So I got new toys...

I got the Yamaha F370 (acoustic) a couple of months back then I decided get myself an electric guitar for my birthday.

I picked an Epiphone Les Paul Standard (Custom), which is an authentic (way cheaper) Gibson copy.

So I haven't written for a while...

But check-out my new "favicon".

A couple of semesters after, I found her again in class sitting at the row ahead of mine; it was Computer Science 141. From time to time, before the instructor came to class, I would arrive finding her at my seat. Though I temporarily have to seat elsewhere, I never bothered asking her to transfer, I thought it would be rude and she really didn't appear friendly enough to me.

Thanks to our surnames, we'd get grouped together a couple of times on certain class activities, despite that, there were still no interaction whatsoever. Separately, we went on with our semesters. I got to see her 3 times every week and every Friday, she comes to class with a huge Chicago Bulls bag (presumably a week's worth of laundry)--to me it was like, "Chicago Bulls? That' so 90's!". And I didn't know why, but on Wednesdays, she comes in late to class with a big frown on her face... So yeah, I did notice her a bit during those days.

Things went on like that until the end of the semester when the group projects are assigned. I was friends with some of her friends, so we hooked-up... as a group that is. For some reason the group decided to work on the project at my place, so alright, it's not as if I have any choice.

I believe it was a Saturday when we finally decided to meet. The entire group cramped in my small apartment (which I share with my sister), particularly in front of my aging computer. So there she was, sitting on my deflated bean-bag, dictating code which needs to get typed-in. We used to have cats so I was quite worried that the bean-bag would smell like cat excretion--as you know, that would be a major turn-off.

I had several of paintings hanging in my apartment. There was one painting that she truly admired, she actually joked about taking it home, to which I might have willingly agreed to if she seriously insisted so. The painting was in fact my best as of yet, I thought she had great taste.

We finally had some real interaction and remained acquainted for the duration of the project, sad to say, the project only lasted for the day. Fortunately, we met-up again in time for the submission. She was wearing jeans and a red shirt which she would later on deny ever owning, I vividly remember the way she jumped while clapping her hands, cheering that we made a good grade--I found that interestingly cute.

The next time I saw her was on another class, Computer Science 142. This time, we were seated far from each other: I chose to seat with the guys I knew--she, with the girls she knew. The instructor arrived and announced that he would re-arrange the seating--alphabetically. So again because of our surnames, we again had to seat near each other. This time though, she was seating next to me--on my left.

Well, we didn't exactly "clicked" right away, I was shy and can only manage to make a faint smile every time she and my friend to right chatted and joked about. Yeah, they were talking over me. With the help of several group conversations, we did eventually end-up in "talking terms"--this actually came in handy at a time when the instructor threw me a question, I was entirely clueless on what to say but she offered a glance at her notes for the answer.

Morbid, but I knew that I can already consider her my friend when she started teasing and making jokes about me (not that there's something to tease or joke about). Right before the December break, she was really on to making fun of me--she even had some of her friends join in the assault for some reinforcement. I thought to myself, "Yeah, you can make fun of me today, soon you'll go crazy over me anyway". I remember thinking about her that night. Maybe because I was dead drunk, but I was seriously thinking about her.

Some time during the break, I received a friend request from her on some online community site, it said something like, "Add kita ah, friend naman kita diba?". So laughed, accepted the request, took the indicated email address and added her as an IM buddy. The next day, I found her online.

I am a lot more brave when I'm online, so I was able to actually initiate a conversation. We ended-up talking about everything: from school, to classes, to hobbies, to past relationships, and eventually to gifts for x-mas. She actually had the guts to ask for a gift when she herself wasn't planning on giving me anything. We started talking at about 10 PM and ended at around 3 AM the next day. From then on, we were online buddies.

When classes resumed, I simply had no idea how to approach her. We were quite close online, but I know for a fact that things would be different in person. I can vaguely remember that as she walked past me by the classroom corridor, I uttered a joke about her gaining some weight due to the holidays. If my memory serves me right, the response that a got was a playful hit in my arms.

