in retrospect…

the Commission on Elections [COMELEC] is now requiring all candidates for local and national posts to undergo drug testing as mandated by a 2004 COMELEC Resolution… the COMELEC is giving candidates until today to submit their drug test certificates…

Section 4 of the resolution said that no candidate who wins a seat will be able to assume the position until they submit a drug test certificate, but it doesn’t say anything regarding any penalty if the drug test certificate shows that the candidate is using illegal substance or other performance enhancing drugs…

but Atty Romulo Macalintal is saying that this is against the Philippine Constitution… according to Atty Mac, the Constitution says that drug testing is mandatory only for all winning candidates, or after the May 14 elections… but COMELEC chairman Benjamin Abalos is very adamant about this, saying that all candidates who fails to submit the certificate will be disqualified…

i just hope Abalos and all his cronies in the COMELEC faithfully follow the letter of their own resolution and bar any candidate-winner from assuming a seat if they don’t have a drug test certificate AND everyone found using illegal substances… this, most especially for all candidates coming from the movie industry running for public offices…

i am not saying that all celebrities are using drugs, but knowing the lifestyle of these actors and actresses, i wouldn’t be [very much] surprised if some candidates are barred from assuming office, or even from running altogether…

Ciao, sweetie…

Tags: [ politics | drugs | drug testing | COMELEC ]

crossposted in Kubiertos

was mildly surprised early this morning [about 8:30am] when a messenger came to the house looking specifically for me… when i went to the door to see what it was about, i was further surprised when the guy was reaching into a plastic bag for 2 boxes of Krispy Kreme’s… i thought that the wife wanted to surprise me and decided to buy me donuts [why? donuts, though? i don't like sweet eats] and have it delivered to the house… and then, the messenger pulled out a piece of paper out of an envelope and handed it to me along with the boxes of donuts… it turned out to be a letter from Krispy Kreme’s PR Blooey Singson… part of the letter says:

Krispy Kreme, America’s most loved doughnut, offers egg-shaped doughnuts in the spirit of Easter. We’d like to give you first bite of these doughnuts, that come in five designs and two flavors — chocolate and cream cheese. The Easter doughnuts are great for Easter egg hunts, too!

i was eating one of the donuts as i was writing this, and it actually was good!! the usual sweetness and that melts-in-your-mouth features are a welcome change in my usual food…

here’s some additional info from Blooey sent via email:

Enjoy great value with Krispy Kreme’s Sweet Easter Treat when you purchase 1 dozen Assorted with Egg Shaped Doughnut and a medium Frozen Blend or Iced Espresso for just P379. Hurry! This offer is until April 15, 2007 only.

Plus! It’s our 1st Easter in the Philippines . So join us on April 8 as Krispy Kreme celebrates Easter with fun-filled activities for the entire family.

Visit us at Bonifacio High Street, Bonifacio Global City , Taguig City and Ground Floor, Bldg. B, SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City .

Share some Egg Shaped Doughnuts today!

anyway, it will be Easter soon, so head on over to a Krispy Kreme store nearest you [The Fort and SM Megamall] and get your usual donuts plus their new Easger egg-shaped donuts to satisfy your sweet tooth…

i am also reminding myself to try their coffee out…

tsalap!!

Ciao, sweetie…

Tags: [ Krispy Kreme | donuts ]

there is a new show in the airwaves [or the cables, if you prefer] called 30 Rock starring Tina Fey as Liz Lemon, the head writer of a sketch comedy show who must deal with her arrogant new boss, Jack Donaghy played by Alec Baldwin…

this is a very funny show where Tina plays the lead role to the hilt, and Baldwin is at his “dry-witted, brilliant best”, according to one commenter of the show…

anyway, this post is really not all about the show, but a comment made by Fey in its premier episode… when Baldwin said to Fey that “that’s how you should dress to work” when she showed up to work one day in pink jacket and skirt, Fey shot back in a very sarcastic tone:

yeah! if i was the president of the Philippines!!

this is one comment against the Philippines that i agree with… what a laugh!!

