The story so far on my left leg

Well, the reason why my leg still hasn't healed yet because it was a partial LCL tear. And all this time I've been handling it wrong. Back in early February, when I was bending my knee, bad idea. Not only was I not supposed to be bending my knee, but I also wasn't supposed to be walking on my left leg either.

My leg as it is now

And it resulted in that. Aside from the LCL tear, I believe a 2nd tear happened on my lower calf. My silly cameraphone doesn't show the colors right, but it's seriously red there. So, since February 23, I have not bent my knee till now. Thanks to that, I feel my LCL reconnected, but I'm still not going to bend my knee until my lower calf heals. But it's become very frustrating to deal with. I was supposed to get crutches last Monday, but I've yet to get them. My right leg is becoming fatigued from all the hobbling. I have a feeling I may not get them, considering how terrible my luck has gotten, and I really think this language barrier has just about ruined me. Can you believe, since December last year, I've not been able to  hold a proper conversation with anyone without exploding into a coughing fit. And when I finally got a new supply of cough drops earlier this week, the damn things are a factory defect because for some ridiculous reason, the menthol is not present. And this is a brand I've been using for many months now, and in the one time I really needed them, they are a freaking rip off. So now I gotta wait for a new resupply. I'd probably ask about those crutches too but damn my bad luck. I can't believe how much of a mess this whole situation has become. It's not helping my view of this country either. Just when I thought I turned things around ending 2013, 2014 has been off to a really frustrating start for me...

Want to know how bad my luck was? While my knee was bandaged, the only open spot was my knee cap area. A mosquito saw fit to bite not once, but 6 times in the same spot in a crescent moon shape.

Let's not forget that due to a communication error, I was not able to eat eggs in February except for 1 piece (don't ask). The food poisoning in December 2013, the event that started this chain reaction leading to the break down in my leg, and I couldn't eat eggs for the protein when I really needed them because of potential contamination of the eggs that were purchased (no way was I going to risk food poisoning again).

(By the way, if anyone was wondering about the timeline: food poisoning in December, left ankle hurt shortly after a very nasty mosquito bite, during my very slow recovery in January, the severe lack of protein (egg ban for one month) + my over exertion of my legs (I live in a 3 story apt) led to the breakdown in my just recovered left leg (Jan 23). LCL partially torn or separated, muscle in upper calf hurting is where I'm at now.)

The year is young, but my luck is too old for that spit

Health status? 70%. Maybe less. Recovering from my food poisoning incident was a slow process, whether it was my malnourished state or I was just too tired, I neglected the warning signs on my left leg, the same leg that had the ankle-bug-bite sprain. I was too pre-occupied with taking my supplements and watching what I eat (I put a 1 month ban on anything egg related), I did what ever it took to heal my ankle faster since that was more important, but I hadn't realized the slight pain in my knee was more serious than cramps.

I ended up injuring the ligament on my left knee, and it's back to hobbling around again. I am seriously putting way too much strain on my right leg, almost 2 months now I been putting what's left of my weight on it, once my left leg is fully healed I might end up with a kick boxer right leg >__>

And that's the gist of it. I am in a lot of pain and putting a lot of ice on it, wrapping it up, and I've got a few more writing assignments to do and it's just not looking good. Hadn't had a chance to give my 250GB hdd a proper funeral either :/

Health down to 60%

The first 2 weeks of December have not been nice to me, despite getting my new hard drive ahead of schedule. Let me put this in as few words as possible:

1. Nasty cold from November 16 to December 10. I currently have trouble breathing and cannot sustain lengthy conversations.
2. Still suffering back problems related to above cold; due to my inability to sleep properly, I toss and turn too much, and nearly crush my lungs by having my right shoulder jammed to close to my ribcage.
3. During this time, the mosquito's came out in full force, and one of them bit me on the area above my ankle (on the top side of my foot). This was a devastating bite as it paralyzed much of my muscles to the point where I can barely walk, it's as if I have a sprain (still suffering from this at the time of this post).
4. The final killer, I'm currently suffering from food poisoning (bad eggs from the first week of December). I was too pre-occupied to realize it sooner, and this went on for more than a week until my abdomen pains went on long enough.

As you can see I am in no shape to do much of anything. I have many, many things to do, sorting my hard drives in preparation for retirement, I have several GameFAQs guides to update, I have Android development duties, plenty of blog posts I was supposed to write, anime to watch, manga to read, games to play, and I actually have a life.

If you are waiting for me to continue any of the above, do know that I am very, very much got the life sucked out of me. Weight loss, aching bones, can barely walk and trying to stop myself from coughing, it's not easy right now so do have some patience as I do remember everyone and I will do what I can.

