Pektus's Journals

It was my first time today in Mariveles, Bataan. We went via ferry (Mt. Samat express) from CCP complex to Orion, and we were fetched from Orion to Mariveles by service vehicle. Along the way to Mariveles, i noticed a different kilometer post on the right side of the road, reading kilometer 7, to which the driver said, "It’s 7 kilometers away from kilometer zero in Mariveles, where the dreaded death march started". Stories about those days ensued, while we were negotiating the bends and curves of the hill going down to Mariveles. I watched in awe to the scenery of the mountains surrounding this town, especially when they said that most of the fight that ensued between the Japanese and Filipino/American soldiers happened there. There was a dam built between the mountains, where the community gets their fresh supply, a wall like mountaintop, which I said the adventurous could climb, all in all, a good setting for the industries surrounded by this.
After thirty minutes or so, we arrived at the site of the Km Zero where they built a monument, and noticed the Philippine and American Flags waving to the winds. I just remembered that the government, by pulling out troops from Iraq, has put blemish to our relationship with the US. I don’t want to be political here, but what do you guys think? Lunch came and we’ve done our work, and we hurried up so we can get into the 3pm ferry. On the way back to the port of Orion, with a clear sky fronting Manila Bay, we had a sight of the buildings of Manila and Makati from afar.
The ferry ride going back went on smoothly, not noticing it was raining outside, because we were watching the UAAP basketball game between UE and NU. After arriving, I hurried back to the office to check on the servers, because my boss called me, informing that one of the servers have gone down. After fixing the server, I went to church and heard mass. After mass, I hurried back to my apartment, because it was time for F1 German Grand Prix. Well, who else won it, but Michael Schumacher. But it was Jenson Button, who is man of the race for me... imagine starting from 13th on the grid, to the 2nd step of the podium. Too bad for Kimi Raikonnen, crashing on the first turn with a rear wing failure at braking from 310 Km/hr.

it's hard to accept that my trusty 1 and half year old LiteOn 40x12x48 (which i managed to OC to 48x12x48, W/RW/R) is now officially dead... ok not really dead, but it's writing is somewhat faulty and unacceptable. My friend eric, last used it to burn his Shaman King series to Ritek CDRs, which i told him was one of the most reliable medias around. after he tried on watching some in his office, he told me that some of it was unreadable (actually all of those which was written here at home with my writer was defective), imagine 6% damaged and 1% unreadable blocks in a reliable media. and most of the shaman king (i think 15+ cds) were written here in my writer (i'm sorry eric, not my fault). at first, i thought of cleaning it and then test it again after. and after spending 2 hours of cleaning both my DVD ROM drive and the CD Writer, i wrote the Libranet GNU/Linux 2.8.1 Flagship Edition (Trial) version on two CD/RW. using the nero CD/DVD Speed, i tested it and found that almost 5% was defective. so i tried installing it after (more on this later), and it failed on installing the TCLx libs... :( oh my, what am i to do.... thankfully, even if the other packages failed during installation, the libranet linux was installed properly, albeit some programs were not installed. because if it was not properly installed, my computer is doomed! (well not actually, i have to reinstall my trusty debian woody all over again to be able to boot into Winblow$ 2000)..... giving it another chance, i tried to write once again the Disc 1 of Libranet now on my reliable,trusted and few RiData black CDRs, which by the way is not available nowadays (before, it cost PHP11.00/pc). i doubted my CDRW test, because as i found out, the CDRW media was slightly scratched. testing it again with the nero tool, that is when i gave out on it. too bad, after using it for 1 1/2 years, burning the Charmed/Alias/Smallville series, not counting the many data backups and installers, and the lolita's, jenny's, sky lopez's (Erwin's and Varian's, not mine!), mp3s, you name it. well, it still can be used as a CD-ROM drive.

now i have to save some money to get me one of those 52x24x52 or 8x32x24x32 (DVD+R -R DL) drives.. :( and also, wait till monday to reinstall Libranet GNU/Linux 2.8.1 on my PC... dang! icewm rocks! (X-Windows is functioning on my failed install!)

I woke up at 8:30AM today, late for gym as usual (a good sleep is hard to come by nowadays), expecting my girlfriend later in the afternoon. So I took a shower, put my gym things in my bag and got dressed, ready for workout. Before I hurried up to the gym, i took a glance at the engagement ring i got for my girlfriend, paused for a few minutes, and thought long and hard if and when i should give it to her.




So off to the gym I went. I didn't even remember telling her (or I forgot to text her) that I was going to the gym that day. After arriving in the gym, I changed my shirt, and spent 30 minutes in the threadmill while thinking of her and the ring. I have decided to give it to her later in the afternoon.

