and in special news: ritchie isn't the only macapinlac blogger in the webworld. oh what was that? that was the sound of my uniqueness jumping out the window... err i mean... hey! great to meet you!

i'm at work today.

i've ignored the advice of most people who think i should still be at home resting. at least until i can actually start eating solid food without making a face down trip to the bathroom. why am i here? to prove a point. let's just leave it at that.

thank you to all the people who sent e-cards, instant messages and left comments. i'm alright, still standing and ok. i will eat more crackers, drink more ginger ale and make sure that i rest up. you guys really know how to make a guy feel special. thanks!

what sucks about having the stomach flu.

so i was wrong. it wasn't the clam chowder but i'm never going back to that soup place again anyway. it was stomach flu to the nth degree.

let me tell you guys what sucks about stomach flu. it's like having motion sickness and bolemia at the same time. you can't eat anything solids, any attempts to will guickly get thwarted with a quick trip to the bathroom. trust me i've made many attempts to eat. you also realize that being hungry and having a semi-stable stomach is a better feeling than a really really upset stomach.

so trust me boys and girls, stomach flu isn't pretty.

i'm at home sick out of my mind. i just have one thing to say: stay away from the boston clam chowder!

isn't it sad?

i can't imagine anyone not liking abba. well not the recreated abba*teens, they're just wrong on so many levels. everytime i think of abba, i think of 2 girls with tight bel bottom pants and hair puffed-up like no tomorrow. now combine that with mediocre singing talent and catchy hooks; what do you have? i mean besides ernie dancing to britney spears (i'm just kidding!). well, you have the greatest singing sensation on 8 skinny legs and hair that could suffocate an elephant.

wrong i tell you, wrong!

pay it forward, or not pay anyone at all...

ever heard of the concept? people would do good deeds for other people and in turn, the other people would do more good deads for other people. so it becomes circular (eventually). it's a good concept and it's a thought that came to me this morning as i was listening to the radio.

it seems that clint eastwood's 8 year old daughter was here in vancouver. apparently, their house burnt down and a neighbor was able to convince the 8 year old to jump out the window. he essentially saved her. the radio hosts were commenting about how mr eastwood just gave the guys flowers and a box of chocolate. i'm sure the guy wasn't expecting anything in return. he's already receiving an award from the vancouver fire department. my question here is: does clint eastwood have an obligation to do more than just flowers and a box of chocolates?

do you have days... ?

• where you just don't want to be where you are?
• when you just don't want to interact with anything human?
• when "getting up on the wrong side of the bed" is a HUGE understatement?
• when your brain isn't functioning the way you want it to
• that just starts off so bad that perky "i-love-the-morning" people just piss you off?
• when the idea of condemning everyone to the pits of eternal damnation just doesn't cut it?

i think i'm going to lay off blogging today because i need all my strength to concentrate on being borderline sociable.

what would you save?

i was listening to the radio station this morning and they were talking about house fires. i'm not sure how the topic came around but after all your loved ones have been saved and all that is left is to save are your worldly posessions, what would you save?

you know it's messed up that the only thing that you can think about is saving your computers. after i heard the radio dj's talk incessantly about saving their family momentos, i had a vision. it was me, running out from a house fire, covered from head to toe in soot, coughing involuntary and carrying my laptop under my arm with desktop computer in the other. i would probably also carry my bag that usually carries my digital camera, ipaq and memory cards.

forget family albums, annuals, the painting that i did when i was 6 years old or the dvd/vcd collection. i would save my computers and i'm proud of it!

i haven't geeked out in a while.

who do you know spends a whole night converting his desktop system to linux? who would you know that would actually do it for fun? yea, do you know anyone who would actually blog about it?

