beh! in every class there's always one smart wannabe.

you know the type: know-it-all, crosses the legs so that the smelly sneaker is in your personal space and answers all the questions with considerable arrogance (and gets it wrong anyway). well, there's always one in every class. no exceptions to the rule. just like there always has to be that one suck-up that offers to carry the teacher's books or always putting an apple on the teacher's desk but thats a completely different story.

the problem is co-existing in the same environment with them. thats the challenge. you know there's a problem when everyone has left the one unattended seat at the end of the room at the farthest corner to be occupied by this guy, and the only available seat is beside the one being left open. (never going to be "just-on-time" again!)

the problem is when, that person sees it fit to just look over your shoulder while hands-on lab work is being done. personally, i like doing my labs. i like getting down with the "code" (yea, a bit of g33k talk there). the problem is that when mr. know-it-all decides that "i'm too good to do labs" and starts to talk to me incessantly. that's a problem.

courses are fun, just don't be left sitting at that one last chair beside that person.

it was a year ago today....

the obligatory i-don't-know-what-to-post-so-i-looked-in-my-archives post:

• pinoy ninja was born! pinoy ninja has been a running gag between a few of my friends. let me explain.. there was a youth camp, and i took a shirt and wrapped it around my head, giving the impression that i was a ninja. except that i was grotesquely overweight and i was in no way, shape or form to play a ninja. so hence pinoy ninja was born.
• i spent a lot of money, well i didn't really spend that much cash. it was more of credit because i bought my sxsw interactive pass. it was this day last year that i bought my ticket and convinced ernie to go as well. i have to admit this was a pretty big milestone cause if i didn't go to sxsw, i wouldn't have met ernie, mj or bertie in person and i don't think i would've been that close to them. and that would've sucked!
• and erna still owes me print packages.

a year goes by soo fast!

microsoft good.... bill is god.... err.... i mean i just got back from devdays 2001!

i'm all for conferences, techie sessions and the works but going to a microsoft sanctioned session seems more like brain wash rather than a session. during the first 5 minutes of it, the presenter said "i'm in love with microsoft", no joke. it was very scary! it was held at a hotel, in bomb shelter level rooms with no ventilation. with the cumulative totals of laptops, ipaqs, pocket pcs and just the plain body heat of g33ks around; needless to say that it was hot! the total count of women in the conference of 500 people was....4!

i think the screen flickered a few times with some subliminal messages.

but on the plus side. i actually really enjoyed it. i saw old classmates who are doing web development too. i even saw my old teacher, he was actually a presenter! i actually came out of there with a huge desire to buy the new windows operating system and install all the dot net technology. but hey, i guess a free t-shirt will do.

weekend? what weekend? you mean we had a weekend?

good grief! i didn't even feel like i got a weekend. sleeping late, waking up early, working all day on little things. i did not get a weekend! although i do rant quite a bit on how i didn't get to relax, i did get quite a bit of work done. mostly sifting through emails and setting up accounts on the new server.

i was also bent on searching for some pants, but because i couldn't find the style that i wanted (in the color) that i wanted; i gave up. this, of course, was after i had dragged cedric up, around and all over the mall (after his work). eventually we decided to go and just call it quits. other events of the night were: feeding paulo's dog, waiting in line at mcdonalds drive through, counter-strike, misc. movies and star wars. geeks we are!

update: ok, maybe we're not the biggest geeks after all. after over hearing the conversations around the office. my co-workers are psycho analysing reboot and beast-wars. hummmm, uumm yea ok.... no comment.

see, i get a lot of ideas.

many many ideas. some "inspired" and revamped from other people's ideas but still it's an idea. i love working on webtechnology, the thought of pushing the web to it's full potential is exciting to me. (i think i better stop cause i'm showing how much of a geek i am) my latest idea is setting up a linux hosting computer to host websites. so right now, i'm in a semi-beta state. i need 3 people to test and get hosted. you can find details about it here and apply here.

so all you geocities people, who can do php and mysql. go apply, remember i'm only picking 3 people.

incidentally, the net is wonderful! in a few searches in google, i'm back re-living my grade school days.

now if that's a good thing, i don't really know.

random proverbs....