Ciao, sweetie…

Tags: [ 30 Rock | Philippines | president ]

every male [yes, including me], have at one time or another envied the package of the next man… we sneak a look at that bulge, and wished we have the same… or when we watch porno movies and we loook at the penises of known male porno stars Ron Jeremy, Mr Marcus, or the ever-famous-with-women-who-love-butt-plugs Peter North, men cringe when they do not measure up to these porno stars’ baggages… the length and the width are our main points of comparison…

and yes, yesterday, i suffered penis envy… but not the regular kind… what i really suffered from was camera envy… more to the point, camera lens envy… :$

cameras of all makes, models, and lenses of all sizes were on display at the 1st PinoyPhotography.org Badminton Tournament held at ClubBadminton in Makati City the whole day yesterday… photographers and badminton players, or both, trooped to Makati yesterday to join in the celebrations… some have played badminton till they dropped from exhaustion, some took photos of players and models that were all over the place, including Ms Daisy Reyes and Rachel Lobangco, or did both… and with Epson and Canon printers in attendance, shooters printed their images till they can print no more…

and the cameras??

goodness!! take a look at these babies!!

aren’t they the beauties?? and i was exposed to them the whole day, and it took all effort on my part not to drool… a lot… okay, maybe a bucket or two, but definitely not more than that… there were even lenses which costs way more than 6 of my own Pentax K100D!! sheeessshhh… :S

anyway, one good thing that came out of that yesterday was me and my partner won the Men’s Doubles Level B championship… hehehe… i got a medal and an EPSON R270 Photo Printer out of it…

not bad at all for a typical sunday, eh?? for more of the pictures [you'll be so glad you looked at this set, believe me] go to my picture gallery…

Ciao, sweetie…

Tags: [ badminton | penis envy | camera | photography | camera lenses ]

i chanced upon this news story today from CNNMoney and i am glad that i do not live in the US nor am i its citizen…

in a very bold move, a US federal court judge overturned a law which restricts children’s access to Internet porn as being too restrictive and unconstitutional, and which violates its people’s right to free speech… the ruling which came out March 22nd ruled against the Child Online Protection Act of 1998 due to a challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union…

i have yet to find anything why the ACLU challenged the said law right after it was signed by US President Bill Clinton, that was why i reserve my comments on this… but why anyone would want a law protecting their children in general is totally beyond me… again, that was why i don’t want to live in the US… they have such stupid laws that will make you want to cry: WHY???!!!

to wit:

Louisiana: It is illegal to rob a bank and then shoot at the bank teller with a water pistol
Maine: You may not step out of a plane in flight.
Massachusetts: Mourners at a wake may not eat more than three sandwiches.
Michigan: A woman isn’t allowed to cut her own hair without her husband’s permission.

and on, and on, and on… for more of this, go to Stupid Laws…

again: WHY???!!!

anyway, whatever my son may say or do, he cannot enjoy [yes, the word is enjoy] Internet porn until he can prove to me that he can handle it maturely… what?? no age limit?? you ask…

oh no, none… i said maturely because i know of some people in the age range of 25 to 45 who still act like kids around a popcorn… :S

aren’t you proud to be a full-blooded Pinoy??

Ciao, sweetie…

Tags: [ stupid US laws | ACLU | free speech | internet | porn ]

:[

it all started about 3 months ago, when my Internet connection bandwidth from Globelines Broadband started declining for some reason... i later found out that the connections were broken due to the earthquake that happened in Taiwan and Globelines was not the only one affected [although i heard they had the worst of it]… the connections only started stabilizing about a month and a half ago…

but since then, i was in constant conversation [if you can call ranting a conversation] with their customer service [though, if you ask me, they should be just called the secretaries pool, since all they do is take down notes on what the problem was... tsk tsk tsk] because, every so often, like every 15 minutes or so, the donnection will suddenly drop for no apparent reason… and so, i called, and called, and called it was like during my younger days when i was on the phone with a lover all day and night…

it came now to a point that i am considering extending my connection from SmartBro which, although is a little slower, but at least is stable enough that i don’t get disconnected all the time… sheeshhh…

Globe technicians have been coming to the house almost everyday now hoping to pinpoint the problem and fix it, but to no avail… it prolly is just that connections in my area is really next to nothing… the problem was, i cannot have this connection discontinued as i have a contract with Globe for at least a year… and i still have 9 months to go of this… tsk tsk tsk…

i hope Globe gets to read this and finally get this fixed as i am already so frustrated with their service… haaayyy… :S

Ciao, sweetie…

Tags: [ Globelines | broadband | internet ]

with Leo Martinez as Congressman Manhik Manaog at your self-service and Manuel “Jun” Urbano, Jr as Mr Shooli, M.O.N.A.Y ni Mr Shooli is set to be shown soon in Philippine theaters…