My week of November 6th, 2013

I had a little issue earlier in the week, about my ISP and the Nintendo eShop for the 3DS. Long story short, my wireless carrier prohibited large file downloads, making Resident Evil Revelations un-downloadable. Yeah, don't ask why I'm using 3G internet to download it, but it's my only internet access method, so I had to.... use a proxy. Yep, I shoved a proxy into the wifi settings on the 3DS, and got the entire game thanks to a proxy. As you might imagine, this left me completely unable to play my 3DS, so I did what any sane person would do: marathon anime! I finally am current with a number of my shows, such as Arpeggio and Golden Time, first time in a long time I watched so many eps in a row :D

Which was a nightmare because I stayed up late at night babysitting the connection most of the time, as I had to let it run night and day. This of course kept me awake for many hours, many much more hours, leading my left eye to get very, very sore. So sore, that the second night of downloading the game, an eyelash was caught in my left eye, and I wasn't interested in letting it itch me up, so I used the old wash and rinse with water to get the hair out. I then went to sleep and woke up a few hours later with some pain in my head. I naively thought "oh no another headache", but it was much worse. This finally confirms it, I can't let a large amount of water get to my eye anymore, I ran into this problem last time when I found out I cannot cry anymore or else it's instant pain, but I thought that was mostly the tears, now it seems like any sort of liquid cannot come into contact with my left eye. If you're wondering how I even take showers, I had to change that too, keeping my head mostly down, and have the water come down my forehead or around my eyelashes, I've become so paranoid because I'm still traumatized by the unforgettable pain I felt in my left eye during the incident. Trust me, I really thought I'd lose it forever, that's not a trauma to easily overcome.

The reason why I find that worse than my spinal-induced headaches, is because when I have the pain in my left eye, it's inside my head. Back in I can feel this really throbbing pain, and because it's inside my head, applying Tiger Balm or any other ointment/painkiller never helped. Not even an icepack helped. This is now something I just have to avoid completely, because there's no painkiller that can soothe it now. The only remedy I found was wrapping my eye tightly, and leave it closed as long as I can, which also means lowering my rapid eye movement to a standstill. This is now at the top of my list of things to check on when I schedule a checkup at the hospital (whenever that will be).

I then came across some bad news regarding that Seagate Hard Drive I have been keeping alive, the one at 2% health (which oddly went up to 4% just recently). I have to finally retire the drive after 6 years of service, which it just accumulated too many bad sectors since I got my Desktop (went over 2000 bad sectors in less than a month). This drive served me well, if only for a short amount of time, but more importantly, this was the drive that held everything that I did in Germany, from my fansub work, the backups, and pretty much my entire usage history of my time in Germany during 2006-2007, I think it did well, considering it didn't take a dramatic major dump like my WD 1TB did.

Then that typhoon came by, which I hadn't known the seriousness of that until that wind, which was so strong, it slammed my window shut. I found that particularly interesting because it's a rusty window, something you need to put your whole body weight into just to close it, and the wind just boop, slam. I'm very thankful my area didn't get the brunt of it, and my prayers go out to those that felt it's full force, I've experienced many of the storms here over the past few years (particularly the flooding of 2009), and I know it's not a picnic. I've not really spent much time online during that weekend, but I did come across this link at Amazon, so if you can, give a donation, no matter the amount. I really think these folks in the Philippines who are homeless because of the storm need to at least know that people care.

http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_356995202_2?ie=UTF8&node=1297793011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=right-csm-1&pf_rd_r=1JA8C2Y82H2FR3S9PP5E&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1656429182&pf_rd_i=507846

Trust me, it's not a good thing losing what little you have, so stay strong, citizens of the Philippines!

The weird and wonderful 1st week of October: Nintendo 3DS, Army-Navy etc

That was the most strangest week I've had since, a very long time actually. Probably since I had both an HD2 and iPhone 3G at the same day. But I've waited 2 years for this, and I say this feels a lot better than getting 2 phones that were actually useless to me lol (my hands are bad with capacitive screens, at least those old ones back then)

I knew on Sunday September 29, that it was going to be one crazy week. That day I was out very late taking care of stuff, it got so late it ended up as the second time I found myself in a mall well into closing time. In fact it was so late, I had to grab dinner at McDonalds, which actually made me iffy because that was the 2nd time in 20 days (not a  good thing to me).

Get ready for the zombiepocalypse :P

I also got meself a USB wireless adapter for my desktop at CDR King, which you might recall my desktop had nothing of the sort. Lucky for me, the Chinese-looking thing (like most of CDRKing's items) happened to be using a Realtek chip that supported AP Station mode, basically sharing an internet connection over wifi. Which meant I could use my USB 3G Broadband modem to stream it through the wifi to other wireless devices. Such as the 2DS I was planning to get. Of course, I didn't know it would be the 3DS I would get 3 days later:

I've finally joined the 3D race :D (or whatever the Nintendo 3DS group is called, for example PC gamers are "The Master Race" :P) The reason why it was unexpected was because I was originally out with someone to get computer parts (at the same area I got my desktop), but the deal was if the particular parts were not there, I could use the cash to get the 3DS instead. Which of course I was not expecting the parts to not be there, considering it was practically computer heaven. So I went into Game One Gadget and inquired about their 3DS price, and I was expecting it to be in the ballpark of the rival store, Datablitz's php7,600. Imagine my surprise when I was told it's php7,000, which is a little more than $20 USD cheaper. I just had to get that, especially when I consider that if I had pursued the 2DS and imported it into this country, it'd cost a heck of a lot more than that. What's even more complicated, was that I had planned to use my GameFAQ's earnings *cough* reward to get that 2DS, and they had just announced the July FOTM winners were going to be paid. In October! I then wrote off the 2DS because at that rate, it looked like I was going to be paid in January 2014.

