The Hound of the Wolf

For the strength of Pack is in the Wolf, and the strength of Wolf is in the Pack -Rudyard Kipling

Friday, February 27, 2009

Cashflow Board Game

The second edition of the Cashflow Board game of the pinoymoneytalk.com sponsored by CondoInvestor pushed through last February 21 at McDo guadalupe. Officers of the PMT Coop led by rainmen and gr8collector explained the mechanics of the game. The 40+ people were divided into groups of 4 with 1 banker on each group. My group mates are quite excited. The group's banker is very patient in explaining the intricacies of the game. We were then given 'hypothetical' jobs with varying incomes, expenses, liabilities and assets. I am an office secretary, a mid-paying job.

The rat race track is divided into the following categories: opportunity, pay checks, babies, charities, downsize and the market. Avoid babies and downsize for it could add figures to the expense column or cut off income. In order to win the game, the cashflow should exceed the expenses.

One of my group mates, Rovhie, was able to get out of the rat race in about 2 hours. I am winning during the first instances of the game but eventually succumb to the agony of being 'downsized' three times in the game. I wasn't able to get out of the race (cashflow: 400, expense: 1700), but I definitely gained lots of lessons in investing. After the game, I am a low risk, low return, high security type of investor. An investor who wants to play it safe.

CI did a humorous presentation of his financial life. There have been early dropbacks but he was able to recover after going through some soul searching and imbibing the lessons of cashflow board game.

Here is a link of last saturday's cashflow board game courtesy of mark3acsay:

Thursday, February 26, 2009

CHITS and National Telehealth Service Act

We owe it to the public health people who have listlessly listened, participated and believed in various training sessions and talks especially with CHITS. Now that the National Telehealth Service Act of 2009 is on its way of filing in the Congress, the challenges from the development and implementation team of CHITS is greater. Great job to UP National Telehealth Center for leading the way.

Acknowledgment: Thanks to Ms Anna Valmero of Inq7.net for posting the article.


Post Notes:

As the technical lead of the CHITS project, the need for a relentless pursue of excellence and stronger and tougher nerves is inevitable. These are necessary traits for aspiring entrepreneurs as well. I hope to be one. Higher passive income is my personal battle cry nowadays. :D

Monday, February 23, 2009

A day at the Hybrid Yaw Yan gym

After playing the cashflow board game sponsored by pinoymoneytalk.com, i decided to visit either the Muay Association of the Philippines (MAP) office or the Hybrid Yaw Yan gym. The intention is to inquire about the training programs (including rates) they are offering. I opted to visit Hybrid Yaw Yan at the Annapolis, Cubao. I decided drop by to the future office of Trim Tab Technologies which is just on the adjacent street.

The Hybrid Yaw Yan is a martial school which teaches Yaw Yan (Sayaw ng Kamatayan or Dance of Death). Yaw Yan is a filipino martial arts developed by Grand Master Nap Fernandez and has closed resemblace to Muay Thai. Finally, upon reaching Hybrid Yaw Yaw's gym, I saw the fighters doing workouts and sparring sessions in preparation for an MMA competition this Saturday.

Coach Henry Kobayashi, Hybrid Yaw Yan's founder and head coach, discussed the basics of Yaw Yan and how different it is from other martial arts. For one, Yaw Yan does not have a kata or belt system. He also demonstrated some basic punching stance in Yaw Yan. The rest of the time was spent in watching competition videos of Hybrid Yaw Yan fighter.

From what i observed, the Yaw Yan attacks are lightning quick and unexpected. Yan Yan is a striking martial arts but Hybrid Yaw Yan was able to infuse other disciplines in their regimen such as wrestling, grappling and submission moves. This makes the craft MMA-ready. Yaw Yan is also a practical martial arts intended for personal self-defense not just for competitive matches. Vicious holds, head banging strikes with a Filipino twist.

Kudos to the Yaw Yan fighters, kudos to Pinoy martial arts.


PS: I just learned Sunday morning that Kru Robert Valdez, MAP president, was killed over a shooting incident inside his office. Big loss to the Muay Thai community in the Philippines. RIP Kru Robert and thank you for putting Philippines in the international Muay Thai map.

EDSA at 23

February 1986 has carved a special place in the Philippine history. It was the time when Filipinos from all walks of society assembled, marched, opposed and ousted the 20-year dictatorial rule of former Pres. Ferdinand Marcos. What was a simple call from the late Jaime Cardinal Sin, then Manila's Archbishop, has led to a massive People Power revolution that even made other countries admire Philippines. The victory then was sweet.