• man with one chopstick........go hungry.
• man who scratch ass should not bite fingernails.
• baseball is wrong: man with 4 balls can not walk.
• man with hand in pocket..... feel cocky all day.
• crowded elevator smell different to midget.

email forwards are messed up sometimes.

so it's thanksgiving? again? oh yea that's right, american thanksgiving.

well, i'm still compelled to talk about what i'm thankful for. lets get the major ones out first, of course i'm thankful for my life and the things that are happening in my life (good or bad). i can honestly say that i have many things that i'm thankful for. i remember archie calling me: mr memories, because i like to reminisce a lot but that's exactly what i'm thankful for. my memories.

i love to look back and see what has happened, what made me laugh/cry, or what brought me closer to someone. memories in general. and memories wouldn't be memories without the people around me. my family and friends. so let me thank my parents, and my distant family because family is family. they will always be there even when the whole world has turned against you. my friends because it doesn't matter where they are, true friends will never leave your side.

so to everyone out there, be thankful for something because thats what thanksgiving is all about.

happy thanksgiving

no matter what your brain tells you, going to sleep when you've been awake at 5:30am isn't a good idea!

<rant>remember that folks. let me explain. last night, my insomnia kicked in and caught me off guard. next thing i knew, it was 2am and i was still watching tv, 3am and i'm back infront of the computer working on a cheesy poster layout for the empty picture frame in my room and 5:30am my body is finally tired and is willing to go to sleep. so i did. i can't stress enough how much of a bad idea that was people!

do you ever have those mornings where everything just fell into place and ran like clockwork? this one was the complete opposite of that. my alarm clock, for some reason, said that it was already 9:30am when it was really 6:30; this meant that i ran around my room/bathroom/shower trying to do 4 things at the same time. it's not pretty when you mix your shampoo and toothpaste while you're trying to soap yourself. not pretty, i tell ya.

and the drive to work was horrid! some crazy sunday driver cut me off, almost causing the truck behind to slam into me. she got a good taste of my highbeams for the rest of the way to work. no, it's not a good day to piss me off.

and why do they make those small aspirin boxes so hard to open?! you already have a splitting headache to rival the grand canyon in size. i don't want to deal with "press the side arrows with your fingers while sliding the bottom to open". newsflash people: ritchie only has 1 opposable thumb! meaning: he can't pinch the side of the stupid box and slide the bottom all at the same time! jolt should also have the equivalent of 10 cups of coffee in 1 bottle instead of the usual 1 to 1 ratio. 7-11 should stop selling preheated breakfast "country biscuits"; it's sick when the biscuits are hard enough to knock superman unconscious. the lights in my office should be a tad alot dimmer! and the guy in the cublicle beside me should get some sort of nasal vaccum going cause he blows his nose every 2 minutes! and the telephones of the people around me are too loud. and people talk too much! and while we're at it; let's make ritchie supreme and undisputed ruler of the world!</rant>

If I was an Autobot, I'd be:


good freaking lord, even when i'm a robot from another planet i'm a geek! prefers linux to windows, well it is the better operating system right?

secret santa? this is a good idea!

see the problem with being raised in my family is that, we are inheritantly cheap! so being put in my shoes, as a gadget freak and cheap brings me to internal conflict. but i digress. here i was stressing out about how i'm going to get christmas presents to my friends outside of canada. thinking about buying them things from their wishlist and buying them early. blah blah blah, but that would mean racking up quite the credit card bill.

i think the secret santa is an awsome idea! can you imagine? everyone still manages to get a gift for christmas, even though it is just 1 gift. and people just end up buying 1 gift! so join the new meme going round. i'm soo down for this! <link via="the great head">

so jodee asked me for a bowlcut picture. of course, i was happy to oblige. apparently he's putting together a bowlcut section of webloggers in his site. which is incidentally, not something you surf at work people!

so there i was pondering where i was going to get a bowlcut picture of myself. being a filipino only child with a camera-trigger happy mom, i thought the process would take long since i had to look for pictures through 13 different albums. but it was actually very painless.

it was more of.... (1) randomly pick and album below 7 years of age, (2) open the album... BAM! there it was. bowlcuts galore.

so imagine me, 5 years old just getting out of school. in my bibbed-out costume used to cover the yoga outfit that i was wearing. pissed off cause someone stole my crayons! who would've thought i'd be posting this picture for the whole world to see 18 years later.

so how much do you think i've changed?

resolutions? already? it's only november!

did i accomplish anything this year? you mean besides buying a while slew of electronic gadgets? you mean besides vacationing to austin and san francisco? this year was more focused on accomplishing social goals rather than actual planned long term ones. i grew close to a lot of people, drew apart from people that i could care less about. the problem with this is that, at the end of the year: i can't look back and say "look, this is what i did, look at that!" more tangable goals.

well, time has come to make a list of things to accomplish by the end of the year. think of it as a mini crunch period! i really need to get going on these. i think i'm already a bit late on a few things. i can feel the languid insomnia driven nights creeping up already.