It was a good meal...

...Made better by playing Flower Shop in a Krispy Kreme while waiting for a ride.

That night it was late (again), and I said forget McDonalds, twice in 4 days is a disastrophy. Enter Army Navy Burger and Burrito, which I have to say, if you've got one in your area, give it a try, really. Their Starving Sailor sandwich destroys Subway, at 8 inches I wasn't sure I was going to finish my Onion Rings. By the way, their fries are a blast, compared to that stuff at McDonalds :P

My ritual is safe once again.

Enough about food, you might have realized something about that day. I so wasn't expecting the 3DS that it didn't hit me until the ride home, that I didn't get a game >__< Aside from my DS games, but it's all about the 3DS games, right? 2 days later I went out and picked up Fire Emblem Awakening, something I was looking forward to ever since I made an avatar for a member at Animesuki (actually I've been looking forward to it since it's announcement, but the avatar piqued me further). I have to say I am impressed with Fire Emblem Awakening, and it's everything I was hoping it'd be. ( I made it even more hilarious by going to another Army/Navy for dinner, take that McDonalds, twice in 3 days :P)

That's how an adult Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière would look like!

I had originally wanted to get Dead Or Alive Dimensions as my first 3DS game, but they didn't have it at the store I went to (it wasn't where I got the 3DS). I'm serious, I was looking forward to that game 2 years ago, jigglies in 3D uh huh ;) That's actually one of the main concerns about my 3DS purchase, and you might be wondering why I was even considering the 2DS in the first place. You'll recall my left eye, and that I was very worried that it wasn't going to handle the 3D that well. It's one of the main reasons why I considered the 2DS, there's no one in this country that I know that has a 3DS, and I couldn't test the 3D effect on my eyes before making a purchase for the 3DS or 2DS. So it was a tense moment when I eventually got the 3DS, as you cannot test it before buying, the common rule in this country is that you can open it, and see if it works, but if it does work, you bought it already. And with no demo stations anywhere, I couldn't see the 3D without buying it. What's even more weirder, was that this particular 3DS was from Saudia Arabia, and although I was told it can plenty well play NTSC games, I wasn't sure, and the kind folks at the shop where i bought Fire emblem were kind enough to let me test it on my system before buying.

This is not actually my first Middle Eastern device. I had previously used a Samsung i600 Blackjack, which was the most strangest phone I'd ever used:

Check out that keyboard, there's not only qwerty, but symbols and Arabic! It was hilarious to type on XD

NO, I DON'T :P

Now I know what you're thinking, what's a guy like me with an old phone, shakey health, and a whole lot of no time, doing with a 3DS? Well, aside from the cash originally being for something else, I had already notified my superiors about my plans about dealing with my health once all projects are settled, so that's out of the picture. My phone, as ancient as it is, it's qwerty, which a lot of phones these days aren't, and if you hadn't figured it out, I'm not too sure about any decent phone out there for php7k that won't take a dump when my fingers touch the screen. And since I've really been looking forward to the 3DS for years now, it was a no-brainer. My eyes can handle the 3D effect perfectly fine, although I've not tested playing with 3D on for more than 20 minutes. If I can survive more than 1 hour of non-stop 3D, then that would confirm it is incoming light sources that my left eye has a problem with (every device I use is at minimum brightness setting, including my computer monitor.) It's why I do very little photoshop these days, it demands my monitor go up to at least 50% brightness for superior editing. Something I'm afraid I can't do for long periods of time anymore.

But what's that, my weird and wonderful week only went until Friday? Nope, the reason why that will forever be a ironic week is because the next day after getting Fire Emblem, GameFAQs paid everyone. Including me. Talk about irony. Which I promptly donated to the owner of the cash, which I have a mini rant, why the heck is it so difficult to spend USD online while in the Philippines? Always with this US phone number verification this, must have US IP that, I tell you the e-commerce landscape changed since I was last in the USA.

Yes I will get to that post about my BenQ S6. Don't mind that Nvidia sticker, okay? It's not like I went mad scientist and shoved a GeForce into there >__>

The reason why I keep on helping

Yesterday I was feeling down in the dumps, having finally given up on my keyboard(s). For so long typing has been a part of my work, and for some ridiculously ironic reason, on my free time I am..... also typing. A part of the reason why I'm typey typey like crazy is because I do it very very fast. And somehow the help I give people involves typing. It's not helped by my incredible desire for phones with hardware qwerty keyboards, which I've used for years.

Then I had a chat with my mother, who I rarely get to talk to these days, and she was telling me about how difficult it is to deal with folks, people who abuse her goodwill, and how it's just unhealthy to converse with them. It hadn't really sunk into me until midnight was approaching, and I was browsing whatever I missed before I hit the bed, and I came across this wonderful piece:

The reason why my mother keeps helping people, and the reason why I fulfill requests as much as I can, is because my mother taught me when I was a kid that "If someone comes to you for help/something, never hesitate to help them, because you do not know who they might be". And that video above is everything I've stood for, and what helping really means. See that link above? I named it "Endeavors/past projects" for a reason. Granted I'm not able to help people physically, but the time I spend on the internet, if someone has a question, and I know the answer, I'll help. If someone wants an avatar done, I'll help. If someone needs help with their computer, if someone needs advice, if there's anything I can do to help, I'll do it. Whoever they may be, if it's something they needed help with, I'll help what I can.