scary thought isn't it? but, in all truthfulness, last night was one of those nights where i actually did something fun for me. i used to stay up late nights just configuring computers and making sure that everything worked the way i wanted it to work. i used to run a BBS called "day of the tentacle" based on the lucas arts game. i used to stay up countless hours on a school night just to write scripts and run batch files that managed everything from my user database to sending out mail. i enjoyed every minute of it. the only problem was that the next day would actually be like a bad hangover. waking up early because of school and only having 2 hours of sleep was brutal. especially, when you're only 14 years old.

ritchie's geek points: 1 point for blogging about how much of a geek you are, 2 points for proving that you have been a geek since day one and 10000 points for comparing computer programming to drinking. yay me!

oh my lord, this is the funniest thing i've seen in a loooong time!

i swear to god that there is something wrong with this building.

not to be a worry wart but this building shakes. every morning, a little before 8am, the building goes into it's usual hiccup. it just shakes like it was ment to be in california or something. could it be that the 10000lbs overweight lady is settling into her cubicle? nope because i've never seen a 10000lbs overweight lady. could it be that we're near the water? i'm not sure. all i know is that the damn building is not structurally sound.

and who the heck started the saying: women and children first? obviously, either a woman or a child. i am a 24 year old, male, asian, webdeveloper/programmer. we're a dime-a-dozen right? well, let me tell you that i'm always ready to run straight for the stairwell; elbows up! women and children first my ass! i hate being smack in the middle of a demographic. especially when the building is ready to collapse any time.

vain, vain, vain!

did i ever tell you that i'm a closet narcissists? i've always wished i had the ability to take a decent picture of myself alas most of my pictures usually end up in tragedy because i'm never happy with them. i have many many pictures stored in my harddrive and archived into cd's but i don't have a decent picture of myself. it just doesn't happen. i also can never write a bio page, well at least a decent one. i just can't do anything that requires me to be decent and/or requires me to be serious about myself.

this weekend in my online travels, i ran into ate erna. she asked me to put together a bio and send in some pictures for the maARTe people page. i cringed, started writing and looked through my pictures. photo album after photo album, all i saw were: me holding up a peace sign, me sticking my tounge out, me doing my googly eyes pose and/or me contorting my face into a hideous expression. great! 3 cd's and 4 gig's worth of pictures and not one ok-looking picture. so i set out to take some pictures of myself.

6 hours and 30 pictures later, i come out with semi-decent pictures of myself and my mom laughing at me cause i have pictures of myself on my desktop. *ahem* stop laughing ernie *ahem*

i loooove my junk food.

i'm talking about pizza, chips, mcdonalds, hotdogs, burgers and the savory heart-clogging oily filipino desserts. i usually see a commercial for food and totally have a craving to go out and order one. if i wasn't so lazy to get off the couch i would probably be attached to multiple pace makers and be on a non-fat non-calorie diet.

one thing that i've had a craving for is the pizza hut p'zone! i mean c'mon people! who could've thought of a better idea? take a pizza pop, increase the size so that it's almost as big as a pizza hut pizza, insert all the yummy pizza hut ingredients that make a great pizza, and fold it in half! with a recipe like that i can't think of anything else they can make this any better? actually, if they made it stuffed crust. i'm going out to order one today! will you?

hi, my name is ritchie and i've been completely brainwashed by pizza hut!

here's my weekly routine of "filling out my sap time-entry form".

• talk to people and make sure that what i plan on entering will be consistent with what they will be. nothing worse than me billing 5 hours to a project meeting when another co-worker bills 10 to the same meeting.
• look through my calendar, to consolidate all the meetings that i have
• figure out what project codes match up to which projects that i was working on, because of a sadistic systems administrator who came up with a naming convention that makes no sense at all. what the heck is an "IS.02.HFU8.SMETING.SCKS" anyway?
• figure out which activity code match up to activity, because god forbid that they call analysis - analysis instead of "ISANA"
• log into system, figure out which password i switched it to last time
• take 30 minutes entering the times matching: project codes with activity codes to my notes on how much time i spent on it
• log off system
• 2 minutes later, look through emails... realize that i forgot somethings
• log back into the system, enter time
• repeat logging off, logging on, enter time steps at least 5 times
• think of a new password because the stupid system makes you change your password after 5 logons
• print figure out how to print a hardcopy to show team lead
• print hardcopy
• stare at hardcopy for 5 minutes trying to re-match back project codes and activity codes to actual activities
• show hardcopy to team lead and try explaining what each entry means
• sit at my desk and stare blankly at the screen for whatever time i have left for the day