One day, I saw her standing in front of the school building staring aimlessly. I hesitated before I approached her, I asked her what she was doing there and she told me that she needed to be in a seminar at that very moment. She told me that she doesn't feel like going to the said seminar but after a couple of minutes convincing her to go, she finally decided to attend. A couple of minutes after she left, I realized that I should have offered to accompany her--it was however, too late.

Since we had the same professor in one of our classes, we met-up to schedule a consultation with him. Unfortunately, the professor wasn't around when we arrived. I was already walking home when I received an SMS saying, "Wag ka umalis sa kinakatayu-an mo, sasabay ako palabas", so I did what I was told and stood there at the middle of the street patiently waiting for her. She was going to a friend's house, so I went on and walked there with her.

Later that day, I decided to finally ask her out. I sent an SMS asking her if she made any plans that night and if she'd like to have dinner with me. Minutes later, I received a positive reply. We started hanging-out that moment on. After our class together, I would follow and walk with her going to her next class.

We had this trip to Baguio in one of my classes, she was taking the same subject but was unfortunately on another class. I convinced her that I would only join the trip if she's going to come with me, she agreed. Because she was from another class, she was supposed to be in another bus different from mine--it took a lot of trickery for me to convince my professor to let her join my bus. Eventually, we ended-up seated together in an 8 hour bus ride.

We had fun during day, we hanged-out like we were actually together except, we were not...

That night at around 10 PM, January 31, 2004, I told her that I love her...

She wouldn't believe me and even questioned how I am so sure...

So I kissed her...




Four years after that, I end up asking the single most important question in my life...

Ms. Ma. Recah E. Austria, will you care to spend the rest of your life with me?

On a regular day, I get in front of 4 PCs: My office PC, office laptop, home
PC, and my home server. I decided to post a screen shot of each desktop...

My office PC is running on Windows XP SP2 with a 1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM, 80GB HD. My desktop "wallpaper" is, as you can see, an image of the the holy Flying Spaghetti Monster as depicted by the great Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (a.k.a. Michelangelo).

Part of my job is to provide integration support to clients in the US, Europe, Middle-East, and parts of Asia Pacific; I use Qlock to keep track of timezone difference between regions.

Obviously, I am not a big fan of cluttering my desktop but there are a few items which I find necessary to be there: Remote Desktop, WinSCP, Adobe Flex Builder 2 Eclipse Launcher, MS Office, and a couple of temporary folders.

On my Quick Launch are the following: Command Prompt, Cygwin, Putty, Notepad++, Eclipse, xplorer2, Yahoo! Messenger, Firefox, Outlook, Show Desktop.

I am provided an office laptop which I use mostly for on-site visits. It isn't really much of a machine--really. I decided to use Linux on it so as to maximize performance.

My laptop is currently running on Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon with an Intel PIII 1.0 GHz and 256MB RAM (seriously). I'm using the original Ubuntu flavor which comes with Gnome.

As I've said, my laptop isn't much of a power horse so I've only manage to install gDesklets (clock and starter bar) for eye-candy. Nevertheless, I find my Ubuntu desktop much more pleasant to look-at compared to any Windows desktop.

I don't do much development on this machine, which is a good thing considering how slow Eclipse runs on Linux boxes.

My home PC is a relatively higher-end machine running on Windows XP SP2. It's built on an Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 processor with 2GB RAM, 256MB nVidia 7600GT video card and with about 250GB hard disk space.

I'm using a wide screen display with 1440x900 resolution. I find the shade of green a bit relaxing so I themed my desktop accordingly. Again, my obsession over uncluttered desktops is pretty evident here.

I no longer spend a lot of time on this desktop as I currently prefer Linux over Windows for daily computing. I assembled this PC with gaming in mind so I really can't abandon Windows just yet. I'm quite sure I won't be upgrading to Vista--at least not anytime soon.

On my Quick Launch: Command Prompt, xplorer2, Notepad++, Eclipse (oh yeah, this machine serves as a development machine too), i-Speeder, Firefox (can't surf without it), Yahoo! Messenger, and a Show Desktop control.

My current favorite PC functions as my home server. It is supposedly just for JBoss, CVS and MySQL but I got bored with it and decided to dress it up a bit. I've just upgraded to Ubuntu Gutsy this previous weekend so this is fresh as it can get.