This is also the reason why I was recently involved in a serious scuffle with someone on Gamefaqs' message boards, concerning the FAQ Bounty system they have up. The love of money blinds people, and it also brings out their true character, and that person who I shall not name was fighting off every suggestion I had for the new system, all because the new system would have rewarded those who think they deserved it, without even realizing the implications the new system has on bounty's smaller than $40. For a person like me whose very first FAQ was speedily toiled on to help others, that was a slap on my face and everyone whose primary purpose is to help, and I called out that person for the hypocrite they were, and not long afterwards the mod closed the thread. One person threw away their humanity for $60. And that wasn't enough for them.

 Money can make people do funny things. --All about the benjamins

Remembering September 11

The Texas Rangers third base coach Gary Pettis said that day, "...It's like it was a movie, it's like that wasn't something that actually happened."

It was the first time I was in a country that nearly froze completely, and it's something I can never forget. The worst I've experienced were bomb threats, and while I'm thankful I've never experienced an actual attack, it's something I hope no one goes through in their life.

Need For Speed Most Wanted A Criterion Game FAQ support page

Well, this will be the location for all things related to my NSF MW ACG (lol acronyms) FAQ hosted at GameFAQs. For locations, I set the game's resolution to my native res (1440x900) just to take a better screeny than 800x600 :P

I am also going to post some race times, to show that Ambush is possible and a lot of fun.

BILLBOARDS:

Let's take a break from all the madness

Well it finally couldn't take it anymore.

Last time we saw this drive, it had 66 bad sectors, and 632 weak sectors. I guess making it a boot drive was a bad idea :<

That... took it's time escalating.

Last Sunday was the first time since 2005 that I've drank wine. And it's as nasty as ever. Personally, I don't like wine, never did, don't mind me I'll just mix me some Tang and be on my way.

It's better up there :P

Updates for July 14 through 19

Finally got better from a cold I got last Sunday, again due to sweating exposed to the extreme cold. Seriously speaking, I was just about to come out and say never ever go to bed when dead tired, and then I get this cold. Who came up with these terms anyways? When you have a cold, you are a lot warmer than usual. Some time from now someone is going to have to change the term for high drug use as "being feverish", because whenever you have a fever, you can hallucinate and stuff...

If I could have it any other way, I would

It would probably be an understatement to say May was a terrible month for me. It was a drastically horrific month for me. And, that was mainly because in the one time a year I can be myself, it was very much the opposite.

1 year later, has it changed for the better? My new computer, my health & more

Almost a year ago, my left eye was shot by some glue. That was a life changing moment as I was in the midst of saving up for a new laptop. After that, everything seemed to have fallen apart, my laptop plans were changed, then ultimately scrapped, then my 1TB hard drive went down, perhaps the most shocking thing to happen as I calculated it to be the least likely thing to break on me, especially considering I didn't keep it plugged 24/7. The glue thing had a higher chance of happening since I use almost one pack a month for my hobby, but after that hdd died, I had to change a lot of things. I put Anime aside, I tried to focus on keeping my health in check, and just when I thought it was okay, my left eye actually isn't, and now I can't cry without pain. That's when I decided I had to get myself back up again, and an idea I had for Android eventually happened, and I did it.

During that time I was also focusing on work, and I managed to complete 2 primary objectives in helping the company. That led to me being able to get my first new hdd, the 750GB. And thanks to some donations, I was able to finally get a new computer.

Specs are AMD A4-3400 2.7Ghz, 4GB DDRIII RAM, 600W PSU. I don't think I'm missing any details, it's my first time using a desktop since February 2006 so I'm just going by how cheap this thing is. A little over $100 USD, which is not including a hard drive, monitor or optical drive. Those were assembled from other areas, the monitor provided as the last solution in exchange for me to return the laptop I was borrowing, the hard drives I am surprised to be able to use my 2.5 inch drives, and the optical drive ripped out of an external ODD unit. Hm, technically, my desktop isn't really a desktop, I am using laptop drives and an external optical drive :P

I am surprised at how much this computer flies. Maybe it's not so much to some people, but I had just come off years of laptops, my most recent experience being an AMD Turion X2 Ultra 2.5 Ghz with 4GB DDRII RAM, which was slow apparently because of the hard drive. Or maybe it isn't, I think so because my 750GB has a nearly 80MB/s write speed, and that's a 5400 RPM drive. Of course, this being my first time with a Desktop in a long time, I've already encountered some problems that seasoned desktop builders would know about before hand: My 750GB, it parks. Er, I'm not sure how to explain it, but I know what the reviewers meant when they say "my hard drive parks", and I believe that is when the hard drive makes clicking sounds as if it is going idle, in this case it is "parking". Which made me realize I'm probably not supposed to be using it as a boot drive. So currently I am in the process of clearing my old external 250GB 3.5inch drive and shoving that into my desktop, even though its SMART health is at 2% and several files cannot be copied, I've become too paranoid to risk my hard drives for anything, and this 750GB wasn't easy to come by so I am going to put my all into using a dead drive for what its worth. Hopefully that will hold up.