it might be kinda weird to stare at the screen for the rest of the day. in all honesty, i'm not really that lazy that after i do my timesheets. its just that, i'm too scared to go through and enter things that i do after i do my timesheets and have to go through this process again.

yes folks, i survived yesterday: the seagull attacks, the lack of sleep, the appointments, the meetings and the mishap with friends. yes folks i am alive.

today is a totally different story though. when did my to-do list get so big that it can't fit on an 8x10 page? when?

attack of the killer seagulls?

i hate the bird problem here at my workplace. it's an outdoor eating area right beside a lake a stream some body of water. this means that seagulls are always flocking about looking for food, combined with the social retardedness of people leaving their unfinished trays of food around makes for a dangerous combination.

today, i took around my digital camera for a walk to take some pictures during lunch time. it was a nice day, the sun was out and i was in a rutty mood. i needed to get outside and have a little fun, right? obviously not! i saw a seagull perched on a table scavenging on some leftovers, i thought to myself, "hey! thats an interesting picture isn't it?" so i walked close and took aim of my camera. out of nowhere, this stupid bird must've had body guards. no less than 2 birds swooped down to protect this bird from me. apparently the birds must've thought that it was princess diana and i was some lowlife paparazzi. great! i screamed right when it swooped down for the kill. i ran, ran like the wind, to safety. *sob*

err i was supposed to post something today but...

• i slept a total of 5 hours in the past 2 days and my brain can be compared to the campbell's cream of corn soup
• withdrawing from smoking, and then having a "few" can cause you to cough up some blood right?
• the redbull that i took at 5:30am this morning has yet to kick in
• blind date blog has re-created itself into a porn-stories site
• i'm still wondering how my 30 minute nap turned into a horrid realization that i'm at work at 6:30am again!
• i'm still trying to figure out if i need (1) a wake-up pill, (2) coffee, (3) mcdonald's breakfast or (4) all-of-the above to wake me up

remember when i used to be more interesting? yea me to.

i brought my camera with me today. in hopes that there will be an update to an old section of this site. with that said, i'm going to go take some pictures and leave the blogging to the experts.

so i sleept through everything!

last night was my crash night and i didn't even realize it. i was planning to head over to a friend's house to wish her happy birthday, work on a script and take some pictures. did any of these things happen? nope!

the cable at my house is gone. well not permanently, it's just gone. this oversized truck was passing down my street and inadvertedly snapped the cable by passing under it. it didn't help that the cable was sagging across the street below regulations either. so now, it's almost been 48 hours without internet or cable tv! last night, i took a nap after reading in hopes that i'd sleep for just 30 minutes. i didn't wake up until 5:30am with a few voicemails and text messages on my phone. i even slept through an earthquake! when i woke up, i made sure that my friends were ok. how? well, i checked all their blogs. it's not only nice to be a geek, but to have geek friends as well.

i don't get it. never did and i don't think i ever will.

photoshop has always eluded me! it bothers me that i can figure my way around linux: configure the webserver, php, mysql, establish the correct permissions to get everything to work properly and install it in a network that has a billion settings but i can't, for the life of me, seem to add a blue filter to a picture using photoshop. i was sitting at home last night struggling to change a picture from colored into black and white. how sad is that?

i gave up after an hour of putting up filters, tinting, solarizing and went back to my linux box.

happy mothers day!

go and give your mom a hug today. you know she deserves it.

for all you psychologist-to-be and mind doctors out there.

