Hey cool, I didn’t know that I have a Getz CD.

I had a couple of rants I wanted to post days back but I didn’t want to rant all the time. I’m starting to realize that there are no effects or it barely does anything.

Before I get to my main agenda, I’d like to share our experience at Assumption College (AC) the yesterday. It’s one of those bad days when I get on a road rage because of stupid drivers. When we got to San Lo, there was this dumbass truck driver who had three dumber guys assisting him. The truck was blocking the way as it attempted to back up into a driveway. We were waiting for fifteen minutes already and we were already late, even Joy had to walk. So I went down and told this idiots to hurry the fuck up. Then when we passed them, I saw this guard just sitting on his bike watching. I asked him why he didn’t assist them. He said there were three guys already assisting the driver. I told him those three guys don’t know a single thing about driving. Geez.

The next problem was parking. We reached the end of a long stretch of cars parked outside the campus then parked there. We were told that we can’t park there and directed to turn back until we reach the end of the street. And so we did. When we reached the end of the street, the guard there said we can’t park there either. So we just parked at this street near the campus.

Less than five minutes after getting a seat, I was told that I didn’t park correctly. So this Karen helped me on this. It turns out we couldn’t park there either (Joy’s instruction was to park on areas with the gutter painted green). I was five minutes close to getting the car tire locked (did I write that right). It was a lot of waiting and a couple of small things then Joy came to the rescue and got us parked at the “canteen”.

Going back to AC, we attended their IT: Trends, Opportunities and Carreers (TOC) which is a series of talks. They hold this annually and they have their usual iAcademy guests (as they mentioned). In the raffle, we got trial cards for Blast prepaid dial-up internet cards out of pity.

The most interesting topics were the preview of Vista and VS .net 2005, Back to Basics (by Mr. Doy), and “da best” Macromedia Flash animation introduction by Mr. RD from MS-NERDS.

And now, for the main agenda (considering how much I’ve typed already), I we have a complain on our NETCENT professor. We will give her an alias of Jobert for privacy. NETCENT is the most interesting course (for us CS boys and specially for me) on our curriculum, I even dropped it in exchange for DIFFCAL. But what should turn out to be a class filled with lots of enthusiasm, fun and knowledge transfer, is we get something no different to a group study (only the group includes the girls and the half male).

Here’s how her teaching style goes, every student is assigned a seat number and a group. That’s okay, I’d like that for the sake of organization. The first twenty-or-so minutes of the class is allocated for a game for groups. The next thirty for the report and the remaining time for Q&A. This looked like it added fun points to the class but that was before.

The losing team of the game will be the one assigned to report for the next meeting. The reporting is done every other meeting. The following meeting with a report is assigned for a fifty point quiz that doesn’t measure the student’s understanding of the topic but a measure of one’s skill at memorizing abbreviations and terms. Then after the quiz, she will write on the board then read it all then dismiss us except for the next group to report which she will breif.

For us, this looks like easy money for her. She just sits there and watch, well, comment and correct a little, but she doesn’t teach us anything at all. Besides, what would you expect from a group of students who don’t have an extensive background on teaching like a professor/instructor like her? This is where the quality of education goes down.

We’ve been discussing on how to resolve this. Just like [codenamed] Chuck Rambo said, “We need to think carefully on our next decision”. The actions we thought of doing are telling the guidance counselor (instant brainfart/wining), mention this to the SC (was recommended) and talking to her first then file a complaint if it doesn’t work (my small thought).

The following are the possibilities that I thought of. On the first case, I don’t really know what might happen but it doesn’t sound appropriate. On the next one, it would be a public humiliation and put her on a massive hatred campaign to kick her out or replace her. On the last one, I think no one would have the guts to step up to her or at least disclose the issue to her correctly which would just lead to its Plan B.

We are lost and we are running out of time. Something should be done before it’s to late.

This should be two posts instead but who cares, I’m tired too. I also noticed I gave out a clue on Jobert’s gender. Uugh…too tired to change…must stop myself from click the submit button…..

_{to be continued..}

Last Friday was the start of massive nationwide raids on companies using pirated or illegally acquired software (I think initiated by BSA or Microsoft). Many computer cafés scramble for help on getting legit OEMs and boxed of Windows 98SE, Windows XP Home and if no other choice, Professional. There was a 30-day warning.

Most of the shops didn’t have ample time to go legit and even many vendors ran out of stock. This forced most of them to close down temporarily.

This crackdown is working somehow but for many shops that couldn’t afford to, per unit, shelf out PhP8000 for the latest Microsoft operating system then additional PhP6000 for the Office productivity suite instantly, opted to migrate to Linux. Articles of Software Revolution or Rise Against Software Imperialism also started to circulate around. I think this is the part where the plan backfires.

This will be evangelized among shop owners to give up Microsoft products. I suggest that Microsoft should lower the price. I’m aware that there have been considerations for computer rental shops that special licenses or agreement were being offered but I believe it’s not enough.

I read in a news article that Microsoft cannot give a lower price for the Philippine market because everybody will go here to buy licenses/copies. With what I know about the license (I’m not quite sure so please correct me if I’m wrong) is that you could only use the software within the bounds of the country that you bought it. Or is this only for Microsoft server systems (SQL Server to be exact)? If it is, why won’t Microsoft apply it to Windows XP? For frequent fliers (international level) that would use the software could get another kind of license which will allow users to jump from one country to another without braking the agreement.

My prediction is that support and use of Linux will increase if Microsoft will not do something about their pricing schemes.

Went out with Lawrence and Tina last night. Tina wanted to go to a strip club. We ended up at a cheapass one. Anyway, it’s nice to meet new people. I have someone to accompany me when I go all the way to Lawrence’s birthday thing. For those who know the annual inuman, it’s next Saturday (24).