Finished my program at about 12noon, and while taking a shower, she called me on my mobile. She asked if i went to the gym (but of course, I forgot to tell her), and if I want to meet her in glorietta mall. Told her to just go straight to my apartment (yes, she have a keys) and i'll be going there after i picked up something in the mall. That something, was of course white tulips, which i planned of putting the ring inside the flower so as to give some element of surprise to her. Why tulips and why the color white? because it was her favorite flower, and i remembered her telling me and her mom, that she will marry whoever gave her 3 white tulips. Of course, i have given the same flower to her, but that was years ago. So I went, and searched for white tulips in the mall, asked the customer service station (even guards) where i can find flower shops. Holland tulips was the only one who have stocks of tulips, but even there, they have no white tulips. Even went to greenbelt and pasay road to search for those precious tulips. Damn, i should have planned this 2 days before, but even then she will know, 'cause she'll be asking me a lot of questions... Before i went to pasay road, i called her again on her mobile and ask her what she wants for lunch. so i bought our lunch, went to pasay road where there are 3 florist (all closed) in front of Coronado bowling alley. in my frustration, i rode the jeep, still looking at stores in pasay road where they may be selling flowers on a sunday. received a text from her that she's already in my apartment, so i text'd back that i was on my way. when i arrived at my apartment, i found her reading Harry Potter book V, and asked her to help me fix our lunch. so we had our lunch, and while eating, i asked her if she wants her surprise, but i told her that half i didn't get the half of it (the tulips). But she insisted, so after eating, i get the ring from my drawer, knelt down before her and asked "Will you marry me?", and she answered “Yes, I will marry you”. I can feel her excitement and happiness when i put it on her. still glazing, she asked me the details about the ring (amount, carat,etc., but of course, guys who give gifts don't want tell these things). After this, we fixed the table, asked her if she wants some food while watching the movie "13 going on 30". so off we went to mercury drugstore, then 7-11, picked up 2 cans of soda and pringles (sour cream and onion). and so we watched the movie, took a nap, and then went to church for the 6:30pm mass. we didn't bring an umbrella, and it rained minutes before the end of the mass. we were soaked, and i didn't know that on our street, when it rain this hard, the street is flooded. we went up to my apartment with my fiancee, i changed shirt and shorts, got the umbrellas, and off we went to her house in fairview. i went home at about 10pm, arrived at 11pm, put my clothes in the dryer (which i forgot to get before we went to mass), and slept. This is one fo the happiest days of my life. if you want to read her side of the story, click here.

whoaaa... 6 critical updates for windows 2000 was just released today... 3.8Mb is pain in the a**e to download via dialup... that is why i'm using more and more my mozilla firefox browser than the IE...

but why can't i update my win2k installation using a different browser? you see, IE has more bugs than the OS itself. a few ramblings can be found here and here

more details here

After gym and lunch yesterday (sunday here in manila), me and my gf went to see The Prince and Me movie, starring Julia Stiles and Luke Mably. The movie is really good for a teen romance movie. BTW, if you're an F1 fan and missing Eddie Irvine (former Jordan, Ferrari and Jaguar driver), you will see him in this movie as himself, racing with Luke Mably (Prince Edward). after the movie, we heard mass at the greenbelt chapel.

It has been a long while since i went on a bar. well, it again happened last friday when we had a few drinks in Absint, a post b-day celebration for me and Maya. i had only three bottles, and because i haven't drink for a while, i was tipsy. it was good, because all the A-Holics where there. i will be posting some pictures soon on my website at http://pektus.pinoyportal.com/pics .

i've been searching google over "free gmail invites" for 2 long weeks. Lynne (http://cariadsrealm.net/) has kindly given me a free gmail invite. this made me really happy.

on a side note, i was using Mozilla Firefox Browser 0.9.1 to register for an account, but when i clicked on the register button, gmail gave me an error, that is why instead of my favorite nick/handle/username (pektus), i got adriancd@gmail.com instead. one thing i noticed is that the password fields are missing in firefox, whereas in IE 6.0sp1, it is present. i think this is not a browser issue, but a programming error in gmail (i trust my firefox browser).

i think F1 is getting more and more of a bore... when will the other teams cope up with the Ferrari steam? after the 2nd round of pit stops, it is already known that schumi will win the french GP, as has been..

on the other hand, cheers for Makoto Tamada of Camel Pons Honda team for winning the Rio grand prix. now, if only max biaggi can take on sete gibernau and valentino rossi on the championship standings, this will be a season to look up to.

I and my gf viewed Spiderman 2 the movie just yesterday. i think this one's better than the first movie..... it will be very hard for the producers to top this one (there will be a sequel, and his nemesis will be the green goblin again, harry osbourne, his bestfriend). as in the comics version of spiderman, after the death of the goblin, his son, replaced him. kudos to the producers of spiderman!

Sunday (July 4th) will be my 28th b-day. In the US, they will celebrating it with a bang, since it's their Independence Day. I'm going to celebrate it with my girlfriend, and hoping that it wouldn't rain on that day for a change (during my previous b-days, it was always raining here in metro manila).

I have created this blog page to test and make it my personal correspondence.. that's all... hoping to get this thing updated once in a while

July 01,2004