presence! it's all about presence.

have you ever seen heat? it's that movie with val kilmer, al pacino, and bobby de niro, where they play cops and robbers? my dad recommend that i see it, and since we both have similar tastes in movies i took the time to see it. the story was good, it was overall a good film. what caught my eye in the movie was this scene where al pacino and robert de niro were sitting in a diner having coffee. good guy and bad guy talking about how they can't exist without each other, an action/reaction relationship.

these two actors demand presence. when these two walk into a scene camera, even when the camera isn't focused on them, they demand attention. i think it's what they call stage presence. i think it's generated through attitude. al pacino just eminates "i'm the bomb and you can't even come near me" attitude and robert de niro just has that "don't mess with me cause i'm going to mess you up big time" look on his face all the time. sometimes i wish i could give off that vibe, not because i want people to be scared of me but i think it'll be cool to demand presence. it's one of those nice-to-have kinda things.

ick.... oh wells, it's not quite done yet. but one area is there already.

happy birthday ernie!

update: see, uummm i started watching movies and eating pizza. i'm soo sorry people have been trying to submit to the interactive roast but stupid me forgot to set some permissions on the database. and make err upload the rest of the site. but it's all there now. so roast away!

damn: so i hear scandalous stuff happened in the party. like for real! scandalous stuff. scandalous. what a nice word: scandalous. but i'm sitting here and people are telling me stories about it. and my mouth is hanging open from the shock. like shock, good lord, shock! what a nice word: shock. where's my thesaurus?

school is a big step don't you think?

here i am, acting all student like and registering for courses. at this time, i'm already handling a full load. 3 courses in january spanning all the way until march. so i guess sxsw is out of the question, the problem with priorities is that all the fun stuff gets bumped down the list. so last night, i was lying there and thinking about how much i miss cramming and generally going crazy studying.

so today, i'm working on fighting for my courses. which means, i have to create a course plan and schedule. which i haven't done in a while. i get to go shopping for supplies, not that i don't have enough electronic equiptment for note taking, i just want more things to clutter my bookshelf. and hit on girls wearing school girl outfits, that's really the whole reason for going back.

the economy around the world sucks. in response to mj's inside joke.

i know a lot of people who are unemployed at the moment. it's not really their fault either, it's just that their companies were mismanaged and completly driven into the ground. take for example, ernie. he's mr. internet-rockstar-usa-today-featured-can't-touch-me-cause-i'm-flying-higher-than-mc-hammer vibe thing going on, but he's doing contract work. mj might as well hold up a sign that says "will *blinkblink* for food" cause she spent all her money and then some on a trip to europe and being layed of at her hair salon job. bertie, who's like this smart iq=500+ woman is doing contract work. the economy just sucks!

me on the other hand might not be feeling it right now but i can sure feel it looming around the corner. my filipino-balut-eating-mojo seems to be running out as i write this because people in this monopoly of an insurance company are getting layed off and/or settling for severance packages left and right. there are rumors floating around that the new gov't will be laying off more people. the problems that a gov't run company has to deal with i guess. now, lets see. what else can i sign off to the devil, i'm sure that my soul was a hefty sum. i wonder if my non-existent love life will go for much.

uumm, mom are you sure it's ok for me to be taking your antibiotics?

i'm sure doctors wouldn't be giving these to you in the hopes of me taking it *looks for the expiry* 6 months later. i'm also quite sure that mom's shouldn't be passing on medication to their children no matter what the qualifications. which is what i asked her "hey mom, what exactly qualifies you to be giving me your antibiotics?", and in turn she says "me? qualified? i'm overqualified!!". so there i was dazed, sick and too tired to argue but still trying to press on "how are you qualified?" and she just clarified everything in 1 sentence.

i'm qualified because my mom is a doctor, my dad is a doctor, my brother and uncle and ..... *the list goes on* .... are doctors.

yes folks, she's qualified by association. i'm pretty sure that it only works for the medical profession though. why? well, because my mom and my dad are chemists and i failed chemistry.

see, i'd blog about what happened last night....

but i was too much on a drunken frenzy to remember. i don't think anyone wants to hear about me throwing up all over my toilet and falling asleep there or how i still don't know how i got myself into my pajamas or how i woke up with a huge headache. thank god for friends who manage to drive you home and carry you into your house. why don't i ever learn?

would you go into a dressing room knowing full well that there's a camera in there?

