The Girl
WHaT u DoN'T NeeD 2 KNoW aBouT Me

AL!a$ * V@N!
thestone addict, always looking for a good nudge in the commons, narcissist, kulot, maganda (bwahahahahahah walang kokontra kanya-kanya tayo hokey?), batty, bookworm, nerdy, extremely allergic to math and physics, webhostess/webmistress (wink, wink), best buddies with raven and google (reeeeeally?), trellix site wrecker (hehehe so always recreating them), trying hard na blogger, middlename is LUNA for lunatic or lukaret, know-it-all in training, duwag na nagtatapang-tapangan and i'm paid to surf the net all day every g*dd*mn day!

AGE * TiMeLe$S (i SToPPeD CouNTiNG WHeN i HiT 18)

LOCATION* aLWaYS Lo$T SoMeWHeRe, aT the WoR$T PLaCe @ THe Mo$T iNCoNVeNieNT TiMe

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December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 April 2006 July 2006

Doodleboard




BR@!N SQueeZe

(sarcasm and cynism galore)

"I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end."
Margaret Thatcher, in Observer April 4, 1989

i don't know who said this but i agree:
"Hell is empty and all the devils are here."

"Lately, I have come to believe that the principle difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there."
-- Simon Illyan, from A Civil Campaign by L.M. Bujold

from The Devil's Dictionary by the ultimate cynic Ambrose Bierce :
"Patience: a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue."
"Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country."
"Politics: The conduct of public affairs for private advantage."
"Bride, n.: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her."
"Lawyer, n.: One skilled in the circumvention of the law."
"Year, n.: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments."
"Pleasure, n.: The least hateful form of dejection."
"Reverence: the spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man."
"Admiration, n.: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves."
"Corporation, n.: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."
"Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion."
"Acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to."
"Admiration, n.: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves."
"Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen."
"Quotation, n.: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another."
"Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)"
"Brain, n.: an apparatus with which we think we think."
"Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others."
"Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic."
"Politics, n.: Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles."
"There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don't know."
"Politeness, n.: The most acceptable hypocrisy."
"Truth: An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance."
"Mad, adj.: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence."
"Love, n.: A temporary insanity curable by marriage."
"Egotist, n.: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me."

from Mark Twain:
"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."

from Voltaire:
"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

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WHaT'S oN MY SH3LF???

The 8th Commandment by Lawrence Sanders Read it and loved it. Go ahead and meet Dunk, yeah that's the protagonist's nickie

Lawrence Sander's book: Timothy's Game I want a Timothy Cone too!

Monday, August 29, 2005

What A Day!!! growls...screams....curses...

it started pleasantly enough - i wasn't late so that was something to be happy about. and when i checked my email there were some comments from anonymous people who have actually gone through some of my posts - now that's unbelievable=_) but seriously, thanks everyone. i didn't think anybody reads this other than moi and gwen because she's always posting comments whenever she can. haven't seen her for some time now. miss u friend.

anyways, as i was reading through those comments a call came in around 11:41 pm central time. and that started the downhill slide from pleasant to frustrating. don't get me wrong the client i was speaking with was actually very very nice despite the issue she was having. truth be told i wouldn't be as calm as her or as perky as her especially at that time of the night. i would be stark raving lunaTic mad.

her problem? she can NOT, for the love of mac (she's using a MAC OS 10.3 - just thought i'd put it here for emphasis) send out from her domain email address (read: email address that's attach to her website e.g. myname@myswebsite.com). but she can send out from her regular email address (read: the email that's attach to her internet connection account) which ironically uses the same smtp server (read: the server that handles/processes sending emails). and the subject of our frustration is an error message that i have encountered once before (only difference was that time the person i was speaking with was on a windows os using outlook express 6.0 and not mac mail). it says that her message cannot be sent because according to the error message it does not conform to the rfc 2822 protocol. (sorry this is not verbatim since i didn't jot down the entire message since my hands froze from typing as soon as i heard the rfc 2822 and the images of the other call about this same problem was already flashing in front of me and i was silently mouthing oh no oh no god why me =_).