It is an old AMD Sempron 2600+ with 512MB RAM, 128MB nVidia 5200 video card, backed by a meager 26GB hard disk drive.

It used to be running Ubuntu 7.04 but I recently evaluated Mac OS X (86x) with it so I had to re-install with an upgraded version.

Compiz-fusion comes packaged with Gutsy Gibbon--because of which, my upgrade went way lot easier. I am running gDesklets and Avant Window Navigator and I can't be any more pleased with it. The desktop theme has this modern look which is accentuated by a really nice (albeit gay) clock desklet. AWN made it seemingly Mac-like.

On my AWN Dock: Main Menu, Home Folder, Drawer, Show Desktop, Terminal, gEdit, Firefox, Pidgin, Totem, Rhythmbox, Calendar, Quick Quit, a savvy workspace switcher from AWN, and a trash bin.

I also dual-boot to evaluate other Linux distros. I currently have PCLinuxOS as my alternate OS. It is using KDE and I'm inclined to say that it sure looks nice.

PCLinuxOS is performing very well with this machine, I might actually keep it for good.

A while ago, I felt like watching some good old episodes of Myth Busters and I knew just exactly where I can watch them from the net.

So I pulled-down my bookmarks menu (proud Firefox user), located and clicked-on TV Links.

To my surprise, what I got instead was a "Problem loading page" error. I thought that the site might be running some maintainance or probably my broadband has decided to be an ass again. I tried googling for "TV Links" thinking that they could have moved to a new address, instead I stumbled upon a terrible news...

TV Links is now dead!

Reportedly, the site has been raided by British authorities, and its owner--arrested. This is a bit surprising considering all it did was to compile links of popular TV shows which were already uploaded to some video streaming sites (YouTube, Google, Stage6, etc).

Gee, to think that I found the concept quite ingenious. I even thought to myself, "why didn't I think of that?".

If you've never visited TV Links before, you would have been amazed by the wealth of available content--most of which were TV shows which you wouldn't imagine to be able to ever watch again.

So this is a terrible news indeed, TV Links has been my companion when I was bored to death in a place called New York City (don't get me wrong, NY is a fun place, I just didn't have enough cash to make it so). In a span of 2 months, via TV Links, I was able to watch 3 seasons of "Peep Show", the entire 3rd season of "Grey's Anatomy", an unbelievable number of Dragon Ball Z episodes, and of course BBC/HBO's Rome.

I really don't anything wrong with TV Links and as what one blogger mentioned: if posted a link to a video of some uploaded TV show, should I also get arrested?

I'm up for it, but have no means--so I simply hope that someone would attempt to resurrect TV Links again.

Just thought it was funny:

Please stop killing dolphins...




This has to end...

Government sympathizes with the local fishermen taking their livelihood into consideration.

I understand that people must value tradition and livelihood but this is simply wrong. Not even livestock are treated like this.

Knowing that dolphins never leave behind wounded family members, fishermen deliberately injure a few dolphins from the group. This way, they can easily catch and slaughter the rest.

The dolphins are hauled-off the waters and are dragged from the ground by trucks which would take them to slaughter-houses. This is done while most of the dolphins are still alive.

The dolphins are slaughtered using machetes--one stab is all it takes while fishermen morbidly watch and wait for the dolphins to die by suffocation.

In a modern world where a large percentage of people never go hungry, is there really a need to slaughter helpless animals to satisfy the luxury of exotic cuisine?

Now showing on webshots:



jramoyo

A couple of months ago, I had the itching to play Medieval II: Total War. My old desktop just couldn't possibly run the said game so there's only one option...

I had to buy a new desktop....

Well, I actually thought about getting some mid-range laptop (AMD X2, 1GB RAM) but decided that I'd rather get a pretty good desktop instead. Besides, building one's own desktop is a lot more fun.

So I went home with a new box:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 - best I can get from what I'm willing to spend
• 2gb RAM - a must for me
• 256mb Nvdia 7600GT - decided to get a quality 7 series instead of a low-end 8, I don't need DirectX 10 anyway
• 250gb SATA HD - might seem a lot but believe me, I need that much

I have Windows XP SP2 running on the new machine and I should say that I'm pretty happy about it: Medieval II runs smoothly at max and Oblivion runs pretty good at high.

