Taken at Chief’s house (look at the time!!!) doing early day rouse up for the Chief! The man! Happy Birthday! Can you say Mañanita?

My double chin’s starting to make itself known. Noel’s a lot chubbier than he is now. Kyle always manages to whip out her trademark grins. Pyangz, thanks for the shot!

$ sudo apt-get install -y kopete qca-tls

The qca-tls package will ensure that you’ll be able to connect using the default encryption protocol. After these packages install, start Kopete, and create a new Jabber account if you don’t have it yet. On the first tab, set up your Jabber ID to use your Gmail address:

Jabber Id: <yourid>@gmail.com

On the “Connection” tab, use talk.google.com as your server and tick all the boxes like so:

[x] Use protocol encryption (SSL)
[x] Allow plain-text password authentication
[x] Override default server information
Server: [talk.google.com] Port: [5223]

Done!

Image(089)

Originally uploaded by jon.doblados.

My daughter has outgrown her fear of mascots. She’s still holding back a bit though (her smile’s about half-done there).

Special thanks go to my in-laws, who went with us and carried some of our hand-carried items, to Papa Jun, who’s always ready to pick us up from the port whenever we’re in the area, (Aside: guess what, we’re settling down here, but I still hope he’d keep doing this until I get a car to do this myself…soon.) and to my parents and brother, who lent us a few (and very important) items to get us by while I pay off the fridge and aircon.

Papa’s out of practice. It’s funny because it seemed like we changed roles already; him assisting me. I’m thankful he stayed up late just to make sure we finished wiring the darn thing. It was so stiffling hot and we needed some cooling so we’d get to sleep already.

Anyway, I’m up to my neck with work already. It’s just one project for now, but I’m still trying to adjust to a predominantly Windoze environment. I got a go-ahead from the boss, so I’m going GNU\Linux over the weekend. Bliss!

As a direct result of my sudden resignation, manpower and work load concerns that we’ve been raising for years are finally being addressed. I just feel like the fall guy here, because I _know_ that if this pushes through, remuneration for my colleagues is ensured, on the basis of supervisory work load, and I can’t have any of it.

However, I’m happy that all these are happening, for three reasons. First, I will be able to _focus_ on web programming, a passion if I may call it. My wife sees this in me. She knows it’s the one thing that keeps me up till the wee hours of the morning, and I’d still be able to do what needs to get done in the house, or spend time with her and our daughter without spacing out. Second, I wouldn’t want anything less than give my colleagues their happiness. They deserve greater things in life. Incoming!!! Lastly, and most importantly, we get to live on our own; just myself, my wife, and our daughter. To God be the glory!

PHOT0022

Originally uploaded by jon.doblados.

I clearly remember that day in ’85, back in Leyte, when my brother almost drowned in the company pool. We both knew how to wade around a bit, and it would not be for another year until we get swimming lessons from the pool lord, Mang Rufo.

But anyway, my brother and I look back at the near mishap and remembered that we’d do just about anything to get near water and swim to our hearts’ content.

Some of you may have been into swimming in your early years, and we’re no different. We were born to swim, and swim we did! Now my daughter’s a wader; not yet a swimmer, but yes, the great love for water is definitely there.

Initially, I did a Breezy install and got all the needed packages up to-date. I wanted more so I changed all “breezy” references to “dapper” in /etc/apt/sources.list, and did sudo apt-get update, and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. IIRC, a total of 940+ packages had to be updated over an estimated 4 and a half hours. I left the computer running overnight, woke up at around 2 am and finished the installs and configurations.

By morning, my wife, daughter, and sister-in-law, were able to use the computer for Internet surfing. I was able to recover their personal documents and multimedia files in the office; and just last night uploaded their files via an external USB-mounted hard drive that we use for mobile backups at work.

I just love Dapper! The default Human theme’s colors and icons just totally rawk, and for a while, I didn’t feel the need to install another theme. Well my kid really likes Gartoon, and since her gcompris theme is already in Gartoon, I installed that theme as well.

Mark Shuttleworth posted an announcement last night on planning Dapper+1. He divulged that the codename for the next release would be the “Edgy Eft”, saying that:

Edgy is all about cutting edge, perhaps bleeding edge,
brand new code and infrastructure. It will be the right time to bring in
some seriously interesting but definitely edgy new technologies which
lay the groundwork for the next wave of Ubuntu development.

The “bleeding edge” phrase is so Fedora Core, but IMO, Ubuntu won’t be like that in any way. Mark did say they were going to explore slightly unfamiliar territory that is out of the mainstream. This controlled exploration of technology will definitely bring Ubuntu as a GNU/Linux distribution to very, very high levels. The good stuff is just around the corner: Xen for virtualization (awesome GPLed technology that rimuhosting.com has been using for years!), multi-architecture support, and the XGL that blows away just about everyone.

