Mike’s Personal Blog

I love my children.  I love them so much that I would go through heaven and hell just to make them happy.  And today, Vhi celebrates her 5th birthday so I’ve set myself to make her happy.  But what makes her happy.  The best way to find out was to ask her and so I did.  I said, “Vhi, ano ang gusto mo ngayong birthday mo?” (Vhi, what do you want today your birthday?).  And she quickly answered by giving me a shortlist.  Here it is:

• Birthday Cake
• Strawberry and Vanilla Ice Cream
• Halo-halo (For those who don’t know, it’s a mixture of sweets and milk topped with crushed ice and ice cream)
• And a day to celebrate in SM Fairview’s Storyland

I agreed so I just took a 4 hour sleep while Vhi and her sister Kei do the usual things they do every morning - play, watch TV and of course the usual quarrels they have.  When I woke up, Vhi, Kei, and their mom were already prepared so I took a quick check on my emails, took a bath, dressed up and we left for SM Fairview Storyland.

As soon as we got there, I bought three ride-all-you-can tickets for me, Vhi, and Kei.  My wife Evelyn can’t enjoy the rides because she’s got a 3-month old baby in her womb - yes she’s pregnant.  So the three of us enjoyed the rides as Evelyn enjoyed watching.  We tried everything in Storyland and we enjoyed it.  Then we had dinner and afterwards bought the cake.  Tomorrow, I will buy the ice cream and the halo-halo since it’s already late at night and they won’t enjoy it anyway.

So that’s it!  All in a day’s celebration!  Happy 5th Birthday Vhi.  Soon it will be Kei’s 7th birthday…

I love my children.  I love them so much that I would go through heaven and hell just to make them happy.  And today, Vhi celebrates her 5th birthday so I’ve set myself to make her happy.  But what makes her happy.  The best way to find out was to ask her and so I did.  I said, “Vhi, ano ang gusto mo ngayong birthday mo?” (Vhi, what do you want today your birthday?).  And she quickly answered by giving me a shortlist.  Here it is:

• Birthday Cake
• Strawberry and Vanilla Ice Cream
• Halo-halo (For those who don’t know, it’s a mixture of sweets and milk topped with crushed ice and ice cream)
• And a day to celebrate in SM Fairview’s Storyland

I agreed so I just took a 4 hour sleep while Vhi and her sister Kei do the usual things they do every morning - play, watch TV and of course the usual quarrels they have.  When I woke up, Vhi, Kei, and their mom were already prepared so I took a quick check on my emails, took a bath, dressed up and we left for SM Fairview Storyland.

As soon as we got there, I bought three ride-all-you-can tickets for me, Vhi, and Kei.  My wife Evelyn can’t enjoy the rides because she’s got a 3-month old baby in her womb - yes she’s pregnant.  So the three of us enjoyed the rides as Evelyn enjoyed watching.  We tried everything in Storyland and we enjoyed it.  Then we had dinner and afterwards bought the cake.  Tomorrow, I will buy the ice cream and the halo-halo since it’s already late at night and they won’t enjoy it anyway.

So that’s it!  All in a day’s celebration!  Happy 5th Birthday Vhi.  Soon it will be Kei’s 7th birthday…

Today (May 30) is Vhi’s 5th Birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY VHI!!!

For those who don’t know, Vhi is my second daughter.

I’m now trying the simplest method of fighting comment and trackback spam on this website.  The method is simply setting up Options->Discussion (wordpress blogs only) to the following:

The following items are checked:

• Attempt to notify any Weblogs linked to from the article (slows down posting.)
• Allow link notifications from other Weblogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)
• Allow people to post comments on the article
• Anyone posts a comment
• A comment is held for moderation
• Comment author must fill out name and e-mail
• Comment author must have a previously approved comment

Then, I have ‘2′ in the box that says “Hold a comment in the queue if it contains more than ___ links.

Next, I copied the list of common spam words from http://codex.wordpress.org/Spam_Words and pasted them in the textarea box that says “When a comment contains any of these words in its content, name, URI, e-mail, or IP, hold it in the moderation queue: (Separate multiple words with new lines.)”.

Lastly, I did not place anything in the blacklist box BUT I checked “Blacklist comments from open and insecure proxies.”

That’s it!  It works for well for me and it pulled down my problem from 10 spams / day to 1 spam per week.

Fighting comment spam is easy. Just install captcha and you’re all set. You won’t see comment spam again - unless of course a spammer deliberately enters spam content on your blog and enters the captcha code himself.

