Wi-Fi

Haay. Naka dial-up lang ako sa bahay. Yung maingay. Yung eeeeeee grrrrrr eeeeee. Tapos failed, kaylangang ulitin ulit1.

Five of my high school friends invaded our home and abused our Internet connection via wi-fi. It all started back in Saturday, when I and some of my friends in high school (a few of them where the same people who invaded our home) played badminton. I did not play much and there was nothing special with it so I will not talk more about it. After we played, we went straight to a mall here in Pampanga, despite that something had blasted in Glorietta 2 the day before that which resulted to a big accident leaving the part of Glorietta 2 where the accident happened unusable, 11 dead, and 129 others injured2. As of the time of writing this, the investigators of the accident doubt that it was a cause of terrorism. They still don’t have a concrete evidence that it was a bomb or anything of that sort that set-off this disaster.

When we got there with all of the bags we were bringing, we expected the security guards to inspect us thoroughly. But we got inside without them inspecting our bags. Come on, they should do their job! They should inspect everybody and their baggages no matter what the gender, age, and how the patrons look like. You see, they were busy chatting with each other. Of course, they can talk freely but they should do what they’re supposed to do because they’re being paid.

We strolled around the mall and ended up in Greenwich. It has been ages since I last ate there. I ordered Lasagna Supreme. Their lasagna is really great and it’s still included in the list of my favorite foods. On that same day, I bought a wireless router. Our phone line is busted yet again for the nth time. We have a temporary line in our dinning room, but I really hate surfing the Internet there because I don’t have any privacy so I bought one.

I have successfully set up the router in no time. But it took me a day to set up the network in our home. Figuring the firewall rules on my Windows Vista and on the old computer’s Windows XP turned my brain into nuts. Setting the network was really hard.

And today, around noon, one of my friends IMed me that he wants to go here in our house and surf the Internet for his paper. He complained that the Internet fee in a local Internet cafe was expensive. I had only less that 30 minutes to prepare myself. He brought with him his notebook so we were able to browse the Internet at the same time. We also had a good time chatting. We watched the funny videos produced by Christine AKA Happy Slip via YouTube, laughed at the stupid answer of Miss Teen USA South Carolina 2007 to her question, shared with him some of the programs that I use, and he told me that he left his orgmates from UP who were in his house3. Lol.

And then, another friend texted me, she wants to go here in our house to browse the Internet too. But she was not alone when she got here. She was with three of our high school classmates. Ah, I miss my high school classmates. I miss the way they make me laugh. I miss laughing with them with almost anything we see, hear or read. I miss our bonding. I miss high school. I miss our stupidity.

Nevertheless, I had a good time with them and I really hope that I’ll meet most of my high school friends this semester no matter if there is an available wireless connection or not. What I am after is to see them and talk with them again like there’s no tomorrow. Currently, I have seen eight out of 47 high school classmates this sembreak.

  1. It was one of my friends who said this, out of jealosy. []
  2. Source: Wikipedia []
  3. Kuya Rex is one of them. []

22 Comments

From Dial-up to DSL

During the turn of the millennium, I had my first taste of internet. I don’t really care if my internet connection is slow, as long as I can view sites with reasonable amount of time, it’s fine with me. I don’t care if some of my classmates are enjoying the super fast DSL while I’m on dial-up, scratching the protective coating on the internet cards that I buy every week and waiting for a long time just to connect to the internet.

To me, the slow connection is still bearable. As I’ve wrote, as long as the websites that I visit load with reasonable amount of time, it’s fine with me. I’m not somebody who would go for the faster one if I can tolerate the slower one.

The biggest downside of being on a dial-up connection is that you can’t use the phone. You can’t create an outbound call nor nobody can call you if you’re connected to the internet. For the past years, this really makes my parents irritated. Especially when family relatives from the USA are calling here at our home but can’t connect because I’m busy surfing the internet.

I’ve been a pain in the ass. Yeah. Whatever.

