Happy New Year

Sharing with you some of the new year text messages I got:

HAPi NEW YEAR! May d Lord cntnually bls ur famly w/ mor hapnes,gud health,prosprty& peace of mind.May u alwys b blsd w/ dis priceles tresures 4 d coming yir!

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Happy New Year! Prosperity, good health, happiness and peace. Good luck and all the best this 2009. :)

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Tatlong mabuting Bisyo para sa bagong taon:
A-L-A-K - Alalahanin Lagi Ang Kapwa.
S-U-G-A-L - Sa Umaga Gunitain Ang Lumikha.
B-A-B-A-E - Basahin ang Bibliya At Ebanghelyo.

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God's gift to me are people like you, so, on wings of prayers, I whispered my thanks to Him &asked Him to blessyou in countless ways... Happy new year.

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Worry is wasting today's time to clutter up tomorrow's opportunities with yesterday's troubles. As children of GOD let us then be wise. Listen to the LORD's news rather than the world news. Let's welcome 2009 with hope excitement and positive outlook. Let's not be afraid to TRUST an unknown future to a well known GOD. We can choose where we go, what wedo, what we believe and how we behave. Have a wonderful,blessed, God glorifying year ahead.

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May God bless u more w/ what's truly essential in life: Stronger spirit, braver heart, healthier body, endless love & God's favor. A Wonderful New Year!!!

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Wishing you & your family not just happiness but pure joy, not just serenity but God's blessings! Happy New Year!

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May God continue to bring grace to you and your family this New Year, as well as in the years to come. Have a most blessed 2009!

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Before 2008 ends, i thank all d good people like U who made diz year beautiful for me.. i pray that u'll be blessed w/another fruitful year! God bless!

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Masayang pagbati sa 2009 kasabay ang panalangin na sana ay maging masagana at mas payapa ang buong taon para sa ating lahat.

Meeting old friends

I got word that a couple of co-workers got back in town and would like to meet old friends. It would be fun to reconnect with friends who once shared the same passion for OR and IT in the early days of the PC, so to MOA I went. It's uncanny to vividly remember how we all looked before and now see the changes that twenty plus years can do.

Reunions are heartwarming. Old friends sharing lunch together after years apart, retelling tales of old memories always with a laugh, even the ones that hurt before. Folks enjoy reuniting with people only if they enjoyed their previous time together. I am sure we all enjoyed the brief time together better than the lunch we had.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

2008 is almost over...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! 2008 is almost over and this is the first time that my website gets updated after more than 365 days. The previous update was before Christmas last year yet. Since then, free web hosting service where I keep my resume/CV has discontinued its freebie operations. The free URL redirection service which I use was also down for a while. The service is back and my account surprisingly is still intact but my CV pages are irretrievably lost. Sigh! Anyway, I acquired this domain name and some web space more than a year ago because I planned to do away with some of the free stuff. I am starting to do that now.

Yet, I am still using some of the freebies available out there. I use Picasa, Photobucket, and Flickr. I still have my Gmail and Yahoo accounts. I still have my rarely updated blogspot. These, along with Youtube, are the old reliables. Their servers are still faster than the ordinary webhosting services. Hooray for these free services!

I will be porting this site to Joomla.Perhaps I will move my blog to wordpress. Study Ruby on Rails. All on hugotheboss.com.

Why hugotheboss.com?

• My co-workers from way back (CPM/DOS days) will remember that I called myself the Boss. Not because I was a boss but because I am a Springsteen fan. Then Hugo Boss products started to do well locally. I thought Perry the Boss has a nice brash ring to it.
• Of course the domain name hugoboss.com and its variations are not available anymore. And I could not afford to buy hugoboss.net or other variants from them. But hugotheboss.com is available and I grabbed it before they can get it.
• I also acquired some substantial webspace and bandwidth last year so I can play around with some of the more interesting web-related stuff. This is my sandbox. Bureautocracy does not allow me to tinker with work servers even if it's all legit.
• This will be my portal site. No more redirects or tiny urls. But still, much of the photos and videos are stored on the free multimedia service hosts. Only the html pages and incidental graphics for the banners are here on the server. In fact the whole site will fit on a standard 1.44mb diskette.

Arroyo apologist refuses to see rot in GMA government

Belinda Olivares-Cunanan finds it bothersome that Rodolfo Noel “Jun” Lozada Jr. engaged in irregularities while he was an official of a government corporation, and she questions his credibility. (“Whistle-blower’s own sins,” Inquirer, 2/12/08) She’s alarmed that the religious groups backing Lozada play blind to the double standard. She says “No wonder people are so confused.”

No, Ms Cunanan, we are not confused. We are fully aware of the rampant corruption in government. The Church, for its part, doesn’t play blind. It sees the corruption as borne out in the investigation.

What’s more bothersome and alarming is the refusal of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s apologists (including a Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist) to see the corruption and the continuing efforts of this government to cover it up. The apologists are the ones guilty of double standard. The Chavit Singson exposé was not that different from Joey de Venecia’s. Lozada’s part may not be equal to that of Clarissa Ocampo’s, but it also exposes corruption at the highest level.

I hope Commission on Higher Education Chair Romulo Neri does his part and does a Clarissa. And I hope the press will also relentlessly expose corruption and not cast doubts on the ones who expose them.

appears in:
Phil. Daily Inquirer-March 20, 2008
PDI Special Features - NBN Deal

Sport lang!

The Miami Heat and the Magnolia Beverage Masters, my favorite basketball teams, are both having such nightmarish times that not even Michael Fajatin can amuse me. Then the Fed (the tennis champ not the post-Greenspan board) lost to the Joke. That means it will take a while before he catches up Sampras' Grand Slam record. Rafa also lost, to Tsonga (who he?). New and younger talents indeed. Pete's record will be safe for a while as the younger ones crowd out the top players. Looks like a bad weekend for my sports watching.

The big upside that negates the lows is the all-goddess finals in the Australian Open Tennis Championships. That's enough to make my weekend. Tennis fans can't ask for more. Ana Ivanovic faces Maria Sharapova. Maria won eventually but fans do not care who wins. It is a sight to behold. Lithesome Maria versus shapely Ana. Gone are the Williams sisters, one of which has a body like Lebron James and the other looks like Blakdyak. Never mind if Maria grunts louder than Monica (Seles, not Lewinsky).

Then I caught on HBO the Kevin Costner-starrer "For Love of the Game", one of my top 5 favorite movies. I don't know why this movie clicked with me. I've seen it like a dozen times, I have a copy, but I still spend two hours watching it again on cable. It is both a love story and a sports movie (Costner's 3rd baseball movie?). IMHO, this is Sam Raimi's best work, the same director who gave us Spiderman and the Evil Dead movies. Kelly Preston makes John Travolta a very lucky guy. Good song selections with Bob Seger's "Against the Wind" and Bob Dylan's "I Threw it All Away" capture the drama and emotions.

Not a bad sports weekend after all. The men's tennis finals may prove to be a good weekend capper. I go for the Joke on this one.