M.O.N.A.Y or “Misteyks of the Neysyon Address Yata” is a movie, though political in nature but without pointing to any particular issue, with lots of comedy, but the nature of the movie is serious… according to Martinez, this movie is meant to educate votes who will troop to the polls on May 14…

maraming tangang pulitiko ang nasa puwesto dahil na rin sa mga tangang botante

and that is true enough… if we want politicians who will work towards the people’s agenda, who is working for us and not for themselves or for their political partymates or their friends or their padrinos, we must be astute enough to know our politicians not simply because they are celebrities…

anyway, this is one Pinoy movie that i will definitely watch our for… you see, i don’t watch Pinoy movies for the very simple reason that watching one makes me feel stupid afterwards… which is why i will not be voting for Cesar Montano because his platform will be the movie industry… ewwwww…

Ciao, sweetie…

Tags: [ MONAY | politics | movies | Mr Shooli ]

aside: go for the rhinoplasty Houston, Texas

if you managed to watch CSI: Miami last night, you will know what i am talking about…

we all know that Horatio Caine [played by David Caruso] is the epitome of an uber-cool super cop when it comes to busting criminals and solving seemingly unsolvable crimes…

anyway, in last night’s episode, they were looking for a kidnapped person whom they managed to pinpoint to a building that was about to be blown up… with 5 seconds to go before detonation, Horatio went into the doomed building in his sleek black Hummer, managed to save the victim who was tied in silver packaging tape, bring him into his vehicle parked about 4 meters away, and drive out of the building with detonations happening behind and all around him with nary an expression on his face!! COOL!!

it’s like nobody and his brother can break his composure either when shooting a criminal, or his girlfriend getting killed… and no one is like that!! how real is this guy?? oh right, he is just a TV show character… goodness!!

i like the characters of Gil Grissom [played by William Petersen] of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Mac Taylor [Gary Sinise] of CSI: NY better… yeah, they’re both cool, too, but not to the point that makes them seem less like human… unlike the character being played by David Caruso…

again, no one can be THAT cool under extreme stress, people!!

it’s not that i don’t like CSI… the reverse, in fact… the wife and i live on CSI… if we couldn’t manage to watch it during the week nights, we catch up to it starting 9pm Sundays, where all 3 shown within the week are replayed… i just can’t pass up this chance to comment on this episode…

Ciao, sweetie… < -- Horation Caine cool

Tags: [ CSI ]

aside: anyone looking for a plastic surgeon in Naples??

have you ever done something stupid that costs your company millions of pesos worth of data??

if you have, then you prolly know how this computer technician in Alaska felt when, after formatting a hard disk, found out later on that it contained $38 billions worth of accounts of applicant information for an oil-funded sales account… it still wouldn’t have been so bad except for one thing: the daily backup tapes were unreadable!! :o

so, their final approach was to recover from another source of backup… they turned to the most unlikely source of information: paperwork consisting of application forms, birth certificates, and proof of residence stored in more than 300 cardboard boxes, costing the Permanent Fund Dividend Division more than $200,000 to re-enter everything over a period of 4 months to re-enter everything using 70 people working overtime…

i remember my biggest mistake when i was first starting out in network administration… this was way back in 1998 when i was given the task of deleting unneeded directories in a server… i was just supposed to delete the contents of the /tmp directory in a Linux server, but i didn’t look where i was at the time and simply typed in rm -rf * denoting delete all thinking that i was where i was supposed to be… you know what happened next, right?? no?? well, when the prompt was supposed to return after a brief period of time and it didn’t, i suddenly realized my mistake and immediately hit the off button of the server…

obviously, i was at the root directory, and the command proceeded to delete ALL the directories one-by-one… fortunately for me, it did it alphabetically… and since the /home [where the most important user data were in] was right in the middle of the list, and i was able to turn it off at the right time, it was saved… i simply re-installed Linux, and it was like no one knew what happened… **whew**

after that time, i was very conscientious of the things i do in a server, most especially if i was deleting something… even if it was just a file… and that was the turning point of my career in administering Linux servers…

anyway, whatever happened to that computer technician??

Ciao, sweeite…

Tags: [ computer | technician | Linux | humor ]

aside: are you looking for New York City face lifts??

the finalists for the 2007 Philippine Blog Awards are now out!! check who they are here…

although i am not a finalist, i still will be at the RCBC Plaza on the 31st of March, awarding night, not only to find out who the best of the best will be, but also to record the whole thing on digital film… yep, i am one of the team who will document the event…

maybe next year…

Ciao, sweetie…

Tags: [ philippine blog awards | blogging ]

aside: if you are from Washington and needing something done to your face, you can get the Washington DC plastic surgery…