I have a new list of to-buys. I think it’s better to call them investments because just about half of their purpose are for my hobbies and the remainder for my freelance work.

1. A new hard disk (probably a 160GB)
2. A tripod
3. A videocam
4. An SLR camera

I have the sudden interest in film and digital video. Then I want to do some photography too. My 3D experiments came to a dead halt since I can’t do freelance on that yet (software’s too expensive).

Ate Tinay’s blog has moved to Tripod. Tripod did a good job with revamping the site. Friendster had a massive revamp too. What I don’t like about it? The ability to embed video, music and CSS stylesheets. Why? That’s because tons of people will start putting in high-bandwidth annoying content and color combinations that will make the whole page unreadable (is that a word?). Just like how myspace turned out to be. I guess freedom shouldn’t be given to the [stupid] people.

We have a game against UP (LB, most probably) tomorrow. I haven’t trained for a month or so.

I decided to drop DIFFCAL in exchange for NETCENT. Why? I’m under the same prof in DIFFCAL then approximately 95% of my classmates are freshmen engineering students. In NETCENT, I’m with my block (the good ole CS boys), it’s a hundred times less boring than math. One small agenda though, the instructor of NETCENT didn’t get to differentiate a hub and a switch correctly.

Yes, I’m a geek but no math genius.

Went to this year’s Software Freedom Day yesterday. I was their early so I ended up volunteering. Read the presscon details here. Nice people there. Didn’t learn much though.

Then last night, we didn’t get to go to Maria’s birthday bash. We didn’t money. For that reason, it pisses me off. There are some people who are very irresponsible and insensible. Fred borrowed three grand from Ramel and that’s so long ago. Ramel’s been reminding him almost everyday. The ass that he was, had the guts to turn Ramel into a driver by asking Ramel to drive them home. That’s almost every Saturday. The only thing Fred is good at is …err, I don’t know. Eric and I accompany him on his chauffer jobs.

It’s sick that Fred borrowed the money that Ramel worked so hard for. Now, he doesn’t have money to pay for rent. I had to shelf out one grand and I told Ramel that it’s strictly for his rent (no lending, not for food, just rent).

I don’t know what to do about it. Sometimes we end up picking on Ramel for lending that much. This is the second (or third …maybe the fourth) time he’s getting stood up with regards to money.

On a final note, Carol Agagas is a whore and borrowed a large amount of money and never returned it. She used all the money for a date with this dude we don’t even know. She can’t be found anywhere anymore.

I’m pissed off. Anyway, happy birthday Maria.

I’m trying out Yahoo! 360. I liked the fact that they considered all those privacy settings. Let’s face it, we want to categorize our friends. We don’t want everybody snooping about everything you do, right?

I didn’t push through with my evil plot of throwing hand-egg-grenades. I’ll just wait, just like how a civilized entity of humanity in this planet called Earth.

Continuing with my uttered interest in 3D, I bumped onto Pixel Must Die dot com while surfing along in my endless journey on the information highway. I envy those renders. I wonder how long they took.

Before I end this post, I’d like to leave you all with a quote from our clinic downstairs, “Take care what you say before a wall, for you cannot tell who may be behind it.” quoted from Sadi.

Gently, mildly …keep it cool.

In 3D (3dsmax to be exact), you can assign a material type, texture maps and a bunch of other stuff to polygons and then you can manipulate settings. Plastic materials are refractive, not reflective. They’ll give a difused image of you. Actually, it could be very reflective depending on how smooth it is but I’m generalizing on most plastic products. To achieve this, you assign it a material type such as Blinn with high refractive settings. My favorite part is adding textures. Textures will change the real color/s that a certain object will reflect or refract.

Moving on, I was backreading some stuff. I can’t believe how much anger, lies and deceit that I’ve read. Well, people have their opinions and it’s pretty retarded that I got to read it (when it was supposed to be exclusive). Dates span from last year’s last quarter to this year’s first and all I can say is that it raised my blood pressure for a while there. It changed the way I look at some things/people.

Some things change, some things don’t. Live with your own faults and mistakes, don’t blame others (that’s a note to myself not to you).

I could write more shit but it would be pointless.

Fuck you.

I’m serious with the title. Although I don’t like that song that much by Green Day, it is very appropriate. It’s Semptember too.

If I had a hand-grenade, I’d throw it on the nearby construction of an ugly house. Yesterday, I woke up because of this racket from the said construction site. It’s a policy for Ayala Land and LPHI to prohibit construction during Sundays and if a special permit allowed, it shouldn’t generate a lot of noise.

Just to let you know, this isn’t just hammering and saws, they have friggin grinders. Two to be exact, the other has a higher pitch. They alternate making noise for spans of 30 to 40 seconds with a rest of five seconds.

I thought to myself, I’ll let them do this just get it done. But even on Sundays? I was so pissed off I drove to their guards, village admins and our village admin to stop it.

I’m thinking of substituting hand-grenades with eggs. They crossed the line, my evil plot shall be executed by tonight. <sinister laugh>

Die motherfuckers.

I went to the other side of the province to visit her last Monday and today again. It was supposed to be yesterday but you all know the great procrastinater, don’t yah? I’m starting to have fun. Or is it just the influence? Anyway, I was with Eric and Ezzy (Amiel was also with us the other day). I guess I don’t have to elaborate everything. Let the mystery prevail.

A lot has happened lately but I’ll sum it up. I got my second job offer last night. I like this one because it is more in line with my field. I don’t know if I could take it yet.

I registered a domain and got a host for my portfolio and testing site for my projects too. It will be up by September 4 …hopefully. Uhh, that’s all I guess. I’ll post next term’s schedule later on.