Moving Advice

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Moving advice:
It is important to book your moving services well ahead to secure your ideal moving date.

Important documents and possessions, such as wills, deeds, jewelry, photographs and home videos are impossible to replace. It's wise to consider moving these and other important belongings to a safety deposit box while you move.

Remember to contact your local post office and fill-out forwarding address forms. Additionally, leaving a small welcome card with your forwarding address for the people moving into your old home is a nice way of asking for any additional pieces of your mail to be redirected.

Do not have your phone disconnected until after loading day.

DON'T polish your furniture! This makes the furniture

Recommended free anti-virus software: Avast

This is from a facebook email I was exchanging with my cousin, it got pretty long and I thought with all the crap I put on this site, this somewhat educational email is more than worth a blog post of its own.

Background: he got a new laptop a month ago and his free Norton anti-Virus will expire soon.

So after editing my email from Tag-lish (Tagalog-English mix) to English... and making it 50times more interesting for blog readership...

Image Source: Avast

You have a couple of options for your anti-virus problem:

(1) Either you keep Norton and buy a one year license (you can do this online)
(2) Or get a free anti-virus software.

(Of course that's the simplified version. Other options include buying a different anti-virus license other than Norton, or getting cracked versions of these softwares which is difficult and totally against the law but people do it anyway if they could.)

Let's assume you'll choose option #2: Free anti-virus software.

As long as you don't expose yourself too carelessly online, then you're most likely safe from the really, really, REALLY bad viruses/worms/etc.

Translation: as long as you're smart enough to know that music files don't end in ".exe" and video files are more than a few hundred bytes, as long as you know what a phishing site is, as long as you don't click random dubious popups or ads especially when you're visiting pron sites.

Free anti-virus suggestion: Avast (www.avast.com)
There's a Professional Edition that you have to pay for.
But there's a free Home Edition - this is adequate for most people's safety needs

If you decide to get Avast then follow these steps:
(1) Download Avast
- go to http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html
- click "Download Now" image in the middle of the screen
- click "Download Now" again (e la makaying makulit ne?)
- you'll get a .exe file
- keep it, don't run it yet

(2) Uninstall Norton
go to Start
- Control Panel
- Programs -> Uninstall a program (small text beneath it)
- right click Norton, then choose Uninstall
- Restart computer

(3) Install Avast
- double click the .exe file you downloaded from the Avast page earlier
- click through the installation
- Restart computer

Done!

Some things you might want to know:

Why is the free version enough?
Aside from your anti-virus software, Windows has its own internet firewall. The anti-virus software is an additional protection.
The free version also answers our basic needs: it updates its database of viruses to look out for, and it scans your computer periodically (as long as you allow it to :P) for these stuff.

If you have Windows Firewall, then why do you need another anti-virus?
Windows Firewall protects you from the common harmful stuff online. However, bad people are constantly creating new viruses/worms that can outsmart Windows Firewall. That's when the anti-virus software comes in.

Elevator Etiquette

Source: xkcd

Be considerate.

Entering the elevator

1.) First person to enter an empty elevator should assume the role of the operator: position yourself in the corner and press the open button until everybody is safely inside.

2.) Filing into the elevator (translation: habang papasok sa elevator nang sabay sabay), move all the way to the back so everybody else can fit in without having to squeeze their way to the back.

If you don't want to go all the way to the back, then stay at the back of the line. But then be mindful of item#6.

3.) Let other people disembark before you enter.

Inside the elevator

4.) Shut up when other people are inside.

Shutting up: includes conversations with family/friends;

Other people: includes everybody apart from your family and friends.

5.) If there is space to do so, press on your floor button yourself. In a tight crowd, however, kindly request for your floor to be pressed.

6.) When you're blocking the door and someone from the back has to alight, step out of the elevator to give way. Don't worry about being left behind because (1) the operator is pressing the open button and (2) in case you're with people who should be reading this list, you can simply hold open the elevator door when you step outside.

Exiting the elevator

7.) Say "excuse me" when someone is blocking your way.

8.) Say "thank you" to the person holding the door open for you.

Restaurant City Updates: Bears and skunks are scaring your friends' customers! Help them!

More Restaurant City updates were installed on November 2009.

• quick toilet clean
• quick arcade fix
• more coins when visiting friends!

Click on the dirty toilet to clean them up or click on your broken arcade machine to fix them. No need to wait for your janitor to make time for each! Dirty toilets are those that have water around them and have the "needs cleaning" image hovering above it. Broken arcade machines puff dark smoke and look like they short circuited.

Click on the dirty toilet to clean it up without the help of your janitor!

Click on your broken arcade to fix it without waiting for your janitor!

