open office 2.0

tech
open office 2.0 is final and available for downloading at www.openoffice.org. its a free download but donations are very much appreciated.

for those who doesn't know, open office is a bunch of programs that you can use for word processing, spreadsheets, databases, presentations, graphics and drawings, etc. in other words its a free alternative to your other office programs.

crash

tech
i have a linux-based firewall between my home computer and the internet. i'm paranoid, what can i say and if you can see the intrusion detection logs you would be too. its a jungle out there.

the hard disk of my firewall crashed the day after i got my dsl. it just stopped working. i guess its about time because its more than five years old already. good thing i have an old hard disk lying around so it was easy enough to replace the dead disk and reinstall my firewall. all in all, it took about 30 minutes.

faster internet

tech
after several years on dial-up i finally upgraded to dsl. i went through six (6) analog modems with speeds ranging from 14.4k to the current standard of 56k. two of those modems died on me and the rest have fallen by the wayside to faster technolgy and newer standards.

my connect speed is around 4 to 5 times faster at 256k (233k on average) and the additional cost is minimal up from around php 700 (us$ 12.50) to php 999 (almost us$ 18.00). so i think the package is worth it. pages load faster. downloads are faster. getting updates is quicker. i don't want anything faster because:

1. i can't afford anything faster
2. at this moment, i don't need anything faster
3. and lastly, i can't afford anything faster

to test the thing i'm downloading breezy badger from ubuntu (linux). the size of the file is around 662 megabytes. it will still take a while for me to download but hey it still beats 56k hands down.

for now, i'm happy.

old friends, lamb burger and super dry

friends
last night we went out with an old friend. dinner was lamb burger with fries and coke light (i have to watch my tummy) with my date having roasted lamb. dinner was great! conversation was plentiful moving from "what have you been doing?" to "whatever happened to...?"

over super dry, san mig light, gin tonic and a great view of the city in the lightning and rain, we talked about other old friends -- people that we used to work with, people we've been involved with and people that we will be seeing in the future.

it was a pretty good "catching up" night.

ps. pictured are pandesal ni carla

wala

i wanted to try something new other than 360 so here i am.