let me explain, you go into a dressing room where every wall inside seems to be a mirror. you turn around normally and the mirror seem to act like a normal mirror. when you quickly turn, then you experience "elastic-time" where the reflection seems to slow down. all so you can take a look at how you look like from the back. how? cameras and screens.

amazing? yes! it's great that people actually came up with the idea of doing this. cause the effect couldn't be duplicated with more mirrors and reflection (yes folks sarcasm doesn't suit me). i can just see some kid with thick as glasses, buckteeth and a t-shirt with angelina jolie's hackers picture trying to hack into the video camera's stream now. uummm invasion of privacy much? <link whored="harrumph">

the power of lists....

to those who doubt the power of making a list. yesterday, before i started my work day i created a list of tasks that i wanted to accomplish. during the day, i was able to take things out and also put more items in. i then proceeded like a robot to do all these projects. it's a good feeling to cross something off the list. needless to say that i got a lot done.

i came home last night. what did i do? well, being the geek i am. i made a list. i ate dinner, read a portion of my book and got on to my list. one by one, things started to get crossed out and i was actually accomplishing something. to my amazement, i also finished early. meaning, i got to sleep early.

being organized really helps sometimes when you have many things to do. this has been a public service announcement from macapinlac.com!

i did make it to work this morning, with 3 hours of sleep behind me.

as you all know it was archie's birthday yesterday. there were speculations that last years drinking binge would make a comeback but to the disappointment of a few people, it didn't happen. instead, we ate filipino food (nothing sick) and homemade raw fish. watched a bit of temptation island 2, played a little counterstrike and it was off to the bowling alley.

when the bowling lackey offers you 2 dollars extra to play 3 games instead of the 2 you planned to. think really really hard! remember an extra game means that you have to throw that 14lbs ball down the lane at least 20 times. it also means that you're there for an extra half an hour and it also means that you have to drive home with a sore arm. think about it hard, especially when you reach the bowling alley at 11:30pm. it was fun, a lot of jokes and laughing; an all-around good time. it's been a while since the group actually got together to hangout that was in a setting other than breadgarden.

i think the real alcohol poisoning happens on the weekend.

so how long have you known a friend?

i've known archie since i was grade 11. through my church group, we both joined at the same time and at the same camp along with cedric. i guess thats why the three of us are soo close. we practically grew up together. we all went through our awkward phase together, and trust me it was awkward.

now, lets see. i used to skip class with him and i used to write his excuse slips because he didn't have legible handwriting. we'd go hang around the mall, by mcdonalds and walk around richmond centre. joke around about cars, girls and everything under the sun. from hanging out to clubbing to sharing secrets and sharing each other's accomplishments, we've hung in there.

but what would a friendship be without hard times and hard times they were. archie handled it all pretty well though, which is probably why we're still friends today. we've been through a lot and it's also probably why he's one of my most trusted friends.

happy birthday buddy!

so let the roasting honoring begin!

good lord. spank the monkey? no no! get your mind out of the gutter, this is a pg-13 blog.

priesthood is sounding a bit better.

i can feel the whole macapinlac clan getting cold shakes as i say those words. being the only boy that is carrying the name on my father's side can be scary. let's see, my uncle all girls, my other uncle all girls and my aunt all boys. the only family that has a boy that bears the macapinlac last name is mine; and i'm an only child. can you see the irony in that?

now, for a guy who's always had relationship problems that thought is kinda scary. i've never had a "normal" relationship. there always had to be something quirky or something just plain and simple wierd about it. now i'm not even going to ennumerate my relationships and start naming off what was wrong with them (i can feel the sighing relief of all my ex-girlfriends who read my blog), it wouldn't be fair. lets just say that, because i'm completly losing hope of finding the right girl out there; priesthood is looking like a good option (oh god i hope my mom doesn't read this).

last friday, i was walking around downtown vancouver by myself.

i gotta admit that it was fun at first. checking out the sites and getting a little walking done. it started to get boring after a while since i didn't have any cash to buy anything or had the drive to go shopping (which is a first). i walked around places i wouldn't normally go to, and i wished i had a book to relax by the steps of the art gallery. just to feel like i was doing something. i didn't want the afternoon to go to waste so i decided that i was going to watch a movie.

a few minutes of walking, i get to the movie theaters. check out movie times, a few hours to kill and call around for someone to see it with. i whip out my cellphone and .... dead. i guess the fact that i haven't charged the batteries for a week resulted iin drain. so there i was contemplating if i should go see the movie *gulp* alone. i mean what's wrong with watching a movie alone. besides the fact that when you're sitting there alone people might think that you're some lonely guy and start offering popcorn to you. it's a bit a social taboo i guess, i mean seeing a movie alone is almost the equivalent of hanging a sign around your neck saying "pathetic loser".

