Automatic Health Card
One of the medical benefits we have at the office is a card that we were issued. It looks like an ATM card and works pretty much the same as one, except it didn’t have any money in it. At first we did not understand how this health savings account worked, thinking that we had to deposit money into the card so that it would work. I put mine away in my drawer, thinking that it was just taking up space in my wallet.
Our boss clarified that bit for us. What we could do with the card was show it at any accredited hospital during an emergency and the hospital would either swipe the card at their terminals or call the health card provider who will verify that we are indeed bona fide members of the program. The hospital will then treat us and pass on the charges to the card provider. We could practically walk out of the hospital after the treatment, without shelling out any cash.
Sounds good, but honestly, I really don’t want the opportunity to put the card to the test.
When a computer gets a cold…
Some time after Christmas a photographer friend of mine issued an S.O.S. Her computer had become infected with a virus, and apparently the antivirus software that she had on it could not remove the infection. She contacted me online to ask if I could help her, and of course I said I would.
I told her to bring the sick computer to our house, lock, stock and huge widescreen monitor, so I could apply the latest in fumigation techniques that I learned from our technical department.
The computer had one of those free downloadable antivirus programs that really didn’t do much especially if the signatures weren’t regularly updated and a daily full scan was not run. There were other ways of getting a virus, most common of which is through removable drives, which is how my friend’s computer got infected.
The virus hid all her photo folders, which to my friend looked like they were deleted. The virus also hid the Tools > Folder Options link from the File Manager, which removed the ability to unhide the folders.
Short story is, I installed a Kaspersky trial version, ran updates, ran all possible scans and in the end managed to get the virus out, the folders back, making my friend so happy she brought me a huge bag of goodies from Pan de Pugon.
Yummy! 
Life as you go
If getting life insurance leads to peace of mind as I go through a busy day which starts with commuting to work then I’m all for it. I look at insurance as a form of forced savings, something I HAVE to do if I really care for the people I’ll be leaving behind in case I walk into the way of a speeding truck or get mugged or something like that. This is a more formal and systematic way of putting a little away for that inevitable day which most of us would rather not think about. We just need to make sure that we pick the right company to administer our savings for us.
Goodbye P910i
I got my Sony Ericsson P9109i from my then-coworker Ejay in the last quarter of 2005. He had just bought the phone himself, hardly two months old, but he had found a cellphone that he liked better. Perhaps if Ejay had not wanted to give it up I would not have bought the P910i, but we were at the point of our careers when we needed a phone that was also a PDA, and this was an opportunity for me to buy it for a lot less money than I would have shelled out at a mall.
I lost that same cellphone last Friday, December 11 2009, after four years of constant use. It was stolen from my backpack as I was walking across the Estrella pedestrian overpass. I was an easy mark for the zipper gang, I suppose, regularly walking that route at least 5 days a week.
The phone has seen better days. I had already removed the flip because it was broken, and was using the onscreen keyboard and virtual flip for text entry. There was even a time when the jog dial didn’t work anymore, but I found a shop that could repair it, of all places, in Masbate. I had vowed till death do us part with this phone, and I guess this loss was its death.
But not quite. The thief, whoever he is, is still using the SIM card. The number is 0921 9866 989. I can’t recover it because I no longer have the card backing, having had that number for the past 2 years or so. Feel free to send it any junk text that you can think of. 
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