Still deaf from high above

27
Nov/090

I love flying but often suffer from “ear popping” upon ascending and descending. A web search landed me to a few forum posts and health sites; weirdly, only one article mentioned yawning which is my own remedy but sadly didn’t work this time around. Having arrived home from Cebu two days after posting this my ears still feel clogged.

 

It was a great trip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How can I begin to tell you the awesome? Food was heart stopping, beautiful women and sights to see. It felt like a ‘provincey’ version of Manila while keeping the things you get from a big city: business, convenience and leisure. Cebu was clean and orderly, I only expect the best from a renowned name in tourism.

 

I especially loved the convenience of pulling over a taxi, quoting a driver –“there are more taxis than passengers”, this essentially means not only is it easy to get a cab at any hour, they don’t even require you to pay extra or haggle for fixed priced rides.

 

Had the lost in translation situations where other would usually come up to me and just flood me with Cebuano (their local dialect) which gave me the benefit of the doubt that they were reassuring me of my near fit figure as the only good reply I had was a shrugged nod. Of course.. there’s always people who would offer concubines having noticed my Japanese blood. Mabuhay!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had friends guess where this photo was taken after each one got a quick glimpse. Not surprisingly, they all said Greenbelt. You would be fooled too if you saw it for yourself –the Terraces at Ayala Center Cebu. It’s gorgeous to see and hang out at night where bars stay up ‘til late.

 

 

One of the few places we got to visit on a very tight schedule for anything other than work was Sto. Nino Church while is conveniently just beside Magellan’s Cross.

 

I may have pissed off a group of people when I forgot to disable the flash from my camera and ….fired a very mean beam inside the hall where the actual Sto. Nino was. To make things worse there was this sign conveniently placed outside:

 

 

Yeah I got an instant +1 to the many things I need forgiveness for.

 

 

For lunch we dined at the Tinderbox, which I found to be your run-of-the-mill semi-classy restaurant from the outside as I walked in. I was wrong, upon seating I got around and noticed a house made entirely out of what seems to be……. graham biscuits! After much sniffing curiosity got the best of me and while no one was looking I had executed a quick lick.. yes they’re real graham cookies! It would be shallow to judge the overall quality and status of an establishment entirely on the material they picked to make their Christmas festive decoration, but that’s the kind of guy I am and I say graham is a classy choice.

 

Oh yes, the food was great too.

 

Pictures to follow; above the Tinderbox restaurant is the coveted Z-Bar by Kenneth Cobonpue, a popular name in interior design. We arrived in the late afternoon and it doesn’t open until 6PM but a friendly staff showed us around. I wasn’t able to take pictures as my camera is highly unreliable without proper lighting therefore let me just recommend this blog post: http://experiencedelux.blogspot.com/2009/05/kenneth-cobonpues-z-bar-cebu.html

 

 

The next stop was the Taoist temple in Beverly Hills where this panorama was taken. We were greeted by a hard ass guard who “timed” our stay at thirty minutes and warned us to be extra quiet. It seemed as if he knew I was trouble! He stayed at the entrance where we didn’t expect him to come look for us once we got in but not long he got around and sent us on our way out.

 

Cebu was just the trip I needed, wait…. that’s bullshit travel talk. Cebu was fucking awesome!

Tagged as: , , , , , , , , , ,
No Comments

77 Windows 7 tips

3
Nov/090

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.10.77windows.aspx

 

These are my top picks:

 

7. Record Problems. The Problem Steps Recorder (PSR) is a great new feature that helps in troubleshooting a system (see Figure 1). At times, Remote Assistance may not be possible. However, if a person types psr in their Instant Search, it will launch the recorder. Now they can perform the actions needed to recreate the problem and each click will record the screen and the step. They can even add comments. Once complete, the PSR compiles the whole thing into an MHTML file and zips it up so that it can be e-mailed for analysis to the network admin (or family problem solver, depending on how it’s being used).
 
 
14. Understand Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Windows 7 plays an important role in Microsoft’s VDI strategy, where virtualized Windows 7 machines are hosted on a central virtualization server using a special blanket “Enterprise Centralized Desktop” license. Read up and figure out if you can take advantage of this new strategy.
 
 
34. Add Unindexed Shared Folders to Library. You can add UNC paths such as \\servername\sharename to a Library, but the server must index the folder. If you want to add a UNC path to an unindexed server, you can create a symbolic link to the UNC path, then add the link or links to the library. Use the mklink command. For example, mklink HomeFolder \\ServerName\Homefolder.
 
 
45. Create Virtual Worlds. Virtualization capability has been added to the Disk Management tools. If you open Computer Management, go to the Disk Manager tool and then click the Action button at top, you will see the options Create VHD and/or Attach VHD. This allows you to create and mount a virtual hard drive directly from within the GUI. Note: With Windows 7 you even have the ability to boot a Windows 7 VHD (see Figure 6).
 
 
61. Put It on Old Stuff. One perhaps-not-so-obvious Windows 7 tip is that you should attempt to install it everywhere. One user has a 6-year-old laptop that originally shipped with Windows XP. He could never get Windows Vista to install on it. But Windows 7 installed without complaint and runs extremely smooth. Granted, there are some Windows 7 features he can’t take advantage of because the processor lacks certain features, but these are minor issues considering the laptop now has life again.
 
 
Virtualization is where everything seems to be leading to lately and Microsoft saw this opportunity to release proven solutions. Virtual Desktop Infastructure isn’t exactly new and you can read more about it here: http://www.msterminalservices.org/articles/Virtual-Desktop-Infrastructure-Overview.html. It’s great to see that even in small detail, virtualization is being integrated more and more; I benefit a lot from being able to mount virtual hard disks because I work heavily with VMs and having direct access to them without the need of loading up their respective environment really comes in handy.
 
 
The Problem Steps Recorder is a godsend for the helpdesk. More often than not, issues can be solved efficiently without being physically present on the problem machine. Alternatively, it can be used as a documentation tool; say for example, a step-by-step program walkthrough.
 
 
Document warriors are expected to have messy file storages; you might have documents in your desktop, in your My Documents, a portable drive or even a shared folder. Libraries brings that all into one place as if you’re looking into a single huge folder. This is particularly great for me as combined with Windows HomeGroup I don’t longer need to have “redundant” songs (repeating, same songs on different computers) and just keep everything in one computer and stream it from there.
Tagged as: , , , ,
No Comments

Pages

Categories

Awesome stumbles

Meta