To infinity, and beyond!

My wife and I have this “kapatid sa labas” or step-sibling of sorts, who we used to work with in Allegro, back in Makati. He’s now a flight steward for this nation’s flag carrier, and he was on our CDO-MLA flight. I tried to give him a hard time by complaining about the (his) service, but he outmaneuvered me, as my wife and I had to contend with hand carried baggage, which he had insisted that we stow away under the seat in front of us. It was a good thing that the life vest demo was on video, otherwise I might’ve laughed my gut out the whole time. Blah. It really was great having bumped into him again. My daughter remembered him too!

We stayed at the Dusit Hotel Nikko; posh, yes, but this selection wasn’t ours. It was mostly creditable to the auspices of my mom-in-law, who has great PR with the pharma companies, by the way. So the plan was to settle in, do some shopping, steal the van for a day and visit grandma, and spend the rest of the days doing more shopping. Now this didn’t exactly go as planned since mom needed the van, so we went to Novaliches, QC, straight from the airport.

Our house in Novaliches, QC, seemed to have gotten real small over the years. It must be because since my grandma stopped working on the garden, all sorts of plants have occupied what available space there was. I saw several monitor lizards darting in and out of the shrubs. I guess they were as eager to keep cool in Manila’s unbelievably stiffling heat. Lola Magding didn’t immediately recognize me, but I was happy she did eventually; and she cried as usual when someone close to her comes to pay her a visit. I was even happier that she remembered Pangga. Naturally, her “apo-sa-tuhod” got smothered with hugs and kisses, much to the latter’s irritation.

After lunch, Pangga, Aunt Fe, and Aunt Dodang talked a lot. Kysa got along with her Uncle Brian (5’10″ at 13 years, and he was just a runt when I last saw him) and the helpers, and they were doing their stuff. My Uncle Arnold and I did a one-on-one; not like how it was when Uncle Boy was still around, but yeah, two’s a quorum and will definitely do. You do know how catching up drinking sessions work, right?

That night, we were back at the hotel and did checks on the itinerary. Monday was to be spent for taking care of Pangga’s LTO certification at the Tayuman agency. It was pretty far from where we were, but it helped that we were able to borrow a car for the trip. LTO surprised me that day. I didn’t see the kind of transactions that I used to see. Everyone was being quite helpful and appeared to be no-nonsense in their dealings. We got the certification we needed in under 30 minutes! Wow. Talk about fixing up. The afternoon was spent going around Market-Market, a vast shopping area that I swear I’ll never visit again unless necessary. We met up with Mareng Lilay, Pangga’s closest friend, Kysa’s Ninang, co-worker at the Allegro, and now big time manager at Teriyaki Boy. Why do they get sweetest jobs? Don’t get me wrong, I’ll code anytime for food (and beer).

We went to Enchanted Kingdom the following day and pigged out and rode all we could. I wanted to try out the space shuttle ride, since it wasn’t around the last time, or maybe I just didn’t see it back then. Big disappointment. Nobody wanted to ride with me and I hated riding alone, so I missed out on that one. I’ll catch that ride next time, or maybe some other fast and crazy ride in HK!

On our last day, I met up with Carl, a high school buddy and one of my closest friends. We did some catching up over lunch, coffee, and Lights. Bong, bilib ako sa iyo tsong, kasi kahit anong mangyari, kahit papaano, inaangat mo ang pamilya mo at sarili mo sa wasto. To hell with those who righteously think they’re better than you are!

I was also able to meet up with Ubunteros Clair, JM, Charo, and Ealden. They’re all real cool people! Clair and JM compose one of the sweetest couples I’ve seen. They’re really a great match. Charo, well…Charo…nevermind. She’s well, disappointing. I was expecting to get scared off my socks with her patent claws and green wasabi for a brain. But no, she’s real cool and very nice naman pala! Ealden’s very “in demand” as he had his thoughts on coming interviews. Panicky? Not! But it’s obvious that he can bowl over any interviewer with his skills and his looks..nyarharhar! As I’ve been eating most of the time, I said I just wanted coffee. Ealden needed a chow real bad (overslept, ergo skipped meals; tsk) so we shuffled to Big Buddha at the Greenbelt. Surprise! Like our “kapatid” and “kumare”, the manager of that restaurant used to be a co-worker at Allegro!

I’m really happy that in spite of the tight schedule, we were able to do everything we needed and wanted to do; well, almost.