Seagate FreeAgent 250GB 7200RPM Barracuda, if it was healthier I would consider myself lucky >_<

The other thing I hadn't known about, well, searching online, it's not even common knowledge, is that in order to overclock, I need a DVI cable. Which I don't have, it would explain why I tried to overclock, and while the desktop was booting, I didn't see anything on screen. I had no idea a simple change in video displaying could affect overclocking. Back when I last had a desktop, all I had to do was up the FSB in the BIOS and boom, higher temperatures :P Well, at least temperatures aren't a problem here, as this APU runs surprisingly cool (remember, I had just come from a AMD Turion which burns on load at over 80c). As for gaming, I would say it was considerably better than the Mobility Radeon 4530 that was in that laptop, but I'm not entirely sure as I was only throwing old titles at it (CoH, Crysis 1). I sure would like to try the newer titles, but that's for a later money happy time :P

AMD A4 WEI versus AMD Turion M620 WEI

Overall, the only thing left that perplexes me greatly is why did I not think of this earlier? I had been so fixated on bringing my work everywhere I go, that only a laptop would do, but I hadn't realized a desktop can also use a 2.5Inch drive, so if I need to jet, just put the drives back into their enclosures and away I go. And for less than $200, what else do I have to lose? I honestly wouldn't have thought of this desktop idea if I wasn't in such terrible shape last year. It's funny but, last year I learned that, a large amount of money doesn't solve the simplest of problems, it was only when I had my back to a wall with a wall right at my nose did I realize was, if I ultimately have to move around, my hard drives were more important than the computer itself. The computer can be replaced with just $100, but the hard drive not only has a price, it contains priceless information that cannot be bought. So I'm not all regrettable about how crappy my year was for 2012, because I have lived my life knowing that "only through pain are the most important of lessons learned for life", and this was a lesson I am glad to have learned. (to get an idea of my "grand" plan, it was to spend $300 on a laptop and import it over at the cost of almost $200, bringing that to $500. Yup, great plan >_>)

I also wanted to personally thank the donators for their contributions. I... would like to thank you by name, but I don't share people's real names without their consent and I have no idea who is who as I contribute to several fields at several forums, so I don't even know for sure, but you know who you are, and you have my gratitude. I look forward to continuing requests left over from last year, and hopefully I can fully get back into the swing of things. This year I have more glasses than I have eyes, and every time I use glue I am sure to have at least something covering my eyes :D

The BenQ S6: turning an MID into a UMPC

A UMPC, eh... Originally I was supposed to receive this last year, when my first plan to get a new laptop failed (shortly after August), and then my 1TB died the miserable death it did, preventing me from receiving this device until this month (February).

At its lowest cost ($49.99, seriously), it sounds like a really affordable computer considering I currently don't own one anymore (the laptop I'm using right now is borrowed). But at these specs, 800mhz Atom CPU, 512MB RAM, 2GB SSD with built-in 3G/BT/Wifi, a USB port and an Micro SD slot, is this really something I can use long term, if I eventually have to return this laptop?

Best of Yahoo comments Feb 22-24

For a long time now, I've been a Yahoo user, about 15 years now. Only recently did they allow comments on their articles, and for all the shortcomings Yahoo had in handling their articles, the comments was always the bright spot. Since I usually get a good laugh out of them, I decided to share what I encountered, the best of the comments I've come across on Yahoo on the listed days.

Ronda Rousey's latest win

I'm not into UFC, I don't know much about it except this girl who has been in the news lately, mostly due to the way she quickly defeats her opponents. Well, time is everything, and Daniel wins my vote for best comment of the article:

Family in Berlin lives without money

Living with no money. I'm sure we've all been there before at some point (yeah, even me). There's an interesting family in Berlin who lives without money, thanks in large part to the goodwill of others. It's an interesting read, which I suggest you do read it, and then when you get to the comments, you'll find out someone was clever enough to throw this gem out there:

No disrespect for those in poverty, but that makes a lot of sense if you think about it, and something many of us are going through these days. Thanks T-block for the laughs :D

Japanese Women Rent Their Legs to Advertisers

I'm a huge, huge fan of girls' thighs. My love for the zettai ryouiki transcends space and time. And lo and behold, there exists an advertiser that surely makes money out of suckers like me who cannot help but look at the girls' beautiful legs. But as always, Yahoo comments give no quarter to articles, and this comment'er raises an interesting question:

If you don't know what braille is, you seriously need to.... "feel" it up :P No really, look it up, and you will see why I, as a lover of girls' legs, laughed so hard at this.

That would mean it's totally legal to get all touchy feely with them! :D

Alex Smith NFL Gundam

I'm not an NFL fan, I'm more of a Baseball - Basketball dude. More so into Baseball due to my broken right shoulder, I'm always amazed at how the pitchers can throw a ball almost 100mph repeatedly, don't think I'll ever be able to do that.