Another reason why I wanted to get a new desktop is because I desperately wanted to have a working installation of Linux--this is where the old desktop comes in...

I am not a masochist so yeah, the distro of choice was Ubuntu Fiesty Fawn (7.04). The old desktop was intended to be my "server" for CVS and MySQL but after a couple of weeks, it broke down. Just lately have I realized that the video card's stock fan burned-out so I simply had to replace it.

After a couple of hours re-installing Ubuntu from the LiveCD and setting-up CVS as well as MySQL, it's back to business.

Having a Linux server just sitting around seemed a bit too boring for me, I needed to add some flavor to it; so after going through some HOWTOs and installation guides, I was able to make my Ubuntu look the way I want it to.

Currently I have Ubuntu 7.04 (Gnome) running with Compiz Fusion, Avant Window Navigator and gDesklets:

So I just had the chance to work on projects involving Adobe Flex 2.

I used Flex to implement a couple of RIA (Rich Internet Application) plug-ins to some Java Enterprise software product.

I should say that Flex did indeed give me some pleasant development experience as compared to traditional JavaScript/AJAX. Flex provides high level programming constructs as well as an incredibly easy way to build responsive UI. Of course, the pleasantry is probably brought about by the fact that I was using their $500 IDE, Flex Builder--which might remind us of JBuilder but it was apparently build on-top of Eclipse which is, by the way, free. As a matter of fact, Flex Builder also works as a standard Eclipse plug-in (supposedly supported by versions 3.x and above, but I was only able to successfully use it on 3.1).

I'm pretty much a "noob" when it comes to Flex but here are a few cool things I've experienced with it...

As opposed to JavaScript, hell, you can debug in Flex--that by itself is reason enough for me to prefer Flex over JavaScript.

Flex applications are actually just Flash movies embedded in vanilla HTML, this means that a browser is required to have Flash Player installed. There are advantages and some small disadvantages about it...

The good thing is that incompatibilities with different browsers are reduced if not completely removed, ever developed AJAX to support IE and Firefox? It sucks big time.

The bad thing of course is that you need to download Flash Player before you are able to use any applications made in Flex, ever heard of YouTube? I thought so... well yeah, you most likely have Flash Player already installed.

Flex is free. It is advisable to use Flex Builder while developing with Flex, but you aren't required to do so. The compiler is currently available for free, and just like a lot of other programming languages, all you need is a text editor. Good luck!

Flex is faster than HTML, you can display tons of data in your Flex application yet it won't bother the browser as much as rendered HTML would.

Flex isn't really just for browser applications. You can also use Flex to develop stand-alone desktop applications. But yeah, I'd rather use Java instead...

Flex offers some pretty neat UI components.

Uhm you should be warned though, after a couple of small projects, I found out a few minor things you might want to consider...

Controlling scrollbars in Flex is a freaking pain in the ass! I expect a "UI framework" such as Flex to at least have this perfected, but once I tried moving the scrollbars around, I was really disappointed. Looking at a few web postings, it seems that there are still a hand-full things that Adobe needs to address in terms of Flex UI controls.

The Data Binding concept in Flex is cool! Really cool that you might build your application around the concept, until it's too late and you realize how buggy it is. In my experience, data binding failed in the most critical of components; introducing some "workarounds" really destroyed my original design. To be fair, I should say that I might have been too assuming without having deeper knowledge of the concept.

Finally...

Flex Builder, a $500 IDE built on-top of an essentially free software which is Eclipse. Since I paid $500 for it (actually, my company did), I should ask: why doesn't CTRL-F work? 2GB of RAM? Geez!

So I've been on a sort of temporary blog leave for quite sometime...

So just for a recap:

I've actually arrived back to Manila for around a month now, I guess all the free time I had for blogging went away with my settling back to the Manila life.

I was in the States for almost 3 months--2 months in NY and a couple of weeks in SF Bay area. I should say that it was quite an experience.

