Mike’s Personal Blog

No, I’m not for higher gas prices but I just read this article that says that traffic deaths have been reduced as a result of higher gas prices. It does make sense don’t you think?

Higher gas prices, less cars on the road. Less cars on the road, less traffic related accidents. Less traffic related accidents, less traffic related deaths.

Another thing that I think that would be a direct effect of the increasing gas prices is less pollution, especially in the cities. The less cars on the road, the less smoke. Less smoke, less smog… well you know the drill. The latter though can be easily solved by switching to alternative energy to power cars. One such possibility is electric power. And another possibility is Hydrogen power.

Well oh well… I think that this rising gas prices will eventually force us to move on to the next level and be pro-active in thinking for solutions. As for traffic-related accidents, as long as there are reckless drivers and day-dreaming pedestrians, we’ll be having them for quite some time.

I don’t understand why 2 mails sent by Google which contains my Adsense pin has not arrived yet. They should have arrived on my doorstep months ago but still there’s none. I called our local post office and they told me that they have not received no mail for me from Google. I asked them who I should call about it and they advised me to contact the Pasay Central Office.

I haven’t contacted Pasay Central Office yet but that’s beside the point. Thing is, my mail should have arrived already. For those who don’t know, getting my Google Adsense pin is very very important because I won’t be able to get my money from Google if I don’t get that pin.

So, what’s wrong with the Philippine Postal Corporation? What’s taking them too long to deliver all those mails?

I got bored at home and it was Saturday. Add to that the fact that I haven’t taken my regular dose of movie watching for a quite a time already so I decided to go out to SM and watch a movie. The moment I arrived, I realized that there are actually four movies that I wanted to watch but time will only allow me to watch three of them.

So what did I do? Well, I watched all three movies in a row. First I watched The Incredible Hulk, then Hancock, then Wanted and I had one large popcorn, one large chippy, one large iced tea, one large pepsi, and one medium sized fruit shake to go along with it. The result of this movie-watching novena? Well, aside from getting a head-splitting migraine on my way home, I was also able to churn out three movie reviews. Here they are:

• The Incredible Hulk
• Hancock
• Wanted

I enjoyed all three and basically would recommend them all but I guess I liked Hancock the most.

This is starting to get on my nerves. It appears that no matter what I do, my Busby SEO Challenge ranking stays in the page 7-8 spot. I’ve tried link building and on-page optimization but it appears that the competition is just too strong. After all, what’d you expect from an SEO contest like this one?

Truth is, lots of good SEO practitioners have joined the contest - both whitehat and blackhat. Yes, there are blackhatters in the contest alright. A few of my friends (also contestants) can attest to that but I don’t think none of us wants to go open in the public about it.

Anyway, if you’re reading this post and have some spare time, I’d be glad if you could link to my Busby SEO Challenge entry. Just link to http://mikelopez.info/busby-seo-challenge/ and put “Busby SEO Challenge” in the link text.

Well, still lots of weeks to go and anything can happen.

OK, this is going to be a short post. I was browsing Youtube and came across two videos that were trying to spoof the song “Wannabe” by Spice Girls. I compared two and picked a choice. Thought you guys might want to see it too so I posted it over to Squidoo. Check it out at:

www.squidoo.com/the-better-wannabe

I prefer one over the other… guess who?

Here’s the myth:
You unknowingly swallow an average of four live spiders in your sleep each year.

And here’s the fact:
This very widespread urban legend has no basis in fact. It exists in various forms; another common version is that you swallow an average of 20 in your lifetime. (At 4 per year, that would make a very short lifetime of 5 years…) A correspondent in Pennsylvania had heard a version that involved swallowing a pound of spiders (while sleeping) in one’s lifetime. (That would be over 20,000 average spiders, for a lifetime of 5,000 years at the 4 per year rate).

For a sleeping person to swallow even one live spider would involve so many highly unlikely circumstances that for practical purposes we can rule out the possibility. No such case is on formal record anywhere in scientific or medical literature. Since this page first appeared, I have heard from one person who found a small harmless spider hiding in her ear (which is possible), another who claimed to have had one in her nose (but had no evidence that it wasn’t already in her hanky), and one who claimed that when she was a young child a spider leg was found by her lips. But not one person has claimed that a spider entered his or her mouth.

Source: www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth/myths/whileyousleep.html

Here’s a quick announcement.

For sale: 444 square-meter residential lot for only P600,000 located in Hulo Proper, Sapang Palay, City of San Jose del Monte, Bulacan. Has right of way and located one lot away from main road. If you’re interested, please text or call me at 09287840878.- Mike Lopez

Or you can post your inquiries as comments below.

I’m 31 and I have 3 kids, two lovely daughters Kei and Vhi and a son Jae. As a father, I see fights among the siblings almost everyday. Even Jae who is only 1 year and 6 months old already knows how to fight. Parenting experts say it’s normal and I agree. I however don’t think that parents should remain passive about it. We parents have an active role in making sure that these rivalries are in control.

