Mike’s Personal Blog

It was round 1:00 am November 24, 2006 when Evelyn my wife started feeling the pains of labor. We weren’t expecting her two give birth until 2 weeks later so I asked if she’s sure and guess what, she was! We left home at around 3:00 and we arrived at the hospital 30 minutes later. She was immediately taken into the delivery room.

One hour later, I heard the cry that I’ve always waited for. The cry of my first baby boy. Born on November 24, 2006 4:30 am, weighing 6 lbs and measuring 18 inches long, Jae Lopez was introduced into the world. Oh how loud he cried!

Jae Lopez drinking his milk

Jae sleeping after drinking his milk

Jae - more sleeping… sshhhhh…

Isn’t he cute? Of course he is! He’s my boy.

cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty  uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig  to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,

it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the  ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat  ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll  raed it wouthit a porbelm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey  lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas  tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs sahre it on  !!!

I love drag racing. I watch it almost everyday! But best is that I’m writing this post and I’m getting paid because this post is sponsored by Speedtv.com. Check out the all day marathon of PINKS followed by the premier of PINKS All Out on Speedtv.com this coming November 23.  Check out the video clip below to give you an idea.

Cool video clip huh? View more Drag Racing Clips.

With the advent of heuristic anti-spam softwares and spam databases, many thought that the lives of spammers will be over but it didn’t.  Spammers still manage to get away with their spam tactics and even manage to make money out of it.

A few months ago, after enjoying lots of months with very little spam in my inbox, I started getting a new breed of spam mails.  This time, they contain graphics.  Without text, it will be impossible to trigger heuristic flags on whether an email is spam or not.  What these annoying spammers do is type their message in an image editing program, save it as GIF, and email the GIF image.  This way, the recipient reads the message but anti-spam software can’t.

In my head, I knew that sooner or later, anti-spam software will be able to catch this spammy GIF images through OCR or Optical Character Recognition but just before I saw the good guys develop the needed techniques, I started seeing a new and evolved version of the GIF image spam emails.  Take a look at the image below (note, I’m in no way endorsing whatever they are offering):

Notice how the letters are waved to make it difficult for OCR software to recognize the message.  Furthermore, the background of the image is some sort of an abstract picture making it even harder for OCR to read it.  It looks like more of a Captcha image which is used by the good guys to prevent spam - this time, the spammers are using the same idea to protect their spam.

This indeed is a classic example of bad guys using the tools of the good guys to make bad things.  I just hope that someone will be able to stop all these spam so that we can all live with a clean inbox.

If you’re determined to stop SPAM, I would recommend Spam Bully for Outlook and Outlook Express users.  For all the rest, I recommend Spamweed.  Another one that I also strongly recommend is THIS.

I know a friend who’s name I won’t mention who joined this $10,000 SEO contest for the keyword Vorgermilten and he appears to be doing good.  His website now ranks #3 in Google for the specified keyword and according to him, he’s basically not doing much about it.

Here’s a quote from his website:

Prove you have what it takes to be the top SEO professional in the world and by winning the SEO contest, with the top grand prize, you get $10,000 for ranking number 1 in Google, and $2,000 for ranking number 1 in Yahoo. Aside from the $10,000 prize for ranking number 1 in Google for the keyword Vorgermilten, you will get a 1-year SEO contract as well.

I do wish that he wins so I can get my share.  Hehehehe.  Good luck friend!

Geez! Antonio is a true master impressionist! I can’t believe it with my own eyes! He transformed from being a human into a catfish! Amazing!

Check out the video below:

Ok, well ok.  He doesn’t look like a catfish.  Hehehehe, but that’s why they call it an impression right?  He basically pressed his face on a piece of flat glass.  I didn’t say he was an illusionist, I said he was an impressionist.

I wonder what would it take to transform myself into an eagle or perhaps a crow.  I always wanted to be some kind of a flying predator.  If that’s too difficult, maybe I should try changing into a lion or a tiger.  Duh, I think that would be easy.  But then, if that’s still too difficult, I might just change into a monkey - everybody calls me monkey anyway. Hehehe

As for Antonio, he’s cool.  The way he spoke the way he sounded like and his face, he looks like someone who’s lodged a pencil into his brain.  Hehehehe.  Go Antonio!

I was working my way through all of Google’s amazing services and due to this, I’m bound to come across Google Checkout.  I’ve heard about this before though I didn’t try it back then.  Now that I’m in the mood to give it a try, I couldn’t.  Why?  Because the Philippines is not included in its list of countries.

Well oh well, it’s most probably due to the patriot act.  So until they find the Philippines worthy to be included in their list, I guess there will be no trying it for me.

After weeks of waiting, my Philippine Paypal account was finally activated.  Paypal locked it for a moment and required me to fax them certain documents to verify my identity and after many exchanges and misunderstandings, they finally got everything sorted out and reactivated my account.

Now, just waiting when will they allow Philippine accounts to receive payments…

The construction industry is an ever-growing industry merely because new buildings and houses are built everyday.  But what about Canstruction?.

Canstruction® is an international charity competition where architects, engineers, contractors and students they mentor, compete to design and build giant structures made entirely from full cans of food. At the close of the competition all of the food from the New York City competition will be donated to City Harvest.

Take a look at some…

Aren’t they amazing?  Read more about Canstruction here.

Evelyn is expected to give birth on the first week of December and we were a bit excited to find out whether our third baby is going to be a boy or a girl.  We’ve been planning to the local laboratory for an ultrasound since last month but we only found time today.

A lot of friends are saying that we’re going to have a boy this time and there was only one way to find out.  A few minutes after we arrived at the local laboratory, it was already my wife’s turn.  All four (me, my wife, and two kids) of us went into the ultrasound room so we can all find out together.

Much to our surprise, there was indeed a baby inside my wife’s womb.  Hehehe, just kidding, we already knew that.  The doctor first showed us the head, the internal organs including the heart which was beating lively, the spine, then legs.  He purposedly skipped the genitalia since we were obviously excited.  Some doctor huh?  Then, after he did his usual measurements, he showed as what we all wanted to know.  It was a boy!  Oh yes.  A boy!  All four of us were so happy to find out that we will have a baby boy soon in our home.