Another new feature included in the update is Help your friend!

Visit your friends' restaurants to see what help they need from you and get rewarded with coins! Some will ask you to help them fix their leaking pipes, drive away the sleeping bear or the penguins or skunks, etc., others have mushrooms on their backyard garden! You'll earn 15coins on your first few visits. The prize drops as you visit more friends. However, unlike one-time free-ingredients from visiting friends for the first time, your friends will need help every now and then. The maximum prize of 15coins also refreshes on the next day!

Help your friend put out the fire in their restaurant!

Help your friend get rid of the sleeping bear!

Help your friend get rid of the skunks!

Help your friends get rid of those penguins!

Help your friends plug those leaks!

Help your friends get rid of those mushrooms!

You can also help them water their plants - 1coin per click. Note that you can only do this if their plot actually has a plant or a seed and if the soil isn't saturated with water yet. Also, you can't water plants that are actually ripe for harvest :)

Shows how Playfish is integrating Country Story into their more popular game, Restaurant City!

Game for NOOBs like me

Noob: slang term for newbie

This week I was introduced to Castle Crashers. It's now my second favorite game (next to Tetris, followed by Word Boggle).

The objective appears simple to me: kill the guys that don't look like my character!
A - jump
X - attack
Y - hard attack
B - use stored object (a potion at first, then it became a bow and arrow attack later)

source: Castle Crashers

Boyfriend and I play the game together, I'm green ranger and he's yellow ranger.
I refuse to delve any deeper on game play explanations and whatnot! If I can't understand it in the first 10 minutes that I tried it, then I'm not interested.

Unlike most people who can live through (and enjoy immensely) hours at a time of playing video games, I'm the type who'd experience motion sickness 20 minutes into Katamari.

Source: Wii60

That's mainly why I stick to Tetris and Word Twist and Restaurant City.

Boyfriend, on the other hand, is a gamer. Instead of plotting ways to get rid of me so he can have precious time with Dragon Age, he sets up a devious plan to get me interested on his second love. I'm now to try and survive playing Castle Crashers. Next on the line I think is Prince of Persia, but that seems like too big a step...

All for the simple reason: "I need a playmate!"

Are there any simpler games I can try before moving into the nauseating types? I suffer from motion sickness when I watch people play Counter Strike.

47 Pinoy Rock Artists "Stand Up" to Climate Change

Climate change is real. Addressing climate change requires a mix of mitigation and adaptation. This requires more mitigation for industrialized countries and more adaptation for developing countries.

This can be translated into one simple scenario: While the industrialized world continues to send up tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, whether or not we blur the amounts through carbon credits, hopes are fading for those who will be receiving the sharp end of the Damocles sword; the developing world. The urgency is to realize that this is not going to stop at 350 ppm, or even double at 600 ppm, the Philippines has to realize that despite all the petitions and feel good campaigns of dreams for a climate stabilized world, real solutions need to be done.

We have to get to the part where we learn to start dealing with this. The country is located right beside the warmest parts of the ocean that is in the perfect storm of vulnerable coastlines, intense winds, and an observation of growing dumping of large amounts of rain. We need to live in a world where climate will hit the poorest of the poor first, regardless of where they live, it will test our resiliency as a city, as a village, as a community, and specially as a people. This song is dedicated to the awareness that dealing with one ONDOY is not the victory, but a climate of change will be the battle of this generation.

-Illac Diaz

Crazy Planets by Playfish (ever wondered where your Restaurant City friends are?)

I've been wondering why my friends haven't been paying attention to their Restaurant City accounts if they also weren't taking care of their Country Story farms... Then I found out about: CRAZY PLANETS!

This is Cello's crazy Crazy Planet!

Crazy Planets is another cool creation by Playfish (creators of Restaurant City, Country Story, Pet Society, Word Challenge, Geo Challenge). It's a simple, addictive game that gives you ownership of your own planet and a battlefield to declare war against alien robots!

The 3 minute tutorial on your first try will show you how to use your weapons and how to get to missions. You travel to an alien planet to kill all the alien robots. Before you get them all, be sure that you collect all their alien money so you go crazy on designing your planet!

Here's a mission to an alien planet!

You get an overview of the planet before you enter it. See all those gold rings? Those are coins/alien money. Be absolutely certain that you collect them before killing the last robot. After you've killed the last robot on the enemy planet, you're to fly back home or to another mission!

Since planets are generally round, your weapons fire based on a projectile. Aim well and true! Remember that you only have 30 seconds per turn. It's a turn-based game: you hit then the enemy tries to hit you then it's your turn to hit back (just like Pokemon games!)