what would you say if i said that. (1) i can't get a good night sleep without drugging myself with nyquil? (2) i can't get out of bed and function normally without a super-high dose of caffine in my system? (3) i have extremely terrible sleep habits. i'm talking about sleep at 2am wake up at 4am or sleep at 8pm wake up 2am and stay awake the rest of the night. (4) how would you diagnose me if i had a mental picture of everyone's demise in my head? (5) how about if i told you that it's 7am and i've managed to clean my desk, write up this blog, surf all my bookmarks and organize my files ... at work! (6) what if i say that i also managed to update icemag?

i say you have the next robin williams movie. i guess, you could say that i'm crazy too!

other meat?

i'm a regular at the chinese fast food near work. i mean, its fast and they give the best portions around here. they'll even offer you a free sample as you walk away with your food. sometimes you get stuck with day-old noodles and re-heated bbq pork but, no matter what, you keep coming back. it's almost this strange facination that i have with their efficiency. they're quick, they'll yell at you for taking too long to decide and don't even try and ask for your company discount after they've rung up your order. they're vicious. remember the soup-nazi in seinfeld? kinda like that only 4 feet 9 inches of full chinese fast-food fury!

i only noticed this now but they do have a regular menu to order from. i'm not quite sure i'd like to order from it though. what do you do when you're faced with "other meat" and 2 choices for sesame chicken?

bah.... ok today is workday and i spent way too much time trying to compose a relatively clever entry on blinddateblog. so go read that instead. ya know, appearing witty and cool can be a really hard task and sometimes i don't pull it off as well as i should.

it way too early to be at work today.

still amazed at the time i managed to get myself into work today considering that public transportation was my close friend today. it takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to get to my place of employment by bus and seabus. it also takes thirty minutes to get ready for work. so lets do some math, boys and girls: ritchie arrived at work at 7:00am, minus an hour and fifteen is 5:45am and minus 30 minutes is 5:15am. now lets take into account that i rolled around in my warm toasty bed for 15 minutes that would mean that i actually opened my eyes at 5:00am! 5:00am people, most redeye flights don't arrive that early. roosters in farms everywhere would be telling me to fuck off if i tried waking them up at 5:00am.

in other news, i think that all rude people are awake at 5:00am. during my little commute, i managed to get sworn at, stared down and fingered just because. well, not really. sworn at because this man was pushing old ladies out of his way, i told him off and said that he should have more respect for his elders since he's already approaching retirement age. he swore and gave me the finger as he was walking away. stared down because people wonder why a 19-year-old looking kid was ordering chai latte at starbucks holding up the line because they needed to start the magical coffee machine. everyone had to wait for their low-fat-foam, soy-milk americano. whoops sorry.

adventures before wake-up time.

its the apocalypse! repent your sins...err ok, nevermind.

yea, i tend to make fun of my old church group a lot. why? well cause they're easy targets for mockery. today, for example, it's snowing. a freak snow storm to be exact. it's may already and i look out the window and snow is pouring out like buckets. i wouldn't be surprised if my old church group were just crowding the entrance way of the church and confessing their sins to anyone that kinda looks like a priest. i'm sure they're probably not the only ones though.

in all defense, it does seem like the appocalypse up here in vancouver. the sky is a bit dark, the snow is coming down like god turned off the heater for spring, people are driving like their in panic-mode, causing traffic... ok, nevermind. this is vancouver.

me? well, i'm ok trust me. i'm a reverend. that automatically saves me right? oh lord, i'm going to hell for this post.

a bit late but worth posting anyway.

last friday was opening night of spider-man. i was determined to go because like all mindless zombies my opinions are molded by the media and not through free thought. the hype was there, everyone and their uncles's third cousin twice removed were there in the movie theaters that night. being the online junkie, i managed to scam a few tickets from the friendly-neighborhood online store. i asked a friend to join me because i was not going to be the lone loser wearing a spider-man shirt with the overstuffed belly super-sized drink in each hand.