So yeah, settling back in Manila was quite tough at the beginning--I mean, suddenly the world around me doesn't feel quite as safe as it was. Now I'm back to my normal 3 hours a day commute and as much as I hate it, there's nothing I can do about it.


Anyway, I am actually busy at the moment--I am totally loaded with a new development project which is kinda exciting except that I'm currently working on the more boring parts of it. So I'm trying to find a way to write them in the most exciting of ways and it is starting driving me crazy.

So I was trying to post a link to my photo in WWF's Tiger Mosaic, and I got this for word verification:

So it's a long weekend and I was being pressured at the office to make the most of it. It was suggested that I visit Six Flags in Jersey but it's a theme park, which I don't find very interesting these days--add that to the fact that it is not within Manhattan and I'd be going alone. So Friday evening, I started planning for something else--Atlantic City!

I've been planning to go to AC way before but I couldn't muster the will nor determination to go out of Manhattan by myself. AC is like, 2 1/2 hours away from mid-town Manhattan so it ain't exactly a backyard trip.

So my biggest worry is that I'd get lost and look really stupid--see, the number 1 policy when I travel is that I should NEVER ever look stupid while at it--so I'm making it clear that I don't mind getting lost at all, just as long as I don't look stupid.

Anyway, come Sunday morning, it took me great pains to get my lazy body out of bed. I slept late the night before to fulfill a 3 episode semi-marathon of Grey's Anatomy (does anyone else find Kate Walsh hot?). I seriously had to convince myself into getting out of bed, but the idea that I'd probably get a good amount of taunting if I don't do anything cool this weekend was disturbing enough to do the trick...

Of course I was late. I was meaning to get to the bus terminal an hour before the 10:30 departure so that I'd have the time to get lost and wander around the terminal; I arrived 30 minutes later than planned. Anyway, it wasn't all that bad since I was easily able to locate the boarding gate and purchase a ticket.

So the bus ride costs $31 and it had with it a bonus coupon. Upon arriving at Caesars Palace, the bonus coupon turned out to be a very much appreciated $20 rebate!

Well AC ain't exactly what I was expecting... I mean, it's simple to say that it ain't Las Vegas. To me it seemed more like a theme park, it's just that it has casinos instead... The beach was nice though, or should I say--what's to be seen in the beach was nice?

Anyway, following my travel policy, I didn't get to take pictures a lot of pictures since no one else was taking any. But anyway, here's Caesar and his glorifying pose...


Silly, I've always thought it was Julius instead of Augustus...

I was hoping to play poker but unfortunately, I couldn't find any lower staked game to my liking, $1-$2 no-limit is probably not a table for a guy with less than $300 to mess with. As much as I like poker, I hate gambling--so I didn't bother with those slot machines, roulettes, and dice games. It was fun to watch other people losing hundreds of dollars on a stupid bet, but since I'm in the casino anyway, I thought that I might as well join the fun (or stupidity); so I did. I guess all I can say is that "Video Poker sucks!". So I lost $10, but allow me to make it clear that I purposely did so... I got bored with the game and I realized that there are better things to do outside the casino.


So anyway, I did get to do a little shopping and it was a generally nice experience. I also visited Trump Plaza and Bally's Casino but Caesar's for me is the best--I totally wanted to stay at least overnight; of course I can't afford it, so never mind...

So my girlfriend is complaining that I haven't been updating my blog. I'm still stuck in New York so I guess it's just right that she wants to be informed of the latest buzz in my life.The problem is, nothing is happening here--seriously!

So after a couple weeks, New York eventually lost its excitement. After visiting all the nice places, there's nothing left here to do--unless of course I've got tons of cash--then I'd probably be doing a lot of shopping right now. Note that it has to be "tons" of cash; "just enough" is simply not enough for me, I hate shopping, that's why...

I don't even have to mention the fact that I am virtually alone in a large, over-populated city. Yeah my co-worker is actually living in the next-door hotel room, but his idea of a free time is staying in his room all day (I don't even want to know what happens there).

OK, so there are a couple of nice bars and clubs out here in New York--I was able to visit a few when my other co-worker was still here. He already left and I just can't see myself standing in line, alone, waiting to get inside a bar or club--too pathetic for my taste.