23 years later and what have Philippines become? Andres Bonifacio, the father of Philippine revolution, believes that true freedom is not just gaining social rights but also being able to live a decent and comfortable life. Are Filipinos truly free? Yup, free in the sense that people have "social rights". Yet for freedom from poverty, that I am unsure of. Pres GMA, in her recent EDSA celebration speech, mentioned that the world will not forgive a third EDSA revolution. This is quite disappointing for number of reasons, 1. EDSA is a symbol of activism and modern-day Philippine freedom, 2. GMA was installed thru EDSA 2, 3. EDSA is an internal Philippine affair, why foreign nations should mingle?

Being a four-year old kid in 1986, I don't care what's really happening. Memories then were quite vivid. We were eating crabs for dinner in our old Caloocan house while listening to June Keithley of Radio Veritas. Things became clear when we studied history in elementary. Ninoy is an icon.

It's time to take this country back. Long live Philippines and proud to be pinoy!

Sunday, February 22, 2009

NBA weekend: Newbie Basketball Altercation

A regular,no nonsense Sunday workout in the hoops court. The burning heat of the sun is a perfect energizer. The regimen is composed of matches in H-O-R-S-E, biente uno (21) and a one-on-one race to 12 game. The winner earns some bragging rights while the loser carries the basketball on the way back home.

Here are the competitors:

Austin a.k.a. "The Wonder Gnome"
Specialty: lightning fast dribbling. Devastating long-range jumpshots.




Alison aka "this blog's owner"
Strengths: likes shooting (and missing) lots of three pointers, banging bodies under the basket then pulling up an unexpected jump hook.




The match:
Closed match, Austin won by a point but garnered multiple hits and blows in the body and head.

Friday, February 20, 2009

The Last Lecture

Long yet heart warming "The Last Lecture" presentation of Dr. Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon University. It's amazing to see a man who knows that his days on Earth are numbered but still was able to deliver an inspiring message all across different types of people. The push-ups are funny. The message is loud and clear.





RIP, Dr. Paush.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

PHP Script for Automated Backup

Requirements:

1. PHP5 with PECL-SSH2 enabled
2. The SSH2 wrapper library (http://www.seoegghead.com/software/ssh2-php-wrappers.seo)
3. The killer script:

require_once('SSH2.php');
$s = new SSH2('MYSERVER');
$s->loginWithPassword('MYLOGIN', 'MYPASSWORD');
$_buf = $s->execCommandBlocking('tar cvf - /www/foo_com/');
file_put_contents('foo_com_backup_' . date('Ymd'), $_buf);

Result: Priceless peace of mind knowing that there is a script doing stuff humans should not supposed to regularly do.

Source:
http://www.phpclasses.org/blog/post/88-Automating-Backup-Tasks-Remotely-with-PHP-and-PECL-SSH2-extension.html

Monday, February 16, 2009

A week full of CHITS-ing

Three days, three health centers. That's how I would describe the itinerary I've been to last week. The goals are : 1. to upgrade their CHITS version, 2. To instruct users to test the stability of the new system, 3. To ask consensus to work inside the health center during the development of the family planning module in CHITS and 4. To re-experience the health center culture which I missed for sometime. Not all went in accordance to the plan. It has been that way always, the world is truly chaotic.

Monday: Malibay Health Center's LAN infrastructure is misbehaving. There is a persistent disconnection all across the PC's. In addition, the server's memory capability is being sapped by mysterious mysql daemons (this is pronounced as 'demon'). Workaround: 1. switch cables and fortify their attachments, 2. kill KDE and switch to the more memory-friendly IceWM user interface. All is well until ... A 15-minute visit was made to Lagrosa after (i arrived 4:45 and the center closes at 5PM) and all is up and running.

Tuesday: Novaliches to Tagaytay: 5 solid hours. I am about to made a visit to the Mendez Rural Health Unit to do system checkup and to offer Dr. Auditor the new deployment setup for CHITS. I will be a salesman for the day. The travel was less challenging and tiring than the previous visits. I counted the number of Cavite towns the bus passed by before getting to Mendez. It's around 5. I also tried counting the number instances I will be seeing the word 'Revilla'. Man, it's countless. :P

Upon arriving at health center, the staff greeted me 'Good afternoon' in Caviteno accent. The relief from a tiring trip was doubled because of: 1. having somebody greeting you a 'good afternoon', 2. the distinct Caviteno accent. The relief was tripled when they offered merienda.

Dr. Auditor gleefully welcomed me. Ok, so much for pleasantries. It's time to buckle down to work and start slaying the beast. The problem is quite simple, another workstation is getting the IP address that is supposed to be for the server. 30 mins, and its all done. Now, the business pitch starts. I won't go on the details anymore due to the confidentiality of the conversation but the salesman made a sale.