But when it comes to the NFL, it's only those close games and interesting stories like the Madden curse that intrigue me. So with the 49ers and Ravens going at it this year for the Supa Bowl, I remembered something I had several years ago:

A promotion from Burger King back in 2007! I didn't know who this jersey belonged to, and it didn't hit me till now, this is the 49er's quarterback, Alex Smith. I, in all my zanyness, wasted no time:

This got me thinking, I should have gotten that Alex Gundam, and put this jersey on it, then it would be a true Alex Gundam :D And my pick for the bowl? I honestly would like the Ravens to win. You know, last year, a Person won the big game, so I think it's time a team based on an animal should win this time :P

Cracking my spine, a nearly 4 hour CoH match and more

Last week I cracked my spine. Did you ever crack your spine before? I'm not talking about the Bane breaks Batman's back in Dark Knight Rises, it's just a simple cracking of the spine that was the most frightening sound I ever heard from within my body. Maybe for some people it's normal, but it really freaked me out. That's probably because of the circumstances of how it happened, and it happened when I was asleep. The nightmares have become more frequent lately and in earlier nights I would wake up in cold sweat or my breathing was too high, to the point when I cracked my spine, I woke up very suddenly and my stomach went skyward and I gasped for air quite loudly. That's when I heard the crack and I tell you, it's not a sound I want to hear again.

Thankfully, it wasn't serious. The first thing I remember doing was checking my limbs to see if I was paralyzed, and all seemed well. Now that it's been a few days, I noticed some strange things due to the cracking of my spine. For one thing, I've not had those aches and pains on my upper body, and because my right collar bone has almost no muscles linked to my neck (nearly my entire right shoulder is broken), I used to have severe neck pain but not anymore. One side effect I do see was my thinking had been erratic, there were times when the information flows too fast, and other times where I felt lost, as if I had to do something but felt no urge to do it. Some of you might have noticed my sudden increase in participation in the Vivid Red Operation thread at Animesuki over the weekend, which was linked to this. Searching online yields mixed results, to some it is a good thing, to others it is a warning sign, as much as it felt good, I don't really want to go through that again. I still can't think straight and I go to sleep paranoid of it happening again. Though I think it is unlikely, last week was too strange a week. The weather was a lot colder than I thought it would be, and I ran up a little cold, and my nose was stuffed for a few days, so that might have contributed to my inability to breathe properly.

As if my weekend wouldn't get any weirder, I was playing a casual game of Company of Heroes Skirmish, and if you ever wondered how scrambled my mind was during this time, this ought to give a clear picture:

That's a 3 hour 51 minute match right there against the AI. Sure, many folks will say the AI is easy to beat, but not when I played. For some reason, I was off my game, I could never hold my ground on the only road into my territory, and when the expert AI double teams you with 2 Airborne commanders, it's a miserable hell. They frequently did back-to-back bombing runs, they'd drop anti-tank guns as if it's all they got, and I had to use mortar fire strikes just to burn them out. That went on so long, I only wanted to play a simple session to see if my thinking power was affected by the spine cracking, but for more than 3 hours, I was totally embarrassed and I had enough.

I had to end it as quickly as possible, and with my AI buddy doing nothing but spawning StuH's and losing them, I had to Hummel smash the nearest enemy base as much as I could (above). The only other time I played a nearly 4 hours match was when I had my old Sony lappy, and it ended up that way partly due to the laggy graphics. Now I know I really ought to take it easy if my mind is muddy, and NO GAMING IF YOU HAD A SUDDEN HEALTH CHANGE XD

War against mosquitos

I don't like mosquitos. There are some bugs I like, and some that I don't like, but mosqy's are definitely in the "do not want" camp. And for some reason these guys just want to bite the heck out of me. There were jokes about these local mosqy's wanting some foreigner blood, but I've just about had enough of them. Armed with my trusty electric swatter and my hand, I set out on a holy war against these pests.

Even the committee in my neighborhood caught wind of the sudden rise in mosqy's, and they set out to gas the place. I don't know what it was they were gassing, but that stuff seemed to have worked. Unfortunately for me, the mosqy's sought refuge indoors where the gas was less. My swatter has no effect when I'm at my lappy, and in the magnified image above, that mosqy was killed when it invaded my personal space. What happened was business as usual for me, but that dude was buzzing around my hand. In my surprise I rolled my chair back a little and the dumb mosqy landed on my trackball mouse. In 1 or 2 seconds my mind was a speedy mess: I could make a break for my swatter for a sure kill, but it would notice my movement and fly away, or I could risk my already hurt right hand and hulk smash. The end result:

I had to smash it. I'm not sure how fast I am, I know for sure I'm a terrible fighting game player, but these mosqy's are smart and I wasn't going to take a chance, but what this particular mosquito did was freaky. It was the first time in my life I saw a mosquito walking. I mean it was walking with those dangly legs, desecrating my royal trackball with it's bendy legs, I was half furious, half awe struck at watching something walk for the first time in my life after having seen them be flyers for years. By the way I have been a trackball user for 13 years.

Let's go modding

I did mention in an earlier post about mods, so here goes one. HP designed some really bad laptops. Strangely, I only notice this in their AMD lappy's, I don't really see this particular design in Intel based machines, which did lead me at one point to speculate that perhaps there was a conspiracy where Intel paid off these manufacturers to cripple AMD machines with poor ventilation, because I seriously doubt a manufacturer would be this dumb to adopt this particular fan design that HP used for their DV7 AMD-based series.