*****

Late last month, I’ve seen an advertisement of PLDT’s newest DSL service in the newspaper. It’s the Plan 888. I’ve told my dad1 about it. I’m just glad that he agreed. I’ve told my dad about it not because I want a faster internet connection but because I don’t want to be a pain in the ass anymore. He called the effing customer service of PLDT and the customer service representative said that their line man will go to our place within the week. A week has passed and we haven’t received any news from PLDT about our application. So my father decided to ring PLDT again. Whoever spoke to my father don’t know the services that they offer. That person told my father that the Plan 888 isn’t available here in Pampanga yet. How come their advertisements clearly state that it’s already available here and there is even a big billboard of their newest product here? Don’t you call this stupidity?

I decided to forget about it. I thought that PLDT made a big mistake. Two weeks ago, I was surprised when somebody from PLDT called here at our home, asking me if they can install the device that they’re giving so I can start using DSL.

When they went here in our house, they found out that my computer still doesn’t have a LAN card. Curse my old computer for that. Two Sundays ago, I’ve bought LAN card. I let the sales man in the store where I bought it install it at the back of my CPU because I’m too scared to do that work. When I got back to our house, it looked like my computer can’t find the newly installed LAN card. And that’s when I started to troubleshoot my computer alone. Since then, I’ve opened my CPU numerous times just to find out what seems to be the problem.

Monday last week, I had my first taste of DSL here at home. I was online the whole day. But when night came, the DSL connection we have doesn’t like to work. It continued to be like that for about three days. So I was forced to dial 173 (PLDT’s effing customer service) and I found out that our application was not yet activated by that time! :phwoar:

Last Saturday, miraculously, our DSL connection came to life once again. Dunno if our application was already activated. But until now, I’m enjoying it.

And because of this, I can now enjoy and abuse YouTube (which is now owned by Google). Any short films that you want to recommend? And look at this! This is so cool. The newly released international trailer of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and hey, mind you, it’s not just the teaser trailer.

YouTube Preview Image
  1. Who went to Singapore last week, yeah, off-topic. []

27 Comments

Stinks and Sells

Sorry, I neglected this blog for the past four days. I wasn’t visiting it much within that period. Why? I got some problems with my PC and I troubleshooted it alone. Thank God it’s normally working again. And oh, I got addicted to O2Jam. Haha.

So lets go to the topic. Back in high school, in our official publication, the Chimes, we have this write-up in our features section called “Ins and Outs.” I was one of those few people who contributed in that item. You might think that doing it is easy, but I tell you, thinking of what is “in” and what is “out” can be really time consuming.

And since my life is not that interesting lately because I’m just stuck at home (okay, I’m not saying that I’m bored) and I miss doing “Ins and Outs,” I’m gonna do one… my own version. And I’m calling it “Stinks and Sells.”

Dora the Explorer (negrang lakwatsera) stinks
Dora the Exploited1 (negrang GRO) sells?! Eek! Yeah, she sells her body.
Political ads stink
Makisig’s Lucky Me ad sells
Yahoo! stinks?
Google sells!
Summer sells
But because of the hot weather, I take my word back, it stinks!
School will stink forever
Rejoice for vacation sells!
O2Jam sells
But Audition sells better
“Pichay, itanim sa senado” stinks
“Pichay, itanim sa semento” sells
Amazing Race All-Stars really sells
But I still don’t know which team I’ll root for
Harry Potter sells
But does nude Daniel Radcliffe sells either?
Spams and spoiled hams2 stink
Hams sell
Ball pen stinks
Mechanical Pencil sells
Dial-up connection3 sells
But DSL4 sells even more
Maria Flordeluna stinks
Will Rounin sell or stink?
Robinson stinks
SM5 sells
WP 2.1.3 will stink soon
WP 2.2 will for sure sell

I want this to go on, but I’ve ran out of things to include in here. Oh, well, I’m off to read your blogs.

  1. It was one of my high school classmates who created this. []
  2. Spam comments from legitimate users []
  3. As long as the pages that I want to view load in a reasonable amount of time, it’s tolerable to me []
  4. I’m just waiting for the activation of my DSL. Thank you, God! []
  5. They’re constructing another annex in SM City Pampanga. It’s the third annex. []

23 Comments