The terminal for Manila is just few blocks away but their nurse, Ma'am Ellen offered a ride. I found out the both she and Dr. Auditor started working at the Mendez Health Center since 1981. That's the truest sense of dedication and teamwork in serving the people thru public health delivery. The day is generally good except that i wasn't able to see Melissa. Tagaytay scenery in the afternoon is captivating.


Wednesday: In the middle of the afternoon, Malibay health center called me up to report the deteriorating status of their network. Desktops are disconnected, CHITS is hanging up and the server freezes and all is in pending chaos. The situation was slightly been relieved because the wireless network still works. I promised to dropped by and let my black magic do the work. At the end of the day, all is back to normal without me touching anything in the setup. The LAN cables got loosed and was re-attached by the midwives while the server just did an auto system check. The black magic worked!

Lessons learned from last week's experience:

1. a small problem may not be a small problem at all if the impact is quite uncontrollable
2. sometimes, a little prayer works.
3. end-users love CHITS! otherwise, they won't care at all if anything went wrong
4. intimate interaction and laser-pointed focus are requirements in slaying any troubleshooting woes
5. Tagaytay is a good stress buster.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Ampalaya Obsession

Recently, sa hindi malamang dahilan, nagkainterest akong isama ang ampalaya sa aking daily meals bilang appetizer. Simula ito sa transition ko mula sa pagiging omnivore tungo sa pagiging full-time herbivore. Gusto kong kainin ang ampalaya nang hilaw pero di ko pa kaya. Ang pinakamalapit ay ensaladang ampalaya. Iyon ang pinag-pipiyestahan ko lately. Ang mga sumusunod ay ilang facts na makakatulong upang ang pinaka-misunderstood na gulay ay mahalin at tangkilikin ng mga tao.

1. http://en.factolex.com/Ampalaya - Bitter melons are seldom mixed with other vegetables due to the strong bitter taste, although this can be moderated to some extent by salting and then washing the cut melon before use.

2. http://ezinearticles.com/?Health-Benefits-of-Ampalaya-(Bittergourd)&id=941524 - Ampalaya is noted to be an effective component in herbal medicine, and the fruit is known to help treat, or alleviate the symptoms of rheumatism and gout and ailments of the spleen and liver. It also is effective in helping lower the body's blood sugar and blood pressure levels.

3. http://www.stuartxchange.com/Ampalaya.html - Studies have suggested that ampalaya contains a hypoglycemic polypeptide, a plant insulin responsible for its blood sugar lowering effect. Other benefits suggested were body detoxification (including removal of nicotine), strengthening of the immune system and fertility regulation.

4. http://thecookmobile.com/conquering-ampalaya/ - For centuries, Asian communities have harnessed this vegetable’s nutrient and insulin-like components, preparing it as a regular ingredient in many Asian dishes and also as a herbal tea.




Sana ay maging pambansang gulay ng Pilipinas ang ampalaya. Mabuhay ang Ampalaya!

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Biyente Siyete

Twenty seven random thoughts on the undersigned's 27th birthday

1. the power of compounding the greatest invention ever -- albert einstein
2. passive income, multiple income streams
3. reduce bmi to 20. reduce weight by 40 lbs. increase muscle weight by 20%
4. the best medicine to a racking anxiety is work and play
5. FOREX seminar on February 5
6. beat X Refs and PAris 18ers team in NBA Fantasy game
7. congratulations to Austin for passing UPCAT 2009. Up, above in heaven, proud sa iyo ang tatay natin.
8. compre on may, thesis on june, graduation on october. wishful thinking...
9. CHITS expansion to 7 LGU's
10. missing eyeglasses.. need to get a new one
11. study Symfony + Dojo AJAX toolkit
12. contact KRU Robert of Philippine Muay Thai Association
13. business registration galore
14. exchange deal for CMS of Probusiness and Skyworld
15. Gina Carano
16. finish the book "Startup Entrepreneur by James Cook" next week
17. call Mabuhay Miles office and inquire on point drop off for Shanghai in June
18. report to Dr. Valbuena ASAP
19. 3 more years to go to finish the 1-million peso quest
20. be a regular reactor to Pam's blog
21. emphasize and practice Philippinism in all endeavors. Proud to be pinoy!



22. plan and execute for another PHP programming stint in National Computer Center this March
23. dream big, live fast, work hard, play smart
24. Gina Carano
25. attend PMT's regular Cashflow board game competitions
26. commit to 200+ plus blog postings this year
27. be a savvy, serial technopreneur in the near future... mark this word


Signed,

Alison

Monday, February 02, 2009

The Pepsi Super Bowl Ad 2009

Great ad! Very timely and impacting. Gina Carano is stunningly awesome. Bruce Lee is truly a legend. Gumby and Shrek are .... green. lol



Forever Young

May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
And may you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the light surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong,
And may you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
And may you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.