What you see is a downward facing exhaust fan for one of life's most hottest mobile chips, the Turion 2 Ultra series. From this angle you can already see how stupid this design is for a chip that idles at 59c (800mhz) and gets as hot as 83c (2.5ghz). Explain to me how a chip this hot is supposed remain cool when the exhaust is not only thin, but pointing downward where, you know, the surface of where the laptop is sitting on. As you can see above, the grills are extremely fat as well, prompting me to cut off some of them, and then I proceeded to carve out from the chrome lined part to the rest of where the cut grills were connected to. I wish I did a before and after pic, but I was fed up with the heat this machine was spitting out, and with permission from the owner of this lappy I wasted no time in cutting it. It paid off too, heat is down at least -3c from the usual temps, and for the first time in my life with this machine I saw the green checkmark in Speedfan.

First time a green mark. It had always been a fire icon, indicating how hot the temps are.

I paid a price though: my hobby knife slipped on the first carving and drove deep into my finger. Till now this cut remains, and it hurts when I touch it.

I also have to clean the laptop regularly as dust gets trapped very easily in that exhaust vent. Before I cut the grills, I painstakingly pulled out big clumps of blackened dust that was caught behind the grills, very very poor design HP, and that time you were one of the biggest PC makers, I sure hope you didn't hurt AMD's sales by designing fan exhausts like this, AMD laptop reviews would always mention the heat. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if I have to replace the thermal!

My left eye

I cannot cry anymore. That's the sad discovery I made last month November, and I believe it has to do with the tear duct in my left eye.

It started when I was watching the Strike Witches movie, and I was so happy, I had no idea it was going to be released last month and after the grueling 2 months of worrying about my 1TB hard drive, I was in desperate need of something to be happy about. And I was really happy to see the girls again, so happy I shed tears of joy, I missed the girls, I missed their pantsu, and when we first see Micchan, I was waiting, waiting and I cheered when her crotch came on screen, oh I loved it :D

Strike Witches means so much to me, when season 2 aired back in 2010, it was one of my most followed that Summer, and the girls make me so happy. But when it was all over, and I wiped those tears, I felt something was wrong. I was having that feeling whenever I feel a headache coming on, that all to familiar feeling I've felt many a time before, but this one was different. The pain was concentrated on the left side of my head around my eye, and I thought maybe I am having a headache, and I took it easy the rest of the day. Until the next day came by, and I still had the pain, I thought maybe it's one of those 2 day headaches I used to have, and I was watching less anime and sleeping more. This is when I went out that weekend, and the following week of my great Android kernel milestone I knew something was dead wrong. This pain was persisting. It was getting so bad, my eye started to hurt just like how it did back in April, and I then I knew right away, that it was my tear duct.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but when the glue sealed my eye, it was a very intense pain, it was the most painful thing I ever felt while conscious, and the one thing I'll never forget: I was crying my eyes out. I think it was a normal reaction the eyes do should a foreign substance come into contact with the eye, but my eye was really pouring those tears as if to eradicate the glue in my eye. And it hurt, I remember clutching my head and I wanted to scream, but the pain was too much to even say anything. And somehow, maybe I became traumatized by that incident, in that whenever I cry again, that pain I felt in April come haunting me and severely demoralizing me. After I found this out, any attempt to form tears in my eye yields the same result; the pain in my eye. So that time when I bought my 750GB hard drive, I was looking, searching the nearest drug store for an eyepatch, I thought if there's one thing I can laugh at about this whole ordeal, if I can find an eyepatch like that girl in Chuunibyu, maybe I can take a pic of me twirling my fingers while wearing that thing. But I couldn't find any. In fact there was nothing for the eyes, they had all sorts of bandages imaginable, but nothing for the eye! What the hell kind of drug store/pharmacy is that that doesn't have medical care for ones eyes? (it's Watsons by the way)

This hit me hard, as I'm a rather emotional person, and it is one of the reasons why I don't like to see a girl cry, because it makes me feel real bad. And now, I have to learn to crush those emotions so that I never shed a tear again. That's impossible, the only way I can do that is to become an annoying bastard who takes pleasure in giving other people pain, completely the opposite of my nature. I don't want to do that, and not to mention there is anime with great drama enough to make me cry too, now I can't watch those?

I can no longer spend more than 14 hours awake. I can't do those 18 hour days I so loved to do a few years back, my life has changed. It's this experience that gave me an immense amount of respect for those people out in the world who lost a part of their body, be it an arm, or a leg, and people who need to wear an eyepatch for the rest of their lives, I have mad respect for you folks. You don't ever let it weigh you down, and no matter how painful the pain is, you're still alive, and that's the most precious thing I am very appreciative of right now. I may need to change the way I live my life from now on, but at least I'm alive. I can still enjoy seeing the things I love to look at, and even though it's a lesser amount than before, I'm happy to at least see something instead of permanently losing my eye.

Nov 23 - Dec 9, two weeks of Happyness and despair

On the week leading up to Nov 23, I was going to return to full form and resume my bloggyness. Unfortunately, my cold was getting worse and if there's one thing I hate, that is letting my health spiral out of control. November 23rd was supposed to be my celebration, which so happened to be Thanksgiving Day as well, but being the mangatron is not a rosy life.