Even the experience of a daily commute to work--an activity which could possibly amount to a few exciting moments (it's New York after all)--has been taken away from me. Just imagine walking to your work--which is literally in the same block as your place; it's convenient at first, but now it's simply boring.

I'm going to be here for a couple of weeks more. Hopefully by th 9th of June, I'd be flying my way to San Francisco to visit my sister and her family. My girlfriend would also be there by then so I guess that's a moment to look forward to.

So I just need to find something more to do here in New York...

So last Friday, I rushed to Time Square right after work. Earlier that day, I payed TKS a visit to check whether I can get a cheaper-"tonight's performance" ticket for my much anticipated Les Miserables click--unfortunately, they didn't have any.

So after a grueling but somehow entertaining rush-hour subway bout (there was a guy with a guitar performing in the train!), I reached Broadhurst Theatre. As expected, there were no available seats for that night--they actually had $30 standing-room tickets, but who would want to stand for 3 hours while fighting for a good view against people who are genetically made to be taller than you?

So I opted to try getting the next day ticket--it was the plan after all. So finally, after a couple of weeks, I got one...

$111.25, 8th row in the center aisle; It is an awesome seat.


It was indeed a great show, everything I was looking forward to. I should say though that it took great pains to contain myself from trying to sing along as the show went-on.

I bought a pair of winter gloves yesterday because the cold is becoming quite unbearable.

Now with better insulation, I decided to visit Time Square that night. Since I was commuting alone, I decided not to bring my camera as I knew that I wouldn't have the chance to use it anyway--I should have though, Time Square looks great at night.

But see, other than the sights and without a camera, I realized that I have no other agenda--not until I passed-by 44th street...

See, I've always planned to watch Les Miserables--I mean, I seriously do. And here I am suddenly seeing myself standing in front of Broadhurst Theatre, Les Miserables is performing there--so without having planned earlier nor without the idea whether I even have enough cash to afford it, I queued-up to get a ticket...

Well, unfortunately the rush had to end there as the ticket guy announced that all seats had been sold!

A little-bit disheartened, I looked across the street and saw a sign to Phantom of the Opera. OK, so I'd admit, I only know of only 2 musicals: one being Les Miserables and the other being Phantom of the Opera. So I decided, "Hey! It's the next best thing!".

So I entered Majestic Theatre, I was still unsure if I'm actually going to proceed with watching but what the heck, I'm already there.

Apparently, there was only one seat available so I guess I was still lucky!



And there it is, the playbill to Phantom of the Opera...

The show was spectacular... $66.25 was well worth it!

So I had this really crazy experience the other day...

I was trimming my hair with my clipper--half-way through it, my clipper BROKE!

So you can just imagine... half my of head is trimmed while the other isn't--that's when I had to take the last resort...


I had to shave my entire head...

Haha crazy things happens in New York!

Alright, I'm in New York right now for some 4 weeks. I arrived at around 12:00 AM on the 31st which was way later than the 3:00 PM expected arrival time.

So it turned out that my connecting domestic flight had to be canceled for some reason which was not fully disclosed--this is the first time for me to have a flight canceled so it was expectedly very stressful on my part. The total travel time is about 28 hours!

Upon drop-off, I was expectedly off my mood, I barely had the knack to join the conversation with driver who took us to the hotel...

At least the hotel was quite nice...

I'm staying near the office which is really great considering how cold it is outside; I actually tried staying outside for about 2 hours but it was hardly tolerable...

So the hotel is right around the corner from Wall Street so I had my chance to do some tourist duties...


So that's about it for now...

OK I was supposed to make a blog entry about a recent trip to Intramuros, Manila but my girlfriend "stole" the idea and made one for herself!

I why don't we all just visit her blog entry...

OK, so I have to admit this trip no matter how pathetic it may sound felt like a real tourist experience...

So a little over month ago, I came back to Jeddah against all odds.


As you'd know, taking pictures aren't that much allowed in the Kingdom so I was compelled to take pictures in the Hotel:






So I stayed at Marriott Hotel and they gave me a twin room!