BUT MY BIG PROBLEM IS TRACKBACK SPAM! Trackback spam passes through captcha since it’s sent via well - a trackback. So what did I do? I copied the list of spam words from wordpress.org and pasted them in Wordpress Admin under Options -> Discussion in the box ‘Comment Spam Words’. To my surprise, trackback spam went down from 10 per day to only 1 per week! Not bad ei? To test it even more, I turned off the captcha plugin and still my spam is still at 1 per week. So I think this solves my problem.

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Web hosting has come with the reach of the common man during the last few years. Companies like godaddy.com, webhosting net, bluehost, and yahoo are selling cheapest domain name registration services. Value addition is on the increase with most companies giving away free internet marketing credits for yahoo and google, forum and blog creation software, and backup software. Once you have a website you will want to make people ware of it especially if you are selling something. Along with domain registration and hosting some companies offer paid service to make your website’s search engine ranking higher. Very few low cost hosting companies were mentioned here. To get a more colossal list of companies Google the term webhosting cheap.

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP)—More than 60 years after it was seized by communists, the Romanian government is to hand back one of the country’s most popular tourist sites, the fabled Dracula Castle, to its former owner, the culture minister said Tuesday.The hand-over ceremony will take place Friday noon in the 14th century castle’s museum deep within the fortress in Transylvania, said minister Adrian Iorgulescu at a news conference.

The castle, worth an estimated US$25 million (euro19.6 million), was owned by the late Queen Marie and bequeathed to her daughter Princess Ileana in 1938. It was confiscated by communists in 1948 and fell into disrepair.

LiveScience.com - Dracula Castle Given Back to Hapsburgs

An English teacher was explaining to his students the concept of gender association in the English language.

He stated how hurricanes at one time were given feminine names and how ships and planes were usually referred to as “she”. One of the students raised their hand and asked - “What gender is a computer”?

The teacher wasn’t certain which it was, so he divided the class into two groups, males in one, females in the other, and asked them to decide if a computer should be masculine or feminine. Both groups were asked to give four reasons for their recommendation. The group of women concluded that computers should be referred to in the masculine gender because:

1. In order to get their attention, you have to turn them on.
2. They have a lot of data but are still clueless.
3. They are supposed to help you solve your problems, but half the time they ARE the problem.
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that, if you had waited a little longer, you could have had a better model.

The men, on the other hand, decided that computers should definitely be referred to in the feminine gender because:

1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic.
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else.
3. Even your smallest mistakes are stored in long-term memory for later retrieval.
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
So tell m, are computers male or female?

Creativity is a gift not given to all and I envy those who come up with new creative ideas from time to time. Now, here’s a set of photos of creative bags that were emailed to me which I think should be shared to all of you! Cool creative bags indeed!

Creative Bag - Hand in Mouth

Creative Bag - Hangman

Creative Bags - Skipping Rope

Creative Bags - Handle as necklace

Creative Bags - Hand gun

I’m 29 years old and it’s been 29 years since I started longing for Cable TV and finally the heavens and the earth agreed that I should have one!  Hahaha.  Well, it’s not that we cannot afford it.  It’s more of whether we needed it or not.  Not to mention the regular debate I have with my wife about the matter.  I want it, she doesn’t and you can imagine how long such a debate can be. LOL.

Anyway, after much pressure from our two kids (and my regular indirect convincing as well), we finally agreed to have Cable TV.  Here in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, the only choice is SPC Cable.  No other choice.  They’re definitely not the best but at least it’s cable and I can enjoy Discovery Channel and National Geographic.  However, they don’t seem to have TechTV.  Wahhhh!

Well, there ya go.  Kids in front of the TV set, glued on the screens.  And tonight, I’ll be much like them.

A bus stops and two Italian men get on. They sit down and engage in an animated conversation. The lady sitting behind them ignores them at first, but her attention is galvanized when she hears one of the men say the following:

“Emma come first. Den I come. Den two asses come together. I come once-a-more. Two asses, they come together again. I come again and pee twice. Then I come one lasta time.”

“You foul-mouthed sex obsessed swine,” retorted the lady indignantly.

“In this country . . . we don’t speak aloud in public places about our sex lives . . . “Hey, coola down lady,” said the man.

“Who talkin’ abouta sexa? I’m a justa tellin’ my frienda how to spella ‘Mississippi’.”