My down times started when I went out that weekend before Nov 23, and my main purpose of that trip was to see prices of external hard drives out there so I can make plans for the end of the month. My destination was SM Megamall, and I was horrified to learn of the pricing there. In all the shops I looked in at their Cyberzone (a collection of electronics stores in one place), the average prices for a 500GB drive was PHP3999,99, simply speaking that's $100. One hundred one's for just 500GB? That's pathetic, and the reason why I was surprised was because in CDRKing's website, that's the price for a 1TB, and the CDRKing at SM Megamall had 320GB's over php3000, and I saw one person buying that, my god I felt sorry for them, being ripped off at that mall. I know for a fact it's that particular mall, because CDRKing wasn't alone in those exorbitant prices, other shops selling Buffalo drives had the same ridiculous pricing.

Me not being able to speak the local language makes things harder (yeah not every store speaks english), as I was not sure if they have a "price guarantee" like in the USA. I thought of showing them their site and get the prices down to it, but they didn't have any bigger than 500GB >__>

When the month came to an end, I later knew why it was that particular mall with inflated prices, as I sought out my local CDRKing and their prices were the same as their website. I didn't get any donations (despite hurrying that Android fix ~__~), but I could not pass this opportunity much, I needed a hard drive now as 2 months went by with me stagnating with my 1TB, it was either I end my contributions to the online community or I take the chance, and thankfully I was able to borrow enough for the Toshiba 750GB hard drive (not exactly my proudest moment asking for money >__<).

It didn't take me long to open the enclosure. Full size 2.5inch drive detected! Eat that, WD and your proprietary trite.

Since my Expresscard only has 1 USB3.0 port, the Toshiba drive had to go USB2, which wasn't bad actually. The difficult part was getting whatever data I could get off the 1TB drive, and that took a mother loving 4 days, 2 days at only 12 hours, the latter 2 days I went round the clock copying via SuperCopier, a nice proggy by the way. That was when my new found happiness was starting to turn sour: I had an elaborate plan, see: I couldn't afford a new 1TB drive, no way was I going to sacrifice my health again, and since all I could get was 750GB, I was placing my last bit of faith in WD and their data lifeguard tools to write zero's to the drive once I copied what I could from it. My first problem was I was losing free space fast, 750GB wasn't going to cut it, and I needed backups fast, I hated playing triage with my data and "luckily" I was able to acquire 2 company drives at 60GB each. One drive died when I started to copy to it, and the other one was Mac formatted. My troubles kept piling up when I found out I couldn't copy Windows Mobile ROM kitchen's from the 1TB drive, and I had to say my final farewell to Windows Mobile development, at the hand of Western Digital and their defectively designed [external] drives.

Investigating my 1TB drive, 2 months later

Earlier this month I finally got my USB 3.0 ExpressCard... card. I say finally because it took over a month to finally get to me, from the time I ordered it to the time I realized something was wrong, to the eventual inquiry to my post office and what do you know, they had it and didn't notify me. Which is weird, they know who I am, they know my M.O., and it wasn't held at customs, they just... fell asleep I guess.

After plugging it in, setting it up, the big result is what you see below. Here's what the test intended:

Phase 1 Android development complete

Well it took 2 months, but I finally got Android to consistently fully boot on the LG Fathom VS750 phone.

Was a rather bumpy ride actually, not only was I a complete noob, not to mention the ongoing problems with my 1TB drive, but I've got no C programming skills, I don't know jack about Linux, and Android, on a Windows Mobile phone? The last part isn't a surprise but my oh my did I learn quite a bit from this.

My problems started when the source I am using, the only source on the net, was half baked. It was using code from Linux kernel 2.6.32 and 2.6.35. Now I, a complete noob in all things Linux, had some left over mentality from my Windows Mobile cooking days, which dealt with dll's for drivers and registry lines for the rest of the OS. So if say for WM, you wanted to cook an HTC program into a Samsung phone, one thing to keep in mind was dependancies, that is the files a .exe requires to run. It's not like that with Linux. In fact, if I had to sum up Linux kernels as short as possible, I would say a Linux kernel is made up of a whole bunch of text. I'm not kidding, we're not talking about dll's, exe's or large files, it's practically files with a lot of text in them that basically say "this is the power driver" and "it uses this much voltage" and so on. I was rather surprised by this, and the fact that it took me 2 months to get where I'm at now shows that that's a lot of text I had to read, and watching terminal compile my kernels was also important as it spews out errors and warnings which are critical to compiling a working kernel.

It's a fun process though, and, which is actually kind of easy, to be honest. I mean, during the Windows Mobile days, it was very hard to find drivers for a particular chipset, CPU and such, all I have to say is "HTC class action" and old WM'ers would know what I mean. In a way, this is what Android is about, open source, and it makes things quite easy to solve oneself should they require better video drivers, or more CPU customization, etc. I know things would have been a lot better if I learned C, and maybe it wouldn't have taken me 2 months if I wasn't having space problems, and heck, I'm still bitter about Ubuntu's usability, but at least I made progress.

While shunning some other projects. But now that I got the meat of the problems solved, it's back to Photoshop XD (as soon as I do something about this cold I have >__>)