I should say, the extra bed made me feel even more alone--I never bothered touching it.













Unfortunately, the hotel pool is the only available scene outside the window and as you'd expect, girls never showed-up.


















The Jeddah skyline is mainly gray and brown.







Coming home, Dubai provided much lighter atmosphere.


So there you go, the trip to Jeddah...

So there was this time when the Internet died...

A month of useless surfing--when Yahoo! Mail Beta took 3 minutes to load... when instant messaging was inaccessible... when my download rate is reduced to 1 video a week... when internet poker was impossible... when YouTube took a full hour to load Saddam's execution...

The Internet was so useless I didn't even bother updating my blog to complain...

So now we're back online...

My old CRT monitor finally decided to stop working; so despite the tight budget for this coming X-mas season, I was forced to purchase a new one.

I've been meaning to buy an LCD monitor and here comes the perfect opportunity to get one...

So spending some time researching and checking-out the price range of today's LCD monitors, I decided that the Samsung 740N 17" LCD should be perfect for my needs.

I badly needed to purchase a new monitor since I can't stand the idea that there lies my PC setup--useless, simply because I have no means of "seeing" what's going on. Immediately after work, I asked my girlfriend to accompany me in purchasing a new monitor. Well, I actually needed her to come with me since I don't usually carry cash and I need to loan money from her ATM account.

So there I was looking at the Samsung 740N...

I asked the sales guy if the indicated tag would be their last price--he said yes--fine with me, that's within my perceived budget.

Then I saw the AOC 193FW 19" Wide Screen LCD...

I never came across this item on my research, but it sure looked great. With DVI support plus 19" wide screen, I immediately considered purchasing it instead.

So for an additional P2000 (around $40), I am getting 2" more--plus wide screen--plus DVI. Although my current video adapter doesn't support DVI, it would sure prove useful in my next upgrade (considering the total price of this LCD, it would take a long time before such an upgrade happens).

And there I went, instead of the originally planned Samsung 740N, I decided to get the AOC 193FW.

Since I never read any reviews about it, I simply had no idea how this item would perform.

So as soon as I arrived home, I went-on to setting-up my PC back to its useful state... Imagine my heartbreak when I found out that there's stuck pixel on new LCD!

I can't believe how stupid I can be! I extensively checked for dead pixels, but I forgot to check for stuck pixels!

So let it go with a big sorrowful sigh--at least it's not a dead pixel--it is totally my fault anyway. In fact, aside from the stupid stuck pixel, the new LCD looks fantastic.

A day went-on and I kept convincing myself that the ugly blue stuck pixel shouldn't be much of a nuisance--after all, it is only noticeable on a dark picture.

Of course, the most difficult person to convince is yourself...

As with any problem, often times the solution starts with one simple word--Google.

With one quick search, I came across this website: How to Fix a Stuck Pixel on an LCD Monitor

The solution seemed ridiculous and dangerous, but what the hell? You have a desperate guy here!

So I followed the instructions: turned my screen off, applied pressure on the affected area, and turned my screen back on.

Voila!

No, it didn't really fixed the problem--but to my delight, the stupid little freaking stuck pixel flickered before my eyes! So in theory it's not stuck anymore--it's just... well, now it's simply acting rather strange.

So I repeated the procedure and it finally paid-off! It actually fixed the problem. It's not 100% fixed because the pixel sometimes still revert to its stuck state once in a while, but gently tapping on the surface puts it back to life (it's like reminding the pixel that you've already fixed it).

Since I'm not satisfied with a semi-fixed stuck pixel, I continued to try the alternative solution, and that is using a software...

So I went to this website and clicked on the Java Applet.

I just let the Applet run on top of the affected area while I watched Celebrity Poker. After the show is finished (about an hour), I visited my LCD and looked at it, teary-eyed and all... my LCD is fixed!

So there you go, a lengthy story with one simple moral lesson when buying LCD monitors: Don't be stupid, check for stuck pixels!

So after 3 years of being a WWF Passport member, I finally moved to campaign level 2.

At 103 points, here is my current passport:


And I proudly present my certificate:



Being a member is easy, simply visit WWF Passport and sign-up!