coffee break

i was supposed to write this entry when, as all of my other entry, i tweet about it and it didn’t make sense anymore. social media killed blogs, twitter single handedly made me lazy. it’s amusing to say the least what our lives have now been reduced to, a 140 character update. there are even times that people communicate through twitter that the ‘conventional’ sms and voice calls. my friend missed the movie because i tweeted her on the new screening time rather than sending an sms…

and like mtv, twitter will shutdown the world, but i think google will beat them all and will become self aware by 2015. just saying, get your google+ now.

i will not attribute my non-blogging to a lack of tools, but tooling does help specially for a techy guy like me. nor will i try to blame work; as somebody wise had pointed out, work will always be there, it’s how we deal with it that matters. blogging had escaped me, my usual twice, minimum one blog a week is now a mere chance or even mandatory because i need to justify to myself why i’m paying for this url and hosting. but the thing is, i do love to rant, or rave. i do it all the time, but this time through twitter. twitter changed a lot for me, and its nifty feature and mobile apps made it a non-compete kind of thing. mobility is really taking over the lives of people, mine specially.

a lot has changed with me. my friend @yayiebuenviaje accuse me of being a mac fanboy. i maintain to this day that i’m not, i am a mainstream loving windows guy. but i do love their products. for me the difference of me liking the products against being a fanboy is that, i don’t like everything apple. take for instance the iphone 3gs and prior. i hated the form factor, its aesthetics, which is a big basis for me buying and/or liking a product. what made it worse for me is that my mom gave me a 3gs before, and it only lasted me less than 4 hours on full charge. i have to say that this is not a hand me down, this is a brand new, unopened and sealed phone. and what cemented my “hate” for apple is its ceo coupled with the release of iphone 4. for right after its release, it was plagued with the death grip. and for the longest time apple denied it, it’s just a rumor. then by some soul searching and truth serum they admitted that there’s a problem, but dragged everybody else by pointing fingers to other handsets saying that they too have the same problem. the ceo made an appearance in a song and dance publicity event if you will, being brazen and in your face as he’s known, saying, as i wittingly surmise, ‘yes there’s a problem, here’s a free bumper”. what the fuck?!? you have people line, push and upgrade their plan, wait for eternity, shell out php30,000-php40,000 (in this neck of the woods) for a faulty handset? are you screwing with me? (not the kind i like, nor that you’re my type). then again i like my macbook pro. the color, feel, build, sheer power and awesomeness makes me forget that apple screwed me with just 2 usb ports and nonstandard display output.

my introduction to ipad2 was rather an unusual one. to start with, i hated the ipad. being a proud owner of a galaxy tab, i was preaching left and right how impractical ipad is and great the 7″ of wonder that the tab is, please note the present tense. first is that i have to say that it’s a gift to have an account manager at apple is, taking care of your every whim. secondly, it doesn’t hurt that the product is very visually appealing. my account manager called that i can pickup the accessory i ordered for my macbook; a connector to the projector for presentation. ever so “discretely” during the launch of the ipad2 in manila, i found my way to the mac store to find a long line of people trying either to get their hands on the device or gawk at it. skimmed pass the line, i found my account manager to get my connector. she handed me my order and a demo unit of the ipad2. clever bitch. not to seem rude or a prude, i played a little with the device with no intention of purchasing, but the bitch knew me. while i was toying with it, she grabbed a smartcover and demoed how it works. and right then i purchased the ipad so that i can use the cover, less the waiting and the queue.

you see, i get why yayie thinks that i am a mac fanboy. i am apple’s target market. the techy guy who’s all about aesthetics and cool factor. the guy who wants to see how it all works, put together things, upgrade to the latest version of software and hardware. were mobility and accessibility is a requirement rather than a nice to have, that needs to be plugged-in 24/7 and will die of slow internet access. i am all of those things. i am also the guy that can’t understand why a brand secludes itself from the world. why it doesn’t support popular applications outside its platform. this is why i am not a mac fanboy. i can’t and won’t accept that i’m locked (commitment issues?) to any one thing even if it’s a pretty little aluminum unibody shell.

and lastly, would it hurt if windows live writer and mac os be friends?

by now, with not much thinking, you may have deduced how easily i loose interest in phones. and when  i say loose interest, it’s largely translated that i loose them. literally.

last september, i shifted to blackberry/android combo from my usual nokia, htc/android phone. i am one of those person who has 2 phones, attributed by my paranoia of people tracing who i am. and it did happened to me so there’s just cause. this shift came about by my change of employer. my new  employer is debatedly the largest IT company, and the most trusted IT brand (by 2010 brand ranking). because of my freakishly connected-neediness that i have learned, loved and grown accustomed, i require all my future employers to have this accessibility, mobility. however, employer does not own the #1 email and collaboration tooling that i have been using for the last 7 years of my career. not only that, it has imposed strict and at times over the top security to mobile accessibility. blackberry. really, over the top. i really don’t like blackberry, i find it pretentious and unnecessary, but i don’t have a choice. either join the bandwagon or no dice. halfheartedly i bought my first bb (short for blackberry), a pearly white bb bold 9700. it was beautiful. the way its pearl white cover glistens against the ray of the the sun giving off pinkish grey tones, the distinct white leather cover at the back with its silver logo, the soft yet sturdy portrait qwerty keyboard that allows me to type 60 words per minute. it wasn’t only beautiful, it was heavenly.

before i owned one, i don’t get why bb users, hang on to their bb even how busted and ruggedly deteriorated the case is. how can i understand, i’m not a bb user. but you see, once you own one, you’ll develop a love affair not to bb, but to your bb. you’ll get to know it intimately. every inch of it, the softness of the keys as you use it, the shortcuts you made and the applications you downloaded and the customization you did. even though at a distance that they may look all the same, they are not. they have their own kinks and persona. my white bb loves to show off and change its theme on a daily basis, but would stick to the theme of will and grace at its ringing tone, exactly 33 seconds, 3 seconds over the standard length of a ring tone. it loves to catch people’s attention by just being its pearly white self.

but alas, after a 7 month love affair, i lost my white bb bold. i left it in a cab in broad daylight. i was devasted. my contacts, text messages, my bb messenger! good thing i made a habbit of backing up my  macbook pro when it started going weird on me, so i made backups of my bb as well. bb messenger also syncs to your remote email.  i decide to get the new bb torch in black. it’s a good phone but fails in comparison to my white bb. i guess there’s no comparison to your first love. so much so that i lost this phone 6 days after i bought it, on holy wednesday. i lost it at the restroom near the coffee bean and tea leaf in 313 somerset at orchard road, singapore. i  almost cried. not because i lost it together with my credit cards, atms and almost us$2,000 in cash. i almost cried because i hate the feeling that i lost it because of how stupid i am. shit happens i know, but this shit happens a lot to me. by black saturday, i bought a red bb torch back in manila. i’m not worried with my contact list and what not, i know it’s safely in the cloud where my bb automatically syncs and backup. i just need to activate it. but i do worry about losing this one yet again. i have terrible luck with mobile phones…

i still miss my white bb bold. wherever you may be, i hope you miss me too.

ps. smart infinity changed my number. if you want to get in touch, send me a message though email.

sacrilege! to all ben10 (ben tennyson) fans out there, mcdonald’s philippines have released 4 ben10 toys together with their happy meal. the toys are not that bad, really juvenile if you ask me, directly targeting the 6-9 age group. i have nothing against the toys, except this…

since when did aliens carry man-purse? something is wrong here. i know aliens are far intelligent, are they now more fashion forward? pushing the envelope people…