I am really glad Christmas is over. No more family gatherings, scrambling to find the best gift for each of my friends, mall crowds are back to normal again and we can get on with our usual daily boring lives. Okay, who am I kidding? I love Christmas and all those stuff. Sure, it can be very tiring and stressful but everything just snaps into place on Christmas day.
I expected our noche buena to be an absolute disaster because I volunteered to do all the cooking. I always find myself watching hours and hours of cooking shows (Oliver’s Twist, being my favorite) on a boring weekend and I wanted to see if I actually got something from it. I originally planned a feast with several dishes but scrap the idea thinking there was only 3 of us in the house and most food will just go to waste. I ended up cooking just spaghetti and meatballs, popping a honey glazed ham in the oven and letting my mom do the dessert. Everything turned out well, I suppose. They all love the ham and they better be considering I have to baste it every 10 freakin’ minutes for an hour and half. The spaghetti is a different story though because they expected it to be the sweet kind with gallons of banana catsup poured over but instead I used a can of whole peeled tomatoes which made it sour.
The rest of Christmas eve and day came by the same as with our family tradition. We went to church before midnight, ate dinner, slept through the night and excitedly got up for Christmas morning. I used to be all giddy and excited for this part when I was a kid, understandably, wondering if Santa and my parents got me the perfect gifts. Now that I’m all grown up, I’m looking forward to see my parents’ reaction to mine. Last year I got them a matching pair of watch which they ended up not using so I had to think of something better. Nothing fancy this time, just an all-expense paid trip to Boracay for their anniversary this January. It works both ways, really, as I get them out of the house for 4 days which is awesome.
Did I just wrote a whole paragraph about my cooking? Geez. Well alright, cut me some slack, I’m bored. I just came off from a short vacation and have to work only until the 28th then a week-long vacation after that. You can just imagine that there will absolutely be no work done on these 3 days.
And oh, special mention to Liz which I gave a spankin’ new blog to as my Christmas gift. She used to be on Blogger but is always having trouble about changing templates and such so I move it to wordpress with her own domain and all. Her blog is on vanillabelle.com and just like mine, it’s about our egoistic selves talking about how our silly little Christmas went. Liz, if you’re reading this, better use it as I have already paid for a year of hosting!
It’s December and as if there aren’t enough stuff happening already and my expenses are not going through the roof, I remember that my hosting service is up for renewal this weekend. This site is currently hosted at Dreamhost and although I do not have any problem with them whatsoever, I have decided to switch providers just because I do not want to pay more than a hundred dollars for hosting. I originally signed-up using one of their promo codes but it’s only for one time use.
Using Google to search for hosting providers is kinda hopeless. I don’t know who to trust as there are loads of “hosting review” sites which I think are put up by the hosting companies themselves. I did found a couple which narrow down my choices. Surpass Hosting is offering a promo for a year of hosting for $12 which will start on December 15. It looks tempting as it offers almost the same specifications as my Dreamhost plan (200 GB storage, 2000 GB transfer) but the reviews for the service are not that great. HostICan, on the other hand, is offering the same specifications plus 2 free domains and has glowing reviews but will set me back $45 even after I use a coupon.
I don’t know, maybe I should just opt for the cheaper one. After all, I don’t make any kind of money for this anyway and nobody clicks on my Google ads. Ever. In more than 2 years that I’ve been running this blog I earned a whopping… wait for it… $2! With the rate of the dollar now, I can’t even afford a movie ticket with that. I don’t really mind, it’s nice having a blog and all with your own domain and everything. Makes you feel kinda special.
I was browsing around Installer.app on my iPhone today and was delighted to discover that my favorite application, MobileScrobbler, has been updated. I thought this is probably a just minor one to fix some issues on the previous version. Imagine my surprise when I see the swanky new player with Last.fm radio streaming right on your iPhone. It’s almost as if they ported the client from the Desktop.
MobileScrobbler can be installed through Installer.app on the Community Sources repository under Multimedia.
Most of us have gotten our thirteenth month pay and Christmas bonus by now. For those who know me and still don’t have a clue what to get, I’m gonna make it a little easy for you and post the things that I want. You don’t have to give a nice gift. You could just send a text greeting on Christmas eve and I would be happy. Of course, expect that I won’t talk to you the whole of 2008. Just kidding. Not.
Paperback books. I love reading and paperbacks are cheap enough but will still earn you a genuine “thank you”. Some great titles which I have not read yet but been wanting to are Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild and Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants.
Price: From P200 - P400, Powerbooks or Fully Booked.
Jersey baseball neck tee from Topman. Looks simple, cool and not as boring as a plain tee. Perfect if I just want to go out for a quick trip to the mall or whatever. And oh, I wear size S.
Price: Around P500, Topman
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix DVD. Being the Potterhead that I am, I already have the previous 4 but I haven’t gotten around buying the fifth one yet. If you’re feeling kind enough to save me the hassle then I would really appreciate it if I find this under the tree on Christmas day.
Price: P699, PinoyDVD or your neighborhood video store.
be.ez LArobe Color Sleeve for Macbook 13.3. Whenever I take my MacBook with me, I wrap it around an old t-shirt so that it won’t get scratched by the other things in my bag. A sleeve is one of those which I always think of buying but did not because I can be cheap sometimes. If you’re not cheap then go get me one.
Price: P1400, Media Quest Marketing stall, 2F Glorietta 3.
Starbucks Coffee Press or Thermos. I hate instant coffee. No, I loathe instant coffee. Seriously, isn’t coffee suppose to wake you up with its fresh aroma and ridiculous amount of caffeine? Instant coffee is like water mixed with soil. Our office only has instant coffee so I get my fix at Starbucks but I’ll go broke if I do it everyday. So be an angel and get me the press or the thermos so I would not have to endure soiled water anymore.
Price: P700 - P1000, Starbucks.
Nintendo Wii. Yeah, yeah this gift is so 2006 but I still don’t have one even though they’re not really that hard to come by here in Metro Manila. I highly doubt that anyone is going to buy me a wii but who knows, maybe the big red guy reads my blog.
I was not a big fan of 3rd party applications on the iPhone. I’m one of those who think that it is perfect for what it is because it does everything I expected it to do. Also, a big reason for not installing apps is most of them are pretty useless and, dare I say it, ugly. Well, not anymore. Though a lot of them still are ugly (who am I to complain? they’re free), there are notable ones which will definitely add the much-needed functionality that we had to do without before. I assume you already have a jailbroken iPhone and have Installer.app installed.
Pretty much every one I show my iPhone to ended up being wowed by it. Until I tell them that it cannot forward SMS and for most it definitely is a deal-breaker. Luckily, weTool now lets you forward messages to any of your contacts. If that’s not enough, you can also use it to send texts to multiple recipients and copy messages to the Notes application. Call logs can also be manage allowing you to delete individual entries for whatever reason (I can only think of bad ones).
weTool is not yet available via Community Sources so you need to add: http://app.weiphone.com/installer/ in your source list.
