A couple of weeks ago I was at a client’s site on a meeting. The place was just across the Paco Park so I couldn’t resist skipping over to the historic park when the meeting was over. Sad thing was it was a Monday, and the park was closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Serves me right, I said to myself, after having lived in the Paco area (area of Merced and Herran) for the first six months of my solo return to Manila in 1999, and not having made the rounds when I could.

Similar regrets are not having gone up to Marawi City in the year that we lived in Lanao. I’d been to what was formerly known as Dansalan in 1995, when the Iligan National Writers Workshop scheduled a session there, but I’d never been back in the entire year that our new family lived just a couple of hours drive away. Not having gone to Cagayan de Oro to walk on the hanging bridges. Not having gone up the grotto in Baguio when we were there three summers ago, just to test myself if I could still make it to the top, where I once had my picture taken as a little girl.

Now that I’m (a lot) older I tend to not let opportunities that present themselves go by. Hence this quickie stop at the Paco Park. Bad timing, but good pictures, nevertheless.

Practically speaking, in the Philippines there is no such thing as 100% uptime for any office, unless it has generators that automatically kick in when the power goes out. Even when the building that houses the office itself is backed up by a generator, there is the question of availability of backup power for the individual servers.

Not all offices, especially startup ones, can avail themselves of backup servers, much less of Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) units that can sustain a server’s activity until power is restored. There are various ways in which a building, or the entire area where the building is located, can lose power. A cut transmission line, a blown up power transformer—these contribute to the uncertainty of when power can be restored. And when there is uncertainty, no UPS or backup generator will be enough to keep a server running.

With the loss of power for some key areas also comes loss of internet connection. When this happens, no automated, remote controlled monitoring and management can occur. A company offering BCDRP services that are fully automated, can rely on automation only for as long as the power and Internet is up. Once they both come down, and there are no warm bodies to kick in, then there is a problem.

This is where our BCDRP program becomes practical. Every day we send out a team that goes around from one client to another, replacing backup external disks and taking the previous night’s backups away for safekeeping offsite. This is on top of remote server backup and management that we also perform.

This is practical BCDRP for the third world.

Around the time when that happens, I hover along the sidelines. This is the time when my friends are ready to dispose of the earlier version gadget and so use the funds from the sale to partly fund the new acquisition. The soon-to-be-disposed-of gadget will now be sold for somewhere between 50-70% of its original price, which to me is just fine, if the gadget comes complete with its box, manuals and other original paraphernalia.

These were more or less the conditions by which Sam now has an iPod Shuffle Orange. My officemate and lunch parter Abi had a friend who wanted to buy Abi’s pre-owned iPod nano 4GB and therefore was selling her iPod Shuffle. Abi was selling hers so she could get the iPod nano 8GB. And so there I was on the sidelines more than happy enough to catch the discarded iPod Shuffle Orange for the same price that I would shell out for a day’s trip to the mall.

So now Sam sits at his computer with his ears wired into his iPod Orange (which he prefers to see as Rust) and when I sit on the table in front of him I will have to wave at him before speaking to him so he can take off the earphones, because he won’t hear me when he’s tuned into CSNY.

I just hope he won’t turn into one of those wired zombies whom I sit beside with on the bus every now and then, who have their players turned up so high that I can hear what’s playing through their earphones. On top of that some of them actually start singing along. Imagine your seatmate singing along with Green Day while the bus speakers blare Chris-Tsuper and Nicole-lehiyala on their raucous spiel on Love Radio and you’ll get an idea of how some of my mornings are, on the way to work.

If you are one of the bloggers who have recently joined the Entrecard network and are now displaying that nifty widget (preferably above the fold) on your blog’s sidebar, congratulations! You have just opened your blog to a new universe of visitors.

There have been claims that entrecard dropping can be addictive. I think that all depends on how much time you have to go blog hopping. I have been on entrecard for almost a month and have received visits I would not have ordinarily received otherwise. I have also, through the Entrecard dashboard, have had the opportunity to visit other interesting blogs I would not have stumbled upon otherwise.

For the Entrecard noob these are the three most important screens on your administration panel, which you see when you are logged into your Entrecard account:

1. Your Dashboard - all activity on your account summarized on one page
2. Your Drops inbox - clickable through a tab on your dashboard, it contains the cards of Entrecard users who have dropped their cards on your widget.
3. Your advertisers - two columns on the left side of your dashboard, of Entrecard users who have put in a bid to advertise on your widget, and those whom you have approved.

Basically you get Entrecard points by visiting other blogs and dropping your card on their widget. You do that by clicking on the word “Drop” on an Entrecard widget. You will need to click on the word itself, as clicking just beside it may not give you any results.

You also get points when you approve advertisers on your widget. You can accumulate your points and use them to buy your own advert space on other Entrecard widgets.

There are numerous Entrecard strategy experts who can show you how you can use Entrecard account/widget/presence to its fullest potential. Two posts on Turnip Of Power are a must-read for one who has just signed up for an Entrecard account:

1. Top 5 Entrecard Tips and Tricks
2. Becoming an Entrecard Click Master
3. 2 Firefox keyboard shortcuts for EntreCard dropping

You will eventually read stuff about how Entrecard is actually bad for you as it raises your bounce rate and things like that. But I don’t want to treat Entrecard as just another way to search engine optimize my blog.

I see it as thousands of doorways that have been opened to me, into a blogging universe that I can explore, one card at a time.

1. I don’t have to jostle other people also on their way out of the theater.
2. I don’t have to listen to strange comments/conversations while jostling other people who are also on their way out of the theater.
3. The aisle is always brighter lit after the credits are over (or almost over) because that’s when the cleaners come in to pickup after the hard headed litterbugs.
4. If you have a common enough name you might see someone in the credits with the same name as yours, or who could actually be your relative, or your second cousin once removed.
5. If there is an extra scene after the credits, like there was in the third installment of Pirates of the Caribbean (At world’s end), you get to see it if you watched the credits all the way to the end.

Maia’s picked up this weird trait from me. We watch the credits after an animated movie on DVD or anywhere else. I don’t know why she likes watching the credits too, because she refuses to turn off the player or eject the CD until after the credits have rolled to the very end, where she says “The End.”

So. If you watch Ironman any time soon, take my advice. Stay until after the credits. You’ll be in for a nice surprise.

I took the test before I put this here, deciding to do so after being encouraged by the results. I didn’t realize how much I’d changed over the years. If I had taken this test five years ago I would have answered so much differently.

You can take that long awaited and saved for vacation to almost any city in Europe and the United States. You only need to take care of your own luggage and travel oddments, easytobook will take care of the rest.

Just looking at their website is a tour in itself. You will know what the best places are to visit in the city you’re in and you will have a choice of more than a hundred hotels in each city that easytobook can make arrangements for you and at a discounted price at that!

The easytobook website features maps of restaurants, business establishments and shopping areas and how to get around the city’s transport system. It’s practically all you will ever need to take that long deserved vacation abroad.