so i consulted bestfriend google (since raven doesn't know sh*t about this - no offense raven) and it listed a number of sites discussing it but i couldn't find anything solid about getting rid of this error. really they just tell you - that it's about the headers and shows you a format of it. it was helpful But.. sobs... it just didnt give the fix or maybe i just wasnt searching very thoroughly. all i got were more documents about internet email protocols and other rfc numbers or protocols. too boring to put here.

i have checked her mail configuration settings (over and over and over and over agian - just cannot emphasize it enough) and they are all correct. the smtp server settings even matches the configuration on the one that is working - so logically , it should work right? computers were supposed to have been built on logic and works using logic. so logically that other email account should also be able to send using the same smtp server settings. but it didn't. judas h priest i could not for the life of me figure out why it just wouldn't do as the other one is doing. well i heard there's another fallacy about generalization that i may have violated with my lateral thinking. but seriously, come on, it should work. those settings should work!

but anyway, what increased our level of frustration and perplexity was we configured another domain email address with those same smtp settings and we were able to send out. what more i used my outlook express and used the same settings and it worked on outlook express. i wasn't too happy with mac at this point. it's mocking me. taunting me. if i was there i'd bash it with a baseball bat, really. i thought it was simply asking for it. but i just told her let's reboot.

anyway from the sounds of it that mailbox must be corrupted. but in mac mail, it seems that deleting an email account also means deleting any messages you've downloaded before. so my client just said goodbye to them all and we started to reconfigure them again. and it still says she can't send out because the message doesn't conform to the right internet protocol and the headers are just not right or something. d*mn headers AGAIN!! we have just wiped out her entire mailbox for nothing. we have rebooted so many times that i can remember that i think if we have to reboot i'll start painting my nails. my goodness...sigh...

well desperate times calls for desperate, crazy, it-may-just-work measures like: so why not edit the domain email address that works. we won't be changing anything except for the username and email address. so i told her to delete the email account again and to edit the domain account that's working and change the email address from email A to email B (the one that we've been manipulating and cursing for approximately 171.08 minutes now to work. and guess what???

it worked. i don't know why but it did. she was as surprised as i am. and after 3 hours of being on the phone i'm sure her arms have all gone numb from holding it. anyway we parted on good terms so it's not that bad... but aht is another issue. i can jsut see my supervisor's face when he comes in tomorrow. but i won't be here so...hahaha...

the problematic call that Made my day - read: stink to the high heavens that is - is this man who thinks that someone has hacked into his site because his links are gone and he said he can't find the bloody menu bar. sheesh i told him that if somebody hacks into his site a lot of people will be calling us now complaining of the same thing. eu says it's changing as we speak. told eu to run a spyware check for his pc and to change his password ASAP. he even thinks someone here is doing it, there are just four of us here and i'm the only one looking at his site so i told him it's not any of us and besides that wouldn't be too professional( would be nutty) of us if we destroy our own websites right? it would only mean more work and another good time wasted doing overtime other than partying and doing videoke. and then he said well my menu bar its gone. i told him "sir you menu bar is just hidden." and he went like "it's not supposed to be hidden." i told him "sir the java script that you used says it's supposed to be hidden unless you mouse over it." click... then...dead air...

so.... hello darkness my old friend.



vani WaS STaRK RaViNG Mad @T 8:41 PM *

Sunday, August 28, 2005

solved 3 puzzles today so new status is 91/209. long way to go. 7 more before the lodge but then that's a long 7 - i have gates and bunches to prolong my agony.

dreaming of dead people again last friday or was it thursday. couldn't remember exactly which day it was. i have dreamt of that place before. same people with me. uncle ado was driving (our) jeep. jack and rick and andrie and some other cousins were with us. we were again walking up the same slopy area that i saw in my past dreams before. on my past dreams it was rocky and there were pools of water (yeah and the kind where you could swim in it). much like buyo was after it was hit by typhoon rosing. but on this dream there were workers working to pave the area. they were cementing it. so imagine my surprise. i was walking up the sloping steps holding andrie's hand. we got to the top where my grandma's house is. and my grandma was there - no surprise that's her house but so is my grandfather but then he's supposed to be dead (been years actually). the only relief is that he wasn't mad at me or at anyone. the last dream that i had was my grandma's sister looked very unhappy or sort of mad at me and that really upset me so much because she wasn't like that in real life - when she was alive i mean. i woke up crying from that dream...