so did i end up seeing a movie? nope, i ended up watching a few dvd's at home. which just screams "pathetic loser" even worse than the movies but at least at home i can close the blinds and watch it in my underwear. i already know i'm a "pathetic loser", but at least i can be comfortable while i am.

mouse over for captions

so today, team-swollen went geocaching!

the road trip started in richmond where we all met up in the afternoon. as soon a we turned on the gps it was off to our inevitable location: "some park in coquitlam" too bad we didn't know that in the first place. we were running around in circles trying to find the park. when we got there what did we see? big sign saying: "there have been black bears recently seen here" yes folks brave guys that we are we trekked on. obviously not scared by getting eaten alive by bears and not being paranoid of every noise that we heard. we got to the spot that the gps lead us to. what do you mean, it's accurate to 6m?! well, to you folks, this mean that we had to look around for 20 minutes through trees and other foliage to find this tupperware container.

did i mention that it said in the website that there was a 100 dollars in there? whoohoo $100 divided by 3 is 33.3 with a trailing 3! yea canadian dollars people! we did eventually find it. but with hollywood money!

i guess the hardest part of this cache was finding a spot to hide it. i mean, we're city kids. we don't really take mountain bikes up trails and do the whole x-games thing. we like sitting infront of our computers playing counterstrike. where were we going to hide it? a park?! yeap! under a bridge? yeap! we even got chased down by squirrels folks. our lives were in danger just for geocaching. it was fun, we think we'll take on another cache next weekend. right now i think i'll be resizing images and watching tv for the rest of the evening.

yes folks, i have finished it!

last night, i went through 2 cd's of robotech episodes and finally finished my marathon! it only took me a 15 years to finally watch all the episodes and i did it in a month.

oh yea, instead of writing out g33k i've taken in a new naming convention for geek: <geek>. i'm even thinking of buying this t-shirt.

so the great internet comes through and manages to fill my mind with interesting things today.

see lately, the internet has been the focus of personal sites and getting to know people. today was very different. i was surfing around my usual personal sites and i came across mr award-winner-and-sxsw-panel-cool-guy (kevin's site) which had a link to some effects that they made in disney land. the effect had to deal with creating snow. which wouldn't be such a problem if you lived in the upper regions of canada where it snows all the time. so the challenges for the innovative team (that brought you the britney spears, justin timberlake and annette something-a-rother) was to make it snow in november at a certain time with little maintenance. little maintenance meaning: nothing to clean up and won't create a big customer-slips-and-sues-mickey-mouse playground.

so what did they use? bubbles! not the typical soap bubbles, but something cooler. something that involves a chemical process of solidifying and evaporating water and stuff like that. if you want to learn more about it, the article can be found here. created, conceptualized, researched and written by jessajune

wanna know something? linuxnewbie.com is just a site for advertising videos and other junk, you know why? because there isn't such a thing as a linux newbie, all linux admins are hairy bald fat men who posts signs like this.

being in a mood lately isn't helping.

i just don't understand the complexity of the people here. they expect you to be completely professional because they parade around in pink suits with white collars and super flashy bright ties. and, they tend to talk about internet technology and insert random gobbledygook that they come across like "hi ritchie, i'd like to ftp the file across servers when you've inspected the internet technology but i'd really like to get that internet specification from the w3c." blah! it didn't even make any sense. so why am i soo annoyed? well, in the executive washroom i found this childish note that could've been written in a more "professional" tone.

Your mommy is not here! Clean up your PISS from the toilet seat!

well, i tend to paraphrase a lot. but, maybe who ever wrote this could substitute the can from the toilet seat, it would've placed it in context very well. don't cha think?

dreams? yea....and...?

i wake up sometimes and i just can't seem to put my finger on it. the memory slowly slipping away as i try and regain a firm hold of the passing thought. i guess that's why sometimes, i just can't remember anything when i wake up. except for the odd day, when i remember every little detail as if i just came from a totally different world. retaining the memories and experiences, good or bad.

last night, i dreamt of a long forgotten person. someone who held something in my life. it told a story of happiness and for a few hours i was complete again. no fear and uncertainties, no hate and insecurities. everything just seemed to blend and swirl into a beautiful pattern. i was at peace, and i was content. the world could've ended at that point and it wouldn't have mattered.

then i woke up and everything was back to the way it was. the fantasy disappeared as quick as it came. life is life and everything is back to being uncertain.