Cureless

I promised I won’t upgrade my WP until I come up with a redesign 9 months ago. I didn’t know I would regret that decision until last week, when after a series of unpleasant events related to my site happened.

18 June 2008 - I’ve narrated about it in this entry. And to sum it up, I’ve encountered the following:

1. My traffic significantly decreased.
   • I subscribe to Topblogs.ph and whenever its icon loads in my page I could see my site’s deteriorating traffic performance in relation to other Philippine sites.
   • My extreme tracking says so.
   • As well as my google analytics.
2. Weird keywords are getting picked by googlebot in my pages. (as seen in my Google webmasters tools account.)
3. There were instances when spam pages loaded instead of my page when accessing my domain.

I just passed my observations off as some erratic behavior of my site or perhaps of googlebot. I’ve reasoned out that there’s not a perfect application or system anyway.

11 July 2008 - My host, Bigskymedia.net informed me that my account has been causing CPU “spikes”. In other words, my account was eating up my host’s shared hosting resources, more that what it’s been allotted for. And so it was temporarily suspended.

I was alarmed by this. Thank goodness it was Friday so I had all the time to monitor what’s going on with my site.

What I found out turned out to be more than just a bad dream. (To be continued…)

I mean literally, he’s in F’s hands. Unless otherwise, you think someone else holds him. *wink*

Whee~ Lookie… the Turks are in there~

Honestly, I would be raving and blabbing in excitement upon seeing these scenes if I am still that YAOI fan girl I was some X years ago. Instead, I found myself teary-eyed and asking why heroes need to depart from the world where they could live with their loved ones.

Cloud is one lucky bastard. He gets to wield the Buster Sword after Zack (and Angeal).

ETA: Download a bigger version of that Zack Fair graphic here: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII final scenes

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII © 2007 Square Enix, Co. Ltd.

Two weeks without adios in this blog is just so… sad. I think I promised somewhere within my blog’s pages that as long as I can, I won’t let this site go. The sad thing happened last week, or perhaps just when this month started.

With the series of unfortunate happenings at my work during the past days, like spending the weekendS (mind the capital S) in the office, I just surmised that it’s a bad omen to work on Labor Day.

Yes, I think… it all started when I decided to work during the first of May. Days after that, I would spend an average of 3 more hours in the office during regular working days and at least 8 hours during weekends.

That I guess is a valid reason why I was gone for 2 straight weeks. Believe me.

Now if it weren’t for Fluffy who was always there waiting for me to throw my gripes at him hug and comfort me after work, my brain would turn into liquid and drip from my body’s orifices, I would have gone bonkers.

Ummm… that sounded exaggerated. Truth is I just want to express how busy I was with work.

Edit: Extra thanks to GG (Gossip Girl), too. I’ve just seen the season finale and I guess I’d continue watching it even if it’s so silly and funny.

Around lunchtime today, Fluffy and I saw our former colleague (and buddy) at the lobby of our company’s head office. Not being able to talk with him for a while, we urged Lei (let’s call him that) to eat with us at the building’s canteen. Apparently, he’s already with our company. The last time I heard about him was when he updated us about when he’ll be starting in his new job. I was the one who submitted his resumé to our recruiter. (So, I get the referral moolah heh~)

It came as just a little bit of a surprise when he told us about his stolen laptop. Techie gadgets such as laptops and small computers these days are easy targets for thieves. What’s more disheartening to know was it got lost inside his apartment. Someone broke into his room and voila! Sad, isn’t it?

So our talk this noon wasn’t just about our jobs and our lives. It came to a point when we’re already recommending laptop brands to each other.

(more…)

One of the many movies I’ve recently seen (but failed to mention here) was “5 Centimeters Per Second“. It’s an animation film (animé) which premiered in Japan a year ago. Like many other movies I’ve seen together with Fluffy, this one also brought us the anticipation factor. But unlike the previous ones we’ve watched, I haven’t read a single article about the movie, so I was totally clueless about its theme. Besides, the title gives no more than a vague hint.

It’s a drama. I learned shortly after watching the few scenes. A middle-school boy hurriedly takes the train with a purpose. His memories from his past flashed back, revealing the purpose of his travel - his wait, frustrations and anticipation. Watching how time flew so realistically on screen made me feel that certain rush stirred by the boy’s eagerness to achieve what he desires to do with the ticking clock on his mind. At the same time, it also quelled that feeling every time something causes delay, a reason for the boy to fail.

I miss or rather I wish to see, hear, or witness more stories like these which evoke a certain kind of emotion in me that other media aren’t capable of. Heavily immersed in the Filipino pop culture, how could I forget the first time I saw Cinema Paradiso, or The Bicycle Thief? Although I’d categorize “5 Centimeters Per Second” as a love story (with and without the “romantic” notion), I’d easily rank it with these classics I’ve encountered. (And that by the way includes “Neon Genesis Evangelion”, only categorized differently but in parallel.)

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In relation to the animé, I believe that most of us has a similar story. I suddenly got the drive to reminisce about the movie when I remembered some frequently recurring small talks I have with Fluffy about our past lives. He tells me about his perennial crushes in school from kindergarten to college (minus high school, go figure), making me wonder about same situation I also had in the past. What happened to them? How did I felt back then? Were the memories even worth remembering at all?

In the end, I think the movie still leaves a lot of room for speculation. Cut into 3 stories from the 3 different episodes in the boy’s life, it ended when he, who’s now a man looked back and the one he was expecting to see wasn’t there. I see that it may have further ended with the man still going with his routine of solitary exclusion from the world outside. But something definitely more powerful is telling me that it’s about letting go and moving forward.

It’s not always fun living an independent life. Well, I’ve always equated freedom and independence with living alone by myself, in my room. No parents, no brother and sisters, not even Fluffy. Just me and my computer and everything else I decide to do. Whether it be I let my food rot in my ref, or I decide to do the laundry or perhaps, wax the floor, or cook! Or buy something from the grocery, or just like this… bumming in front of the computer the whole day, and choosing to do this over studying for my work project.

But I don’t feel anything better at all, anything better than feeling there’s no one bothering you, following your movements and saying there’s something wrong with what you do, this and that. My sister just left and I’m alone again, unknowing if I’ll spend the weekend productively or just let it pass and wait for another work week to cut through.

I’m sad, a little bit. And these are consequences of my wanting to be independent. Or maybe I’m being too hard on myself.

(more…)

Cureless.net Preview

I still haven’t made up my mind on my site’s new design. I’ve been working on something since I announced about the design make-over but I don’t think it’s enough. I also need quite a chunk of time to do it. But since I’ve been busy during the weekends on assisting my sister prepare for her birthday celebration (and allowing myself to be tempted by Fluffy’s MMORPG’s), I can’t find enough time to finalize it.

The only thing I can probably be happy about is the graphic design I made for my sister’s debut invitation. She made the rest of the packaging.

On the other hand, Toshi (my laptop) seems to be functioning just like my current mood for design and blogging. I’ve been complaining about how slow it has become recently. If I could work on two memory-intensive programs simultaneously before, now I can only do one.

I became interested in upgrading its memory and all other “upgradable” components in it when I saw this laptop service center in Cubao. But the upgrading cost is almost half the amount of a brand new PC. And I also need a more powerful machine ’cause I want to get serious with tinkering work-related stuff.