hell did my blog fail. If my posts were all original, non-sponsored, then it only leaves me with two presumptions: (1) The 'quality' issue - oh well, nothing I can do about this, that's why I chose engineering for a profession for chrissakes; (2) 10 posts in the past 30 days - highly possible since as of this writing, there are only 2 posts since July 11. D-uh! (there goes the post's title). Lemme make 10 then.

2008-08-04

"A bunch of over-caffeinated white people..."

The post's title is one of the lines said in the film "Crash", more particularly by the big mouth Ludacris. And this is what I only have to say about the movie: You take a bunch of big names in Hollywood, squeeze them all in one almost-two-hour film, they won't be sharing much screen time, but their characters are all going to be interconnected, and you can now draw a diagram that can summarize the whole plot of the film. In engineering, it closely resembles an FSM state diagram.

2008-08-02

"Random thoughts for Valentine's Day..."

The things-to-post list is piling up because of the 8-day-no-internet-at-home crisis. And I want to blog about that crisis, too. Plus the weekend BSoD scare a week before that. Hmph!

Lemme start with "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". The plot revolves around Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) trying to resist Lacuna Inc's erasers (Mark Ruffalo & Elijah Wood) from completely erasing his lover Clementine Kru... Kruzc... Crap I can't spell it. I'm too lazy to search for it in the net. Let's just call her Clem (Kate Winslet), ok? And to continue, Joel doesn't want Clem removed from his memory anymore (which he agreed and hired Lacuna Inc to do in the first place). The movie's dreamlike atmosphere (I think they call it cinematography) is a change from the typical 'modern' feel of most movies today (see Crash for example), which is just appropriate since most of the scenes are set inside Barish's head.

Then there's this side story of Kirsten Dunst's character who is secretly in love with her elderly boss (the doctor in Lacuna Inc). Turns out she also had her boss erased from her memory in the past, simply because the boss is already married. It's a dull emphasis to the main topic of 'memory-erasing', but it also presents a good twist and connection to the main characters. Had Dunst not known the truth, I don't know how else they're going to end the story nicely.

I have one complain though. Patrick's (Wood) love affair with Clem was not at all helpful in making the story interesting. Although again, had Patrick not known Clem (by being partly responsible for erasing Clem's memory of Joel), he would not have tried to imitate Joel's actions and Clem would not have somehow felt that something's off.

Nevertheless, this is my kind of movie in this comic-based ridden Hollywood flicks. Lastly, I loved the song during the ending credits, "Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime" sung by Beck.

Joel & Clem