Rivalries are said to be healthy in psychological terms. It also prepares the children for real life where lovely butterflies are killed for no reason at all. Whenever I see my kids fighting, I try to listen and see what they’re fighting about. If it’s something that they can handle for themselves then I step back and just watch. If I think fatherly intervention is needed then I tell them to stop and explain to them that they’re siblings and they will remain like that forever. In certain cases, I join the fight and make them laugh.

But what do you do when sibling rivalry gets out of control? Well, gladly I don’t have to deal with that yet and I’m doing my best to prevent that from happening. But what if it happens? I think I still know what to do. Having experienced family turmoils myself, I think I have enough experience to deal with it.

For you though who might need help, here’s another page I made which I think will be useful to you - Click here: Sibling Rivalry and How to Deal With It

It has three more articles in it that would be fun to read.

Cheers!

Update (June 24, 2008): Unionbank’s Internet Security department gave me a call regarding my concern. They told me that they’ve seen this post. They also told me that I need to re-enroll my internet banking account as they are making changes to the system. I followed their instructions but wasn’t able to complete the enrollment due to some weird problem when I try to complete my enrollment.

I gave them a call and told them about the error. Even the IT guy on the other end seems to be baffled with the error so he politely asked me to email him a few details about my account and myself and they’ll do the enrollment themselves. So I sent them an email and within 15 minutes I got a reply that I may now log on to their internet banking facility.

Guess what? It works! I gave them a couple of suggestions:

• To put some information on the site about the problem. It always helps to let your customer know what’s going on even if something is wrong.
• To fix the online enrollment facility.

To which they replied with “Noted Sir, Have a great day ahead…”

I’ll settle with that. I sure hope that they fix this really soon. Lots of EON users are probably affected with this problem and although EON is a “zero-maintaining balance” account, it does have its useful benefits.

Cheers to the guys at Unionbank. Keep up the good work!

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(Original Post Follows)

I’ve been a Unionbank client for years and I honestly have no problems with them before until about a few months ago (until now). Problem is I can no longer log on to their internet banking service. Each time I login, I’m given an error saying that my Card Number or User ID is invalid.

I recently replaced my card so I thought that might be the problem. I contacted them and visited my branch and asked about the problem and all they can tell me is that internet banking is currently offline and that they’re not sure when it will be up and working again. Now that’s some answer huh?

Today, I gave it one more try and I still got the same error. I clicked on the customer service link on their website and I was given two options. Call them or request for online support. I clicked on online support and this is what I got.

They also have 3 other links where I might be able to post my concern. They are:

• Talk to our CEO, Justo A. Ortiz, Over a Cup of Coffee
• Meet our President, EVP, SVPs at the Executive Lounge
• Questions or opinions about the site? Call on The UBP Internet Team!

Guess what I got?

Talk to our CEO, Justo A. Ortiz, Over a Cup of Coffee

Meet our President, EVP, SVPs at the Executive Lounge

Questions or opinions about the site? Call on The UBP Internet Team!

Just in case you didn’t notice, they all have the following in them…

What the??? Even the UBP Internet Team is down. Worst, they can’t even format their “Under Construction” page properly! Notice how the text and the image gets cut off to the right.

C’mon Unionbank people? What kind of image are you projecting to your clients if even your “online customer support” is down? It’s as if you’re telling us that you don’t want to listen to our concerns anymore! If you can’t fix the internet banking facility then at least just put customer service back online.

And oh, please give us updates on what’s going on? When will we be able to use the internet banking facility again? Yeah, I don’t really have much in my account at the moment but that’s just because I can’t use it online. If you want me to go to the nearest branch then that’s about an hour of travel. That’s why I use internet banking.

So, please… fix it!

I have Spanish blood flowing in my veins but I never feel proud telling people about that. Rather, I always feel proud telling them that I’m Filipino. Many have urged me to work abroad but I love my country so much that I choose to stay in the Philippines even though the salary is lower than what I would be getting if I worked abroad. I think many Filipinos share the same feeling. It is however the Filipinos abroad who make the world know how important we Filipinos we are.

I was given notice by Yahoo Messenger of an article in Arab News and upon reading it, I felt even prouder. The article entitled “Imagine a world without Filipinos” speaks about how an Arab businessman closed his business when the Filipinos that worked for him chose to leave. “When they left, I felt as if I had lost my arms. I was so sad that I lost my appetite,” he said. To cope up for his loss, he flew over to Manila to look for Filipinos who would be willing to work for him.

I think we Filipinos are a strong driving force in the economy of this world but let us not be lofty about that. After all, we Filipinos are known for our “humble” ways.

Mabuhay ang Filipinos!!!