we got there about 7:30pm for the 8:00pm showing. big mistake! the whole theater was packed full of these teenage kirsten dunst fans. we decided to exchange our tickets for the later show. of course, the only show that wasn't sold out was the 10:30pm one. so we exchanged it along with some handy advice from the clerk: get to the theater at least an hour and a half early. did we heed this advice? nope, we dilly-dallyed around the complex until 9:30pm, an hour before the show. the line up to the movie theater was literally around the building. no joke! we made it in though, i managed to survive the hype eventhough i was sitting beside said lone loser wearing a spider-man shirt with the oversized drink and the tub of popcorn.

it was all worth it though.

the amazing thing....

so my site was down this morning and so were a bunch of other sites that are shared on this server. why? well migration was happening. there was some sort of server migration going on in the isp that i use. no warning, no nothing. at least an email, that would've been nice. i guess i can't complain, free hosting is hard to find. isn't it? so i didn't blog, i wasn't checking my comments every 10 minutes and i wasn't surfing the sites on my bookmark lists the whole day. boring no? actually, it wasn't. i was actually working. can you believe that i was actually coding this whole morning? now thats amazing!

exerpt from organized divisional fun aka look how bored we are at the information services division hotdog "too-bad-its-raining-outside-but-we'll-have-it-in-the-basement-anyway" bbq at lunchtime.

as "dancing queen" is blasting on the pa speakers...
ritchie: why is abba playing on the loudspeakers?
john: you know there are soo many instances that abba is good for. this is sooo not one of them.
dan: yea... like gay pride parades?
ritchie: well, this is kinda... um... gay... isn't it?
looks at each other and rolls eyes...
all: bwwahahahahahhaha!

yay! organized fun!

the floor stinks with the smell of burnt toast!

only in this company would someone have the guts to bring in a toaster oven and plug it into their cubicle. to make matters worst, said person's toaster skills are very sub par. the whole floor stinks because this person has managed to burn toast to the point of a science experiment. whats next? a full blown kitchen set by the window?

i have no problem with people bringing their lunch to work. i don't have a problem with microwaving a lunch in the shared microwave. i can even tolerate it if your lunch is filipino style fish that manages to leave stains on the microwave wall because it's soo strong. i can't stand someone cooking lunch at 9:30am in a toaster oven that they brought in. i guess tomorrow i'm bringing in the george foreman grill; just out of bitterness!

social skills people! a little bit of social skills go a long way.

so, after my rough morning, i decided to get some breakfast. since it usually makes me happy to slobber my face with food when i'm not feeling too good. i go to the cafeteria and what do i see? rather, what don't i see? there were no labels on the muffins. everyone knows that all muffins look a like. i mean, i was standing there for a good 5 minutes staring at these mushroom/cupcake copycats trying to figure out which one was cornmeal! did i get cornmeal? no! i got the carrot riddled one; i hate carrots! i detest carrots on so many levels that i would damn all carrots to an everlasting existence in hell!

so was that it? oh hell no!

i'm walking back up to my lone cubicle on the 5th floor while eating away at my nasty carrot muffin when this socially retarded person starts tailgating me. who cares if the dood looked like some sort of manager in a hurry. if there isn't an "excuse me", i ain't moving my ass out of the way. so there he was trying quite hard to make his presence known. he would cough, make noises and stare at me but he would not even consider saying "excuse me". so i didn't move. did i care? no! i didn't get my cornmeal muffin, instead i got a stupid carrot filled one and this was the only satisfaction.

so try and figure me out.

one day i'm alright. another day, i'm pissed off at the world. one day i'm happy. see me a week from tomorrow and i'm depressed as hell. i don't think anyone can figure me out. i'm just one complicated guy i guess. i'm just not feeling up to par with dealing with people today. i just want to lock myself into the little space of my cubicle and seclude myself from the rest of the world. i think i know whats been bugging me. i'm just not sure if its really the reason or if it was because of something else combined with this. yea, that might be it (hows that for vague?)

ank, ted. whats that stuff that i'm supposed to take? i forgot the name of it.