anyways back to this dream, my grandma was ...well not furious mad but was just scolding grandpa saying "pirmi na lang si ayen (she's the second eldest of the cousins i have on my mother's side - moi being the eldest) ngonian si nap naman." from what i understand grandpa had been "appearing" to ayen and now she wants him "to appear" to nap. but then this is a dream so it could also mean it's always been ayen and now you're appearing to nap? well i've racked my brains over and over to see what it could mean and have so far come up with nothing. if anything - nap is going to be married so maybe this dream is for nap.

one thing i noticed in this dream again is the refrigerator - it appeared on the past dream that i have of this place (back where the roads were not yet paved - still rocky and where there were pools of water on the way.) i opened the refrigerator and it's full of food just like it always is during fiesta and like in the past dream i was also looking for milk? crazy huh? and as always there's milk - i think this time i found carnation evap (no bull, i swear that's what it was). i was reaching for the milk which was on the topmost shelf and at the same time listening to grandma having that conversation with my dead grandfather. and when they mentioned my cousins' names their images would appear on my "mind." so it felt like they were also there in the dream with me, just not in the line of my vision then but in the same place on that house at the top of the hill.

the other people who were in that same room with me is jack and i think andrie was there too. i think florence was even there but maybe i just felt her there (know what i mean?) and grandpa was just you know not outwardly smiling - more like a Mona Lisa smile - secretive not too obvious that sort of smile.. i forgot what happened but i do know that he did not reply. dead people never talk or reply to any questions asked in my dreams. i woke up still dark and went back to sleep again. i'm all alone since jack is doing the graveyard shift.

so i slept again after the first dream and then i had another dream...

this time it was my lala dad (grandma's sister - she passed away due to cancer - sad thing everyone was devastated because it was totally unexpected - it happened so fast). anyways, she was showing me pictures. old black and white pictures of her 'family.' but what was confusing about this was she's showing me 'photos' while they lived in china which they never did. now That was very confusing. they didn't live outside of the country - my aunt and uncles were raised here, so see? and the other thing was i don't think i was able to recognize anyone of those people in the pictures save for me. (very narcissistc huh?) but then i don't have any black and white photos. i shouldn't be in any of her old black and white photos looking all grown up! after all colored pictures were already invented when i was born. but there i was with some other kids and adults i don't recognize. i looked like i was in my 4th or 5th grade. could this dream be a reminder that i never did grow up?

but at least she wasn't mad at me on this dream or unhappy... she was just very Insistent that i take a look at them. and the weird thing was people were moving in those pictures just like they do in the harry potter series (this part i can allude to just having finished the 6th book a few weeks ago). so it was like watching an old black and white movie. never to disobey my elders, i of course took a look at them photos.

i remember looking for other familiar faces like lala din ( i would surely recognize her if i see her - what with her mole and everything? who else would have that mole?) but i couldn't find her in the pictures. i mean this is supposed to be an old picture and if this is old lala din would usually be there since she was always with lala dad. but she's not anywhere on those photos. the photo where i appeared was made outside what looked like a place where people would go to and the impression that i got was a church or something like a municipal building. there was another person i recognized, a young girl who lived on the house they own in buyo (i think, but i just know she's from buyo) and the rest i couldn't remember or recognize.

i woke up and it was morning already.


vani WaS STaRK RaViNG Mad @T 7:44 PM *

Sunday, August 14, 2005

back stoning again 85/208. makes me wonder if i'll ever hit the 98 mark (what with bunches and gates... sigh... near impossible...)

but maybe it can be done. just maybe


vani WaS STaRK RaViNG Mad @T 8:23 PM *

Friday, August 05, 2005

missed my trip to naga on august first, fatal combination - rain and heavy traffic.

i arrived at the bus station at past 9pm and my bus left at 8:30pm. so there... had to eave the next day 8:30am.

arrived at past 4pm in naga. so much has changed.

dad's ok. he's on the thin side. doc told him to go on diet. so there again...


vani WaS STaRK RaViNG Mad @T 8:20 PM *

Monday, August 01, 2005

and God why does it always rain everytime i go home to naga?
it stormed in december, rained monday before last, now it's raining again...hard...


vani WaS STaRK RaViNG Mad @T 6:46 PM *

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